American Indians at the Exposition

Indian performers at the St. Louis World's Fair

Ned Blackhawk:

Within most reservation communities, opportunities for travel, employment, and autonomy were so circumscribed that thousands sought work within staged human exhibitions at world's fairs, Wild West-themed traveling shows, and related tourist sites. . . .

The St. Louis World's Fair of 1904 was only the biggest of a long series of grand exhibitions focusing on the American west:

Each held permanent displays of Indians living within the fiar grounds or within "midway" spectacles led by the famed showman William "Buffalo Bill" Cody. Omaha's "Indian Congress" attracted over five hundred Native people from approximately three dozen tribes who spent three months living in a four-acre section within the exposition grounds. . . . While these performers were presented as primitives, complex adaptions characterized their lives. Some came willingly. Other were compelled by government officials or by economic need. As the Apache leader Geronimo recalled about his time selling handmade arrows at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Fair in St. Louis, "I had plenty money — more than I had ever owned." . . .

While performers like Cody and Geronimo attracted attention, many Native participants used their time in these urban spaces to publicize their community's concerns, to critique government policies, and to couteract public misconceptions. Lakota leader Henry Standing Bear, for example, wrote to the commissioner of Indian Affairs that members of his community wanted to attend the fair but "they want to come as men and not like cattles driving to a show . . . they do not wish that anyone will misrepresent our race." Similarly, Medicine Horse, who performed with Cody in Chicago, remained committed to ensuring that fairgoers developed a positive impression of Native people. According to one acount, he displayed "an apparent eagerness to talk. He is very interesting to listen to, and the information he gives . . . is of much interest and value.

Indians at the St. Louis World's Fair, by George Stark

One of the people determined to make the best use of the opportunities presented by the fairs was Potawatomi author Simon Pokagon:

In his manifesto, The Red Man's Rebuke, which he issued in birch-bark binding, Pokagon wrote pointedly, "We have no spirit to celebrate with you."

Pokagon tried to use the attention generated by the Columbian Expostion of 1893 to agitate for the return of Potawatomi lands; he failed in this, but he did succeed in generating much sympathetic press for Indian causes.

The image of Indians performing traditional dances for fair audiences but spending their spare time lobbying for their causes is quite wonderful. The ties they developed with white liberals led to Indians joining the protests against the wave of American imperialism launched by the Spanish American War, putting themselves forward as spokesmen for imperialism's victims.

Unfortunately nobody seems to know if the Indians who performed at the St. Louis World's Fair ever met and talked to the Filipino tribesmen who were also there, in a separate compound. But what an encounter that would have been.

Quotations are from Ned Blackhawk, The Rediscovery of America, 2023.