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

293 Pages·2012·9.8 MB·English
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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 v 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 vi 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. vii 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 viii 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 ix 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 x

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Around the CIC-AISC office we used to call her “The Boss. Circus work put artists in a precarious relationship with many of the middle class values
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Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.