Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance - Autobiography and Fame

Autobiography and Fame

Cosmopolitan Book Company commissioned Long Lance's autobiography as a boy's adventure book on Indians. It published Long Lance in 1928, to quick success. In it, Long Lance claimed to have been born a Blackfoot, son of a chief, in Montana's Sweetgrass Hills. He also said that he had been wounded eight times in the Great War and been promoted to the rank of captain.

The popular success of his book and the international press made him a major celebrity. The book became an international bestseller and was praised by literary critics and anthropologists. Long Lance had already been writing and lecturing on the life of Plains Indians. His celebrity gave him more venues and caused him to be taken up as part of the New York party life. More significantly, he was the first American Indian admitted to the prominent Explorers' Club in New York.

He received an average price of $100 for his speeches, a good price in those years. He endorsed a sport shoe for the B.F. Goodrich Company. A film magazine, Screenland, said, "Long Lance, one of the few real one-hundred-percent Americans, has had New York right in his pocket."

In 1929, Long Lance entered the film world, starring in the silent film The Silent Enemy: An Epic of the American Indian, which showed traditional ways of Ojibwa people. Hunger was portrayed as the major enemy in the hunting culture of northern Canada. He promoted the cause of Native Americans. The movie attempted to depict Indian tribal life more realistically than in previous films and was released in 1930. It was filmed in Quebec more than 40 miles from cities and used many First Nation and Native American actors and extras.