Title: Buffalo Bill Historical Pictures

Periodical: The Moving Picture World

Date: September 12, 1914

More metadata
 

Buffalo Bill Historical Pictures.

Graphic Story Told by General King, Who Was Present at the Battle of War Bonnet Creek.

RECALLING the circumstances which led up to the famous battle of War Bonnet Creek, when the troopers of the United States under the leadership of General Wesley Merritt overtook and almost annihilated the band of Indians which was trying to join the Sioux who, a few days before, had wiped out the command of Colonel Custer and

[photo]

General Miles, Baldwin, and Maus.

killed that intrepid commander, General Charles King, who was present, tells the story of the Buffalo Bill historical pictures in the following interesting manner:

"That was a memorable march. It was fourteen miles west to Rawhide Peak, and there at 4 o'clock they halted, watered, remounted, rode on again – northward now to the valley of the Niobrara, where at 10 p. m. they unsaddled, bivouacked till 3 o'clock in the morning, by which time the wagons with rations and forage had caught up. Men and horses were roused, given a substantial breakfast, then away they went again – east-northeast now and heading for the Cheyenne crossing.

"The Indians to reach it had only an easy Sunday ride of twenty-eight miles northwestward from their abandoned camps. The Fifth cavalry, after a thrity-five mile jog all Saturday afternoon and evening, had still a fifty-mile stage to cover, and had to make it unsuspected and unseen. With only an hour's ride across the crest of a hill, then everywhere the battle began again and on every side the poor red men were being crowded and broken by our fire.

"A high wind came up from the north and drove the cutting snow in the faces of those of us who merely watched the fight. A troop of cavalry swung past at the trot and an ambulance went bumping down the ruts of the road where a patch of us wounded lay waiting. A soldier with two fingers of his left hand shot off came running toward us shouting that it was all damned foolishness. On the

[photo]

Wounded Knee Battlefield.

hills the sound of carbines firing echoed in a steady, patient way with the sound of hammers driving coffin nails.

"The snow fell thicker and the smoke hung low over the land and we were filled with the heavy monotony of death. It was like some nightmare that we had been weeping in through eternity. The whole world was involved in conflict. A man gritted his teeth and muttered, "My God! Why don't they surrender?" and, as if answering him, the bugles, turned to pity sang "Cease Firing," and a kind silence fell where death and turmoil had been keeping bloody house all day.

"The smoke drifted from the hillside and plains across where we watched; a group of Indians came stalking down the hill pacing to the funeral of a defeated race; our flag fluttered red and blue and white across the dead gray of the earth and skies; there was a cheer and the sound of tramping feet and the blare of loud music.

"And we were recalled to the fact that we were sitting in the Tabor Opera House looking at the motion picture reproduction of the last fight of the Indians of North America against the army of the United States. Hillsides, plains, the moving troops, the dying Indians, the coughing Hotchkiss were no more. Instead there were lights of the theater and the white screen and a thousand people awaking to the realization of having witnessed the most wonderful spectacle ever produced since motion pictures were invented.

"Nothing like this has ever been done before. Nothing to equal it will, perhaps, ever be done again. It is not a 'photoplay.' It is not a series of 'staged spectacles.' It is war itself; grim, unpitying and terrible; and it holds your heart still as you watch it and leaves you, in the end, amazed and spellbound at the courage and folly of mankind.

"No boy or girl should be allowed to miss these pictures. If you are a lonely man or woman pick up some equally lonely kiddie and take him for an afternoon with the great leaders of our army, with the great chiefs of our Indian tribes and two hours in the open world that has been made sacred by heroic blood of the nation's fighting heroes.