Existing comment:
American Indians:
American Indians appeared in many guises throughout the Fair: as subjects of fine art, as historical peoples, and as "living displays" in a simulated reservation land. Together these competing images reinforced a central theme: indigenous people could be viewed as evolutionary representatives of cultural progress that led to "enlightened" civilization.
Nowhere was that message more clearly expressed than in the mock Indian Reservation constructed on what is now the campus of Washington University. Representatives of twenty tribes, including the Osage, Lokota Sioux, Pawnee, and Navajo, lived at the base of a raised hillock in authentically constructed dwellings. At the top of the hill, spatially and symbolically above the mock reservation, was the United States Indian School where the process of "Americanization" took place. |