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Pawnee Bill: A Biography of Major Gordon W. Lillie
Book by Shirley, Glenn
304 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 1965
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 3, 2021
Rather late in the book we are told parenthetically in a sentence fragment that Pawnee Bill was given the rank of major by "circus personnel." The "Bill" comes from his middle name, the "Pawnee" because the Indian tribe designated him a White Chief; he had acquired possible fluency in the Pawnee language and had been a teacher and administrator at the Pawnee tribal school in Oklahoma Territory.
In contrast to his friendliness with the Pawnee, Lillie had a prominent leadership role in the campaign to convince the congress and president to renege on Indian treaties and authorize the Oklahoma land rushes. The book doesn't really explain this dichotomy. The cattle drives from the Texas ranches to the Kansas railheads crossed Oklahoma. Perspective ranchers felt this was unfair since they were willing to lease grazing rights to the land from the Indian tribes. Perspective homesteaders in turn felt it was unfair for the government to lease the land to monied cattlemen rather than open the land to the masses. So it was a slippery slope from the cattle drives to the land rush.
Pawnee Bill staked no claims during the land rushes but he amassed a fortune in the circus business and used it to acquire, develop and furnish a large estate on land he purchased from the Pawnee tribe. He worked to prevent the complete extermination of the buffalo.
I enjoyed the writing style of Glenn Shirley, however, the twelfth chapter "Pawnee Bill's Great Far East" contains some obvious inaccuracies, such as the African cannibal chieftain who was actually a Pacific Islander. It also seems to have been written by someone else.
Pawnee Bill's life straddled a period of rapid change, the 1860s to the 1930s. He never was an army scout nor rode on a cattle drive and he left the circus business when he realized the threat posed by motion pictures.
In contrast to his friendliness with the Pawnee, Lillie had a prominent leadership role in the campaign to convince the congress and president to renege on Indian treaties and authorize the Oklahoma land rushes. The book doesn't really explain this dichotomy. The cattle drives from the Texas ranches to the Kansas railheads crossed Oklahoma. Perspective ranchers felt this was unfair since they were willing to lease grazing rights to the land from the Indian tribes. Perspective homesteaders in turn felt it was unfair for the government to lease the land to monied cattlemen rather than open the land to the masses. So it was a slippery slope from the cattle drives to the land rush.
Pawnee Bill staked no claims during the land rushes but he amassed a fortune in the circus business and used it to acquire, develop and furnish a large estate on land he purchased from the Pawnee tribe. He worked to prevent the complete extermination of the buffalo.
I enjoyed the writing style of Glenn Shirley, however, the twelfth chapter "Pawnee Bill's Great Far East" contains some obvious inaccuracies, such as the African cannibal chieftain who was actually a Pacific Islander. It also seems to have been written by someone else.
Pawnee Bill's life straddled a period of rapid change, the 1860s to the 1930s. He never was an army scout nor rode on a cattle drive and he left the circus business when he realized the threat posed by motion pictures.
October 20, 2008
What an interesting guy. This is who Buffalo Bill should have been.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews