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Anthropology Goes to the Fair: THE 1904 LOUISIANA PURCHASE EXPOSITION

Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Spring 2008 by Shupe, Kevin

Anthropology Goes to the Fair THE 1904 LOUISIANA PURCHASE EXPOSITION Nancy J. Parezo and Don D. Fowler University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 2007. Illustrations, maps, tables, notes, appendixes, xii + 538 pp. $55.00 cloth.

World's fairs have been elaborate stages upon which businessmen, civic leaders, intellectuals, and politicians banded together to display a nation's accomplishments and aspirations for the future. Few events provide such a rich and concentrated source for the study of commercial, intellectual, and technological developments, as well as the underlying cultural attitudes. One of the more fertile areas of study is how world's fairs have served as promoters of imperialism and racism, displaying "savages" in order to confirm the nation's and the white race's claim to supremacy. Other notable historical works have explored this theme, but none to the extent of Anthropology Goes to the Fair. Using a detailed examination of the ethnological displays at St. Louis's Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904, Nancy J. Parezo and Don D. Fowler are able to dig deep into the fair's racial messages and intellectual foundations.

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At the center of the study is William J. McGee, head of the Exposition's Department of Anthropology, whose ambitious plan was to assemble a living exhibit of indigenous groups to illustrate his conception of evolutionary progress. Because of a lack of money, McGee curtailed his original plans and made numerous compromises, including forming an alliance with the Indian School exhibit where 150 Indian students demonstrated their skills in the manual and domestic arts adjacent to a contrasting display of older "blanket" Indians practicing traditional crafts. McGee used the latter Indians along with indigenous groups from other parts of the world to illustrate evolutionary stages. He also brought into his schema the ethnic participants from the Philippine village and the Midway amusements. Parezo and Fowler examine each of these exhibits, showing how McGee integrated the groups to meet his objective. The authors also attempt to tell the story of the participants, giving them names and identities and taking into account the ways those on display set their own terms of engagement.

As one of the nation's leading anthropologists, McGee represented contemporary doctrine, but, as the authors show, his way of thinking was soon to be supplanted. An intellectual turning point occurred during the Exposition when, at the Congress of Arts and Sciences, Franz Boas delivered a paper attacking current anthropological theory as prejudicially ethnocentric. Stressing an ethnological relativism according to which each group would be studied within its own context rather than on an evolutionary scale, Boas set the stage for a new type of anthropology.

The authors' lack of comparisons with ethnological displays at earlier expositions is a disappointment. Chicago's Columbian Exposition of 1893 is discussed, but those held between 1893 and 1904 are seldom more than mentioned. Contrasting the Indian Congresses held at Omaha's Trans-Mississippi Exposition (1898) and Greater American Exposition (1899)-which the authors confuse (pp. 59, 240)-as well as the Indian Congress and other midway shows at the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition (1901) would have provided much greater historical context.

A more disturbing problem involves a carelessness about citations. For my own research, I tried to hunt up several newspaper articles cited by the authors. Three out of the four I was looking for were not there. To see if this pattern held, I checked thirty-five other newspaper citations. Of these, eleven were not found and one was mis tided.

I want to recommend this book. It is well written, and its breadth and compilation of details add substantially to the study of the construction and display of race. My recommendation, however, must come with a worrisome caveat. The citation issue along with a handful of small errors I found in the text makes me wonder how many more problems I did not uncover. With that said, many different audiences will find this a valuable and interesting resource for the history of anthropology, expositions, and museum display as well as an accessible book about Gilded Age intellectual culture.

Kevin Shupe

George Mason University, Washington, D.C.

Copyright Montana Historical Society Spring 2008
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved

Anthropology Goes to the Fair: THE 1904 LOUISIANA PURCHASE EXPOSITION

Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Spring 2008 by Shupe, Kevin

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