Representing History: Performing the Columbian Exposition

Abstract

Scholars have not been slow to notice the collisions and contradictions presented by and represented in the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Alan Trachtenberg depicts it as the culminating spectacle of The Incorporation of America in the nineteenth century. Richard Slotkin examines the Fair as the high point in the performance history of "Buffalo Bill's Wild West" and traces the show's role in the creation of the Gunfighter [End Page 589] Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America. Richard White explores the connection between "Frederick Jackson Turner and Buffalo Bill" and representations of The Frontier in American Culture that offered images of peaceful or of violent conquest (Turner presented his "frontier thesis" at the American Historical Association convention during the Fair and William F. Cody's "Buffalo Bill's Wild West" performed next to the fairgrounds). Historians of the Fair itself and of organizations contributing to it (such as the Smithsonian Institution and the Bureau of Indian Affairs) have produced a rich literature often critiquing the Fair's racist and sexist organization and displays, while historians of Buffalo Bill and wild west shows examine the man, the productions, their performers, their publicity, and their impact upon U.S., indeed international, culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A substantial scholarship has also taken up Frederick Jackson Turner and the impact of his view of American history. Many studies written recently about these subjects reflect a revised view of United States history, and specifically of "the frontier," indebted to scholarly research exposing much that is deplorable about the policies and behavior of the U.S. government and white Americans toward Amerindians. 2