Intriguing piece about the near-riot on campus with the arrival of Pawnee Bill’s Wild West Show in 1899, when students actively tried to sabotage the show. Pawnee Bill’s traveling circus was a pale shadow of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, which I wrote about extensively in my novel, Little Miss Sure Shot, chronicling the life of Annie Oakley — the undisputed star of that show.
Buffalo Bill never played any college campuses that I know of — most of those shows, which were earlier, played in large arenas or playing fields, and in front of adoring crowds, not an army of collegians eager to wreak havoc. It wasn’t surprising to read that President Francis Patton, a stern Presbyterian, chewed the students out for their hijinks — or that The Daily Princetonian downplayed the violence, calling it “horseplay.” Well, according to contemporary accounts, there were a lot of horses.
Intriguing piece about the near-riot on campus with the arrival of Pawnee Bill’s Wild West Show in 1899, when students actively tried to sabotage the show. Pawnee Bill’s traveling circus was a pale shadow of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, which I wrote about extensively in my novel, Little Miss Sure Shot, chronicling the life of Annie Oakley — the undisputed star of that show.
Buffalo Bill never played any college campuses that I know of — most of those shows, which were earlier, played in large arenas or playing fields, and in front of adoring crowds, not an army of collegians eager to wreak havoc. It wasn’t surprising to read that President Francis Patton, a stern Presbyterian, chewed the students out for their hijinks — or that The Daily Princetonian downplayed the violence, calling it “horseplay.” Well, according to contemporary accounts, there were a lot of horses.