The Lost Tribe of Coney Island

"Displaying human beings for the entertainment and edification of the paying public seems shocking today, but 'human zoos' were nothing new in the early 1900s, For more than four hundred years, exotic humans from faraway territories had been paraded in front of royal courts and wealthy patrons from Europe to Japan, and more recently at world's fairs and expositions as far afield as New York, Paris, and London. But what happened in Coney Island in 1905 was the result of two modern forces meshing: American imperialism and a popular taste of sensationalism."

So writes Claire Prentice in her mildly intriguing The Lost Tribe of Coney Island. The story is all there, complete with heroes and villains and a tribe of primitive Filipinos who are dragged around the North American continent, not understanding the language, unable to go home, their money stolen.

The tribe was the Igorrote, mountain people of Luzon, an island in the Philippines. That country had been part of the haul the U.S. received after winning the Spanish-American War, and now it was being discussed whether they would be allowed to govern themselves. Several indigenous and primitive tribes lived on the islands, and some, like the Igorrote, were headhunters, eaters of dog, and went nearly naked.

A medical doctor named Truman Hunt had first organized an exhibition of Igorrote at the 1904 St. Louis world's fair. He endeavored to do it again, anticipating great wealth. And the Igorrote were eager to go. Those not selected begged him to reconsider. He took several dozen tribespeople across the ocean to Vancouver, then to New York City, where the amusement park business was booming. There were rival parks, most notably Luna Park and Dreamland. Hunt made a deal with the former, and the Igorrote were set up in a display to be gawked at by New Yorkers for twenty-five cents.

Prentice neatly documents how the whole thing goes wrong, and how Hunt, who always claimed to be acting in the tribe's best interests, screwed them over. They were not allowed outside of their display area, and Hunt kept all their money, telling them he would give it to them when they returned home. But they didn't trust him, and tried to secrete money they earned from selling handcrafts, but Hunt forcibly took it from them. They were basically his slaves.

Hunt makes a classic villain in Prentice's book. Not only is he a thief, but he is a bigamist and a liar. He snuck the tribe across Surf Avenue to Dreamland, violating his contract, and then moved the Igorrote all over the country, sometimes splitting them up, without paying them. Eventually he drew the interest of the government in the Burea of Insular Affairs, and we get our hero, Frederick Barker, an agent, who doggedly tries to round up the tribespeople and send them home (they had been kept longer than the year agreed to). Hunt ended up on trial for theft in Memphis and was convicted, but it was overturned by a crony judge.

Prentice's story is atmospheric, especially in describing the world of Coney Island at that time, which was then the biggest tourist destination in America. She expresses sympathy all along for the Igorrote, and, as she notes, the idea of displaying humans like that now is completely repugnant to us.

But where the story gets bogged down is frequent speculation on the thoughts of her participants. She will write a sentence like: "Truman watched Laguima chattering excitedly with her friends, and couldn't help but think of Calista, his daughter back in Iowa. She would be thirteen now, not that much younger than Laguima. It was a long time since he'd seen her and he wondered what she looked like now. Did she have her mother's fine features?" This sentence is not footnoted, indicating it was in Hunt's journal or diary. How could Prentice possibly know what he was thinking at a certain moment? This is all through the book, giving it the air of a work of a fiction. Historians often speculate on the attitudes or motives of historical figures, but this seems way over the top.

Still, I recommend it to those like I am who are interested in the history of show business and Coney Island. There is a new book about Ota Benga, a pygmy who was displayed at the Bronx Zoo at roughly the same time (Prentice makes no mention of him) that I would like to check out.