On the night of September 27, a number of Buffalo’s African Americans met at the Vine Street African Methodist Episcopal Church to weigh the conflicting reports. While a committee convened in a separate room, men rose to speak. One, named Shaw, had worked with Parker at the Plaza Restaurant and argued that the effort to “discredit” Parker was the result of a plot. “Should we fail to emphatically resent it,” he contended, “I claim we are a disgrace to our race.”
As Shaw was speaking, Parker himself arrived at the door of the church, entered, and moved down the aisle. The audience swooned. Women fluttered handkerchiefs and men whooped, tossed their hats, and boomed three cheers.
The committee reentered the room, discussed the evidence, and read out two resolutions. One lamented McKinley’s assassination. The other, directed at Parker, equivocated: “It is the sense of the colored citizens of Buffalo, N.Y., in mass meeting assembled, that they very much regret the clash of statement in respect to the reported act of heroism on the part of James B. Parker.” The committee members regretted it so much, apparently, that they could not offer an opinion, and definitive word would have to wait. It would be up to historians, they said, “to award honor to whom honor is due.”
But while the committee held back, others who were there did not. In giving three cheers for Parker, in urging him to speak to them, and by surrounding him on the street after he left the church, they told him they believed him.
Soon afterward, Parker did what he could on his own to set the record straight. He went beyond Buffalo, lecturing about the assassination throughout the East, and he visited President Roosevelt at the White House. While in Washington, he explained to a gathering at the Metropolitan AME church how he had come to the defense of the president. He told them how District Attorney Thomas Penney, for the prosecution, had interviewed him early on but then, somehow, had lost interest in his opinion. “I don’t say that this was done with any intent to defraud me,” he explained to the group, “but it looks mighty funny, that’s all. Because I was a waiter, Mr. Penney thought I had no sense. I don’t know why I wasn’t summoned to the trial.” A woman in the audience had a ready answer for him. “Cause you’se black; that’s de reason,” she said.8
V
GERONIMO
Back in Rainbow City, temperatures were dropping, and on the Midway, performers found themselves unready for the cold. In Darkest Africa, the frigid weather forced villagers into borrowed clothes, and visitors found the sight ridiculous. The Africans also tried to warm themselves around a gas stove, and when one used a match and caused an explosion, singeing himself, it was another occasion for laughs. At the Old Plantation, the cold meant more entertainment, as “the darkies dance and sing with added vim.”
From the Indian Congress, Geronimo wasn’t amused, and he made a plea for seven hundred overcoats. At the Filipino Village, the cold weather aggravated the tuberculosis of a young woman, and she died.9
While occasionally turning their backs on performers’ needs, concession managers continued to use them to make money. And nothing made money more spectacularly than the show planned for the end of September by the Indian Congress. On September 26 and 28, up to twenty thousand guests took their seats to watch an Indian dog feast.
Frederick Cummins, manager of the Indian Congress, orchestrated the killing and eating of the dogs, but most people credited Geronimo with the inspiration. Throughout the summer and early fall, the Apache leader had become the most visible Native performer at the fair. Once known by the US Army as the “human tiger,” the warrior chief, like many other non-European men on the Midway, was now pictured as entirely tamed, even feminine. He was said to be vain about his appearance, fussy about his hair, and expert at bead designs. Word had it that he had taken up a musical instrument and had begun offering cooking classes.
Apache leader Geronimo and Wenona, the “Sioux” sharpshooter, center, pose with visitors and other members of the Indian Congress.
Geronimo seemed so removed from his former life as an enemy warrior that he not only played an Indian in sham battles; he also offered white guests a chance to play Indian. Without taking off their top hats or changing out of their shirtwaists, and with enough money—usually seventy dollars—visitors could be inducted into a tribe, usually Apache, Oglala Sioux or Arapaho. They received funny, pretend-Indian names. Railroad executive Charles Clark of the Big Four Railroad became “Chief Likes His Eggs”; Captain Hobson of the Queen & Crescent Railway became “Chief Blows Them Up.”
