BARNUM AND SITIING BULL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 234, 26 October 1877, Page 17

BARNUM AND SITIING BULL.

{From, the Neiv York Dramatic New*), P. T. Baentjm has reached the crowning point of his career — the culminating idea of his eventful and imaginative life. Not satisfied with being a showman, he now wants to be a national benefactor. Three months ago, Barnum, with the greatest secrecy, detached one of his agents from his show and gave him as special escort one of the tame Indians who have been with him for some time. Both departed under the most secret instructions, and not a soul was allowed to guess the object of their mission. Last month the two returned and laid the result of their expedition at the feet of their master. This was nothing else than the engagement of tlie great Sioux Indian' Sitting Bull as an attraction for Barnum's show. The agent and the Indian had travelled by way of Canada, liberally supplied with money, and by overcoming almost insuperable obstacles had at length reached that portion of the British territory where the redoubtable chief sojourned. It took them three weeks to reach the place, and the route would have been simply impossible to less determined men. The Indian with whom the agent travelled had been formerly a Sioux warrior and a small chief. Upon his persuasions Barnum had relied for the success of the mission. Sitting Bull received the agent and his guide in friendly fashion, listened attentively to tho proposition made, -which was 10,000 dols. a year for two years to exhibit himself with Barnum's Circus. H.e asked a few days to consider, and at the end of that time agreed to accept the proposition, subject, of course, to the permission of the United States Government, which he said he feared most of all. Throughout the several interviews the Sioux chieftain bitterly complained that in all this matter he was not to blame. The United States had promised him his land and his home, and they did not keep their promise. He had only defended what was his own. Barnum had already anticipated the main difficulty. He therefore sent to the Secretary of the Interior, before bis departure for Europe, a petition asking for immunity from prosecution for Sitting Bull for two years. He sets forth in the petition that, once abandoned by their mainstay, the bands of hostile Indians who still oppose the Government will peacefully surrender. The object of the petition, Mr. Barnum concludes, offers a peaceful solution of the whole question. When an Indian chief has been two years under the influence of civilisation, he will certainly never care to return to his wilderness to fight a nation which he will have seen excels in numbers anything he can ever hope to defeat. Indeed it will practically end the career ~of the last of the great Indian chiefs. Secretary Schurz now has Mr. •Barnum's petition in his hands, and it is probable it will be made a Cabinet question.