21. "I Fear No One" - Native American Performance in 19th Century Philadelphia

Copyright Peter Schmitz 2022. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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In May and June of 2021, Play Penn, a Philadelphia non-profit organization that has conducted an annual playwriting development conference since 2005, sponsored online readings of two plays by Native American authors called “Indigenous Circles”. This was done in collaboration with Native Voices at the Autry, a California theater company that produces new works for the stage by Native American, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, and First Nations playwrights.

Two plays were presented at the Indigenous Circles event: Desert Stories for Lost Girls, by Lily Rushing, and Feathers by J R Mathews. The plays were read by a cast of actors of Native American ancestry and developed with directors and staff that were largely Native American themselves.

All this put me in mind of a lot of historical material I had been coming across lately about the history of Native Americans and theater in Philadelphia in the 19th Century, and so I thought I’d share what I’ve found with all of you. And, I promise you at the outset I’m going to try to keep it confined to the 1800s, although we will slip a little bit over into the beginning of the 20th Century, which is a whole different story, in terms of Philadelphia theater history.

We began our podcast’s story with the founding of Philadelphia in the late 17th Century. In our second episode, I rushed rather quickly through the early years of the city’s history, because for our purposes, there wasn’t much formal theater of any kind to talk about before the middle of the 18th Century. Of course, this approach centers mostly on the mode of live performance that we generally think about when we speak of ‘theater’. The standard Western definition of the art form tends to leave out other types of performance, especially ones that are passed down by longstanding cultural practices and oral transmission. But the frustrating problem for theater historians is that once the chain of oral transmission in a particular culture is broken, there’s no real way of retrieving it if someone did not record it or write it down. So like the famous story of the man looking for his lost keys only under the lamppost because that’s where the light is, we stick mostly to where the written records exist.

The long-ago dances, storytelling, ceremonies and rituals of the Leni Lenape and other peoples who dwelled in what is now called Eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey for thousands of years, are largely inaccessible to us, and I don’t pretend to have any special knowledge about them that I can share with you. Though there is a lot of work being done by archeologists excavating ancient Native Americans settlements in the area, I’ve never seen anything about evidence of performances or ceremonies, so out of respect for the subject, I don’t want to speculate. I’m sticking with where the light is, and what I can put my hands on.

But while researching the period of Philadelphia history from about 1790 to 1820 I keep coming across references to Native Americans in the city’s theaters - not Leni Lenape, but visitors, delegations of many different tribes from the northeast and midwest. Now this shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. Many of us have a tendency, or habit of mind, to think of Native Americans, or “Indians'', as they are invariably called in all the source material from this period, as mainly existing on or beyond the ‘frontier’. Somewhere out West. We tend to do this, even though we also know that Native communities still exist in areas of New England, New York State and many other places East of the Mississippi, even today. Still, Philadelphia from this period is tied up in our minds with images of stolid Quakers, politicians, bankers, painters, sailors, carpenters, laborers. We look at the pictures in Birch’s famous 1800 book, “Views of Philadelphia'', and we see people working along the Delaware waterfront,  striding along on High Street, strolling in front of the Pennsylvania Hospital on Spruce Street. White people mostly, but also many African American. But if you look closely, at least two of the pictures clearly show groups of Native Americans, in traditional garb. In Birch’s depiction of the New Lutheran Church on Fourth Street, for example, you can clearly see a group of about half a dozen Indians walking along the sidewalk. A white man in a three-cornered hat walks beside them, looking towards them, his arm gesturing to the side as if he is giving them a tour around the town. And in the engraving titled “The Back of the State House” (what we would now call Independence Hall), four Native men walk across the lawn in animated conversation with each other, while white ladies with parasols stroll nearby with complete lack of concern. From these depictions, at least, it would seem that the sight of Indigenous people in what was then the Nation’s Capital was a notable part of the passing scene - enough for William Birch and his son to want to put them in his book - but also a normal part of city life.

