Final Vision
In 1885, another mythic figure of the American West -- Sitting Bull --
joined Cody's show. Billed as "the slayer of General Custer," he earned
$50 a week, plus the profits from the sale of his autograph, for riding
once around the arena at every performance. Touring from city to city,
Sitting Bull saw another side of American life -- and of his own life
as well.
 "I think he was probably in turns amused and humiliated by
the experience. This was so much unlike the reality that he had lived
as a young man, and yet it was a bizarre reflection of that reality
too. So he must have seen his experience from a different angle when he
was in the Wild West Show."
N. Scott Momaday
Sitting Bull left the Wild West show after only four months,
having given much of his pay to newsboys, hoboes and beggars --
destitutes for whom white America seemed inexplicably to feel no
compassion. He returned to his home at Standing
Rock Reservation, and there had another of his mystical visions,
like the ones that had foretold his people’s victories in 1876.
 This time he saw himself walking near his home when a
meadowlark fluttered down onto a little hillock and spoke to him: “Your
own people, Lakota, will kill you,” it said.
Sitting Bull knew that his visions had always proved true
before.
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