Rare Sitting Bull–Buffalo Bill contract heads to Buffalo Bill Center of the West

CODY, Wyo. — A rare 1885 contract between Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill Cody is coming to Wyoming for the first time after a longtime museum supporter paid $136,000 to secure the document for the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, according to museum officials. The contract will join other cornerstone artifacts in the Buffalo Bill Center of the West’s permanent collection.

The contract, considered one of the most significant surviving records of the Wild West show era, was purchased at auction by philanthropist Naoma Tate. She said she stepped in to ensure the artifact would be accessible to the public rather than remaining in private hands.

“It’s just wonderful this is coming back to the story,” Tate said, according to an interview with Cowboy State Daily. “There is a difference in the presence of the real, and this will help us tell the story better.”

The handwritten agreement outlines the terms under which Sitting Bull joined Cody’s 1885 season, the most successful in the show’s history, according to Buffalo Bill historian Paul Hutton. The contract includes weekly pay, hiring of family members, an interpreter of Sitting Bull’s choosing and exclusive rights for Sitting Bull to sell his own photographs and autographs — an unusually modern provision for the time.

Hutton, who is curator at the Buffalo Bill Museum, said the document is “a piece of the true cross” for the institution. The museum had twice attempted to acquire the contract in previous years but was unable to meet the asking price, according to Hutton.

“This is where it belongs,” he said. “It’s a touchstone to the past and shows how quickly the great events of history — like the Battle of the Little Bighorn — turned into show business and celebrity.”

The contract’s provenance stretches from the collection of North Dakota congressman Usher Burdick to a small museum on the Crow Reservation, then to German businessman Jochen Zeitz, who purchased it at a Dallas auction, according to auction records.

Tate, a longtime donor to the Buffalo Bill Center, said she views the acquisition as part of a broader mission to preserve Western history in a state where museums rely heavily on private support.

“We don’t get a lot of government funding,” she said. “These things are valuable because of their history. My mission is to tell our story through the documents and objects of the past,” according to Tate.

The contract will go on display at the Buffalo Bill Museum once it arrives from the auction house. Hutton said special programming is planned to highlight the artifact and the complicated relationship between Cody and the Lakota performers who traveled with his show.

“This is more than a document,”

Hutton said. “It’s a window into Sitting Bull’s agency, Cody’s nostalgia for the West and the world these performers navigated.”

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