Tatá.ka Íyotake rides into Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and shatters the myth

When Sitting Bull, Tatá.ka Íyotake, agreed to join Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show on May 17, 1885, the announcement rippled through newspapers across the United States. Reporters struggled to reconcile the image they had created of him, the “arch enemy” of the United States, the man whose vision preceded the defeat of Custer, with the reality of a Hunkpapa Lakota leader stepping into a traveling entertainment spectacle. But according to historian Robert M. Utley in The Lance and the Shield, Sitting Bull entered the show with his dignity intact and his purpose firmly his own. He was not there to play a role. He was there to observe a world that had overrun the Plains and to understand the people who now surrounded his Nation.

Utley explains that Sitting Bull’s contract with Cody lasted only a few months, but those months were dense with meaning. Cody paid him fifty dollars a week, a significant wage in 1885, and treated him as a special attraction rather than a regular performer. Cody understood that Sitting Bull’s presence alone could fill arenas. But Sitting Bull did not join the show to entertain white audiences. He joined to see them. He told One Bull that he wanted to study the people whose government had broken its promises to the Lakota, to understand their ways, their beliefs, and the contradictions that shaped their society. This motivation is consistent with Lakota oral history and with One Bull’s known role as Sitting Bull’s closest companion.

What Sitting Bull actually did in the show was far more modest than the public imagined. He refused to reenact battles, refused to attack stage settlers, and refused to participate in mock fights. His “performance,” as described by Utley and confirmed by period newspapers, consisted of a single dignified ride around the arena. He would enter on horseback, circle the crowd once, and then sit before them, silent and composed. That was all. He would not paint his face, would not pretend to be defeated, and would not allow himself to be turned into a caricature. The St. Paul Pioneer Press described him as “self possessed and observant,” noting that he seemed more interested in the crowd than in the spectacle around him. In a show built on myth, Sitting Bull insisted on being real.

Sometimes he addressed the audience. His remarks were brief but pointed. Utley notes that he spoke about broken treaties, starvation on the reservations, and the condition of Lakota children. These speeches were not part of Cody’s script. They were Sitting Bull’s own interventions, moments of truth inserted into a fantasy designed to reassure white America of its innocence. Some newspapers complained that his remarks were “political,” but others noted that the crowds listened with fascination. In the middle of a spectacle meant to erase Native people, Sitting Bull stood there and told America the truth about itself.

He also discovered that white audiences would pay for his autograph, fifty cents apiece, a considerable sum. Utley records that he signed thousands of cards, sometimes adding sharp, humorous comments that revealed his dry wit and his critique of white society. One of the best documented lines he wrote was, “I am an Indian. I am not a fool.” Several show employees remembered this line, and it appears in multiple accounts of his time with the show. It was a small but unmistakable assertion of sovereignty.

Sitting Bull’s observations about white society were not limited to the arena. Charles Eastman, Ohiyesa, recorded one of Sitting Bull’s most famous reflections in Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains: “The white man knows how to make everything, but he does not know how to distribute it.” Eastman also preserved another of Sitting Bull’s insights: “The love of possessions is a disease with them.” These statements align with what Sitting Bull witnessed on the road, towns where some people lived in abundance while others, especially children, lived in poverty. He spoke often about the condition of white children, noting their hunger and their ragged clothing, and he contrasted this with the Lakota belief that no child should go without. His comments were not made in bitterness but in observation. He was studying a society that valued accumulation over generosity, and he found it bewildering.

His response was to give. Utley and Stanley Vestal both describe Sitting Bull’s extraordinary generosity during the tour. He gave away most of his earnings to poor children and families in the towns the show visited. He bought food for the hungry and handed coins to children who followed him through the streets. Cody himself reportedly joked that Sitting Bull “gave away more than he kept.” To Sitting Bull, this was not charity. It was Lakota values in action. A leader provides. A leader shares. A leader ensures that children are fed.

And then there was the moment that only Lakota witnesses understood, the moment preserved by Vestal in Sitting Bull: Champion of the Sioux, drawn from his interviews with One Bull and White Bull. Sometimes, when the crowd roared for him to speak, Sitting Bull would step forward and address them in Lakota. The audience, of course, understood nothing. They only heard the cadence of his voice and saw the dramatic sweep of his hand. They assumed he was praising them, thanking them, or offering some noble sentiment. But according to One Bull’s account, Sitting Bull would look out at the thousands of cheering white spectators and say, in Lakota,

“I hate all white people. You are thieves and liars.” And the crowd would erupt in applause. They cheered because they believed he was honoring them. They cheered because they could not imagine he would speak plainly. They cheered because they did not understand him, not his language, not his humor, not his grief, not his judgment. Vestal writes that Sitting Bull found this darkly amusing. Afterward, he would turn to One Bull and remark on how easily the whites were fooled by their own assumptions. They expected him to be grateful. They expected him to be impressed. They expected him to be humbled by their world. Instead, he told them the truth, and they applauded.

Sitting Bull watched the audiences closely. Utley describes him as “studying the white man,” trying to understand the people who had overrun the Plains. He saw their hunger for stories that made them feel innocent. He saw their fascination with the very people their government was trying to erase. He saw their confusion when he refused to play the role they expected. He shared these observations with One Bull, who carried them forward. In this way, Sitting Bull’s time with the Wild West show became not a performance but a form of reconnaissance, a study of the colonial mind.

His months with the show reveal a man who entered a colonial spectacle without surrendering his dignity. He used the platform to speak truth. He observed white society with sharp intelligence. He practiced generosity everywhere he went. And he remained fully Lakota in a world that tried to define him. His time with the show was not a humiliation. It was a strategic witnessing. He walked into America’s myth and refused to disappear inside it.

(Contact Ernestine Anunkasan Hopa at editor@nativesunnews.today)

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