Representing history: Performing the Columbian exposition

Theatre Journal

Volumn 54, Issue 4, 2002, Pages 589-606

  Bank, Rosemarie K ^a,b  

^a Department of Theatre ^*

^b KENT STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 34547497723     PISSN: 01922882     EISSN: 1086332X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/tj.2002.0112     Document Type: Review

References (84)

1. Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History, facsimile of the 1894 Annual Report of the American Historical Association (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1966). Illustrated London News, 16 April 1887
2. Architectural critic Claude Bragdon is quoted (without attribution) by Russell Lewis, "'Everything Under One Roof: World's Fairs and Department Stores in Paris and Chicago," Chicago History 12.3 (1983): 44
3. Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982)
4. Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Athenaeum, 1992)
5. and see his "Buffalo Bill's 'Wild West' and the Mythologization of the American Empire," in Amy Kaplan and Donald E. Pease (eds.), Cultures of United States Imperialism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), 164-81
6. Richard White, "Frederick Jackson Turner and Buffalo Bill," in James R. Grossman (ed.), The Frontier in American Culture, An Exhibition at the Newberry Library, August 26, 1994-January 7, 2995 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 7-65
7. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972), 155-56
8. For theatre culture, see Theatre Culture in America, 1825-1860 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997)
9. In addition to Philip J. Deloria's Playing Indian (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998)
10. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett explores ethnographic objects and agencies of display in her Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). These boundaries are also explored by performance and theatre historians
11. See, for example, Christopher R. Balme, "Cultural Anthropology and Theatre Historiography: Notes on a Methodological Rapprochement," Theatre Survey 35.1 (May 1994): 33-52
12. and his "Staging the Pacific: Framing Authenticity in Performances for Tourists at the Polynesian Cultural Center," Theatre Journal 50.1 (March 1998): 53-70
13. Dennis Kennedy, "Shakespeare and Cultural Tourism," Theatre Journal 50.2 (May 1998): 175-88, and Bank
14. Robert W. Rydell, All the World's a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876-1916 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), is exemplary among recent scholarly studies characterizing the Columbian Exposition (and other fairs) as a demon scenario
15. but see also the early chapters of his World of Fairs: The Century of Progress Expositions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993)
16. Rydell, John E. Findling, and Kimberly D. Pelle, Fair America (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000)
17. Neil Harris, Wim de Wit, James Gilbert, and Robert W. Rydell, Grand Illusions: Chicago's World's Fair of 1893 (Chicago: Chicago Historical Society, 1993)
18. Slotkin, Robert Muccigrosso, Celebrating the New World: Chicago's Columbian Exposition of 1893 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, Inc., 1993)
19. and Curtis M. Hinsley, The Smithsonian and the American Indian: Making a Moral Anthropology in America (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981)
20. Michel Foucault, "Of Other Spaces," Diacritics 16.1 (Spring 1986): 24
21. For acreage, see The Best Things to be Seen at the World's Fair, John J. Flinn, comp. (Chicago: Columbian Guide Co., 1893), 12
22. Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, ed. Ernest Samuels (Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Co., 1974), 339-40
23. Adams's assessment of this disorder was grim. "For a hundred years, between 1793 and 1893," he reflected, "the American people had hesitated, vacillated, swayed forward and back, between two forces, one simply industrial, the other capitalistic, centralizing, and mechanical." The Fair, Adams concluded, made clear America had "slipped across the chasm" (see Hinsley, 231)
24. Putnam was in charge of the exhibits on the Midway as well as those of Department M. The racist aspects of this relationship have often been noted by scholars (see particularly Rydell, All the World's a Fair, chapter 2)
25. For the Bureau of Indian Affairs, see particularly Robert A. Trennert, Jr., "Selling Indian Education at World's Fairs and Expositions, 1893-1904," American Indian Quarterly 11.3 (Summer 1987): 210-11
26. but also his "A Grand Failure: The Centennial Indian Exhibition of 1876," Prologue 6.2 (Summer 1974): 118-29