By many accounts, we know it was common for Native American delegations to visit Philadelphia during this time, and that they were not complete strangers to the residents of the city, their relationships between the two groups might be astoundingly intimate. In his memoir, William Wood tells the story of a comedian in the New Theatre’s company by the name of Pollard, who during the visit of a delegation from a northern tribe in 1797, was astonished to discover amongst them someone who might have been his twin, the resemblance between the two men was so striking. After a little inquiry the actor learned that it was in fact his long-lost half brother, the product of a liaison between his father, a British officer, and a Native American woman.  But I should note that it was political reasons that were usually the impetus for these visits. Indeed, as we learned in our regular Episode #7, it was quite usual for groups of Indian tribes to come to the city while it was the Capital city of the US, in order to negotiate treaties, settle disputes, collect indemnities, and register complaints. Nevertheless we know that they were also interested in exploring the cultural life of the city, like any visitor. 

As we also detailed in that episode, it was also rather common for these delegations to give dance performances in Philadelphia theater spaces, in order to raise money for travel expenses. We talked about the infamous dance of the Lose Loincloth, also described in Wood’s memoir, which happened during an exhibition of dances at the New Theater in 1802, during which some of Philadelphia’s ladies were supposedly scandalized by getting a full-frontal view of a male  performer’s anatomy. 

But there were even other visits by Native American delegations to the New Theater ones that I didn’t tell you about before. On March 17th, 1806, a group from a visiting Osage tribe was in the audience of a performance by Thomas Cooper of Macbeth. Mr. Carpenter of the publication The Theatrical Censor, was keeping an eye on them during the show, to see how they liked it. He reported that Cooper’s acting drew tears from at least one of the chiefs, and that the after-piece, a comic opera called The Romp, elicited the laughter of the whole group. 

And there were more Native American dance performances at the New Theatre that I left out of Episode 7, but I’m happy to tell you about them now, too! For instance, on April 2nd, 1808, in between performances of a comedy titled Tears & Smiles, and a musical entertainment called Too Many Cooks, we see from a newspaper ad that: “The Oneida Indians, now in this city, will dance several of their Country Dances - particularly the War Dance/War Song, preparing for battle, Manner of Fighting, etc”. But lest the ladies of Philadelphia should have any concerns about a repeat incidence of, um, costume malfunctions this time around, there was an additional note in the ad: “The Public are respectfully informed, that there shall be nothing in their appearance or conduct to wound the feelings of delicacy.”

We also described in Episode 7 the one-night-only dance performance by Midwestern tribes at the Olympic Theater in 1812, and we urge scholars once again to give a fuller credence to Russian diplomat Pavel Svinyin’s entire description of the event, although reading it over again I must say his account is full of vivid details, like the buffalo robes and masks the dancers wore, mixed with a complete cultural condescension and even a wild speculation about what he was looking at. He purports to give a translation of one of the war songs that was sung at this performance, as it was printed in the program handed out to the audience. Also by his testimony both men and women performed at The Olympic that night, which would mark the only occasion I can find of that happening. All other dances I’ve seen described in Philadelphia were usually only done by Native American men.

And even as late as 1818, we find another description by William Wood of a dance at the First Chestnut Street Theatre. This one was by a delegation of Wyandot Chiefs from territories around the Great Lakes. (Although it’s not clear to me that they were chiefs, in promotional material such dancers are always called ‘chiefs’ because apparently white Philadelphians liked to think they were getting royalty to perform for them). In the newspaper ad, their names were carefully spelled, phonetically: Horda-show-tee, Ta-you-ro-wat, Na-ni-lu-du, Sy-u-shaes, and Man-du-shau-quan, who “Will appear habited in the exact costume and arms of their country, and exhibit under the direction of the interpreter An Address to the Audience, in the Wyandott Tongue, by a Chief.” Thereafter was promised War Dances, a Green Corn Dance, a Buffalo Dance, and Brag Dance, a Dance of Courtship, and  finally a speech of peace.

