the most
interesting of my adventures on the Plains. It has been necessary to
omit much that I would like to have told. For twenty years my life was
one of almost continuous excitement, and to tell the whole story would
require many volumes.

It was because of my great interest in the West, and my belief that its
development would be assisted by the interest I could awaken in others,
that I decided to bring the West to the East through the medium of the
Wild West Show. How greatly I was to succeed in this venture I had no
idea when it first occurred to me. As I have told you, I had already
appeared in a small Western show, and was the first man to bring
Indians to the East and exhibit them. But the theater was too small to
give any real impression of what Western life was like. Only in an
arena where horses could be ridden at full gallop, where lassos could
be thrown, and pistols and guns fired without frightening the audience
half to death, could such a thing be attempted.

After getting together a remarkable collection of Indians, cowboys,
Indian ponies, stage-coach drivers, and other typical denizens of my
own country under canvas I found myself almost immediately prosperous.

We showed in the principal cities of the country, and everywhere the
novelty of the exhibition drew great crowds. As owner and principal
actor in the enterprise I met the leading citizens of the United States
socially, and never lost an opportunity to "talk up" the Western
country, which I believed to have a wonderful future. I worked hard on
the program of the entertainment, taking care to make it realistic in
every detail. The wigwam village, the Indian war-dance, the chant of
the Great Spirit as it was sung on the Plains, the rise and fall of the
famous tribes, were all pictured accurately.

It was not an easy thing to do. Sometimes I had to send men on journeys
of more than a hundred miles to get the right kind of war-bonnets, or
to make correct copies of the tepees peculiar to a particular tribe. It
was my effort, in depicting the West, to depict it as it was. I was
much gratified in after years to find that scientists who had carefully
studied the Indians, their traditions and habits, gave me credit for
making very valuable contributions to the sum of human knowledge of the
American native.

The first presentation of my show was given in May, 1883, at Omaha,
which I had then chosen as my home. From there we made our first summer
tou