"Super Sunday & the Mardi Gras Indians"

First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans
The Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
Sunday, March 15, 2009

No one knows when Mardi Gras Indians – African-American men dressed as Native Americans – first took to the streets of New Orleans. In general, the white media and white historians did not take any notice of doings in the black community, unless they happened to intersect negatively with the white community, and the oral histories of the Mardi Gras Indians themselves are hazy and unclear on this point.

Some things we do know. Buffalo Bill’s famous Wild West Show spent the winter of 1884-1885 in New Orleans, and some of the Indians in that show paraded during Mardi Gras of 1885, causing a sensation among whites and blacks alike. And we know that the oldest Mardi Gras Indian tribe, the Creole Wild West, first appeared some time in the late 1880s. Whether or not the Creole Wild West’s Big Chief Becate actually had Native American ancestry, as has been claimed, is not known and is not necessary for the story – but it does seem that there may have been, might have been, probably was, some inspiration and connection there.

According to Reid Mitchell in his wonderful history of Carnival, All on a Mardi Gras Day, one of the earliest accounts in the white press of a Mardi Gras Indian parade surfaced in an account by the New Orleans Times-Democrat in 1899. By that time, Mardi Gras Indians had been doing their thing in black neighborhoods, unknown and unseen by whites, for about a dozen or so years. We will never know for sure – but clearly, Mardi Gras Indians are a Carnival tradition older than many given more honor and recognition.

Black people masking as Indians is widespread in Caribbean Carnival, which was probably an unconnected parallel development. It’s easy to speculate and understand why the recently-enslaved and newly Jim-Crowed black people would be attracted to the spiritual power of Native Americans: an opportunity for self-expression that embraced creativity, masculinity, independence, freedom, and even violence. With lives so circumscribed by law and custom, with local black political power ending in ugly and violent ways, taking on the personae of strong Indian braves and stalwart Indian chiefs must have allowed the working class black men of New Orleans to assert themselves – but through the relative safety of a mask. Mardi Gras Indians take the outward form of conventional (or even cliché) Plains Indians and marry it with a distinct African ritual sensibility, something that I believe could only have happened in New Orleans.

I first learned about Mardi Gras Indians as a small child; my father, a 4th-generation New Orleanian, was a giant fan, and unlike many other white people of his generation, knew about and appreciated the Mardi Gras day gatherings of the Downtown Creole tribes on the old oak-lined stretch of Claiborne Avenue, before the interstate was built. I was so familiar with the characteristic look of Mardi Gras Indian costumes that when as a little girl I first saw a Philadelphia Mummers Parade on TV, I wondered what the Mardi Gras Indians were doing so far from home.

In descriptions from the early years, the original Indian costumes, commonly called “suits,” were not nearly as elaborate as today’s. But it is clearly a Carnival tradition across the board, across race and class and gender and sexual orientation, for Mardi Gras costumes and Mardi Gras floats and even Mardi Gras throws to get bigger and wilder and more intricate and elaborate. The Indians are just part of that broader stream of Carnival tendencies.

Indian suits, in all their incredible detail, are painstakingly remade every year; as the Wild Magnolias sing, “Every year at Carnival time, we make a new suit.” It is a source of constant wonderment and pleasure to me to realize that New Orleans may be the only city in America where black men can get props for their skill at sewing, and can be seen not only as “real men” but seriously macho while sporting satin, feathers, plumes, and pounds and pounds of beads. Mardi Gras Indian suits show an almost unbelievable amount of imagination and creativity. Those of you who had the opportunity to view the Indian suits on display at the New Orleans Museum of Art during Prospect One – for the first time in the history of the museum – know what I’m talking about. Influences range from real Native American customs to Hollywood movie portrayals, from Africa to the Caribbean, with colors inspired by nature and colors that nature would never think of. Indian suits require stamina and commitment, not just in the making, but also in the wearing, since they can weigh upwards of dozens of pounds.

It would be a shame if the products of such artistry would only be seen one day a year, and thus it’s great that we have Super Sunday, the Sunday closest to St. Joseph’s Day when Mardi Gras Indian tribes march through their neighborhoods and gather together for informal contests of dancing and chanting and showing off the prettiest suits. Nowadays, Super Sunday also includes a free concert (and I’m proud to say that my spouse Eric will be playing with Jo “Cool” Davis at Taylor Park*) and booths and individuals selling delicious food and drink. Once an event limited strictly to the black community, today’s Super Sunday is an all-New Orleans affair, with black, white, Asian, and Latino families enjoying the display, the sights, and the sounds of the marvelous Mardi Gras Indians.