But even though there were many examples of actual Indigenous performances, usually dance, there was little suggestion during this period that they join in and portray roles in plays on the stage - although I do see that one of our earliest subjects, John Bill Ricketts, employed actual native performers at his circus in New York City for a brief period in the 1790s. But non-white people did not get to represent themselves in the British Theater, generally, and in this respect early Philadelphia theater, which was largely British in orientation and practice, followed right along. If we look at the records of the repertoire of the New Theatre, we find many examples of this phenomenon. A pantomime called Nootka Sound, or the Adventures of Captain Douglas, done as an actor's benefit performance in March of 1794, depicted the travails of a sailor stranded on the Pacific Northwest. One Indian character was given the joke name of Wampumpoo.

Another example from the same year was a rather more dignified musical play called Tammany, or the Indian Chief, with a libretto by Mrs. Anne Hatton and music by James Hewitt. It was performed in both New York and Philadelphia, with the actor James Hodgkinson in the title role. Set in an imaginary confrontation between a renegade lost sailor of Christopher Columbus and noble Pennsylvania Indians, it was given at the behest of the Tammany Society, a social group that was fast becoming influential in Democratic political circles.

On April 6, 1808 another musical, called The Indian Princess was presented at the New Theater on Chestnut Street in 1808. This play, whose text we still have, was one of those rare plays done by the company whose author was an American, in fact a Philadelphian. James Nelson Barker had been born in the city 1784, was a frequent attendee at the new Theatre, and had long had the urge to write for the stage. In fact he was the author of the play Tears and Smiles that had preceded the dance presentation we mentioned of the Oneidas, just four days previously! The Indian Princess was an attempt to dramatize the story of Pocohontas, and therefore was set in Virginia. It had been set to music by John Bray, another actor in the company. All the Indian roles were played by white actors, with Mrs Wilmot taking the role of Pocohontas. It would have been fascinating to find out if any of the Oneidas chiefs were still in town and witnessed the show, but I can find no reference to them being in attendance. Indeed the main thing we know about that night is that the first performance was halted due to audience abuse of the young tenor singer Mr Webster who was playing the minor role of Larry. 

Other similar 19th Century plays which white authors and performers dramatized Native life was Tecumseh, or the Battle of the Thames which was done at the Walnut Street Theatre in October or 1836, and Montezuma, or the Conquest of Mexico which was staged at the Arch Street Theatre in November of 1846. Of course, if we are going to include theatrical depictions of Native people of Central and South America I should include all the many many performances of Wiliam Brinsley Sheridan’s play Pizzaro, which was set among the Incas of Peru during the Spanish invasion. That particular text, with its themes of defiance against invaders, and a touching love story, was one of the most popular plays of the early 19th Century, and had dozens of performances in Philadelphia at many different theaters by many different companies.

Perhaps the most notable ‘redface’ depiction of a Native American onstage by a white actor during the 19th Century would be one of the one by the most famous actor ever to come out of Philadelphia, Edwin Forrest. Forrest, who after his 1820 debut at the Walnut Street Theatre had actually gone West and even claimed to have spent a period of his youth living with a Choctaw Indian chief named Pushmataha (though scholars today dispute a lot of Forrest’s story). By 1828 Forrest’s career as a leading actor was taking off, and he was just beginning to experience the first measure of success. He was determined to create a new type of American drama to drive his rise to true stardom. Noting the success of James Fennimore Cooper’s recent novel The Last of the Mohicans, and remembering his time allegedly spent among the Choctaw, he put out notice in the newspapers, creating a contest with a prize of 500 dollars for a new play. The contest rules specified that the play must be “a tragedy, in five acts, of which the hero, or principal character, shall be an aboriginal of this country". 

The winner was John Augustus Stone, a young actor from Massachusetts, who submitted a melodrama entitled Metamora, or the Last of the Wampanoags. The action of his play was based on the character of Metacomet, or King Philip, the Wampanoag chief who went to war with the Puritans in the late 17th Century. Chief Metamora, as Stone wrote him, was a highly sympathetic character, typical of the Noble Savage character in many European narratives about Indians over the centuries, as was modeled in American literature by James Fennimore Cooper in particular. In most ways Metamora has greater moral standards than the white men - Metamora wants to avoid war, but when he does his vengeance is terrible. At the end of the play he dies, having killed his own wife and son to prevent them from falling into the hands of his enemies, and he curses the English with his final breath. It was a very muscular and heroic role just the type that Forrest liked, one that allowed him to show off his huge voice, his commanding stage presence, and to display his massive and well-developed physique.