27. Located near Putnam's Anthropological Building and its outdoor Ethnographical Village, the B.I.A.'s Indian School was described by the Secretary of the Board of Indian Commissioners as "a little, mean-looking building in the midst of those grand and imposing structures" (L.G. Moses, "Indians on the Midway: Wild West Shows and the Indian Bureau at World's Fairs, 1893-1904," South Dakota History 22 (Fall 1991): note 11, p. 214, and see Muccigrosso, 151). Encircled by the southeast loop of the fair's Intramural Elevated Electric Railway, the School operated 15 May through October, 1893
28. Rossiter Johnson, A History of the World's Columbian Exposition Held in Chicago in 1893, Vol. II (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1898), 316
29. According to Rand McNally's Handbook of the World's Columbian Exposition [vol. 1, no. 180 (2 May 1893) of the Globe Library] (Chicago: Rand McNally and Co., 1893), 90, the Anthropological Building measured 415 feet long and 225 feet wide
30. For the assessment of the area's appeal, see The Columbian Gallery: A Portfolio of Photographs from the World's Fair (Chicago: Werner Co., 1894), pages in the volume are unnumbered. The quoted matter is from a caption to "Down in the Windmill Section," as the area was called
31. Johnson, 329-31, and 356 for the "white race" quote. The academics in the laboratories included Joseph Jastrow from the University of Wisconsin, who ran the Psychology Section, and H. H. Donnaldson of the University of Chicago, who ran the Neurology Section. Ira Jacknis, "Franz Boas and Exhibits: On the Limitations of the Museum Method of Anthropology," in George W. Stocking, Jr. (ed.), Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 81 and 76
32. The "life group" is not unrelated to the "habitat group" for animals, said to have been introduced by the Biologiska Muséet in Stockholm when it opened in 1893 (see A. E. Parr, "The Habitat Group," Curator 2 [1959]: 119)
33. Jacknis notes (99) that Boas's model maker at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, Casper Mayer, took plaster casts of faces and body parts from the life: "These casts came from diverse sources: some were collected along with the artefacts in the field . . . , some from the visiting circus or Carlisle Indian School, and some from occasional visits of natives to New York." Such figures, Jacknis observes, deserved a performance setting, thus the museum introduced "the staged, theatrically lit diorama, popularized after 1910" (102). Hinsley (112) cites an unpublished paper by Jacknis adding to this discussion that, "without the proper control of scholarly texts subject to 'professional' standards, an exhibit could in fact feed the taste for racist exoticism that it was meant to curb." For Rydell's discussion of the Anthropological Building's laboratories, see All the World's A Fair, 57
34. For Peale's use of wax figures to contrast the "races of mankind" in 1797, see Charles Coleman Sellers, Mr. Peale's Museum: Charles Willson Peak and the First Popular Museum of Natural Science and Art (New York: W. W. Norton, 1980), 92
35. and my "Archiving Culture: Performance and American Museums in the Earlier Nineteenth Century," in Jeffrey D. Mason and J. Ellen Gainor (eds.), Performing America: Cultural Nationalism in American Theater (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 37-51
36. The Best Things to be Seen at the World's Fair, 63. The Columbian Gallery, n.p. Handbook, 89-91. Johnson, 331-32
37. The moulds for the Ruins of Yucatan were "taken from the original ruins by Edward H. Thompson, the United States consul to Yucatan, under Professor Putnam's instructions." They included a simulation of a figure of Kukulkan ("the great feathered god"). Handbook, 86-90
38. Jeanne Madeline Weiman, The Fair Women (Chicago: Academy Chicago, 1981), 402-04
39. and see Rydell, All the World's A Fair. Amy Leslie depicted Cody's guests and performers as the "vanishing Indians," whom she saw picturesquely retreating in the face of Columbian culture ("Amy Leslie at the Fair," Chicago News, 1 May 1893)
40. and see Moses, "Indians on the Midway," 214-15
41. See also Muccigrosso, 151, L. G. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883-1933 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 134-35
42. and Joy S. Kasson, Buffalo Bill's Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000), 192-93. Twenty-three of the thirty Ghost Dancers imprisoned at Fort Sheridan were paroled to Cody and toured Europe with him prior to the Fair. At least some were still with him in Chicago in 1893
43. Curtis M. Hinsley, "The World as Marketplace: Commodification of the Exotic at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893," in Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine (eds.), The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 350
44. John C. Ewers, Indian Life on the Upper Missouri (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968)
