Today’s post is by Cody White, Archivist and Subject Matter Expert for Native American Related Records.
Hunger enters stage right wearing a tight fitting black costume, a skeleton painted on the front and back. Hunger walks to the edge of the stage purposefully, then in a strolling fashion back to the house. Hunger peeps into the windows, inspects the adjacent root cellar, goes back to the dilapidated house, and enters.
The 1930s play was written generically so it could be performed on any reservation for any particular Native culture, and with no lines – the file makes a point to note that no full rehearsal is even needed! But the premise is dripping with parentalism; the Native family is starving, unable to grow, save, or provide enough food to survive. That is, until the White saviors arrive to teach them the proper methods.
In this case it was an educational angle. Others provide history lessons. And yet in others – pure fantastical entertainment. These are examples of pageants and plays that were put on by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and today fragments can be found in the National Archives Record Group 75: Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. So grab your popcorn, dim the lights, pull back the curtains, and let the shows begin across the country.
Love Pirates of Hawaii – Pierre Indian School, 1928
Our first feature takes us to South Dakota where the Pierre Indian School Boys and Girls Glee Clubs put on Love Pirates of Hawaii. All that exists is a synopsis but it provides enough for us to understand the basic premise of the plot. The setting is a private girls school, where Miss Primer is a strict teacher. One student, Dorothy, is infatuated with a US Navy sailor and writes back and forth to arrange a visit. It should at this point be remarked that Dorothy’s age is unstated, but if written by the school and based on Native boarding schools, students often were into their early 20s so perhaps this is not as cringe as it may appear today. So while the two plan their rendezvous, a real pirate visits the school in order to “loot.” Now this is a problem because Billy, the sailor from the” U.S. Cruiser” has decided he can sneak into the school by wearing a pirate costume. (Author’s note: while at this early point the plot is starting to go completely off the rails, as a real sailor who once served on a Navy cruiser and in fact visited Hawaii many times I want to further drive home how implausible this all is) We learn that Primer had intercepted Billy’s letters to Dorothy, and thus thought the real pirates were Billy and his sailor friends. Thinning this, Primer somehow makes the pirates work in the kitchen but when Billy finally does arrive, he sees the real pirates and leaves to get help. But the pirate leader, Chief, and Primer fall in love so when Billy comes back with a detachment of US Marines, Primer says Chief has in fact stolen something – her heart.
Excerpt of three pages from the Love Pirates of Hawaii file, Rapid City Indian School. Decimal Correspondence Files, 1903-1934, National Archives at Kansas City.
The Victory of Plenty – Fort Peck Indian Agency, 1933
Henrietta Burton, Supervisor of Home Extension Work in the Division of Extension and Industry, wrote this pageant, a paean to the supposed tribal reliance on the BIA. As highlighted in the introduction, hunger stalks the generic family who then turn “to the Great Spirit” and before they know it, BIA extension workers and the reservation superintendent arrive with seeds and tools to teach them how to farm. Suddenly fruits and vegetables are walking around, Plenty arrives, and the audience takes a musical interlude to sing “America the Beautiful.” Jack Frost and Winter then arrive but alas, so much was grown and saved they are pushed away by the food and fuel characters, and shot in the chest with an arrow by Plenty. Finally a giant U.S. flag is unfurled, the audience then sings “America.” While everyone files out a fire is set on stage and an “Indian pow-wow” is danced.
Excerpt of three pages from The Victory of Plenty file, Fort Peck Indian Agency. Decimal Subject Files, 1934-1942, National Archives at Denver. (Author’s note: this script mentions that the character drawings, seen in part here, were done by Quincy Tahoma, then a young teenager at the Santa Fe Indian School. According to his student case file also found in our holdings, Tahoma graduated in 1940. He then embarked on a successful career in art, before his untimely death in 1956)
Pageant of Navajo History – Various Navajo day and boarding schools, 1940
The previous plays and pageants had small casts but the Pageant of Navajo History was as large as the massive Navajo Nation itself, including hundreds of cast members and grappled with centuries of history. Put on at the Navajo Tribal Fair in September 1940, each of the nine parts – a prologue set in 1625 at the Santa Clara Pueblo, seven episodes within, and an epilogue set at the Navajo Nation in 1940 – were done by a different Navajo school and spoken in Navajo, with English translations provided. The entire 42 page script was saved and today found in our Charles H. Burke school files. The professionalism of the production is evident. Schools were told to find microphones to practice speaking with, the script was to be memorized, and pains were taken to find age appropriate hats and holsters for certain eras. In the vein of The Victory of Plenty, the play ended with a giant, unfurled US flag and the singing of “The Star Spangled Banner.”
The Long Walk episode setting and script from Pageant of Navajo History, Charles H. Burke School. Decimal Files, 1926–1949, National Archives at Denver
The Song of Hiawatha – Warm Springs Agency, 1946
As often the case with BIA records, the file the National Archives at Seattle has for the Hiawatha pageant at Oregon’s Warm Springs Indian Agency is very thin, only a two page letter and newspaper clipping of a reservation family visiting Portland. The 1946 letter is a copy sent to Hillsboro Oregon where a version of The Song of Hiawatha was going to be put on by tribal members. In the letter Naomi Wanger, a BIA arts and crafts teacher, largely provides Leon Davis biographical information on the various actors for publicity purposes, mentioning their accomplished ancestors when applicable. Graduates of Chemewa Indian School, elders who signed the 1855 treaty, fought in the Modoc War, or were prominent medicine men for the tribe are noted. From the letter it appears Wanger also sent several photographs that she asks to be sent back when done with, but alas those are not present in the file.
The date is interesting because a decade earlier, in 1932, the annual report from the Pipestone Indian School in Minnesota noted they had put on an outdoor production of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous poem to nearly 3,000 people, and was such a success they continued on before it grew into a whole community affair in the 1940s, the time in which it appears the Warm Springs Agency was too putting on a production.
Naomi Wagner to Leon Davis regarding The Song of Hiawatha pageant. Old Decimal Files, 1908–1952, National Archives at Seattle