31
w w w. d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m
M O S T LY
B U F FA L O B I L L
WA S S Y M B O L I C,
STANDING IN, AS HE EVER DID,
FOR SOMETHING
ESSENTIALLY BOTH WESTERN
AND UNIQUELY AMERICAN,
THE PURSUIT OF PROGRESS
ACCOMPANIED BY A NOSTALGIA
FOR THE LOST WILDERNESS.
complishment of outliving the period with which he had be-
come synonymous. The 20th century didn't suit him as well as
the 19th. Sitting Bull might have done the same, had he not been
killed by Tribal Police sent by the government to make sure he
didn't join the Ghost Dance. But there was one thing that Sitting
Bull and Bill now shared: they both had the odd experience of
playing out, nightly, both their greatest victory and their most
crushing defeat at once, for the entertainment of paying audi-
ences. Time had pulled the same trick on Bill as it had on Sitting
Bull. For this wasn't the Wild West, or the Congress of Rough
Riders. It wasn't even Barnum and Bailey.
Despite boasting 11 acres of "waterpoof tents" and "new
patent seats," as well as the alluring presence of "Zora, bravest
woman in the world," who was "lithe as a willow, straight as a
spear, the figure of a Juno" according to an ad in a Denver news-
paper, the most the banner for the Sells Floto Circus could ever
claim was "The Second Largest Show in the World."
All of which is not to say that we should pity the Buffalo Bill who
found himself looking out of his train car windows and thinking
ROBERT
RATH
