Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

When Buffalo Bill crossed the ocean: Native American scenes in early twentieth century European culture

2012; Intellect; Volume: 31; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1386/ejac.31.3.187_1

1758-9118

Irene Lottini,

American History and Culture

Between 1886 and 1906 Buffalo Bill’s ‘Wild West’ show travelled across Europe presenting its performances in England, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria–Hungary, Holland and Belgium. Encountering the ‘Indian motif’ which had already been introduced into popular culture through different forms of adventure literature, Buffalo Bill’s late nineteenth century European performances popularized a series of images that his 1905–06 tour confirmed and the culture industry began to reproduce.From German ethnographic shows to Italian opera, from popular literature to silent cinema, the response to Buffalo Bill’s tours was a proliferation of western scenes through different media. In the same years in which European countries were consolidating their colonial empires or starting their new expansionistic adventures, Buffalo Bill’s ‘spectacularization’ of Native Americans merged with the dominant imperialistic point of view and stimulated the creation of an imagery that reasserted the idea of the White Men’s superiority and civilizing mission.