"Sie Ritten Da'lang, Podner"

Cowboys and Indians rekindle the Old West

Grimy cowboys clanked around in spurs and chaps, six-guns at the ready. Loinclothed Indians eyed them suspiciously from their tepees or wandered casually around campfires. Union Army cavalrymen, in a spirit of truce, hobnobbed with Confederate soldiers in the local saloon.

But wait. Wasn't most of the chow sizzling over campfires Wurst instead of baked beans? And as for the hard stuff being downed in the saloon, wasn't it Steffens Pils and Schnaps instead of redeye? And those redskins turning a little too red in the 90DEG heat, weren't they powwowing in German? The answer, indeed, was ja. The scene was the long Whitsunday weekend in Bocklemuend near Cologne, where 2,500 members of West Germany's Western Bund gathered in a meadow to dress up as cowboys, Indians and Civil War soldiers and live the life of the Old West as it really was. Casual spectators were strictly forbidden. Said Hans ("Old Joe") Jaekel, 55, a retired Cologne machinist who has been Grand Marshal of the Bund's annual three-day councils for the past 20 years: "This is no performance. We are serious here."

Very serious. Throughout the year, in more than 100 clubs in West Germany, devotees of the Old West spend thousands of man-hours and deutsche marks preparing their costumes or polishing such arcane skills for the council competitions as tomahawk throwing, quick-drawing, and tossing lariats. Then, at the three-day camp-out, they can relive the American frontier days in full dress with almost complete historical veracity.

The German fad for the Old West dates back to the 1890s, when Buffalo Bill toured Germany with enormous success. His visit coincided with the popularity of potboilers by Karl May, who wrote Zane Grey-style novels about an Old West he had never seen. Since then, with May's books selling in the millions, Germany has never forgotten its home on the range.

This year, for the first time, the cowboys at the council were outnumbered by "Indians," all of whom had meticulously studied the dress and traditions of the tribes they represented. "Spurs, chaps and guns make a cowboy," declared Edgar Aich of Hamburg's Gemeinschaft Norddeutscher Indianerfreunde (North German Society of Indian Friends). "To be an Indian, you must get into the red man's soul." Serge Parquet, 52, came all the way from Paris with his tepee; as "Chief Walking Bear" he is president of France's Le Cercle Peau-Rouge Huntka (Huntka Redskin Circle). "This is like Mecca to a Muslim," he told TIME Correspondent Lee Griggs. Special guests at this year's council were a group of authentic American Indians. Dave Bald Eagle, a full-blooded Cheyenne River Sioux from South Dakota was amazed at the expertise. He said: "These people know as much about the old ways as some of us do." Surprisingly, only a handful of West Germany's Westerners have ever been to the U.S., and their English is generally limited to a drawled "howdy" or "podner."

Americans are generally not welcome at the councils. Said West Berlin's Jurgen Haase, 26, one of the council's six "sheriffs": "Most Americans don't know enough about their own history to make a contribution. They think Wild Bill Hickok's real name was Bill." (As every authentic German cowboy knows, his forenames were James Butler.) Old Joe, like many of his Western Bund friends, refuses to watch the two U.S.-made westerns currently appearing on West German TV, Gunsmoke and The Virginian. Nobody, he scoffs, ever really said in the Old West, "Sie ritten da 'long " (They went thataway), much less, "Streck die Haende zum Himmel" (Reach for the sky). John Wayne barely escapes Old Joe's fusillade of complaints about Hollywood phoniness. "Inaccurate scripts aren't his fault," he allowed.

As the council came to a close, the Indians, cowboys and even a few dance-hall queens gathered for a final ceremony: a 36-star Old Westera flag was lowered to the accompaniment of a drumroll and a trumpet call by immaculately turned-out cavalry units in Union uniforms. It had been, proclaimed Old Joe, "the best council ever, the most authentic yet." But what about that German beer and Schnaps! "Well," he said, "none of us is perfect." -

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