"I Would Like to Have This Tribe Represented": Native Performance and Craft at Chicago's 1933 Century of Progress Exposition

Abstract

Chicago's 1933–34 Century of Progress Exposition is best known for its modernist architecture, Sally Rand's scandalous fan dance, and its celebration of American progress in the depths of the Depression. So why did hundreds of American Indians from across the nation contact fair and city officials seeking to participate in the exposition? What did this enormous cultural event offer them? This article examines the experiences of the hundreds of Indians from across the nation who sought work at the fair by writing to fair and city officials to ask for exhibit or performance space. They represent participants in the early twentieth-century performance economy that bound together Wild West show veterans, vaudeville performers, singers, dancers, and artists into a network that provided essential income to Native communities. They converged at the fair, revealing both the fair's role as a truly national event, and the integration of Indian communities into American mass culture. This essay builds on the work of historians who have documented the economic importance of performance to Native communities to argue that the long history of Native performance and creative cultural preservation intersected with the economic and cultural context of the early 1930s to produce a national Indian performance circuit that incorporated both individual wage-earning Natives and whole families into the mainstream American economy. The national reach of the Century of Progress Exposition creates a window into the mechanics of this economy that reveals dynamics not visible in studies focused solely on one region or people.