Scholar Jill Lepore, in her 1998 book The Name of War, dedicates a chapter to the play Metamora. She discusses Edwin Forrest's costuming choices, how he appropriated “Indianness” on the stage in order to distinguish himself, in a manner of speaking, as American, as being fundamentally different from his rivals from England. She also analyzes how Metamora’s “vanishing Indian” story implicitly supported the US government's Indian removal policies of the time. And at this point we should mention that Forrest, despite his supposed respect for his ontime Choctaw brothers, was an ardent Jacksonian Democrat, and supported the policies of the American government that dispossessed, killed or uprooted huge numbers of  Native American people in the South during all the period that Metamora was playing to largely white audiences in Philadelphia and elsewhere. 

Because Edwin Forrest first presented Metamora in the year 1829, and it was always a huge hit for him from then on. Metamora became part of his standard repertory of roles that he would play for the next four decades. It was a very lucky play for him. It wasn’t so lucky for its author John Augustus Stone, who although he became part of Forrest’s regular entourage, never received ongoing royalties from the play. That wasn’t a thing at the time. Suffering from mental health issues, Stone drowned himself from the Locust Street Pier in the Schuylkill River in 1834. Forrest paid for his burial and a headstone.

Edwin Forrest returned to the Walnut Street Theater many times over the years, and would almost always present Metamora as part of his range of shows. It became so familiar to Philadelphia audiences that there were even parodies of it produced here, one was called Metamora, the Last of the Pollywogs. Even in his final years, in the 1860s and early 1870s when he was giving his last national tours as an actor, Forrest generally led off the tour by playing a week’s booking at the Walnut Street Theater, and Metamora would be trotted out once again.

By that time, American audiences were discarding plays presented in Forrest’s old-fashioned fustian and contrived style, and they were becoming more concerned with Authenticity and Realism. So now theatrical depictions of Native Americans were generally centered around “Conquering the Frontier'' narratives, such as those presented by Buffalo Bill Cody and other showmen, who transformed the spectacle of indoor hippodramas into huge outdoor extravaganzas. In the 1870s, Cody was already bringing his act on stage at various theaters, but by all accounts he was an indifferent performer until later when he began to refine his onstage persona to a larger than life myth. He brought this new showman character to Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Theater. In February 1880 he presented The Knight of the Plains, which played to packed houses. The cast of the show included native American performers, which became an essential part of Buffalo Bill’s shows. As Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show became bigger and bigger, playing in larger and larger arenas all around the country, he soon was employing hundreds of them, including such major leaders as Sitting Bull and Red Cloud. LIke many circuses of the day when the show arrived by train in Philadelphia there would be a huge parade through the city, ending up at the exhibition field, In 1899, for instance it was the huge undeveloped lot near the railroad tracks at 29th and Columbia in North Philadelphia. Whole families of Native Americans were part of the exhibition. By the end of the nineteenth century, in fact, American show business was a big economic support for many Indigenous people. There were both good and bad sides to this phenomenon

As the historian Paul Fees puts it: “The role of Indian people was both essential and anomalous in the Wild West shows. At least in the big shows, they generally were treated and paid the same as other performers. They were able to travel with their families, and they earned a living not possible to them on their reservations. They were encouraged by Buffalo Bill and others to retain their language and rituals. They gained access to political and economic leaders, and their causes were sometimes argued in the published show programs. Yet they were stereotyped as mounted, war-bonneted warriors, the last impediment to civilization. Thus they had to re-fight a losing war nightly; and their hollow victory in the Little Big Horn re-enactments demonstrated over and over to their audiences the justification for American conquest.”

Buffalo Bill toured with his show for 30 years, always bringing large numbers of Native American performers wherever he went. As late as 1908 he was back in Philadelphia, posing in front of Wanamaker’s department store in a group photograph. 