45. see chapter 15, "The Emergence of the Plains Indian as the Symbol of the North American Indian" (187-203). A cartoon depicting "a major event! Indian woman throws out dishwater," burlesqued both the performative and quotidian character of ethnographic displays
46. Hinsley reports the fourteen Kwakiutl from Fort Rupert in British Columbia "slept on the floor of the Stock Pavillion" ("World as Marketplace," 349)
47. What this means and whether the Kwakiutl used it before or while their own and the livestock exhibits were installed - sleeping with the livestock seems unlikely for a variety of reasons - is currently unclear to me. Putnam had control of a Dairy Barn next to the Anthropological Building, which he used as an annex until he lost the barn to a cheese exhibit. For the Carlisle exhibit, see Trennert, "Selling Indian Education," 209-11
48. Sol Bloom, The Autobiography of Sol Bloom (New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1948), 119
49. and see R. Reid Badger, The Great American Fair: The World's Columbian Exposition and American Culture (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, Inc., 1979), 81
50. and Hinsley, "The World As Marketplace," 348
51. For the Midway show, see Harris, de Wit, et al., 160-61. Michael Chemers, "On the Boards in Brobdignag: Performing Tom Thumb," New England Theatre Journal 12 (2001): 81-82, and 86 and 81 for the quotes, respectively
52. For an Indian defense of working as show Indians for Buffalo Bill's Wild West, see Moses, Wild West Shows, 101-02
53. For Rain-in-the-Face and petitions by Indians to have exhibits at the fair, see Harris, de Wit, et al., 160. In addition to Indian defenses of their show Indian work, see also Ewers, 201-203
54. Rossiter Johnson, A History of the World's Columbian Exposition Held in Chicago, Vol. IV (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1898), 501 and 412
55. Hinsley, The Smithsonian and the American Indian, 110. Jacknis, 108
56. The Congresses published their procedings. Particularly germane to this essay are: C. Staniland Wake (ed.), Memoirs of the International Congress of Anthropology (Chicago: Schulte Publishing Co., 1894)
57. Helen Wheeler Bassett and Frederick Starr (eds.), The International Folk-Lore Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, July 1893, Vol. 1: Archives of the International Folk-Lore Association (Chicago: Charles H. Sergei, Co., 1898)
58. and Herbert Baxter Adams (ed.), Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1893 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1894)
59. Johnson, IV, 169. Foucault, 36
60. White, 7-65. White argues Turner reflects the peaceful conquest side and Buffalo Bill's Wild West the violent conquest side of the same frontier, stories that contradict each other. The verse is from "Westward Ho" (see Joaquin Miller, The Complete Poetical Works of Joaquin Miller [San Francisco: Whitaker and Ray, 1897], 187-88)
61. White cites it on 18, and see 26 for his quoting from Steele's popular 1873 history. Wilber R. Jacobs, The Historical World of Frederick Jackson Turner (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), 4
62. Ray A. Billington's biography, Frederick Jackson Turner: Historian, Scholar, Teacher (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973)
63. also explores Turner's historiography, as does Billington's The Genesis of the Frontier Thesis: A Study in Historical Creativity (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1971)
64. Critiques of Turner's view of American history can be found in George R. Taylor (ed.), The Turner Thesis: Concerning the Role of the Frontier in American History (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1949)
65. For Roosevelt's less than paean to Turner's originality, see Jacobs, 4, and White, 10. Thomas Jefferson made observations in 1824 similar to Turner's: "Let a philosophic observer commence a journey from the savages of the Rocky Mountains, eastwardly toward our seacoast. These [the Indians] he would observe in the earliest stage of association living under no law but that of nature, subsisting and covering themselves with the flesh and skins of wild beasts. He would next find these on our frontiers in the pastoral state, raising domestic animals to supply the defects of hunting. Then succeed to our own semibarbarous citizens, the pioneers of the advancing civilization, and so in his progress he would meet the gradual shades of an improving man until he would reach his, as yet, most improved state in our seaport towns. This, in fact, is equivalent to a survey, in time, of the progress of man from the infancy of creation, to the present day."
66. See Avery Craven, "Frederick Jackson Turner," 102-03, in Taylor. For the Turner quotes, see Turner, 201 and 207
67. For opposition to the thesis, see Taylor, Jacobs, Billington's biography, and Genesis, 172-76 (for the Turner-verein, 3-4). Turner, 201
