Wild West Show Research Paper

In 1893, The World’s Columbian Exposition was held in Chicago to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the New World and to show how America has grown and progressed since then. In conjunction with the world fair, was the Parliament of the World Religions, an event propitiating non-Christian religions to speak on behalf of their own religion. However, even though the world fair was hosted on a total of 690 acres of land, not a single one of those acres were dedicated to Native American Religion besides a teepee set up at the entrance and the noble savage. The only actual living identified Native Americans present were outside the world fair featured in the Wild West show, Buffalo Bill, where they were shown as the bad guys and acted out their own execution. Yet ironically while they were enacting their own death they simultaneously were revitalizing Native American culture and religion with an underground vibrant pan-indian community of those acting in the show.
Although Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show helped Native Americans join together and create a transformed religion and culture, to …show more content…
The show mythologized America’s past, fixing in many viewers ' minds the ‘Plains Indians’ as stuck in that period of time and as a culture and religion defeated by cowboys. By doing so Native Americans were set in Euro-Americans minds as a stuck, traditional, and stasis religion, and were therefore unable to be defined as a ‘World’ Religion which were the ones showcased at the world’s fair. The leaders of The World’s Columbian Exposition defined a ‘World’ Religion as fluid, intellectual, and dynamic, containing faith, belief, and texts. The leaders who had the power to define what would be a showcased ‘World’ Religion included the President of the World’s Congresses at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Charles C. Bonney, a member of The New Church, the Chairman of the 1883 General Committee of the World’s Parliament of Religions, John Henry