Page 52 - Sorrow of the Earth: Buffalo Bill, Sitting Bull and the Tragedy of Show Business

Charles Bristol, to be included in the little display of relics at the Universal

Exposition in Chicago. It’s a version of the mas sacre, revised and corrected in
true American spirit by Buffalo Bill and John Burke. It’s the version for our
school history books. A children’s version. These theatricals don’t include the
Sioux’s long and exhausting trek as they fled their reserve, nor the
manoeuvres by the rangers to draw them meekly, in their dying hordes, to
Wounded Knee. Nor does it include the Hotchkiss gun and its miracle of
technology. Nor the snowstorm, nor the communal grave, nor the women, nor

the children.