One hundred years ago this month a remarkable mini-world's fair opened in Seattle on what is now the University of Washington main campus, the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. Presented at a time when world's fairs were all the rage, Seattle's leaders intended the exposition to take their town beyond its rowdy, gold rush heritage and place it firmly among America's respected cities.
To a large degree they succeeded. But at the same time they inadvertently contributed to the perpetuation of a highly negative notion of indigenous peoples, a notion which retarded America's mainstream population from realizing the equal dignity and capability of people unlike themselves.
The exposition opened with great fanfare. President William Taft, in the White House, touched an Alaska gold telegraph key, which launched balloons and unfurled flags at the fairgrounds in Seattle, and signaled gun salutes from shore batteries and visiting naval ships in Elliot Bay. Eighty thousand people went through the turnstiles on the first day, visiting scores of venues, including a large Government Building, an Agriculture and a Manufacturers' Building, a Forestry Building made entirely of Pacific Northwest timber and billed as the largest log cabin ever built, and even a Women's Building.
Hundreds of Alaska items were on display, including gold bars and jewelry, thousands of cases of canned salmon, and assorted over-sized vegetables. By the end of the fair, in October, 3.7 million people had paid to wander the grounds and be part of the excitement.
The fair included an entertainment midway, the "Paystreak," with rides, the predictable array of carnival stands, and an exotic dancer. But by far the most visited site on the Paystreak, and at the fair, were two major "curiosities," an "Oriental Village," and an "Eskimo Village." These were resident encampments of indigenes.
In the Oriental Village, one found members of a Philippine tribe, the Igorrotes, who dressed in traditional loin-cloths and occasionally roasted dogs for their evening meal. For fair- goers they represented a people yet to be "civilized" by their Caucasian hosts. While at the fair they regularly attended language and etiquette classes taught by white schoolteachers while spectators watched from the perimeter of their enclosure. The Igorrotes were on display, a situation that encouraged the audience to congratulate themselves on how advanced they were.
On display also were three different groups of Inuit people, one each from Siberia, from Alaska, and from Labrador, each living in a separate part of the Eskimo Village. The Siberians were to represent the most primitive, the Alaskans a people beginning to benefit from contact with mainstream western culture, and the Labradoreans, who had been recruited from a Moravian mission, people ready for assimilation. Each group carried on a daily routine of traditional activities, for some of which fake snow was provided.
The displays at the AYP exposition were not innovative; virtually all world's fairs in the era showcased similar examples of the supposed benefits Western culture brought to indigenous peoples. There was no mention, of course, of forced culture change, of land theft, or of the resultant debilitating dependency, all of which would have dampened audience enthusiasm, which was considerable.
Interestingly, photos of the Alaskan Inuit group apparently have not survived. There are a few of the Siberian contingent, and many of the Labradoreans, who in 1909 were veterans of the fair circuit. They had been recruited for the 1893 Chicago World Columbian Exposition, the archetypal world's fair of the period. One of the women at Chicago was pregnant, and her daughter had been born there. In 1909 the daughter, named Columbia Eneutsiak, was sixteen, and she became an AYP celebrity. Named "Queen of the Carnival" by fair participants, her photo published widely. Many of the Labradoreans worked in subsequent fairs. Columbia eventually settled in California and became associated with the growing film industry.
Americans of the period manifested all of the paternalism and condescension of a people who thought themselves far superior to the indigenes they regarded as fair curiosities. Surviving letters from among the "performers" express the dismay and resentment they felt at such treatment. There is mixed lesson for us from the AYP centennial, about how far we have come from those times, and how far we have yet to go.
Steve Haycox is a professor of history at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
Steve Haycox
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