All the World's a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876-1916 by Rydell Robert W

Author:Rydell, Robert W. [Rydell, Robert W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2013-08-16T00:00:00+00:00

Fig. 54. Igorot Village—note spectator with opera glasses seated on bench. Stereoscope card from Division of Prints and Photographs, Library of Congress.

The government’s efforts at overnight civilization provoked much mirth, brought an outcry from anthropologists, and generated a great deal of publicity for the exposition. The Saint Louis Post-Dispatch carried a cartoon showing Taft carrying a pair of pants, in hot pursuit of an Igorot clad only in a G-string. The editor of the same newspaper dispatched a letter to the “Department of Exploitation” at the reservation, declaring: “To put pants on [the Igorots and Negritos] would change a very interesting ethnological exhibit which shocks no one into a suggestive side-show.” An irate Frederick Starr seconded these thoughts in a memo to Wilson: “The scientific value of the display is unquestionably great. Such value would be completely lost by dressing these people in a way unlike that to which they are accustomed.” Starr also added that clothing might actually kill the Igorot and Negrito villagers, given the heat of the Saint Louis summer. By mid-July the Board of Lady Managers concurred in the need for maintaining the apparent genuineness of the exhibits, and the Roosevelt administration abandoned its plans to compel the Igorots and Negritos to wear bright-colored silk trousers.40

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