Geronimo had performed agreeably in all of these ceremonies—he was, after all, still a prisoner of war—but, especially as the season wound down, his irritation at curious crowds seemed to grow. He began to charge more and more money for photographs, and, one day in September, he lost patience altogether. When a spectator tried to follow him for a photograph, Geronimo “buckled into him, tipped him over, [and] knocked his camera to one side.”
Geronimo wasn’t alone. Other Plains Natives may not have acted out in anger, but they turned jokes on their audiences. The Indian Congress regularly featured a line of performers giving “speeches” in Native languages. These speeches tended to be a commentary on visitors, criticizing their clothing, their appearance, and their mannerisms. Behind them, other Native men listened and laughed.
Now, Geronimo and seven hundred other Native people had something different to offer Exposition crowds. Perhaps they were unapologetically or defiantly performing a meaningful ritual. Or perhaps they were performing a “savage” act to bring in revenue. Likely they were doing both.10
At the Indian Congress, fairgoers peer under the flap of a tepee.
Dog feasts were nothing new for some Native peoples. Northern groups especially, like the Lakota, Cheyenne, and the Bannock of Idaho, held dog feasts on special occasions, as did a few southern tribes like the Osage, and the Sac and Fox. Occasionally, tribes fattened their own animals for the sacrifice, while others collected stray dogs from beyond their encampment. Women often did not partake.
Not surprisingly, members of the white press had weighed in on these events with disgusted sighs. What had the missionaries, the teachers, the churches accomplished if these people were still eating “pets”? At the same time, dog feasts reinforced reporters’ own sophistication. And, they had to admit, they were fascinated.
The Buffalo dogs were taken quietly at first. Managers of the Indian Congress bought strays from dog pounds and dogcatchers, and they emptied neighborhoods, streets, and parks. By September 22, three hundred dogs, including poodles, terriers, and spaniels, had been corralled. The Congress, though, wanted four hundred more.
In Buffalo and nearby towns, city residents, eager for the money or the attention, offered up their own animals. In Tonawanda, a woman named Johnson offered her five adult dogs and seven pups. She needed the two dollars. And a Mrs. Foster of Elmira sent a telegram to Henry P. Burgard, president of the Indian Congress, stating that she had a pug named Lillian Langtry that she would part with “if she was certain an Indian would eat it.”
Newspaper accounts like these prompted Buffalo’s reform-minded residents to protest. In fact, the Humane Society would see its failure to stop the dog feast as one of the year’s great disappointments. When officers of the society called on the management of the Indian Congress to halt the event, they were shown permission records issued by the United States Government. There was nothing the society could do.
The animal protectors also admitted they were conflicted. Humane Society officer Matilda Karnes explained that respecting Indian visitors meant acknowledging that the “religious festival must be considered legitimate.” It was the “degradation which was forced upon us,” she said, that was humiliating. The society had labored long to exert a positive influence over young people and this “barbarous” event was destroying its good work. The group knew the counterargument: Killing dogs was not a lot different from slaughtering other animals for food. But, Karnes said, that was not the point. What the society condem
ned was not the killing, but the spectacle of killing.
At 5 p.m. on September 26, before an audience of at least ten thousand, the sacrifice began. Geronimo killed a dog with a bow and arrow, and then sharpshooter Wenona took her turn with a rifle. Newspapers carried every detail, from the killing of the animals to the eating of them. They reported that Geronimo ate two dogs. They tasted, he said, “like fried frog legs.”11
Frank Bostock did not comment publicly on the commercial success of the dog feast, but he was just yards away from the event. He made his living showing off his mastery of animals. Was there money to be made in the death of one?
Not unrelated to that question was the ongoing arrival of animals at his compound: a new llama, a vicuña, a razorback hog, and a black snake, sixteen feet long. There never seemed to be an issue with overcrowding in the arena. And when it came time to sell animal skins at the end of the Exposition, Bostock had plenty to offer.