68. Turner, 200, 207. For Buffalo Bill's invitation, see Billington, Genesis, 166. Turner did tour the fair, evidently after his presentation (171)
69. Bassett and Starr, 227-47, for Matthews, 206-20 for Scott, and 14 for Cody's invitation. See also Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 33-34, for the Folk-Lore Congress, 34 for the quoted matter. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett observes (note 37, page 288), "Anthropologists frequently 'played Indian' as a way of demonstrating what was difficult to describe verbally."
70. Jack Rennert, 100 Posters of Buffalo Bill's Wild West (London: Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1976), back cover for the broadside. Slotkin (Gunfighter Nation, 67) states the Salutatory notice "was added to the program of the 1886 Wild West and . . . appeared in every program thereafter." (There is a clear similarity of language between it and the 16 April 1887 excerpt from the Illustrated London News fronting this essay.) Of the joining of the Wild West and the Congress of Rough Riders of the World, Slotkin asserts, "Beside each American or European unit rode representatives of horsemen of the non-white tribesmen recently conquered by the imperial powers" ("Buffalo Bill's Wild West," 173)
71. The acts are listed in "Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World, Historical Sketches and Programme" (Chicago: Blakely Printing Co, 1893), in the collection of the Newberry Library, Chicago
72. R. L. Wilson (with Greg Martin), Buffalo Bill's Wild West: An American Legend (New York: Random House, 1998), 159, gives the opening date as 26 April 1893, but his closing date of 31 October adds up to 189 days, not 186
73. Annie Fern Swartwout's Missie: An Historical Biography of Annie Oakley (Blanchester, OH: Brown Pub. Co., 1947), 204, says the show was open a month before the Fair itself. The most quoted attendance figure for the fair is 27,539,041
74. The "wondrous voyage" and "from prairie to palace" themes appeared in posters for Buffalo Bill's Wild West. See Rennert, 27 and 110
75. and Don Russell, The Wild West (Fort Worth, TX: Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, 1970)
76. For William F. Cody's view of Indians, also see his Life and Adventures of Buffalo Bill (Chicago: Stanton and Van Vliet Co., 1917)
77. and Don Russell, The Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1960)
78. Vine Deloria, Jr., "The Indians," in Buffalo Bill and the Wild West, an exhibition of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, and Buffalo Bill Historical Center (New York: Brooklyn Museum of Art, 1991), 53-55
79. Moses (Wild West Shows, 116) locates Salsbury's letter among records at the Pine Ridge Reservation and compares Salsbury's figures to those stated in Wild West contracts in the Federal Archives and Record Center (see note 24, page 305)
80. See also Luther Standing Bear, My People the Sioux (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1928), 260-61, who traveled with Buffalo Bill's Wild West and reports Cody's defense of equal, indeed preferential, treatment of the show Indians in his company
81. Vine Deloria, 53-54
82. See Wilson, 254-55 for photos from Euro-Disney and 256 for details about the show. Cowboy hats are issued to all who will wear them. Reproduction Wild West posters are available in the gift shop and a western bar (with dance hall girls) awaits thirsty patrons nearby. Tim Johnson (ed.), Spirit Capture: Photographs from the National Museum of the American Indian (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998), see pages 32, 140, 150, and 152. The people and buildings of the fair also had a history. Frederick Ward Putnam and Franz Boas went to work for the Field Columbian Museum, housed in the Fine Arts Building after the Fair closed, opening as the Field Museum on 2 June 1894. A new building was completed after World War I, which is today the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. The Fine Arts Building cum original Field Museum was renovated (under the sponsorship of Julius Rosenwald of Sears, Roebuck) and is today's Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago
83. I emphasize that Rydell, Slotkin, and White are not wrong about the racism in the three sites and that a show-tolerant perspective of them could not erase race because race defines these scenes
84. Alan Trachtenberg notes, apropos power's insecurity, the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 concerning immigrants, the corporate image offered by the "white city," and the Pullman strike of 1894. Joy Kasson's final take on Buffalo Bill resonates in the context of the Columbian 'world': "an apt hero for the modern era, an age when images have become indistinguishable from what they purport to represent and the content of national identity seems identical to its performance" (273)