Page 25 - Sorrow of the Earth: Buffalo Bill, Sitting Bull and the Tragedy of Show Business

dynamos and crowned by flags from all over the world. The troupe numbered

800 individuals, 500 saddle horses and dozens of bison. It was like another
Noah’s Ark. The bison swayed in their stalls to the rhythm of the swell and
puked into their mangers; they suffered from seasickness.
The troupe finally set everything up at the far end of the boulevard,
alongside a country lane. The tents and the bleachers were erected in a few
hours. The team was well practised. Buffalo Bill decided to lay on two
performances a day, one at two o’clock and the other at eight. Ah! for one

franc sixty-five, how happy the youngsters of Nancy and Bar-le-Duc must
have been! How enthralled by the bison, those unknown aurochs they’d only
ever seen as drawings in the Larousse encyclopaedia. People took the tram
home from Jarville to the Place Carnot, and then dispersed down the winter
streets. It was nearly Christmas, the shop windows were lit, the chestnut

sellers bawled their wares, it smelled good, people allowed themselves a
moment’s reverie, and they bought a few postcards for the grandparents.
They’d seen Annie Oakley firing a rifle and smashing hundreds of glass balls
to smithereens like a cloud in a dream; and it seemed to them like the dream
itself.
Generally, Buffalo Bill gave orders for the camp to be dismantled
immediately after the last show. It would be done in less than an hour, like

packing up a market stall; and then they would leave without delay for the
next stop. But in Nancy, he had learned that there were some worrying
disturbances in South Dakota. According to reports, the Indians were
rebelling.

He doubtless assembled everyone who worked for him and gave them all
kinds of instructions; and after negotiations that he seemed in a hurry to
conclude, he rented a small chateau where the troupe could wait it out. Then,

as soon as he had issued a few more orders and organized their stay, Buffalo
Bill immediately headed for London and returned to the United States as fast
as he could. The troupe remained behind in Alsace for several months, alone,
with nothing to do. Small parties of anthropologists had plenty of time to
measure the skulls of the Indians with a curious sort of compass and to agree a
price for their fancy handicrafts with a view to a future museum. And it must
have been another spectacle, stranger perhaps than the great spectacular, to

see groups of cowboys outside the chateau in Benfeld near Strasbourg,
wandering about between the old pond and the farmstead in Muhlbach. And it