Philosophy
As a frontier scout, he respected Native Americans and supported their rights. He employed many more natives than Sitting Bull, as he thought his show offered them good pay for a better life. He called them "the former foe, present friend, the American", and once said, "Every Indian outbreak that I have ever known has resulted from broken promises and broken treaties by the government."
Buffalo Bill also supported the rights of women. He said, "What we want to do is give women even more liberty than they have. Let them do any kind of work they see fit, and if they do it as well as men, give them the same pay."
In his shows the Indians were usually depicted attacking stagecoaches and wagon trains in order to be driven off by cowboys and soldiers. He also had the wives and children of his Indian performers set up camp – as they would in the homelands – as part of the show, so that the paying public could see the human side of the "fierce warriors"; that they were families like any other, just part of a different culture.
He supported conservation by speaking out against hide-hunting and pushing for a hunting season.
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Famous quotes containing the word philosophy:
“All roads are blocked to a philosophy which reduces everything to the word “no.” To “no” there is only one answer and that is “yes.” Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing. Man lives more by affirmation than by bread.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“How does Nature deify us with a few and cheap elements! Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria; the sun-set and moon-rise my Paphos, and unimaginable realms of faerie; broad noon shall be my England of the senses and the understanding; the night shall be my Germany of mystic philosophy and dreams.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I am still a learner, not a teacher, feeding somewhat omnivorously, browsing both stalk and leaves; but I shall perhaps be enabled to speak with more precision and authority by and by,—if philosophy and sentiment are not buried under a multitude of details.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)