OCR Text |
Show The West's Best Kept Secret 3 Pony Express saddle, there hangs an exquisite Russian lap robe, the design created from seven different furs and presented to Cody by the Czar of Russia following a royal buffalo hunt in 1872. A western saddle belonging to Dr. Frank Powell, an ex-surgeon billed as "the best rifleman in the world," is covered with over 200 silver dollars. Each is punctured by a bullet fired from his rifle on galloping horseback. Equally accurate with a rifle was Annie Oakley, born Phoebe Anne Oakley McGee in Drake County, Ohio. Married to Frank Butler shortly after joining the show in 1885, her husband soon withdrew from the marksmanship act, feeling a lady, "Little Miss Sure Shot," as Sitting Bull called her, would be a bigger draw. Becoming her manager, Frank stood with a cigarette in his mouth, which Annie severed with a rifle from thirty paces. She could slice a playing card with its thin edge held towards her, and in one contest she shot 9^3 out of 1,000 glass balls tossed into the air. The Plains Indian Museum, opened in June 1969, displays materials seldom found in any collection. Sioux, Crow and Blackfoot are represented with full figure costumes, tribal medicines, ceremonials, weapons, scalps, war shirts and elegantly beaded paraphernalia. Unlike other Indian museums, whose contents appear shabby and worn, these displays contain unblemished clothing, beautifully modeled by "ghost" manikins. The tools and weapons are sharp and shiny, as though personally loaned by a Blackfoot chief for a few weeks. Everything displayed is top quality. One manikin wears a bear-claw necklace belonging to John Young Bear, medicine chief of the Saux-and-Fox tribe around 18^0. Extending from a narrow fur hide decorated with turquoise-colored beads are forty long and beautifully matched claws of the Great Plains grizzly, which has now been extinct for many years. (more) |