Even though the credits say [Robert Altman's film Buffalo Bill and the Indians] was only "suggested by" Arthur Kopit's play Indians, there is no better way to understand the film, or the play, than to compare these two visualizations of Americans and their visions of grandeur. Both are crowded, unruly works in which a prevailing visual metaphor—the Wild West Show in all its gaudy glory—is the starting point for getting at the levels of illusion that camouflage the real facts and figures of the American heritage. Altman's and Kopit's unique methods of presenting the Wild West Show and approaches to the truths underlying its splendorous hoopla do indeed make film and play separate but at the same time complementary works. (p. 253)

[The] particular ways in which Altman and Kopit bring to life America's first show business extravaganza reflect not only the medium being used but also the special concerns of each artist. Altman makes use of all the illusionistic resources film offers to re-create the world of the Wild West Show. At first even the show itself seems like the genuine article—that is, it seems as vividly realistic as all those Hollywood westerns. An unseen narrator speaks of the wonder of America as the camera pans across a fog-enshrouded hillside, finally coming to rest on a group of would-be settlers. But the sleepy scene is soon transfigured by the onslaught of whooping savages … sound familiar? The audience seems to be in store for one more face-off between the cowboys and the Indians until Altman changes directions: the camera moves back for a larger view and we see that it was all a put-on. The Wild West Show cast was merely practicing one of its "numbers." This is just the first of Altman's tricks to encourage his audience to sort out illusory appearance from reality, all of which are done within the context of the carnival-like camp of Wild West Show performers and promoters…. Altman's coverage from all angles of life at the Wild West Show corral is an effective way of refuting Bill's claim that the reproduction and the original West are not "all that different."

Kopit, on the other hand, does not render naturalistically the entire world of the Wild West Show. He points up the disparity between the show's re-creation and "real life" by deliberately calling attention to the falsity of the reproduction. (p. 254)

Like Altman's set, Kopit's stage bursts with loud talk, people, and activity, but not all that goes on in the teeming play stems from Cody's big, hard-sell entertainment venture. Indians comprises a montage of scenes that cover nearly two decades of American history (c. 1870–90). In fact, the Wild West Show was not organized until 1883, and in Kopit's play it is not even the only play within the larger play: there is also a re-creation of the 1878 command performance at the White House of Ned Buntline's Scouts of the Plains, starring William Cody and Wild Bill Hickok playing themselves. At least half the scenes in Indians have nothing to do with show business in any form—they concern the Indians' loss of their land. And Kopit's cast of characters includes, in addition to the Sioux leader Sitting Bull, Chief Joseph and Geronimo and a host of other named and nameless Indians seen fighting for their land before an unhearing congressional committee sent to look into the Indians' complaints. What is more, we see Buffalo Bill interacting with his Indian friends outside the make-believe arena of the Wild West Show, from his early days as a young buffalo hunter just catapulted into national fame to the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890 when he stumbles around the wintry battlefield trying to figure out what has gone wrong.

Nonetheless the Wild West Show remains at the thematic center of Indians as well as Buffalo Bill and the Indians. For Altman the show is the perfect instrument for visualizing the split personality of a national figure like Buffalo Bill Cody, the private man and the public entertainer. For Kopit the falderal of the Wild West Show is also used to underscore the fact that Bill Cody is trying to sell Americans a phony bill of goods. The show is the forerunner of a long series of attempts to package our American heritage neatly and reverently, just the way we would like to think it was. From Disney's Frontierland to Hollywood's westerns, the winning of the West has been remade to suit ourselves, as have many other less than glorious moments from America's past—e.g., the Civil War and, more pertinent here, the Vietnam War. (p. 255)

[By] juxtaposing scenes retelling the drawn-out history of the Indians' displacement with those dramatizing the story as filtered through the Wild West Show, Kopit has done more than revise the traditional view of one chapter out of the nation's past. He has, more importantly, commented on the ongoing process of cosmeticizing history. (p. 256)

Altman's most haunting illustration of the mixing up of reality and realistic illusion involves his unique treatment of the man on the white horse before the circle of cheering fans, Buffalo Bill Cody himself…. Because Altman shows him both on and off stage, however, we quickly see that beneath the public hero lies a weak, vulnerable man who, let alone run the Wild West Show organization, cannot keep his personal life in order….

Bill is undoubtedly mesmerized by the figure he cuts; but as the film goes on, even he begins to sense the discrepancies between outer and inner selves that we have been aware of all along. (p. 258)

Kopit's Buffalo Bill, on the other hand, is a somewhat different yet equally complicated character. Kopit depicts Buffalo Bill as a man torn between two self-images, but they are not precisely the public appearance and private reality seen in the film. Turned into a national hero at the age of twenty-three, he has spent most of his life as a legend and, as such, has been pulled two ways. As a man Kopit's Bill is a friend to the Indians; he even pleads their case to the President. But once he steps into the floodlight, he gets caught up in the myth that surrounds him: he tells his audience, "I'm sorry, this is very … hard … for me t'say. But I believe I … am a … hero…. A GODDAM HERO!"

For Kopit's hero, too, doubt begins to well up. It becomes increasingly hard for him to shake the suspicion that his part in selling glorified illusions about the winning of the West has helped bring on the Indians' demise. Bill comes to be haunted by visions of Indians appearing in the grass and rocks and dead trees…. [His distress is tied to] the guilty realization that in his public performances he has betrayed the Indians…. This hero has a conscience and thus cannot escape the guilt that goes along with the glory of his own and America's past.

We come round again, then, to Kopit's intention to make his audience share Buffalo Bill's realization about what has been done to the American heritage. Altman's film, in comparison, is shallow regarding the straightening out of our historical misconceptions. In Buffalo Bill and the Indians the downtrodden but unsinkable Indians serve with their quiet thoughtfulness as merely one more index to Bill's loud ineptitude. But if the film is not as effective a history lesson, it presents perhaps the better integrated study of a character caught somewhere in between what the world believes him to be and what he actually is. Though each work succeeds in its own way, it is nonetheless useful to consider them together, for the juxtaposition of these separate visualizations of the Wild West Show and of the mythic figure at its center makes perfectly clear the concerns of director and playwright alike. We are indeed at others' mercy for a perception of both America's past and its heroes. (p. 260)