When Buffalo Bill visited Plymouth on the 3rd June 1904, he brought with him a troop of Red Indians who toured with his Wild West Show. For the first time, Red Indians could be seen sitting on street corners in the Stonehouse and Union Street areas of the city. It must have been an amazing sight when people's only experience of Red Indians was through stories read about cowboys and Indians in newspapers, comics or seen in early silent movies. Children would have been particularly fascinated by them as their only knowledge of Indians would be from stories heard about Geronimo or Custer's Last Stand.
The one thing that was noted at the time about the visiting Red Indians was that they couldn't handle their drink and notices appeared in drinking houses which read, 'No Indians to be served'. Nowadays, this might seem to appear as being racist but at the time, the problem was actually caused by them getting drunk too quick and being overly rowdy.
Willie Sitting Bull was one of the Indians who accompanied Buffalo Bill to Britain. He was the only son of Sitting Bull (pictured). Sitting Bull himself had originally taken part in the show when it toured America. It's amazing to think how things had changed in America, especially for the Indians, in just two generations of a family. Willie regularly took part in mock battles which featured the defeat of Custer at Little Big Horn.
The show at the Exhibition Fields, Pennycomequick must have been an amazing sight. It's interesting that there are still people living in Plymouth today that remember their relatives telling them of the Wild West show and a time when Red Indians filled the streets of the town.
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