It was a magnificent plan on a magnificent scale, and it achieved instant success. The adventurous phases of Western life never fail to quicken the pulse of the East.
An exhibition which embodied so much of the historic and picturesque, which resurrected a whole half-century of dead and dying events, events the most thrilling and dramatic in American history, naturally stirred up the interest of the entire country. The actors, too, were historic characters—no weakling imitators, but men of sand and grit, who had lived every inch of the life they pictured.
The first presentation was given in May, 1883, at Omaha, Nebraska, the state Will had chosen for his home. Since then it has visited nearly every large city on the civilized globe, and has been viewed by countless thousands—men, women, and children of every nationality. It will long hold a place in history.
The "grand entrance" alone has never failed to chain the interest of the onlooker. The furious galloping of the Indian braves—Sioux, Arapahoe, Brule, and Cheyenne, all in war paint and feathers; the free dash of the Mexicans and cowboys, as they follow the Indians into line at break-neck speed; the black-bearded Cossacks of the Czar's light cavalry; the Riffian Arabs on their desert thoroughbreds; a cohort from the "Queen's Own" Lancers; troopers from the German Emperor's bodyguard; chasseurs and cuirassiers from the crack cavalry regiments of European standing armies; detachments from the United States cavalry and artillery; South American gauchos; Cuban veterans; Porto Ricans; Hawaiians; again frontiersmen, rough riders, Texas rangers—all plunging with dash and spirit into the open, each company followed by its chieftain and its flag; forming into a solid square, tremulous with color; then a quicker note to the music; the galloping hoofs of another horse, the finest of them all, and "Buffalo Bill," riding with the wonderful ease and stately grace which only he who is "born to the saddle" can ever attain, enters under the flash of the lime-light, and sweeping off his sombrero, holds his head high, and with a ring of pride in his voice, advances before his great audience and exclaims:
"Ladies and gentlemen, permit me to introduce to you a congress of the rough riders of the world."
As a child I wept over his disregard of the larger sphere predicted by the soothsayer; as a woman, I rejoice that he was true to his own ideals, for he sits his horse with a natural grace much better suited to the saddle than to the Presidential chair.
From the very beginning the "Wild West" was an immense success. Three years were spent in traveling over the United States; then Will conceived the idea of visiting England, and exhibiting to the mother race the wild side of the child's life. This plan entailed enormous expense, but it was carried out successfully.
Still true to the state of his adoption, Will chartered the steamer "State of Nebraska," and on March 31, 1886 a living freight from the picturesque New World began its voyage to the Old.
At Gravesend, England, the first sight to meet the eyes of the watchers on the steamer was a tug flying American colors. Three ringing cheers saluted the beautiful emblem, and the band on the tug responded with "The Star-Spangled Banner." Not to be outdone, the cowboy band on the "State of Nebraska" struck up "Yankee Doodle." The tug had been chartered by a company of Englishmen for the purpose of welcoming the novel American combination to British soil.
When the landing was made, the members of the Wild West company entered special coaches and were whirled toward London. Then even the stolidity of the Indians was not proof against sights so little resembling those to which they had been accustomed, and they showed their pleasure and appreciation by frequent repetition of the red man's characteristic grunt.