AMERICAN INDIANS, AFRICAN AMERICANS AND THE CIRCUS WORLD OF NINETEENTH ...

293 Pages·2012·9.8 MB·English

UNDER ONE BIG TENT: AMERICAN INDIANS, AFRICAN AMERICANS AND THE CIRCUS
WORLD OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA

By

Sakina Mariam Hughes

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
In partial fulfillment of the requirements
For the degree of

DOCTORATE OF PHILOSOPHY

History

2012
ABSTRACT

UNDER ONE BIG TENT: AMERICAN INDIANS, AFRICAN AMERICANS AND THE
CIRCUS WORLD OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA

By

Sakina Mariam Hughes

My dissertation, “Under One Big Tent: American Indians, African Americans and the
Circus World of Nineteenth-Century America,” rewrites the history of the Old Northwest and
argues that diversity was crucial to community development in this region in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. This dissertation recovers the story of a different past that has been
repeatedly ignored where Indians and blacks not only lived in the Midwest, but also were
prominent founders of communities. I contend that both Native and African Americans were as
pioneering as the white farmers that encircled them, and that their early and sustained presence
encouraged two of the nation’s largest circuses to locate in the Midwest. The Sells Brothers
Circus and the Great Wallace Circus located in Ohio and Indiana because of a ready pool of low-
wage labor and available lands on which its employees could create and sustain communities and
raise their families. While this dissertation focuses on reestablishing this forgotten past, my
work argues that the circus provided the means for persistence for both Indians and African
Americans and provided them the social and economic means to create and sustain robust
communities in the nation’s heartland.
My research reveals that race and ethnicity in America were not monolithic historical
factors shaping community formation. Instead, my research shows how the elites and lower
classes of African American and American Indian societies had disparate views about the value
of circus labor. African American elites were uncomfortable with circus work, but often viewed
the industry as an avenue of uplift. In contrast, leaders of the Society of American Indians
viewed such labor as perpetuating primitive images of Native Americans. While both Native
and African American entertainers understood the demeaning depictions of race that they
performed in the Wild West and minstrel shows of the circus, both groups relied on the higher
wages of the industry to sustain their households. But Indians and African Americans differed in
their long-term goals. African Americans used circus employment to create educational
opportunities for young ragtime and jazz performers which enhanced their mobility, while
Indians used access to wage labor to sustain their communities and insure that they remained on
or adjacent to their homelands in the Midwest.
I use eighteenth-century missionary and church records, community and oral histories,
and treaty negotiations to place Miami, Wyandot, and African American people in the Old
Northwest and to show ways that they built and maintained communities. I use nineteenth and
twentieth-century Native American and African American newspapers to show the scope of
traveling musicians, the challenges they overcame to create spaces for themselves, and how they
moved beyond the circus industry to other national and international opportunities. I use circus
archives, industry journals, and route books to reconstruct circus towns and life in traveling
circus communities.
Copyright by
SAKINA MARIAM HUGHES
2012
For Mason
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful for the time I have spent and all the academic guidance I have received at
Michigan State University. The University Fellowship has been a wonderful experience and an
appreciated program in my academic training. I could not have asked for a more dedicated and
supportive advisor than Dr. Susan Sleeper-Smith. At every stage, she has provided me with the
challenges, direction, and mentoring I have needed to move my studies and career forward. Her
genuine care for her students really makes all the difference. My entire committee has been a
great support and I would like to thank Dr. David Bailey, Dr. Leslie Moch, Dr. Edward Watts,
and Dr. Thomas Summerhill, with whom I took my very first class at MSU. I am grateful to
History Department and the American Indian Studies Program, which provided several semesters
of travel funding for seminars, workshops and conferences as well as a valuable assistantship.
Several scholars outside of MSU have helped me along the way. I am grateful for Dr.
Tiya Miles, who agreed to be a reader on my dissertation committee and whose research and
spirit have inspired my own work in more ways than one. The Newberry Library and the D’arcy
McNickle Center for American Indian History have been a crucial component of my training,
research, and academic community. I am thankful for my American Indian Studies short-term
fellowship during the 2011-2012 year and the summer I was able to spend working with Dr.
Scott Stevens and the Newberry staff. In 2008 I had the great privilege of attending Dr. Jacki
Rand’s seminar, The Indigenous, the State, and Internal Colonialism in a Transnational Context,
and in 2007 I attended Dr. John Tippeconic’s seminar on Indian education. Both of these
seminars have proven useful in my studies.
My semesters as assistant in the CIC American Indian Studies Consortium office were
my best at MSU. This is due, in part, to my friends and colleagues, Dr. Joe Genetin-Pilawa who
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continues to provide valuable advice and guidance, Dr. Justin Carroll, and Rebecca Nutt. There
was a real sense of family in the office and I am so glad that our paths crossed and we were able
to spend so much time together. I also must thank Dr. Nik Ribianszky, my colleague and close
friend, without whose friendship and humor my experience in East Lansing would be very
different. I am also thankful for Dr. Jennifer Barclay and Dr. Boyd Cothran, both supportive
friends and colleagues.
Finally, none of this could be possible without my family. I am thankful for my mother,
Darlene Waller, who instilled in me a respect for learning and provided me with tools I needed to
feed my ever-growing curiosities, and my father, Stacey Waller, who taught me the value of hard
work and the joy of a job well done. (The values of a carpenter, it seems, are very helpful in
graduate school.) I am thankful for my boyfriend and caring partner, Bryan: I can’t begin to list
the many small and big ways he has supported me in the last few years! Finally, a special thank
you to my daughter, Mason, who truly is the light of my life. Around the CIC-AISC office we
used to call her “The Boss.” As it turns out, she is my little bodhisattva who has kept me always
mindful, balanced, and inspired on this long journey that has taken most of her life.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES...…………………………………………………………………………….ix
INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………...1
CHAPTER ONE: Literature of Comparative African and Native American History, Nineteenth-
Century Company Towns and The American Circus……………………………………………15

