Return of Little Big Man (45 page)

Now there was an opening if I ever had one, but at just that moment, our Indians rode howling and shooting into the arena and attacked the little force of bluecoats clustered on the artificial hillock built of earth and rocks that had been carted in from the English countryside, in back of which was the painted canvas backdrop of the Bighorn Mountains, and he naturally wanted to watch that. And when it was over and Cody rode in “too late” and then assembled the entire company for a finale and the American and British flags was flown and the anthems of both countries was played, everybody bowing to the applause of our guests, Emma Hickok having her horse dip down, one foreleg bent back, well, the moment was gone, for Buffalo Bill brung the principal performers over to the royal box, where he introduced them one by one to the Prince and Princess of Wales and the others.

Annie did something she boasted about later, real proud of her prudishness. When the Prince put out his hand for her to shake she ignored it and shook his wife’s instead. I guess she figured he might tickle her palm or slip her a note asking her to meet him somewhere private. She got burned up at me when I says she went too far, but she was in a bad mood a lot these days on account of being jealous of Lillian, who by the way was real eager to give the Prince a long, warm handshake along with googoo eyes, though I ain’t suggesting anything come of it.

After that the whole party went back to the encampment of tepees and met the people the Prince and all the English called Red Indians, and I didn’t know why till somebody pointed out they owned that country of India, over in Asia, where the folks was brown, and in fact while we performed in London some Indians from India come to the Wild West, some in turbans and the rest of their native getup, but a number in the finest British suits, speaking real good English, in a musical accent often easier to understand than some of the whites over there. One of them told me a “cheeky” boy stopped him in the street once and asks, “If you’re an Indian, where’s your bow and arrow?” Even though I got the point, he figured I might be too stupid to do so, and explained, “Hell’s bells, he took me for one of yours, you see?”

Great Britain also owned a lot of Africa full of black people, and I heard there was more in Australia who had been there all along, even before a bunch of white criminals went out from England to join them, and then of course the British had more than a toe in several places with yellow-colored folks, but the U.S.A. and the Spanish and Portuguee in South America had a monopoly on Red Indians, which was probably why the Prince was so keen on meeting them.

Red Shirt was the leader of the Sioux, and with Indians it’s just the same as with whites, and wolf packs for that matter: when the top dogs meet, it’s different from if just you and me palaver. For one, it’s politer, and both sides are real careful in what they say, which is mostly flattery.

So the Prince allows as how he enjoyed seeing the Red Indians perform, splendid horsemen that they was, and dressed in their handsome costumes, very fit and manly chaps, and he was happy to see they brought their families along, and he found a place to work in the word
wasichu.

In reply Red Shirt give a lengthy speech, to which the Prince listened as if he was fluent in Lakota and thereby showed he could do a king’s job when the time came, which is to say look like he’s fascinated by what he don’t understand or care about, which probably pleases more people than if he knowed or cared.

Red Shirt never stopped for me to translate until he had finished all his remarks, which was a break, for I could trim away all but the essentials, which would of disappointed Red Shirt to know but relieved the Prince from hearing the whole works twice.

Now amongst the Prince’s own remarks was how the Princess of Wales joined him in welcoming the Indians, so Red Shirt politely returned the favor. “He says,” says I, “he wants to thank the Big Chief’s wife for her nice words.” When the Prince didn’t get this, I explained. “He means Mrs. Princess.” I called her that so as to differentiate between her and them daughters, who held the same rank, but I could see the Prince thought it was real funny, though again he demonstrated his command of the situation by not laughing lest Red Shirt think it was at him.

I then asked the Prince if he had something on him that he could give Red Shirt. “I’m probably out of order,” I says, “and I beg your pardon, but you see, that’s their custom when a great chief visits.”

“Of course it is,” he says quickly, and he was real mad at his assistants who should of made provision for gifts (referring to these people as “queeries” though that didn’t apparently have anything to do with
heemanehs).
“What would be suitable, Jack? Perhaps my pocket watch?”

