Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 1, January 1993 | Page 57

The Menace of the Wild West Shows

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permission to John Clum's appeal to tour the "effete East" with his
Apaches:
I concur heartily in the undertaking and believe it
will be conducive to great good. Your Apaches never
appreciate the immensity of our domain, the
enterprise and culture of our people, and the
advantages of peace, until they have mingled with
and learned civilized people by actual contact, and
practical association.^
It is ironic to note the Indian response to such "actual contact"
with "enterprise" and "culture." In a speech delivered at the Fourth
Annual Conference of the Society of American Indians, held at
Madison, Wisconsin on October, 1914, Chauncey Yellow Robe
described the "Menace of the Wild West Show."
Some time ago. Judge Sells, the United States
Commissioner of Indian Affairs, said: "Let us save the
American Indian from the curse of whiskey." I
believe these words hold the key to the Indian
problem of to-day, but how can we save the American
Indian if the Indian Bureau is permitting special
privileges in favor of the wild-west Indian shows,
moving-picture concerns, and fair associations for
commercializing the Indian? This is the grea test
hindrance, injustice and detriment to the present
progress of the American Indians toward civilization
___ The Indians should be protected from the curse of
the wild-west show schemes, wherein the Indians
have been led to the white man's poison cup and have

become drunkards. 10

By the middle of the nineteenth century, influenced perhaps by
the Gold Rush and the completion of the transcontinental railway,
the desire to conquer the western frontier escalated. Almost as if to
justify the mass slaughter and denigration of the Indians that was
taking place, "scientific" investigations sought to prove that racial
inferiority was both inherent and inevitable. This pre-Darwinian