Anthropology Goes to the Fair: The 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition

12. Anthropological Performances

324 12. Anthropological Performances The people are in a holiday, communicative, inquisitive mood; but it is not an idle mood. They are very much in earnest. . . . Everything is a passing show. Walter Page, 1904 The Louisiana Purchase Exposition was a place of constant movement, of spectacle and performance. And this melding of performance and national celebration, entertainment and education, was continuously renewed and reinvigorated . Skiff and his department heads tried to ensure that people would come more than once. This meant new activities to entice repeat visitors, so that each day spent at the exposition would be memorable. Pavilion openings and dedications, foreign dignitary visits, and the wining and dining of politicians filled the fair’s official calendar. Military events proliferated; West Point cadets gave dress parades while units of the armed forces, state guards, and military schools executed precision troop drills. Music filled the air. There were six daily organ recitals in the Iowa Building; marching bands paraded continuously. Peoples thronged John Philip Sousa’s concert band as they did the Garde Republicaine Band of Paris and the Philharonische Blas Orcherster from Berlin. On the Pike there were ethnic orchestras at the Russian, Burmese, Japanese, Irish and Tyrolean concessions. The lpe’s official band, under the direction of William Weil, gave two daily concerts. There were private receptions and reunions for hundreds of groups, from college alumni associations and fraternal organizations to veterans who had served in the Civil and Spanish -American wars. There were special days, state days, patriotic days, and days to honor individuals, countries, and business corporations: Cincinnati Day, Eclectic Day, Mark Twain Day, National Hay Making Day, Children’s Day, Philippine Day, Railroad Day, National Cash Register Day, Improved Order of the Red Men Day, and the Pike Day, complete with a parade of all nations. Other days commemorated the annexation of land by the United States; New Mexico Day was August 19, the anniversary of General Kearney’s Anthropological Performances | 325 taking formal possession of the Province of Nuevo Mexico in Santa Fe. Many programs of national celebration used Native peoples as metaphors.1 Dozens of theatrical events were staged after the exhibit halls closed at 6:00 p.m. Several plays commemorated the Louisiana Territory with themes of patriotism and the cant of conquest. “Indians” were used as figurative stock characters who represented virtues to emulate or obstacles to overcome. One of the most popular was an allegorical pageant, Bolossy Kiralfy’s Louisiana Purchase Spectacle Libretto that had Indian characters but used Euro-American actors for the major symbolic roles. It opened on May 28 with a cast of more than six hundred. “Indians” symbolized the wilderness in the prologue and the first scenes, during which Hernando de Soto’s explorations were honored, followed by a battle between explorers, settlers, and Indians in which the latter lost control of their lands. In the final scene, the character of “Civilization” triumphed over the chained Indians, “Spirit of Mississippi” and “Columbia,” who then paid homage to the Caucasian “New Louisiana.” An equally popular play at the Delmar Garden Theater was Hiram W. Hayes’s Louisiana, A Spectacular Extravaganza in a Prologue and Two Scenes. This musical used two hundred Indian characters (including several genuine Indian performers) in the prologue as allegorical characters to represent the wilderness before European pathfinders and settlers arrived. The Indian characters paddled canoes in a one-hundred-foot long canal built around the front and sides of the stage. As in Kiralfy’s play, the central figures, played by Euro-American actors, included Miss Columbia, Miss Dixie, the American Eagle, Louisiana, and the Grotesque Traveler. Vaudeville acts were interspersed and Indians received enthusiastic press reviews for their special ballet, My Sweet Dakota Maid.2 The dramas’ messages were reassuring to the audience for the use of Indians as metaphors reinforced existing notions of racial hierarchies and the right of Euro-Americans to inhabit indigenous lands. Special programs, designed to both educate and entertain visitors about indigenous peoples, augmented the Anthropology Department’s daily activities . McGee spent hundreds of hours planning spectacular events and regular performances that would demonstrate central disciplinary concepts of cultural differentiation overlying basic human similarity. His goal was to show that anthropology could entertain as well as disseminate knowledge to people eager to learn. Both professional anthropologists and Native participants per- | Anthropological Performances 326 formed. Anthropologists lectured; educated Indians held congresses. Indian students...