Ethnological Villages and the Queen of the Pay Streak

On August 18, 1909, Columbia, a 16-year-old Inuit was selected Queen of the Pay Streak, the amusement zone of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. Later that month, she was named the fair’s most beautiful woman.

There were a number of Pay Streak exhibits that focused on particular countries or cultural identities, including the Esquimo, Igorrote (now written Igorot), Chinese, Oriental (or Arabic) and Japanese exhibits. Only the Igorottes and the Esquimos occupied ethnographic villages purporting to present real live primitive people and the way they really lived. Although the Igorrote Village was the most financially successful of the two, much more is known about the Inuit performers.

In the last quarter of the 19th century, people in the United States, Latin America and Western Europe began to take interest in indigenous communities whose traditions and culture had survived the conquering colonial armies, churches and bureaucrats of the previous 400 years. The evidence of this global interest is compelling and confusing.

While white Americans were trumpeting near extinction of Native American populations, isolating the balance of them on reservations and proclaiming the safe settlement on all Western lands, anthropologists began scientific documentation of indigenous cultures.

Today, this documentation is evident in Franz Boas’ work at New York’s American Museum of Natural History, huge collections of Central and Latin American objects at Harvard’s Peabody Museum and Native American objects at the University of Washington’s Burke Museum.

The scientific interest of that era complements the immense popularity of ethnological amusements or “villages” at world’s fairs and expositions at the time. The villages functioned like fair attractions: barkers and spielers calling out to visitors who paid a fee, usually 5 or 10 cents, to see the show. The villages exhibited indigenous people in traditional clothing (furs, loin clothes, etc.) creating traditional crafts, performing traditional songs and dances, cooking traditional foods and acting and reenacting traditional ceremonies (weddings, funerals, birthing ceremonies, etc.)

At the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, villages representing Java, the South Sea Islands, Dahomey, the Sudan, Lapland, Arabia, Turkey, Algeria and Labrador dotted the Midway Plaisance. The Esquimaux, or Inuit Village, was a highlight of the fair. Columbia, named for the fair and not the river, was born in Chicago on Oct. 31, 1892 just after her mother’s arrival in town from Labrador. She was known throughout her life as the First World’s Fair baby.

Called “educational amusements” or “ethnographic attractions,” these villages demonstrated a genuine interest in cultural traditions while appealing to an underlying assumption that exposure to European and American civilizations improved the lives of “primitive” people. There is no doubt, however, that people in fair villages were displayed as curiosities and that they resented their roles, even as they became accustomed to American ways. It is also clear that people on both sides of the show experienced genuine awkwardness and concern for one another. Mrs. Potter Palmer, a very wealthy Chicagoan, adopted Columbia as her goddaughter and the death of a number of touring Inuits provoked Canadian legislation preventing their being shipped abroad for exhibition purposes.

By the time Columbia arrived in Seattle for the A.-Y.-P., she, her parents, her siblings and other Labradorean Inuits had performed at American expositions in St. Louis, Jamestown, Charlestown and Buffalo, among other cities. They had also taken part in shows, museums and expositions in England, Europe and Africa. With her mother, Esther, Columbia became the star of the world’s fair circuit.

Unlike other village communities, the Inuits stand out. Led by Esther Eneutseak, they assumed responsibility for themselves, owning props, dog teams and concession sites, and negotiating contracts that guaranteed return passage to Labrador. Esther learned English and appears to have used her marriages to American concessionaires to negotiate deals, protecting her fellow Inuits both at expositions and in the movie business after 1910.

In Seattle, early promotional flyers promised, “three kinds of Eskimos in the village, those who have not been touched by white civilization, those who only recently came into association with modern civilization, and the common or garden variety, the natives who were long ago brought into contact with the white man.” Columbia, whose photogenic smile and pithy American English were cultivated at Coney Island in New York City and elsewhere, represented the “garden variety.”

How visitors were supposed to tell the three types apart is not revealed; however, Columbia, who was educated in the United States, became everybody’s favorite. Not only was she selected by her peers as “Queen of the Pay Streak” on Aug. 18, 1909, but later that month she was also named the most beautiful woman at the fair. Each title carried the prize of Seattle residential lot. The sale of those lots may have provided the money to send Columbia to school after the A.-Y.-P.

Esther, Columbia and their extended families ultimately settled in Los Angeles where they appeared in movies and capitalized on the Northern obsession of the early film industry. Columbia abandoned her show biz career and settled down as the wife of Ray Melling, a motion picture operator. She died in 1959 at age 66. Her mother survived her by three years.

From May 30 to Sept. 7, 2009, the Burke Museum will present an exhibit and programs about changing approaches to the portrayal of ethnic cultures. The exhibit will examine the representation of indigenous peoples at the fair and provide a forum for indigenous voices to reply, challenging us to consider how we have changed and/or stayed the same after 100 years.

On June 5, 6 and 7, during the Filipino community’s Padiriwang Festival at Seattle Center, Igorots from around North America will present their music, dance, food and building traditions for the first time since 1909. The willing presentation of Igorot culture represents a sea change in community attitudes. Like the exhibit at the Burke Museum, this year’s Padiriwang Festival creates a unique opportunity to consider how we may or may not have changed.