Sitting Bull’s Contract Purchased Museum To Display Pact With Buffalo Bill

The director of a yet-to-open museum at Garryowen says he has acquired the contract that famed Sioux Indian leader Sitting Bull signed to tour with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show in 1885.

That was nine years after Sitting Bull led the Indian forces that defeated the U.S. 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

The contract is the only known document bearing Sitting Bull’s signature, said Christopher Kortlander, a dealer in historical manuscripts and rare books. The Indian leader signed other documents with an X, and his signature, until now, has been found only as autographs on pieces of paper or photographs, he said.

The contract said Sitting Bull would be paid $50 a week for four months and provided a $125 signing bonus. It includes a postscript: Sitting Bull retained exclusive rights to sell his autograph and photographs.

Sitting Bull was getting $1.50 for his autograph, Kortlander said: “That’s a lot of money back then.”’

The show toured the United States and Europe.

Kortlander plans to display the contract when he opens the nonprofit Custer Battlefield Museum at Garryowen, a few miles south of the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, in about two weeks.

Kortlander said he bought the contract from a Minnesota dealer last week. It and 100-year-old letters from the Indian Rights Association were discovered among the possessions of a 95-year-old man who died. He was the descendant of an Indian agent.

Kortlander would not say what he paid.

“This is a major find in Western American history,” Kortlander said.

Sitting Bull learned to sign his name after he found that he could sell his autograph, Kortlander said.

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