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| Igorots were required to perform native dances for visitors to the St. Louis World's Fair. |
The St. Louis History Museum is taking a new look at the exhibit that did irraparable twisted view of Filipinos that continues to thsi day.
While the 1904 World’s Fair is a celebrated moment in St. Louis history, it also highlighted America’s central inequalities and the era’s spectacles of colonialism—from controversies over the content of the displays to conflicts over who was permitted to attend the Fair at all.
The new exhibit is the Missouri History Museum’s aims to tell a fuller, more complete version of the 1904 World’s Fair by including a broad spectrum of voices and perspectives.
Fairgoers' flock to the Filipino Reservation
Visitors learn more about the1,200 Filipinos brought to live on the Philippine Reservation of the fairgrounds just six years after Spain surrendered the islands to the US, bypassing and ignoring the independence sought by Filipino patriots.
Visitors learn more about the1,200 Filipinos brought to live on the Philippine Reservation of the fairgrounds just six years after Spain surrendered the islands to the US, bypassing and ignoring the independence sought by Filipino patriots.
The Philippine Reservation put Filipinos on display in a zoo-like habitat on full view to fairgoers, with different groups of people ranked on a scale between “civilized” and “savage”.
Sharon Smith, Curator of Civic and Personal Identity, underscores the way the artifacts collected and displayed from the 1904 World’s Fair help tell a story that is complex,
“History is often told through stories illustrated in museums by artifacts, archival documents, and photographs. The stories we have chosen to tell in The 1904 World’s Fair evoke both the wonder and the complexities of the Fair.” Smith adds,
“The new exhibit’s artifacts and stories will help visitors see the event for all that it was: an amusement park, a laboratory, a workplace, a stadium, and a place where America’s imperial ambitions were on display for the world to see.”
About 300 of Filipinos brought to the Midwest from different Filipino ethnic groups and tribes including the Igorot, Moro and Bagobo people. Fair planners put Indigenous people from all over the world in these racist exhibits, including Native Americans and tribes from central Africa.
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Ria Unson, whose great grandfather was one of the Filipinos brought to the US, said these kinds of exhibits intentionally displayed the Igorot as “savages” or “primitives.” Her story and the story of her ancestor is part of the museum exhibit.
Pamphlets that advertised the Philippine Reservation, which was the fair’s largest exhibit, referred to the Igorot as “barbarians.” For months, they were forced to live on a recreation of a village from the Philippines as part of the attraction.
“Scientists have declared that, with the proper training, they are susceptible to a high state of development, and unlike the American Indian, will accept, rather than defy, the advance of American civilization,” read the pamphlet, now in the Missouri History Museum’s collection.
An estimated 17 people died in the Philippine Village from pneumonia, malnutrition or suicide. At least one of the dead was a teenage girl whose brains were taken by the Smithsonian by a scientist who wanted to prove the superiority of Europeans over people of other races.
Pamphlets that advertised the Philippine Reservation, which was the fair’s largest exhibit, referred to the Igorot as “barbarians.” For months, they were forced to live on a recreation of a village from the Philippines as part of the attraction.
“Scientists have declared that, with the proper training, they are susceptible to a high state of development, and unlike the American Indian, will accept, rather than defy, the advance of American civilization,” read the pamphlet, now in the Missouri History Museum’s collection.
An estimated 17 people died in the Philippine Village from pneumonia, malnutrition or suicide. At least one of the dead was a teenage girl whose brains were taken by the Smithsonian by a scientist who wanted to prove the superiority of Europeans over people of other races.
“120 years later, there’s still people who have perceptions of Filipinos as primitives,” Unson said. Part of the exhibit’s goal is helping visitors to explore why, she added.
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| The St. Louis World's Fair overview map is part of the history museum exhibit. |
The rumor that some of the denizens of the Philippine Reservation ate dogs provided one of the most durable memories of the fair in St. Louis. To this day one of the neighborhoods near the long-gone exposition grounds is called Dogtown, because it is supposedly where the Filipinos got their dogs.
Human zoo fed into the myth of White superiority
The history museum's exhibit also includes the other peoples who were presented in the world's largest human zoo. An estimated ten thousand people were conscripted to play a role in the account of progress by the Anthropology Department.
