Article 5: Caught between Catholic and Government Traditions: Americanization and Assimilation at St. Joseph’s Indian Normal School

Millions visited the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago between May and October, 1893. Some went to ride the giant Ferris wheel; some went to investigate new inventions displayed; others went to explore states’ and foreign countries’ exhibits. These exhibits were relatively benign, but others took a different path toward “exhibition.” The Chicago World’s Fair was not the world’s first, but it was an opportunity for Chicago to boast of its importance. World’s fairs and exhibitions had grown and developed grander purposes since the first one in London in 1851: “Beginning as large international industrial displays and showcases for the new inventions and discoveries of science and technology, they quickly became committed to the much more ambitious and comprehensive aim of revealing culture in all its dimensions” (Badger 1979, xvi). Chicago’s Exhibition embraced the idea of revealing cultures, including several showcases deemed “less-civilized,” as Native Americans, Egyptians, and Africans were shown in a theatrical exposition. The examples of Native “savagery” showed a way of life slowly disappearing. One newspaper reporter at the time described the exhibition: “Outside the building … are living representatives of various Indian tribes, living as their forefathers did before the white man invaded these shores. Here are their wigwams or bark huts they cook and sleep, carry on their games and dances” (Shaw 1992, 26). Another day, the reporter witnessed: