Cigar Store Colossus

PETER: In February, 1913, just over 100 years ago, President William Howard Taft came to Staten Island for a groundbreaking ceremony. Congress had set aside a piece of federal land on a cliff top there for a new monument. It would be known as the National American Indian Memorial.

FREDERICK HOXIE: It was really going to be a spectacular construction.

PETER: This is Fredrick Hoxie, a historian at the University of Illinois. This monument, he explains, was going to consist of an enormous bronze statue of an Indian warrior replete with feather headdress, a bone and arrow dangling in one hand, and the other hand outstretched in a sign of peace. The 160 foot statue would sit atop a seven story pedestal with a museum at its base. All told, the monument would tower more than 900 feet above the water, making it higher than the Statue of Liberty.

FREDERICK HOXIE: And the idea was to symbolize the free gift of a continent to the newcomers from Europe. And it was supposed to symbolize this transition from the old, savage ways of life to the new, modern America.

BRIAN: The memorial was the brainchild of Rodman Wanamaker, son of the Philadelphia department store founder. He had an active interest in American Indians, or at least in the idea of them. Like many of his time, he was convinced that Indians were going extinct, hence his proposal for a memorial. Here’s how it was described in the official program handed out at the groundbreaking ceremony.

FEMALE SPEAKER: A lonely, lofty figure, where the sea will forever moan a dirge for a vanished race, where sun and stars, and wind and thunder, the gods in his great world cathedral, may utter this speech of his soul, but now to fall upon unheeding ears of bronze. Posterity will applaud the honor we do ourselves in gathering up the life story of this virile and picturesque race, while yet the rays of the setting sun fall upon their departing footprints.

PETER: Now if you go to our website, you can see some photos of this dedication ceremony which, not accidentally, took place on Washington’s birthday. And you’ll see that there were all sorts of prominent dignitaries there, including a few dozen Indian chiefs. Turns out, they were representing tribes from all over the country. And so I had to ask Fred Hoxie, 32 Indians from around the country? Why would they participate in this bizarre event?

FREDERICK HOXIE: Well, that’s a great question. They came to be visible. They came to be– to redeem the invisibility [INAUDIBLE]. And you know, the bar was pretty low for American Indians to have an impact on the American public at this time. This is a time when Americans believed that Indians were savage people who could not survive in the modern world. So first of all, just to be there, to be present, to be a part of the ceremony was something that was at least a symbol that they hadn’t gone away.

PETER: So this is a bit of cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, this is a memorial to the vanished Indian. And then the Indians show up?

FREDERICK HOXIE: Right. But the other thing is that I’ve tracked many of the delegations who came. And it’s interesting that many of the people who did come were actually political leaders in their community who use the opportunity of being present in New York City, of being in the presence of well, the President of the United States, and Congressman, and other people to say, and by the way, we’d like to have a talk with you about the leasing of our lands, and about the fact that you’re sending our children away to school. And we’re doing this.

It was sort of like one of those G20 summits, where everybody poses fora picture. And then in the hallways, they grab each other by the elbow. And so these were very savvy political leaders. And they were struggling to find a way to have a voice, to have an impact on the society around them. And this ceremony was an opportunity to do that.

PETER: The ceremony concluded with a flag raising, and then with all the Indians who were there signing a document called Declaration of Allegiance to the United States. Over the next few months, Wanamaker had that same document taken to 66 Indian reservations all over the country. The person leading that expedition had to explain to many of the Indians signing it that it wasn’t bestowing citizenship on them, but rather giving them the right to honor their country.

If you ever been to New York Harbor, you know there is no humongous American Indian there. Ground was broken for the monument. But organizers weren’t able to raise the funds to actually build it. And with the advent of World War I, public support for the project quickly, well, it vanished. As for the Indians represented at that bizarre event, not only did they decidedly not vanish, Hoxie says they emerged from the 19-teens with a more prominent voice than they had ever had before.

FREDERICK HOXIE: During World War I, American Indians served in the Army and in the Navy, even though they weren’t citizens. They won lots of accolades for their service. But they also began to pick up on the rhetoric, once America entered World War I, the rhetoric of Woodrow Wilson about self determination of nations, and about people being able to pick their own leaders.

And that language resonated with American Indian leaders of the time, some of whom had been at that ceremony, and others in their circles, who said, well, gee, captive nations. That sounds pretty familiar to us. Self determination, that’s a great idea. How about if we have a little of that here? And they began to advocate for citizenship, and as citizenship, not just to blend in with everyone else, but citizenship to give them the ability to fight publicly for their interest, to testify in court, to act in all the ways that a citizen should in a democracy.

PETER: And one of the reasons we have courts and citizens exercise their rights in courts is to protect their property. So the irony of a great memorial to the free gift of the land is that it might be a point of departure, energizing moment for reclaiming that ownership of the land.

FREDERICK HOXIE: Absolutely. And there’s another thread that begins to surface right at this same time of Indians using the United States Court of Claims and other courts to enforce the treaty agreements that had been made in the 19th century. Many times treaties had provisions that had long been forgotten about hunting and fishing rights, or about property rights, boundaries, land use, and so on. And Indians in the early 20th century began going to court to try to have those rights enforced.

And there were victories and defeats. But what really drew people into this effort was the fact that they could actually have, literally have, a day in court. They could bring their cases forward, and again, be heard and be seen as modern participants in American society.

PETER: That’s Frederick Hoxie, a historian at the University of Illinois. We’ll post some drawings of the proposed monument, as well as some newspaper accounts of the groundbreaking at backstoryradio.org.

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