Page 75 - Sorrow of the Earth: Buffalo Bill, Sitting Bull and the Tragedy of Show Business

AFTER THE MASSACRE OF WOUNDED KNEE, the Indians eked out a miserable
existence on uncultivated and divided territories. Those who had worked for
the Wild West Show returned after a few years, but their luck didn’t improve.
The Redskins were viewed as the remnants of an old world, and the

watchword was now assimilation.
The destruction of a people always happens by degrees, and each phase, in
its own way, is innocent of the preceding one. The spectacle that seized upon
the Indians in the final moments of their history was not the least of the
violence perpetrated against them. It casts our original consent into oblivion.
In every case, the initial infatuation lasted no more than an instant. Then, each
time, there followed the same uncontainable destruction. And no world of

words was ever able to generate its world of things.

SO NOW LET’S LOOK. Yes, let’s look very hard, with all our might. Let’s look at
them, from the vantage point of our outrageous ease and prodigality.

And then let’s imagine for a moment—oh, just a brief moment—that
everything we have around us, our houses, our furniture, our kit, even our
names, our memories, and then our friends, our jobs, everything, absolutely
everything could be taken away from us, jeered and confiscated. “Oh, of
course,” we say, “Yes, yes, we’ve thought about it”, and “Obviously we knew
about it.” But it’s all abstract, just words, a hypothesis. Yes, it’s a hypothesis.
Other people. A hypothesis. Well, let’s try harder, just a little bit harder, to see

if we can deduce anything from it. Let’s try telling ourselves, now, that this
hypothesis has been going on for a very long time, in fact, my God, it’s been
going on forever.

And the people in this photograph no longer have a home, and most of their
memories are gone. For them, it’s not just a hypothesis. Look more
closely. Yes, you know them, in fact, you know them very well, you’ve seen
them a hundred times, two hundred times. Oh of course, they’re not exactly

the same, not exactly the same as these people, and yet, if you look carefully,
you’ve seen them before.