Bostock’s Doll Lady, meanwhile, worked through the fall without complaint. Tony, on the other hand, had grown tired of their secretive routine. One night, he crawled through the window of Chiquita’s dressing room and steeled his nerve. He told her he loved her, and asked how she felt about him. Alice told him she loved him, too. “Do you love me well enough to marry me?” asked Tony. She said she did.
Tony wanted to get married then and there, but Chiquita stopped him. She was afraid of Bostock. She was, however, willing to make a date to elope: Friday night, November first. It was the night before the Exposition closed, so it seemed safe enough. Tony enlisted his brother Eddie to help with the engagement by purchasing a ring, and shortly afterward he hoisted himself over the roof of the Ostrich Farm and sneaked into his sweetheart’s quarters to present it.12
VI
THE DARK MARK
On September 25, a Buffalo newsman estimated that of the fifty-eight thousand at the fair the day before, less than two per cent were local visitors. He accused city residents of forsaking their fair, noting that while the rest of the country was being asked to go to the Exposition out of patriotic duty, city residents had been let off the hook. It was time they did their part. “If Buffalo people turned out as generously as Chicago people did at the World’s Fair at this time of the season, the attendance would be nearer to 100,000.”
Residents rallied. September 28, Railroad Day, which had been postponed when McKinley died, brought in nearly 120,000 people. Mabel Barnes showed up, of course. Back at school now, and forced to squeeze her visits into weekends, she had been to the fair only twice since McKinley’s death. Now, arriving alone, she was on a mission to see every last bit of the Exposition. She had state and country buildings on her list, art and sculpture to see, and she wanted more music, more parades, more Midway. Years later, when Rainbow City had been reduced to splinters and dust, and Mabel sat assembling all her notes, perhaps she took pride in the fact that she, above all others, had been flawlessly dedicated.13
While the loyal schoolteacher made her way speedily through exhibit buildings on Railroad Day, other visitors watched a man named Leo Stevens, “the human bomb,” ascend into the sky in a big round ball, explode out of it, and parachute back to the ground. A good many of them also took the opportunity—finally—to witness a young couple marry in the company of lions.
At 4:45 in the afternoon, the betrothed couple, Caro Clancy and William McAlpin, waited while Bostock’s lion trainers marched over the Triumphal Bridge, followed by the altar. The cage stopped in the middle of the Esplanade.
Miss Clancy, who wore a white gown, a feathered hat, and carried orange blossoms, and whose cheeks betrayed a tinge of excitement, climbed into the cage and stood between her future husband and the lions. The minister positioned himself just inside the door and began to read the service. The trainer waved his whip up and down. With great efficiency, the minister led a prayer and produced a certificate. Then he edged to the door. The lions roared. “Hurry up, hurry up,” a witness shouted. The groom and the minister moved out of the cage first, and the bride followed them. “She was,” said an observer, “first in and last out.”14
The long-awaited lion wedding.
It is hard to know whether never-ending comparisons with Chicago’s world’s fair bothered or pleased Buffalonians. What is certain, however, is that October 7, Illinois Day, generated more than the usual fuss. Illinois governor Richard Yates, Senators William Mason and James Templeton, the mayor of Chicago, and Chicago aldermen would be honored with parades, a military review, banquets, luncheons, and a tour of Niagara Falls. The supporters of Rainbow City would show the former denizens of the White City how proud they were of their own production.
The festivities got off to a shaky start. For unclear reasons, the Illinois regiment serving as the governor’s escort traveled from Chicago to Buffalo on October fifth with almost nothing to eat, so the soldiers arrived hungry at Buffalo’s Exchange Street Station. A two-mile march to the center of the city and a train ride to the Exposition, again without food, did nothing for their frames of mind. Aboard the train, they sang loud songs about chicken, beef, and hot dogs. “Hallelujah give us a sandwich to revive us again,” they crooned. They also pretended to be conductors. “The next station at which this train stops is Dinner Avenue,” shouted one soldier. Another claimed, at the Auditorium stop, that he could eat the building’s bricks. Thirty hours after leaving Chicago, they arrived at the grounds and made a beeline for Bailey’s kitchen.
