1913 - [ Wild West Shows] ... is beneficial in the majority of instances, it destroys for the public the romance of the Indian character.

A newspaper article from April 13, 1913 announced that Buffalo Bill would performing two big shows in Philadelphia. They added a new sport - auto polo - to the marquee. The show also included the Royal Singalese troupe of native dancer, "a Jap aggregation" that includes a number of jiu-jitsi experts, the Imperial Russian whirlwind dancers, and Max Gruber's educated elephant and animals.

          "The Wild West includes a number of new innovations, together with all the old ideas, so well liked by lovers of amusement. The bucking horses ridden by the cowboys, the Indian settlement and the rough riding and lassoing are all shaped together in pleasing array, while the best and foremost performers participate in the performance."

                                 Frontier Scouts Led Lonely Life
          "The duty of a frontier scout in olden days was dreary in its isolation, so dangerous in its execution, so fraught with terrors in case of discovery or capture, that it, to a certain extent, eclipsed in oppressiveness the most thrilling expression of poetry or romancer in depicting an individual environed by its solitude.
          Climactic terrors being interpreted only by the words "cyclone" and "blizzard," at times from forty to sixty degrees below zero, necessitated in the lonely scout a possession of physical endurance beyond the ordinary; cunning and plain-scene, the attack on the wagon trail, craft equaling the Indian, perfect horsemanship, deadly marksmanship, combined with determination and courage to the limit. ...."

          "To the searching student of the history of those times, the fact will be impressed that there then existed a peculiar condition of affairs that can never again exist in the future history of the globe, producing a class of men in the American scout that can never be duplicated."

1913, April 13  The Philadelphia Inquirer 

1913, July 31 - The Sheriff having "seen" Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill, it is reported that their Wild West show will go out of existence. But aren't there any other "Bills" to fill the American youngster with longing to shoot Indians and rope cows?"

1913, July 31  Harrisburg Daily Independent 

1913, August 7 - "The wild Indians of the plains -- the genuine blanket-wearing, feather-decorated red men of the prairies -- area almost a thing of the past. Where they have not been decimated by disease and living under conditions for which their nature unfits them, they have lost their distinctive character through contact with civilization. They have learned to dress like the white man and they have absorbed the white man's ways.
          The Wild West shows have undoubtedly done a great deal to civilize the Indians. They have brought the Indian in contact with the white man's world by travel and by association; and no matter how aboriginal an Indian may be, a season or two "on the road" will change his character and give him many ideas and aspirations of the white man -- and sometimes his faults. While this civilizing process is beneficial in the majority of instances, it destroys for the public the romance of the Indian character. The public prefers to see the real Indian, fresh from his wild state on the reservations, and not the Indian whose only claim to being an aborigine is his color and an Indian dress which he may doff after the show.

1913, August 10 

1913, Aug 22  The Bismarck Tribune 

   "Other factors in the bankrupting of the [ Buffalo Bill] show were the moving pictures of Wild West scenes and the many imitations of his Wild West show that flooded the country in recent years, and by their very tawdriness, detracting from the fame of the real thing."

1913, Aug 25  La Grande Observer