How St. Joseph’s Day became associated with the Indians is another one of those unknowns lost to history, but again we can speculate intelligently. In the late 19th century and the early part of the 20th century, the new Italian immigrants were not considered “white” and were discriminated against almost with the avidity of the prejudice against blacks. In some neighborhoods, blacks and Italians lived side by side and shared life’s ups and downs. In Louis Armstrong’s memoir of his early days in New Orleans, he mentions Italian names among the first musicians he played with. It is possible that St. Joseph, patron saint of Sicily, came to the notice of African Americans at that time, and the pomp and ceremony and celebration associated with the saint’s feast day of March 19th came to be a reason for celebration among the Mardi Gras Indians. It’s another one of those things we may never know for sure.

Until the 1970s, all of this was nearly invisible in the white neighborhoods of New Orleans, but it was a tradition cherished and celebrated in the city’s black neighborhoods – although not always honored by the police, who as late as Super Sunday 2005, used official violence to break up the nonviolent crowds gathered to watch the Indians.

The earliest Mardi Gras Indian chants were sung in a version Creole patois. The music historian Alan Lomax interviewed Jelly Roll Morton shortly before his death in 1941, and Jelly’s memories of the Indians were quite clear. He sang some chants for Lomax and spelled them out, in French. If those early songs had a specific meaning translated from the French, most of that is lost now, and modern Indian chants are spelled out phonetically and do not any longer resemble Creole French. Few if any Indians recall the original meanings of the old Creole phrases.

Today’s Indian chants in English boast of the prowess and bravery of the chief (“I walk through fire, drink panther blood”), assert their tribal pride (“We won’t bow, we won’t kneel”), declare their readiness to get on the streets earlier than any other tribe (“My gang got ready by the light of the moon”), proclaim the beauty of their suits (“We got some clothes they wish they had”) or mourn the loss of a comrade (“Brother John is gone”). Certain key phrases are known to all the tribes, Uptown and Downtown, such as “mighty, mighty brave” and “heart of steel.”

Hypnotic and meditative in their repetition, the chants generally follow a classic African pattern of the leader bringing out a couplet, whether new or familiar, and the gang responding over and over with the chorus, such as “Shallow water, Oh mama” or “Hey pocky way.” Interestingly, two of the best-known Indian chants also have their roots in the 19th century and might even have been part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West entertainment, songs such as “Shoo Fly” and “Lil Liza Jane.”

The Mardi Gras Indians’ influence on New Orleans music has been tremendous, while remaining esoteric. Numerous R&B songs have their roots in the Indian tradition, and the hard percussive street beats of the Indian tambourines have made their way into the mainstream of American music, wending their way with the drums of Congo Square through jazz, ragtime, rhythm & blues, rock’n’roll, and pop. Look at names of the most famous and most influential families of New Orleans music, and you will find Indian connections: Turbington, Harrison, Batiste, Neville.

Once again it is Super Sunday in New Orleans*, and the Indian tribes will gather and dance and chant – and many of you might not have known about it or understood it without this service. Why do I think it’s important enough to rate a sermon? Why do I want you to know this stuff? What if I say in return that not-knowing is a form of racism, it’s a kind of not-caring about our fellow New Orleanians who happen to be black? The Mardi Gras Indians are important because culture and tradition are vital and necessary, because New Orleans would cease to be whole without the Indians, because we New Orleanians would lose essential parts of ourselves if we allow the Mardi Gras Indians to be lost.

I hope to see many of you at the Super Sunday celebration at Taylor Park*, eating ya ca mein and barbeque and shaking our booties to “Hoo Na Nay.” But even if you are not there, let us make it our determination to aid in any way we can from the outside the continuation of the Mardi Gras Indian tradition.

In the moving post-Katrina coda to his book, The World That Made New Orleans, Ned Sublette writes of the Indians’ struggle to come home, to battle bureaucracy, to find a way to live in their devastated neighborhoods, and in that first Mardi Gras after the Storm, to somehow parade proudly once again in their tribes’ gorgeous feathered suits despite all they had lost. Let his words ring in our ears and stand for all of us and our denial of our destruction, our determination to rebuild our lives and our city, “They refused to cooperate in their own erasure.” May that be so for us as well. AMEN – ASHÉ – SHALOM – SALAAM – NAMASTE – BLESSED BE!

*NOTE: Super Sunday 2009, originally set for March 15th, was delayed due to rain to Sunday, March 21st. Taylor Park is located at Washington Avenue and South Derbigny -- ironically, behind the Rex den on South Claiborne.