I was with Buffalo Bill

By Chief Red Fox and Lenore Sherman

I was born on the eleventh day of June, 1870, at Thunder Butte, Dakota Territory, the son of White Swan and Chief Black Eagle. My mother was the sister of Chief Crazy Horse. As a child I lived on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Dakota Territory. When I was 7 years old, I was sent to the government Indian school at Fort Yates on the Standing Rock Reservation, Dakota Territory.

In the year 1880, they sent me to the Carlisle Indian School at Carlisle, Pa. The new life was very strange to me. I had to learn a new language, I had to sleep on a bed. My Indian clothes were taken away from me and I was given the type of clothes the white boys wore. My long hair was cut and I was given shoes that hurt my feet. They had drills and inspections of the dormitories. This new life was so different from my old life that I was sad, lonely and had a feeling of insecurity.

I returned to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1889 Major James McLaughlin, the Indian agent of the Standing Rock Reservation, employed me as an interpreter and clerk at the agency. Later I was sent to Washington, D.C. to work in the office of Indian Affairs as an interpreter and clerk. I worked here from 1891 to 1893.

I returned home and a few days after I arrived at Pine Ridge, Colonel William Frederick Cody, better known as Buffalo Billl, came to Pine Ridge to get some of the Indians for his Wild West show. He came to our home to see my father and mother. He was an old friend. This was the first time I had met him. My father introduced him to me and he asked if I would like to go with him as an interpreter and take charge of the Indians. I told him I was twenty-three years old and I thought some of the Indians would resent my taking charge of them on account of my age.

I went with him and talked to some of the old chiefs and their families about going with his show. They asked who would look after them while they were away from home and he told them I would be in charge of them. Many of them said, “Red Fox knows the white people. He has been to school.”

One hundred and twenty Sioux Indians from Pine Ridge Reservation left the reservation for the first time and this was their first train ride. We left Rushville, Nebraska for Chicago, on the Burlington railroad, to join the show. The show opened outside of the First World’s Fair grounds at sixty-third and stoney Island in Chicago. This was in the month of June in 1893.

Before the show closed for the season, I asked them if they wanted to come back for the 1894 season. Most of them said they did. The ones who did not want to come back were old people who thought they were too old. The show opened for the season of 1894 at Brighton Beach, New York. This was the first time that the show was known as a railroad show. The next year we opened at the old Madison Square Garden and then went on to Boston for two weeks. We showed at all of the large cities in the United States and Canada. Many of the Indians who started in show business with Buffalo Bill in 1893 continued in show business. I am still in show business. Billboard once said, they believed that I was the only living Indian that had been at the World’s Fair in 1893.

I stayed with the Buffalo Bill show until I joined the Navy in April of 1898, at the start of the Spanish-American War. They sent me to the Far East to join the Asiatic fleet. I was discharged from the Navy at Mare Island in California, in the month of May 1902. I returned home and stayed until the spring of 1903. I then rejoined the Buffalo Bill show and stayed with it until 1908

In 1904 the Buffalo Bill show went to Europe. We sailed from Philadelphia for Liverpool, England, on the steamship Nebraska, a J.P. Morgan steamship line known as the Red Star Line. We left the dock at the foot of Washington Street and arrived in Birkhead, England. Where we unloaded athe show and opened at New Brighton We showed in all the large cities, in England, Scotland, Ireland and wales. We then went on to France and showed at all the large cities of Europe.

King Edward VIII and Buffalo Bill were good friends. While showing in London, the show grounds were on the west side of the Thames River, across from Westminster Abbey. We showed there for two weeks. One night King Edward came out of Buffalo Bill introduced him to us and he said, “I want you Redskins to put on a bloody good show, when you attack the stage coach. The king will be a spectator, my special guest.”

The stage coach attack always closed the show. Many of the Indians would be hiding in back of the seats and in different parts of the arena. Chief Standing Bear and I were on horseback outside of the Grand Entry.That is the entrance where the performers enter. The stage would circle around the arena twice , then the hidden Indians would give the war whoops and start the attack. We would come riding out as fast as our horses could run and circle the coach. The driver guard and passengers would begin to shoot.

We would ride up to the coach with flaming arrows and place the arrows in cans of red powder that would burn and cause the coach to be bathed in red light that made it look like it was on fire. The Indians would climb upon the coach, and the driver and guard would fall to the ground. The Indians would stop the coach, and Charging Hawk and I would open the doors and hit the passengers on the head with a rubber tomahawk. They would fall to the groud as though they had been killed. At this point the cavalry came to the rescue and the battle was on. Of course the cavalry always won. We always picked up the dead , put them in a wagon and drove out of the arena, and that was the end of the show.

The next day King Edward invited us to a dinner and talked to us about our homes and the way we lived. He was a real person and not at all the way we thought a King would be. We showed at all the captial cities in Europe. Many of the crowned heads attended our show. In Berlin the Kaiser and his family, including his brother, Prince Henry or Hendrick as they called him, attended the show. After the show they came to our tepees and asked if they could to into one.

They sat on the ground and crossed their legs. We handed then our peace pipe and each one took a puff. They talked about Sitting Bull and my uncle, Crazy Horse and about the Custer massacre. They also asked up about hunting and all phases of Indian Life.

Chief Red Fox wrote:

“I do the best with what I have, I never worry about yesterday or about tomorrow. I live for today. Yesterday has vanished into the mists of time, and tomorrow may never come…..for me.”

Chief Red Fox of the Sioux.
Red Fox was born in June 1870 in Dakota Territory, became a featured attraction with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and appeared in over a hundred movies……