But I told him that or any gewgaws he was wearing, cravat pins, cuff links, or the like would be so luxurious they might embarrass the recipient and with his usual delicacy the Prince could understand that point. “You wouldn’t happen to have some tobacco on you?” I asked him. “He likes a good smoke.”

The Prince pulls a sizable cigar case out of his coat pocket and empties it into his hand and in the exact fashion of them tobacco-store Indians, extends it to Red Shirt, who takes them, making the sound of approval, “How, how.”

The Prince drawed me aside while the rest of his party was getting back into the line of carriages drawn up at the show grounds. He had already thanked Cody lavishly and told Arizona John Burke to make free use of his name in promotions, for it was the finest thing he had ever seen. To me he says, “Jack, I think you are aware of how much we, the entire party, have enjoyed ourselves today, and I am personally in your debt for an educational and entertaining commentary. I can’t wait to tell”—he starts laughing—“my Ma that she should make time in the fiftieth year of her reign to see this marvelous spectacle.”

“Well sir,” I says, “thanks for tolerating my ignorance, your R.H. You’re a real nice person and I bet will make a fine king.”

Now I’ll tell you, I been arguing with myself about whether I should say any more about the Prince, for it’s of an intimate nature. He never asked me to keep it quiet, but then the kind of fellow he was, he was probably assuming I’d act like a gentleman, even though I wasn’t one. But he’s been dead a long time now, and anyway I’m an American, so I’ll just make a compromise and say he sent one of them “queeries” around in a day or so to invite me to a party which turned out to be in a grand private house, with the Prince and the other gents in shirtsleeves, along with a number of girls in less, and the food and wine was so rich I was sick next day, and that’s all I’m going to report about it, except that the Prince was supposed to be incognito, so he wasn’t called Your Royal Highness but rather “Bertie.” He sure knowed how to enjoy himself.

Speaking of Red Shirt, he was as fine a looking man as I ever seen of any color and quite a dandy in Indian or white clothes. He also never minded talking to anybody who wanted him to, so them English newspaper reporters was always interviewing him and printing what he said at third hand, for he first spoke it in Lakota and then I translated it and finally they wrote their version in correct English—and by the way the English think because the lingo’s named for them, they’re the
only
ones who really speak it—so by the time it was printed it didn’t sound much like what Red Shirt had said.

Once I translated it back for him from the newspaper, figuring like me he would be amused, but instead he was right proud of having spoke so beautifully, so you see Indians was just like anybody else when it came to vanity, and I wouldn’t be saying this about Red Shirt had I not been vain myself about a mention in the press that said, “In the Sioux language Red Shirt is called ‘Ogilasa,’ as was pointed out by Captain John Crabb, an authority on Red Indian languages and the official interpreter for Colonel Cody’s exhibition.”

I made so much of that clipping in fact—or as they said over there, “cutting”—that Annie got tired of hearing about it, for fond of her as I was, I have to say she liked to shine alone like that star on her hat brim, and she wasn’t in the best mood these days, even though she got a lot of attention from the English, who wrote about her as a “frontier cow-girl,” with a “real Western drawl,” though Little Sure Shot, born Phoebe Ann Moses, never went west of Ohio before she become Annie Oakley and never past Kansas afterwards.

The Sioux visited a number of places around town in their off-time, generally with me, and we seen a lot of famous sights like the Tower of London, where they used to lock prisoners up, which Indians didn’t do, and kill them later on, which Indians of course did to their enemies as soon as they could. Also a museum full of dummies made of wax but you wouldn’t of knowed it without being tipped off, so real did they appear, and while all the Sioux was amazed by this exhibit some didn’t feel good about it, seeing it as a place of bad medicine, where they learned something new, namely that while the usual danger was that your spirit might be stolen from your body, in the white world the reverse was also possible and your body could be stuffed and mounted in a place where strangers come and stared at it. I don’t think they believed them figures was actually made of wax, even after the people who ran the museum let them touch it.

