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The great interest which attaches to the whole show is that it enables the audience to take sides on the question of which people ride the best and have the best saddles. The whole thing is put in such tangible shape as to be a regular challenge to debate to lookers on. I, for one, formed my opinion, and have sacrificed two or three friends on the altar of my convictions. There is also a man in a pink coat who rides a hunting seat in competition with a yellow savage on a clear horse, and if our Englishman is not wedded to his ideals, he must receive a very bad shock in beholding he is a cowboy.
Next year the whole outfit is coming over to the World's Fair with the rest of Europe, and they are going to bring specimens of all the continental cavalry. The Sioux will talk German, the cowboys already have an English accent, and the "guachos" will be dressed in good English form.
The Wild West show is an evolution of a great idea. It is a great educator, and, with its aggregate of wonders from the out-of-the-way places, it will represent a poetical and harmless protest against the Derby hat and the starched linen--those horrible badges of the slavery of our modern social system, when men are physical lay figures, and mental and moral cog-wheels and wastes of uniformity--where the great crime is to be individual, and the unpardonable sin is to be out of the fashion. FREDERIC REMINGTON.
MILITARY REPRESENTATIVES.
The Messrs. Cody and Salsbury, in collecting various groups for their Congress of Rough Riders of the World, have arranged for recognized representative soldiers of the various nations of Europe, and to this end have to-day assembled in the arena a detachment of the Fifth Imperial Garde-Cuirassiers of His Majesty William II., German Emperor. England's Army will be represented by a group of Fifth Lancers (Royal Irish), and France presents a detachment of the First Garde-Dragoons. They will present the various evolutions and exercises of their armies, and in due course will introduce on horseback tentpegging, lemon-cutting, Turk's-head and sabre and lance exercises.
The interest in this friendly meeting of representative cavalrymen will be added to by the presence of a detachment of our own National Soldiers (from the celebrated Seventh United States Cavalry, from Fort Riley, Custer's famous "Old Guard"), who will act in consonance with the Director's idea to present an amicable study of the various military schools. These veterans of the plains will enable our public to more fitly comprehend the training and ability of the little American Army--that is the nucleus of the cohorts that would assemble in time of danger to the Republic--practically an army in which three-fourths of the privates would be able to do honor to shoulder-straps in an emergency. The Arabs are the genuine Bedouin Soldiers of the Desert, that song, story and history have for ages celebrated, and their skill the writer will leave to the judgment of the auditor, as space prevents justice to this feature of our exhibition.
[Image] CAVALRY OF ALL NATIONS, WITH "BUFFALO BILL," LEADING THEM.
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50 State of Nebraska Executive Department
General W.F. Cody. Lincoln January 6th 1891. Rushville, Nebraska.
My Dear General. As you are a member of my Staff, I have detailed you for special service; the particular nature of which, was made known during our conversation.
You will proceed to the scene of the Indian troubles, and communicate with General Miles.
You will in addition to the special service refered to, please visit the different towns, if time permit, along the line of the Elkhorn Rail-Road, and use your influence to quiet excitement and remove apprehensions upon the aprt of the people.
Please call upon General Colby, and give him your views as to the probability of the Indians breaking through the cordon or regular troops; your superior knowledge of Indian character and mode of warfare, may enable you to make suggestions of importance.
All officers and members of the State Troops, and all others, will, please extend to you every courtesy.
In testimony whereof.
SIGNATURE, Governor
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HEADQUARTERS DIVISION OF THE MISSOURI.
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS.
In the Field, Pine Ridge, S. D., January 11, 1891
Brig. General W. F. Cody,
Nebraska National Guard, Present.
Sir: -
I am glad to inform you that the entire body of Indians are now camped near here (within a mile and a half). They show every disposition to comply with the orders of the authorities. Nothing but an accident can prevent peace being re-established, and it will be out ambition to make it of a permanent character. I feel that the State troops can now be withdrawn with safety, and desire through you to express to them my thanks for the confidence they have given your people in their isolated homes.
Like information has this day been given General Colby.
Very respectfully yours,
{signature}
Major General Commanding
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BUFFALO BILL'S COW-BOY BAND.
"A MERITORIOUS MUSICAL FEATURE." - London Times.
Not the least interesting and popular adjunt of the Wild West entertainmnt is the music furnished by the famous Cow-boy Band. This band has always taken a prominent place with the organization, and has received the highest praise from educated musicious as well as the public in all parts of the world. It consists of thirty-six cow-boy musicians, each of whom would be considered a solosit on his own instrument, and when combined and playing together under the capable direction of Mr. Wm. Sweeney, their leader, they make music that compels the admiration of the masses. They give a convert before each performance, and incidental music that is a source of pleasure to all who hear it, and are daily greeted with rounds of applause. This band has been the recipient of commendations from nearly all the musical connoisseurs and leaders and members of the finest bands in Europe, Lieut. Dan Godfrey, the leader of the famous Grenadier Guards Band, having presented Mr. Sweeney, after a six months' engagement in the gardens connected with the Wild West in London, with a solid gold cornet, at the same time saying that the thirty-six members of the Cow-boy Band would produce more good music than any band he had ever heard with even double the number of musicians. For thiry minutes prior to the entertainment this band will give selections of both classical and popular music.
