Sitting Bull signed on with Buffalo Bill for $50 a week
In 1885, the man American newspapers blamed for Custer's death signed on with Buffalo Bill's Wild West, for four months at fifty dollars a week. His contract had one more term: only he could sell his autograph or pictures of himself.
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Sources
Sources
- National Park Service, Little Bighorn Battlefield, "Sitting Bull": https://www.nps.gov/libi/learn/historyculture/sitting-bull.htm
- Frank H. Goodyear III, "Wanted: Sitting Bull and His Photographic Portrait", South Dakota History 40:2 (2010)
- Mark Diedrich, "Sitting Bull and His 1884 Visit to St. Paul", Ramsey County History (Spring 2003)
- L. G. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883-1933 (1999), via "Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill", Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitting_Bull_and_Buffalo_Bill
- Paul L. Hedren, on the skirmish at Warbonnet Creek, History Nebraska: https://history.nebraska.gov/publications/skirmish-warbonnet-creek
- Buffalo Bill Center of the West, "There's never been an actor like Buffalo Bill" (2015)
- State Historical Society of North Dakota, on the 1889 agreement
- Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, "Ghost Dance": https://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.rel.023.html
- Sam Maddra, Hostiles? The Lakota Ghost Dance and Buffalo Bill's Wild West (University of Oklahoma Press, 2006)
- Fine Books & Collections, on the May 2026 sale: https://www.finebooksmagazine.com/news/sitting-bulls-1885-buffalo-bill-wild-west-contract-sold-168213
Pictures
- Edison's films "Sioux Ghost Dance" (1894; listed by the Library of Congress as a Lakota grass dance), "Annie Oakley" (1894) and "Parade of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show No. 2" (1898); Biograph's "Buffalo Bill's Wild West Parade" (1902); Lumiere's "Buffalo Bill - peaux rouges" (1897); and "The Life of Buffalo Bill" (Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill Film Co., 1912), all Library of Congress. Photographs by O. S. Goff, D. F. Barry, W. R. Cross, the Notman studio, J. C. H. Grabill, Stanley J. Morrow, Alexander Gardner, Mathew Brady's studio, C. M. Bell, James Mooney and others, from the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the Smithsonian, the National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Commons; Red Horse's 1881 drawings of the Little Bighorn (National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian); the New-York Tribune of 7 July 1876 (Chronicling America); Harper's Weekly (1877, 1890); the Wild West's 1884 programme and an 1890 poster. Contract photographs courtesy of RR Auction. George E. Spencer's 1891 portrait of Kicking Bear: Wikimedia Commons, Von Bern, CC BY-SA 4.0.