Abroad with Buffalo Bill in 1890-1891

Wild West performers on horseback

Frank Lehner photographs of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, NMAI.AC.147, P10202

William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody opened the first Wild West show in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1883. Within four years the fame of the Wild West had grown so great that Cody took his fellow performers on an international tour of Europe, performing between 1887 and 1906 in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany, Austria, Italy, and a host of other countries.

Undeniably, Cody’s Wild West constructed and promoted inaccurate views of Native Americans, defining “real Indians” as only those who lived in tipis, rode horses, and wore feather headdresses. Such stereotypes have sadly been perpetuated in dime novels, television shows, and major motion pictures down to the present, ignoring the staggering cultural diversity of the Indigenous peoples of North America.

Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild West performers on horseback

Frank Lehner photographs of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, NMAI.AC.147, P10203

In spite of the Wild West show’s culpability in creating and perpetuating narrow views of who Native peoples are and what they look like, several recent scholars have argued that there were some upsides for those Native Americans who chose to perform with this traveling show. One of the major bonuses was the relative freedom Wild West performers experienced compared with their community members who had to remain on the reservations. L.G. Moses in Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883-1933 and Michelle Delaney in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Warriors both note Native performers’ opportunities to not only see the world and earn an income, but also to practice their beliefs and live their days free from the interference of the ever-present missionaries, politicians, and BIA agents back at home.

Wild West show performers in camp

Frank Lehner photographs of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, NMAI.AC.147, P10208

In addition, Wild West performers experienced opportunities otherwise unimaginable to many Americans of their day, including being presented to Queen Victoria at her Golden Jubilee in London in 1887, attending the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris with its debut of the newly constructed Eiffel Tower, and having their photograph taken by the daughter of the future King of Bavaria, Ludwig III, in Munich in 1890.

Princess Maria Ludwiga Theresia of Bavaria photographing performers in Wild West camp

Frank Lehner photographs of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, NMAI.AC.147, P10218

A recently processed photograph collection in the National Museum of the American Indian’s Archive Center provides a glimpse into this world: Frank Lehner photographs of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show.

While few of the images include descriptions of a date or location, most can be attributed to 1890 or 1891 and related to one of the Wild West show’s European tours. A handful of the photographs, however, can be definitively placed in Munich, Germany, in 1890, between approximately April 19 and May 5 of that year. As the Wild West tour for Germany included visiting cities from Hamburg in the north to Munich in the south, and from Dresden in the east to Cologne in the west, the performers were usually in one place for only a few days or a few weeks at a time. According to Julia S. Stetler in her article “Painting the Town Red: Buffalo Bill’s Indians in the German Media,” daily performances in Munich alone often attracted more than five thousand spectators, with shows consistently being sold out.

King Ludwig III of Bavaria with Buffalo Bill and Wild West performers

Frank Lehner photographs of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, NMAI.AC.147, P10215

Although the identities of the original photographers remain in question, the photographs themselves nevertheless reveal much about camp life for the Native and non-Native Wild West show performers.

Portrait photograph of Wild West performer and son of Trapper John Nelson and unidentified Sioux woman

Frank Lehner photographs of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, NMAI.AC.147, P10219

Cody, in his showman-like manner of balancing historical authenticity and outright fabrication in his shows, even recruited a number of Sioux Ghost Dance performers in the immediate aftermath of the 1890 death of Sitting Bull and the Massacre at Wounded Knee. These men would later accompany the Wild West as it toured Germany and other European countries throughout 1891 and 1892.

Sadly, the identities of many of the Native performers themselves were not included with the original photograph descriptions when donated. Because of this, we as archivists need to rely on the public to aid us in correctly identifying the individuals featured in many of these images. Please reach out to us at the NMAI Archive Center at NMAIArchives@si.edu if you believe you can provide any further cultural or descriptive information for the Native and non-Native performers in these photographs. In this way we can work together to correct the historical record, and to give a name and a voice to those who have otherwise been silenced.

Wild West show performers in camp

Frank Lehner photographs of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, NMAI.AC.147, P10195

Nathan Sowry, Reference Archivist
National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center