Distinctly Montana Magazine

81 w w w. d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m were beyond huge, like Buffalo Bill's performance at Chi- cago at the World's Fair in 1893. There, he put on 318 perfor- mances with an aver- age of 16,000 people every time. That's roughly 5.1 million people. Of course, we have to consider that some of those people must have come back to see it again, perhaps over and over. That's a far cry from the smallest Wild West show on record, which pitched its meager tent on the lawn of the courthouse in Terre Haute, Indi- ana. It consisted of Buckskin Ben, his horse, and his wife, who sold tickets and served as the drum player. This anec- dote comes from Chief William Red Fox, a former Buffalo Bill Wild West alum who witnessed the miniature production as it was hastily put together, performed, and taken down. He said that Buckskin Ben's wife "never skipped a beat." If someone, Montana Frank perhaps, had a much smaller-scale show than Buffalo Bill's Wild West, they would have to resort to posters with generic images selected from printshops offering catalogs full of off-the-shelf, non-specific Western scenes that could be ordered with a bit of text on top to advertise smaller shows unable to afford their own artists. These images offered up generic copies of the bigger shows' spectacles and feats, with comely young lady shootists, Indians raiding a traveling stage- coach, etc. Montana Frank's posters were printed by the Amer- ican Show Print Co. of Milwaukee, sometime between 1909 and 1911, and presumably were purchased not long thereafter. To follow his trail, I began by scouring newspapers.com for mentions of Montana Frank. As the number of clippings grew, so did a list of some of the performers with whom he shared the stage: Fresno Rose, the Circle M Rangers, Cattle Annie, and Come Together in Lewistown LewistownHotels.com Funding Provided By Lewistown Hoteliers TBID 216 NE Main Lewistown, MT 406-535-5468 TrailsEndMotelMT.us 216 7th Avenue S Lewistown, MT 406-535-5411 TheCalvertHotel.com 520 E Main Lewistown, MT 406-535-5496 B-Bmotel.com 102 Wendell Lewistown, MT 406-707-4541 Super8.com 211 E Main Lewistown, MT 406-535-8721 YogoInn.com

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