COSSACKS WITH THE WILD WEST.
In pursuance of their intention to assemble together at the World's Fair a congress of the representative horsemen of the world, MESSRS. CODY AND SALSBURY have had their agents in all parts of the earth looking for rough riders who could compete with or excel the original riders of the Wild West, the native product of America. In the Russian Coassack they found a horsemn whose style was new, novel and striking, and one who could compete with the finest in the world. These Cossacks, in the pictureesque garb of the Caucasus, form the latest acquisition of the Wild West. They are a troop of "Cossacks of teh Causcasian Line," under the command of Prince Soucca.
The Prince and his comrades, it is interesting to the public to know, belong to the same branch of the great Cossack family, the Zaporogians, immortalized by Byron's "Mazeppa." Mazeppa was the beif of the Saporogian community of the Cossacks of the Ukraine.
When Byron's famous hero came to grief at the battle of Poltava, the Cossacks fled to the Crimea, then Turkish territory, to avoid the vengeance of Peter the Great. Subsequently they were deported to the Kuban, and settled along the river as military colonists to defend the Russian frontier against the marauding tribes of the Caucasus.
On this dangerous frontier the qualities of horsemanship that made the name of MAzeppa and his warlike followers household words throughout the whole of Europe, became still further developed in the following generations, so that the Kuban Cossacks quickly became, in many respects, the most remarkable riders in the world.
On their lithe steppe horse, as fiece and active as themselves, they proved themselves more than worthy of their sires. During the heroic struggle of teh Circassian mountaineers to maintain their independence against Russia, the sons of Mazeppa's Zaporogians were
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found to be the only Cossacks sufficiently skilled to cope with Schamyl's wild mountain horsemen on equal terms. The Don Cossacks were lancers, and teh Circassians quickly learned to dodge within their guard and cut them down, they being among the most expert swordsmen in the world.
But the descendants of Mazeppa's Coassacks were equally expert with the sword, and so, in the matter of arms, as of horsemanship, met the enemy on equal terms. For many years the Cossacks of the Caucasian line were engaged in perpetual border warfare with the Circassian tribes. Their fighting was a series of little cavalry combats, surprises and raids, similar to the American Indian frontier wars, the finest school for the development of military horsemanship the world has seen since the days of Saladin and Coeur-de-Lion. Graduates from this fierce, wild school of saddle and sabre, the Cossacks of the Causcasian line have long enjoyed the reputation of being the flower of that vast horde of irregular cavalry, the Cossack military colonies, that have been planted along the southern frontier of the Russian Empire, from the Crimea to the Chinese border on the Pacific.
Circassian blood plainly crops out in the Coassacks of Buffalo Bill Wild West arena. Indeed, some of them look the Circassian, even more than the Coassack. The infusion of Circassian, Georgian and Mingrelian blood, began with stirring drama of strife and romance in the days of Schamyl. Part of the policy of Russia was thesuppression of the trade in Circassian beauties for the harems of Turkey, then carried on in small Turkish vessels in the Black Sea. A Cossack coastguard service was organized for the purpose, consisting of fleets of rowboats concealed in the creeks and inlets of teh Causcasian coast, whence they could pounce out on the slave ships.
The vessels usually contained from forty to fifty Circassian, Georgian and Mingrelian slave girls, lovely creatures selected for the harems of the Sultan and teh wealthy Pashas of Constantinople. The slaves thus captured were given to the Cossacks of the Kuban for wives; hence the sons and daughters of Schamyl's fierce opponents are as much Circassian as Cossack. The combination is a "strain" of horsemanship that has produced startling and unique results in the form of riders capable of really marvelous feats of a kind never before seen outside of Russia. Visitors to the Wild West who have marveled at the skill of the Indians and the Cow-boys with the bucking mustangs, will marvel anew at the striking performances of these descendants of the famous "Mazeppa."
SOUTH AMERICAN GAUCHOS AT THE "WILD WEST."
The latest additions to BUFFALO BILL'S "WILD WEST" makes the sixth delegation to the "Congress of the Rough Riders of the World," which MESSRS. CODY AND SALSBURY have organized in order to present the different schools of horsemandhsip to the world.
Having seen the performances of the Cow-boy, the Indian, the Vaquero, and lastly, of the Cossacks of the Caucasian line, our appetites are considerably whetted at the prospect of seeing how wild life on the South American pampas contrast with theirs.
To the student of human progress, of racial peculiarities, of national characteristics, the Gauchos are a subject of investigation as remarkable as anything modern history has to show.