Actually, there are many Philadelphia connections to such Wild West shows, including the fact that it was Philadelphia Circus impresario Adam Forepaugh who first came up with staging a grand ‘Custer’s Last Stand’ show with real Indians, a concept which Buffalo Bill soon borrowed. And it was the Philadelphian May Lillie, a daughter of Quakers and a product of Smith College, who married another Wild West showman, Pawnee Bill, became a rider and sharpshooter, and toured with her husband’s show, living and working with many native American performers, for fifty years. Lillie never did so herself, but during this period other white actresses would sometimes impersonate Native Americans, in dramas that showed the heroine in a rather sexualized manner. We can see one such example in a poster for Princess Hu-Ne-Kaw: the First Born, which also played at the Walnut Street Theatre.

I am happy to report that such depictions of an “Indian Princess”, that long-standing trope in American show business, was triumphantly reclaimed and re-invented by a Native American actress who appeared on the Philadelphia stage: her name was Gowongo Mohawk.

Born Carolina Mohawk on the Seneca Nation’s Cattaraugus Reservation in Western New York in the year 1860, she moved with her family to the town of Greene, New York, in Chenango County. Called “Carrie” by her friends, as she grew up her outgoing nature, as well as her prowess as an athlete and a performer soon became evident. Craving adventure in life, she  joined the traveling shows of the Wild West Shows of Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill Hickock as part of the cast of Authentic American Indians, billing herself as ‘Gowongo’ which means “I Fear No One”. Like Mae Lillie, she learned to ride horses, shoot rifles, and to participate in the spectacular battle reenactment scenes that sometimes featured hundreds of performers during the 1880s. 

But being a canny businesswoman as well, she realized she could make even more as a star performer in her own right. Writing her own material, she came up with an action-packed melodrama called The Indian Mail-Carrier. We should note this play was set in the plains of the Wild West, not the forests of upstate New York, so she was taking on a character of a different Indian Nation than the one she was born into. But presumably, she knew what her potential market audiences wanted, and evidently she was correct, because she toured the play all over the country and in Great Britain too. Interestingly, she was an innovator in gender roles as well, because in The Indian Mail Carrier she enacted not a virtuous and sexy Indian Princess, but instead the heroic leading male character, Weptanomah.

In January of 1891, the show arrived for an engagement at the Lyceum Theatre. The Lyceum was a popular house for light opera, burlesque, and vaudeville shows on the East Side of Franklin Square in Philadelphia. The reviews in the Philadelphia papers - at least those papers that tended to cover shows done in the theaters in the Tenderloin part of town, were pretty glowing. Wrote one reviewer: “The play is that of The Indian Mail Carrier, a strong sensational Western drama full of exciting events . . . The part of [Weptanomah] the Indian Boy is rather a striking one, being a departure from the average Western character as depicted on the stage.  . .”Spanish Joe” is one of the villains, and the Indian boy, bent on vengeance goes on the warpath, hunts him down, and a terrific bowie-knife encounter is the result. The contest is a ferocious one, and after several rounds the Spanish villain is made to bite the dust.” The paper also noted that Gowongo was a perennial popular performer in Philadelphia, whenever she came to town.

After a busy life in show business, Caroline Mohawk, who had married a fellow performer from her Buffalo Bill days, Captain Charles W. Charles, retired to Bergen County, New Jersey. She died in 1924 and was buried at Edgewater Cemetery there. The Lyceum Theatre, by the way, was demolished about the same time, as the eastern Franklin Square area was largely leveled to provide access ramps for the Benjamin Franklin Bridge.

But I promised myself and you I wouldn’t get deep into the 20th Century in this episode. We could go on, but there's already quite enough here, I think. We’ve hardly exhausted this fascinating subject, but we don’t want to exhaust ourselves, although I’ve had a great time finding out about it.

I’m Peter Schmitz, and the sound and music are by Christopher Mark Colucci. Thank you for coming along on another Adventure in Theater History: Philadelphia.

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Text Copyright Peter Schmitz 2022. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED