American Indian Culture and Research Journal

“We were rounding a curve,” recalled Luther Standing Bear, Sioux author, interpreter for the Indian members of Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West, and casualty of the Melrose Park train wreck of 1904, ”when suddenly I saw a train behind us, coming at lightning speed. Then came a terrific crash. There was no time even to cry out. When I opened my eyes again, the seats were piled on top of us and the steam and smoke from the engine were pouring in on us in great clouds. My legs were pinned down, and I was perfectly helpless . . . . Blood was everywhere.” Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West, a depiction of the American frontier experience, traveled and performed throughout the United States and Europe. By 1904, it was a well-established and well-known entertainment attraction in its twenty-first year of operation. Train wrecks were among the greatest dangers faced by the members of traveling shows around the turn of the nineteenth century. One of the most dramatic but unpublicized accidents of Cody’s Wild West happened near Melrose Park, Illinois, on 7 April 1904. According to Luther Standing Bear, the Indians were riding in the last car of the train, which, in effect, segregated them from the other passengers, when another train traveling behind them at ”lightening speed” plowed into the back of the Indians’ car. Standing Bear was one of the more seriously injured, sustaining three bruised and two broken ribs, cuts above both eyes, a severe gash on the back of his head, dislocation of both hips, and a broken left arm, left leg, collar bone, and nose.