Feathered footsteps: mythologizing and ritualizing Black Indian processions in New Orleans

Abstract

This essay explores intersections between the ritual veneration of stereotypified Native American spirit figures by American Spiritualists and the performative traditions of ‘Masking Indian’ practised by urban African Americans in New Orleans' Mardi Gras processions. The author examines the ways in which communities in New Orleans, of both sacred and secular identity, employ images of Native Americans as icons of spiritual power and presence. This essay suggests some ways in which this process constitutes an instance of co-narration, in which clergy and congregants of Spiritualist/Spiritual churches – whose narratives of the Indian spirits find expression through interlacing oral and ritual performances – have helped to establish a sacred dimension for Indian processions in New Orleans, adding an overtly spiritual note to otherwise secular ‘rites of territory repossessed’. Through an examination of the community response to the death of Big Chief Allison ‘Tootie’ Montana, and the first post-Katrina Mardi Gras in 2006, the article explores the ways in which Indian icons and imagery still stand for many New Orleanians as powerful signs of something in the soul that, to paraphrase a popular Mardi Gras Indian song, won't kneel and won't bow down.