Page 55 - Sorrow of the Earth: Buffalo Bill, Sitting Bull and the Tragedy of Show Business

THE END OF THE WORLD IS APPROACHING. And this time it’s for real, it’s not the
wild imaginings of prophets or cloistered nuns, it’s a widespread impression, a
commercial necessity—a wish. Something is happening, something that’s
never been seen before. It’s as though every poor wretch in the world had

suddenly decided to head for America. In 1870, there were forty million
Americans; but by 1880 the number had gone up to fifty million; and by 1900
it was seventy-six million. That’s a lot of inhabitants arriving and getting born
in such a short space of time, a population that’s doubled in size in thirty
years, a territory that’s expanding, a vast populace turning up and filling out
the place and propelling its mistakes way out before it. In Minnesota,
Missouri, Arkansas, they’re all gripped by a kind of madness. No more quiet

Sunday afternoons. Giddy up! we’re off to Oklahoma! Kansas! But in Kansas
the safety curtain is already burning, people are saying that gold has been
found in California, and now everyone is making a dash for the Pacific:
wagons, tramps, tarts, good-for-nothings of all kinds, but also prodigal sons,
decent lads from Memphis who all want to see. And when they get there, what
do they see? The perpetuity of the breakers, Big Sur, tremendous cliffs.

Nothing is easy for these people, but everything is possible. The human
species has just embarked on a journey without end. People walk for months,
they gallop, and then the rail tracks extend in an unprecedented war between
Vanderbilt, Gould and two or three other crooks. There had to be a way of
crossing the continent. And while the US Army labours at the expansion of
Progress, the great powers rise up. Frenzied speculation. Scandalous
bankruptcy. Legendary collusion. And all the while, people go from Duluth to

Tacoma, from Houston to Los Angeles and from Chicago to San Francisco.
The Union Pacific smashes through the Rockies and steams onward! From
now on you can go everywhere without getting your feet wet. Oh! there’ll be a
few attacks and disruptions, but you can still travel all the way from the statue
of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt in New York City to San Francisco,

while you read your newspaper.
In 1895, like any self-respecting American, Buffalo Bill created a town,
investing his burgeoning fortune in a project for the future. And, bizarrely, he
gave the town his real name: Cody. A town that came into being out of
nowhere, as you can see on the photographs. At what point can you begin to