The mayor of Chicago couldn’t attend the event. But city aldermen made their way east in large numbers, and Governor Yates arrived in Buffalo early on Sunday, October 6. After attending church, the governor’s party of twenty-seven decided to tour the Niagara River along the Canadian side. They were on their way back by rail, heading toward the falls, when, a little after 4 p.m., their car lurched, smoked, and stopped dead. There were, someone recalled, “a few screams.”
The governor and his fellow passengers, all uninjured, held a conference and decided, with no help imminent and no way to call for help, that the solution was to get out onto the tracks and walk the rest of the way to the falls. Two to three miles, they were told. The young, athletic governor was especially undaunted. He had, as a college student, walked seven miles before breakfast, so this was nothing.
But it wasn’t a couple of miles. It was six. As the group trudged along the rails, the sun went down, and then set. The men and women had nothing to eat. The roadbed, which skirted cliffs and moved through narrow trestles, was rough. The party straggled into Niagara Falls, took a working railroad car to Buffalo, and, around 8 p.m., went straight to their hotel.
There was more awkward walking the following day, because fair officials forgot to tell the Illinois visitors how long it might take to get from their hotel to the Exposition. But good humor prevailed, and the ceremonies in the Temple of Music moved forward without mishap. The visiting speakers thanked Buffalo, congratulated the city on its Exposition, and only discreetly alluded to the Columbian Exposition.
But they might as well have waved a White City banner alongside their regimental colors, for the theme that rose above all others was Buffalo’s—it seemed to belong to Buffalo—sad assassination. Senator Mason, after talking about the virtues and beauty of Illinois, offered condolences. Americans knew that Buffalo had been kind and attentive to the president, he said. They also remembered “that the blow at the nation was struck at Buffalo.”
Governor Yates graciously offered thanks to his audience and explained that Illinoisans knew how they felt. Lincoln, America’s greatest hero, and an Illinois native son, had fallen to a madman’s bullet. They felt for Buffalo. Edwin Munger, chairman of the citizens’ committee of Chicago, added that his group had come to Rainbow City “with saddened hearts and drooping spirits.” Now here they stood, he said, “in the almost visible presence of the most awful and most senseless crime of the century.”15
For all of Rainbow City’s artful colors and lights, its grand exhibit halls, its celebration of th
e Western Hemisphere, and its Midway, what stood above them for these Chicagoans was Buffalo’s tragedy.
8.
Freefall
I
SEESAW
As October progressed, mood swings at the Exposition accelerated. There were days that seemed to bring Buffalo residents unadulterated joy, such as New York State Day on October 9, when nearly 130,000 visitors broke the attendance record. The following week, though, a Buffalo Times headline announced: “Buchanan Admits Loss,” and a column declared that original Buffalo stockholders “will in all probability realize nothing.” The next morning, Fidelity Trust Company, which held the Exposition bonds, opened its windows to nervous customers. They came quietly at first to withdraw their money, but, as rumors of a failure spread, they formed lines that snaked into the streets. Bank officers tried to calm them, pointing to tellers who sat behind windows with towers of cash at the ready.
Judge Loran Lewis, a director of the bank and the man who three weeks earlier had defended Leon Czolgosz, got up on a chair to speak to those in the bank’s lobby. “You ought in the interests of Buffalo,” he said, “go away and do all you can to allay this absurd excitement. You should not have allowed yourselves to get into this foolish flurry.” Some people listened and went away. Others made deposits, even big deposits. Some customers, though, more concerned about their money than the image of the city, went up to the tellers, took away cash, and went home.1
The Electrifying Fall of Rainbow City Page 14
