1920: Indians Keep Their Ancient Customs Alive
Chicago Redmen Organize to Preserve Traditions of Tribes
1920, June 10 Escanaba Morning Press
Chicago, June 9 - The customs and traditions of a vanishing race are being kept alive in Chicago by a unique organization.
This is the Indian Fellowship league, whose council room is the assembly hall of the Chicago Historical Society's building on North Dearborn street.
There are no buffalo to be hunted in the streets of America's second largest city; the virgin prairies are built up with the tepees of the paleface. The noble red man now follows the occupations of peace. His war dances are performed for the edification of amusement parks crowds. The tocsin is no longer heard.
Keep Up Customs
Yet the tribal customs have by no means died out. The camp fires still are burning.
For a small but interesting colony of Indians live in Chicago. It clusters around the near north side, in the neighborhood of North Dearborn and Ohio streets. The tribe includes about 180 red men, including Sioux, Iroquois, Pottawatomies, the Sac and Fox and other nations formerly at war with one another.
But they are banded together now under the great calumet -- under the peace pipe. Their efforts are directed now toward perpetuating the folklore, the song and legend of their race and reviving ancient ceremonies.
Most of the members of the league are "show Indians." They travel with carnival companies and wild west outfits.
They set up primitive villages in the shadow of the "figure eight" or scenic railway. They are neighbors of the candy butcher, the three-legged man and the snake charmer. It is but a step from their tepee to the [gipsy] fortune teller's van or to the "red-hot" wagon.
Dance for Pleasure
In the companionship of their leagues, however, they come into their own. Here the pipe dance and the corn dance are given, not perfunctorily for money, but for the pure joy of self-expression. Here they can don their war bonnets and be every inch an Indian. Here they can listen to the history of Tecumseh, the prophet, as recorded on the white man's phonograph.
The league was organized last winter. It holds a powwow on the third Friday of each month. If you drop into the Historical society building on one of these nights you will hear these Indians playing their weird native instruments, singing their tribal songs and telling legends as old as the Greek myths.
The seal of the organization shows the thunder bird emerging from the darkness. The lightning flashes from its beak. Above, in either corner, is the peace pipe and the home fire; below, hand in hand, like those strings of paper dollies you cut out to amuse children with figures symbolical of the alliance of the six nations.