CHAPTER TWO: Founding Fathers: Native Americans and African Americans in the Old
Northwest..……………………………………………………………………………………….52

CHAPTER THREE: The Godfroys and the Great Wallace Shows: Life in the Miami County
Circus Quarters…………………………………………………………………………………..94

CHAPTER FOUR: Columbus, Ohio and the Sellsville Winter Quarters……………………...132
CHAPTER FIVE: The Show on the Road……………………………………………………..173
CHAPTER SIX: Race, Respectability and Class: Circus Performers Confront Media and
Middle-Class Values……………………………………………………………………………223

CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………………253

BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………256

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Miami County Map, circa 1877……………………………………………………....58
Figure 2: The Godfroys…….……………………………………………………………………59
Figure 3: Butler Township, Indiana and private Miami reserves………....…………………….62
Figure 4: Peru Neighborhoods…………………………………………………………………..72
Figure 5: Native American Villages…………………………………………………………….80
Figure 6: Sellsville Residents……………………………………………………………………91
Figure 7: Benjamin Wallace…………………………………………………………………….96
Figure 8: A Hagenbeck-Wallace street parade in Peru in 1907…………………………………96
Figure 9: Gabriel Godfroy with some of his children and grandchildren……………………….99
Figure 10: Wallace Winter Quarters, circa 1890………………………………………………102
Figure 11: Wallace Show Poster……………………………………………………………….101
Figure 12: The Hagenbeck-Wallace Quarters…………………………………………………106
Figure 13: Buildings in the Great Wallace Show winter quarters circa 1890…………………108
Figure 14: Miami Sites in Butler Township………..………………………………………….109
Figure 15: Route book listing………………………………………………………………….113
Figure 16: Home of Miami leader and minister, Pimyotamah……..………………………….115
Figure 17: Jones’ Black Hussar Band,1896……………………………………………………121
Figure 18: P. G. Lowery’s Bandwagon in 1912……………………………………………….122
Figure 19: The Carl Hagenbeck and Great Wallace Combined Circus Banner……………….124
Figure 20: Boxcartown………………………………………………………………………...126
Figure 21: The Sellsville Winter Quarters in the1880s………………………………………..142
Figure 22: Map of Sellsville and the surrounding area……………………………………......148
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Figure 23: Sellsville Winter Quarters Map…………………………………………………….151
Figure 24: Benjamin and Katherine Bowen……………………………………………………152
Figure 25: The Clinton Township Polkadot School……………………………..…………….155
Figure 26: The Walkers……………………………………………………………………......158
Figure 27: P. G. Lowery’s Sells Brothers Side Show Band, circa 1890s……………………...159
Figure 28: Life in Sellsville…………………………………….………………………………164
Figure 29 and 30: African American Snack Stand…………………………………………….190
Figure 30: African American Hotel……………………………………………………………190
Figure 31: Lowery Band……………………………………………………………………….207
Figure 32: Job Postings…………………………………………………………………….......208
Figure 33: Lowery Band……………………………………………………………………….211
Figure 34: Eph Williams poster……………………………………………………………......213
Figure 35: Lightening Sculptor, Nabor Feliz Netzahualt………………………………………216
Figure 36: The Haskell Marching Band………………………………....……………………..234
Figure 37: Wassaja cover…………………………………………………………………........240

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