Among the 10,000 in the human zoo were Ainu people from Japan, “Patagonians” from the Andes, and members of 51 of the First Nations of North America—including Chief Joseph of the massacred Nez Perce, the Comanche soldier Quanah Parker, and the Apache leader Geronimo. Geronimo was assigned to pose for nickel-apiece souvenir photographs with white visitors and play the part of the Sioux leader Sitting Bull in daily reenactments of the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Elsewhere on the grounds lived Ota Benga, who was about 20 at the time of his sale as a slave He had had his teeth filed into sharp points as a child, and was exhibited at the fair as a “cannibal.” Benga and the other enslaved Africans sometimes danced and performed before as many as For a time after the fair, under the auspices of the white supremacist racial theorist Madison Grant, Benga was kept in a cage at the Bronx Zoo. After his release, Benga worked in a tobacco factory in Virginia, where he had his teeth capped. In March 1916, in Lynchburg, Virginia, Ota Benga built a large fire, danced, and then shot himself through the heart.
The only representation of African Americans on the fairgrounds was at the “Old Plantation,” where black actors tended a garden, staged a fake religious revival, sang minstrel songs, and cakewalked in an endless loop of white racial nostalgia.
That the Philippine Reservation was called a “reservation” in the first place reflected an important fact about the racial imagination of the fair organizers. In their view, America's expansion to Asia was a natural extension of an f American empire that began with the conquest of the American West and the displacement of Native Americans. The American emprie would put the US on par with the European countries with colonies in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
The history museum's exhibit also includes the other peoples who were presented in the world's largest human zoo. An estimated ten thousand people were conscripted to play a role in the account of progress by the Anthropology Department.
Among the 10,000 in the human zoo were Ainu people from Japan, “Patagonians” from the Andes, and members of 51 of the First Nations of North America—including Chief Joseph of the massacred Nez Perce, the Comanche soldier Quanah Parker, and the Apache leader Geronimo. Geronimo was assigned to pose for nickel-apiece souvenir photographs with white visitors and play the part of the Sioux leader Sitting Bull in daily reenactments of the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Elsewhere on the grounds lived Ota Benga, who was about 20 at the time of his sale as a slave He had had his teeth filed into sharp points as a child, and was exhibited at the fair as a “cannibal.” Benga and the other enslaved Africans sometimes danced and performed before as many as For a time after the fair, under the auspices of the white supremacist racial theorist Madison Grant, Benga was kept in a cage at the Bronx Zoo. After his release, Benga worked in a tobacco factory in Virginia, where he had his teeth capped. In March 1916, in Lynchburg, Virginia, Ota Benga built a large fire, danced, and then shot himself through the heart.
The only representation of African Americans on the fairgrounds was at the “Old Plantation,” where black actors tended a garden, staged a fake religious revival, sang minstrel songs, and cakewalked in an endless loop of white racial nostalgia.
That the Philippine Reservation was called a “reservation” in the first place reflected an important fact about the racial imagination of the fair organizers. In their view, America's expansion to Asia was a natural extension of an f American empire that began with the conquest of the American West and the displacement of Native Americans. The American emprie would put the US on par with the European countries with colonies in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
The 1904 exhibit, like many others, was supposed to demonstrate the indigenous way of life as savage and tje need to be ciivilized. But the underlying racist message of the fair was about the moral responsibility of the "superior" White race to civilize the world's "savages."
Painting indigenous people in this light helped justify American imperialism, colonization, and destruction of other lands.
The museum's updated exhibit goes beyond celebrating the 1904 exhibit by including the racist exploitive aspects of the human zoos. “It can be a difficult thing, but what we find is that people are hungry for that,” says public historian Adam Kloppe. “People want to grapple with history. They want to get in the weeds, and we view the museum as the space where you can have those kinds of conversations and explorations in a civil way.”
The museum's updated exhibit goes beyond celebrating the 1904 exhibit by including the racist exploitive aspects of the human zoos. “It can be a difficult thing, but what we find is that people are hungry for that,” says public historian Adam Kloppe. “People want to grapple with history. They want to get in the weeds, and we view the museum as the space where you can have those kinds of conversations and explorations in a civil way.”
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