The Native American figures were exceptionally carved. The maker had given them some dignity in wood, surely not matching the ways they were perceived in the era the carvings were made. They were symbols for a shop that sold and smelled of cigars and tobacco.
These larger-than-life figures – a man and a woman described as a “Cigar Store Indian Maiden” – were up for auction with other ethnic items of all shapes and types. Her base bore the word “Cigars,” and she held a bundle of wrapped stogies in her raised right hand. He held a raised tomahawk in his.
They were among a number of full-length and tabletop wooden Native American figures that I have seen at auction over the last year, appearing at a time when the country is debating the use of Native Americans as mascots. Just about everyone has heard of the declaration by Washington Redskins’ owner Daniel Snyder last year that he will never ever change the name of his team.
Opponents consider the use of Native American mascots as both derogatory and offensive. Proponents say it is a tribute to them – which I seriously doubt, since the team got the nickname from a segregationist who didn’t likely see it as complimentary. I suspect that the proponents just don’t like the idea of being told what to do – even if they think their opponents’ reasoning is valid.
I always thought the word “redskins” referred to the skin color that European settlers used to describe Native Americans when they first encountered them. Instead, it beckons back to a dark period in U.S. history when Native Americans were being annihilated. It referred to the bloody scalps of Native American men, women and children that were sold and hung in settlers’ homes.
The horrific origin of the word should be enough to make most reasonable folks cringe at using it.
The historical use of mascots has not been confined entirely to Native Americans. Around the end of the 19th century, the Chicago White Stockings (later named the White Sox) had at least two real live mascots who were African American – a boy named Willie Hahn and a man named Clarence Duval, a former vaudeville performer. Mascots traveled with the team and were considered good luck.
Duval was said to be the most famous mascot of his day, and he was treated terribly by both the owner and players.
A 2012 biography of ball player Arlie Lathan noted that the Sporting Life in the early 20th century wanted teams to stop using mascots:
“To paraphrase the catechism ‘mascots are a visible evidence of a belief in superstition,’ ridiculous in the extreme and only worth the intelligence of a Digger Indian. Baseball is the national game of Americans, as cricket is of the English. Who ever heard of an English cricket team carrying around with them ‘for luck’ a big illy-smelling darkey, a monkey or a parrot? The magnates should have said in effect ‘Play ball, boys, and don’t make yourself ridiculous with fetishes.’ With its disdain of the practice, the newspaper showed a trend toward modern thought. But with casually strewn monikers like ‘Digger Indian’ and ‘darkey,’ Sporting Life proved that it, like most of the country, was still happily embedded in the dark ages.”
Both the terms “Digger Indians” and “darkey” are derogatory.
Sports mascots – including my niece’s beloved Atlanta Braves and that awful grinning Chief Wahoo of the Cleveland Indians– signifying Native Americans are persistent. Just as those cigar store Indian symbols are still being made and sold.
I’m not sure how old the cigar store Indians were at auction, but the origin of them stretch beyond American shores. They go back as far as the 1600s, made by Europeans who had never seen Native Americans but instead made them in the image of Africans with feather headdresses. They were called blackamoors and other names. I see blackamoors quite often at auction but none that looked like a cigar store Indian.
They found their way here around the 1830s or 1840s, and the likeness to Native Americans became more fixed in a country that was in a constant battle to remove the people from their land. One site noted that some of them resembled white men in Native American garb.
The figures were hand-made by ship carvers along the East Coast, and sold to cigar stores where they were placed outside to attract customers, most of whom were illiterate and could not read the names on the store windows. Indians were used because they had introduced European settlers to tobacco, and thus, became the symbol for cigar stores up until the end of the 19th century. By then, local ordinances required that they be placed inside so not to block sidewalks.
Native American men and women were not the only carvings used on sidewalks: Chinese figures fronted tea houses, white women fronted dress shops, and white men fronted shops that catered to them.
I was not around when the man and woman statues were sold at auction, and could find no mention of the price on the web. I did find a lookalike statue of the man – I assumed it was the same figure – bearing no price but designated “on hold.”
The male figure (87″ tall) was made around the 1850s and attributed to John L. Cromwell, who was said to be one of the first carvers of cigar store Indians. The woman (85″ tall) was attributed to Thomas V. Brooks, a student of Cromwell’s. Both were said to be among the most prominent cigar-store carvers of the 19th century.
On one site on the web, I found cigar store Indians that sold for a few hundred dollars to more than $20,000 at an auction last year. Another site was selling two for $175,000 each. A circa 1880s Native American “princess” sold for $747,500 at an auction in November in Maryland.