Another time the Indians was invited to see a famous actor named Mr. Irving perform in a play about a German who sold his soul to the devil, and they was asked to put on their full warpaint as well as the feather bonnets and the rest of their savage getup, so they did, and we was seated in the royal box seats, where Bertie’s Ma sat when she came, Grandmother England, which impressed Red Shirt and the others, and they enjoyed the tea and sweets served during the intermissions, but the drama never made no sense to them, Indian afterlife lacking in the idea of a nasty place where folks went when they died, for being bad.

However, Red Shirt, who had a knack for being gracious in whatever circumstance, told Mr. Irving afterwards he thought the play was a very interesting dream.

As might be expected in them days, when religious people was as active in England as they was in America, we was also hauled around to see a lot of churches, and over there these was considerably older than them at home, one for example being St. Mary’s Rotherhite where the Pilgrims worshiped before sailing on the
Mayflower,
which I didn’t identify for the Indians because I would of had to explain too many details some of which might of been uncomfortable.

And another time we was taken to Westminster Abbey, which ain’t only a church but also a great big tomb for a lot of Englishmen who was real important in their day, so there’s a lot more clutter than in even a church like H. W. Beecher’s in Brooklyn, let alone the plain board building in Dodge where Miss Dora Hand went of a Sunday.

Now the Sioux took an interest in the fact that all them bodies was under the floor or in marble boxes with statues of their occupants sleeping on the tops, some wearing armor also fashioned of stone, for they wrap their own dead in a blanket and put the body on a scaffold someplace away from camp, so it can by natural means, including buzzards, gradually rejoin the elements from which it come, but they figured the English kept these important bodies here so they could display them from time to time at Madame Tussaud’s waxworks.

Speaking of armor, they took a dim view of it, either in marble or in the original iron suits we seen at museums, once I explained it wasn’t just a show costume you took off for an actual fight, for the Sioux thought a man cowardly for covering himself up so he couldn’t get hurt, the purpose of going to war—except against the white man—being to gain honor, which was the opposite of keeping danger away. Also they wondered at the horse that could carry a man of that compounded weight, until we come upon some painted pictures of them huge chargers half again as big as an Indian pony, but they must of been mighty slow, too, and how in the world could a fellow in armor climb on a horse in the first place? Another thing that occurred to
me
was how did they take a leak?

But Red Shirt always thought well of Westminster Abbey, for he had a vision in which he seen girls with wings, and there they was, in stone figures at the abbey, and he give a serious speech on the subject to the newspaper reporters. I don’t know if they believed him, but they liked to print what he said, for of course he had a different slant on everything they knowed, which was worth listening to if you wanted to get the most out of life, though I am aware that some people just enjoyed laughing at how simpleminded they thought the savages was compared to themselves. But here’s something to consider: the Sioux didn’t have no angels in their religion, so how did these get into his dream?

Four days after that dress rehearsal for the Prince, B.B.W.W. had its official opening, and if there had been lots of excitement in London prior to this, it was nothing like what happened after, for like I said it was the fiftieth year Queen Victoria had sat on the throne and everybody was celebrating anyway, and now the Wild West seemed a part of the Golden Jubilee, for both sides forgot our old quarrel with the English to remember America had started as a colony of the British Empire, so the Indians could be seen as originally theirs too, to be added to the blacks, yellows, browns, and them South Sea islanders that I heard a friend of the Prince’s say was the color of a “well-roasted sweet potato.”

But the highest point of all come five days after that opening show, for good as his word, Prince Bertie had told his Ma it was the greatest thing he ever seen and though her opinion of him was supposedly low, I guess she believed if he knew about anything it was being entertained—which might of been discouraging at another time, but in fact the Queen had been widowed a quarter of a century earlier and not having had to earn a living, could be even more devoted to her dead husband than Mrs. Libbie Custer, so she had mostly stayed inside her palaces all them years, in mourning. Now she had sent a delegation of her own queeries to Cody asking him kindly if he would bring his company to a “command” performance at Windsor Castle, which is how English royalty had to put the matter, not having any actual power (like Indian chiefs, incidentally), but Buffalo Bill replied, with all respect, that the exhibition was far too big to be moved from the grounds at Earl’s Court.