StephanieJ.

Fogel
PacificNorthwestCollegeofArt
May18th,2015

ThomasEdisonandtheGhostDanceasEthnographicEntertainment

Ethnographic entertainment has existed in various forms over the course of the last
several hundred years. The concept of foreign cultures as fodder for entertainment traces back
through the Expositions Universelles of 19th century Paris where massive cultural habitats
were staged. Within these lifesize dioramas,livehumansinhabitedreconstructedenvironments,
like animals captive in a zoo, they existed to be observed.1 This kind of public ritual served not
only to entertain, but to reify stereotypes perpetuated by colonial masters. While this event was
not the first time foreign cultures had been reduced to stereotype for entertainment, it was the
genesis of an entire system of thought centered around the
Other
. This system has been
reproduced in various ways sincetheoriginalExpositionsUniversellesin1855
,
andcontinuesto
influencecontemporaryentertainmentmediums.

Within this paper I will explore the development of Thomas Edisons Kinetoscope and
his connection to the Parisian Expositions. ThroughthelensofEdisonsmotionpicturemachine
I will examine one ofhis veryfirstfilmsentitled,BuffaloBillsWildWestShow,andidentify
the historical events that render the film highly problematic. The short movie features Buffalo
Bill himself and Annie Oakley, along with a group of Native American performers. When

Celik,Zeynep,andLeilaKinney."EthnographyandExhibitionismattheExpositionsUniverselles."Assemblage.13(1990):
3459.

watching the Native dancers in the Buffalo Bill film, viewers are transported to a time before
colonization, before the Religious Crimes Code of 1883, and the creation of the Federal
Reservation system. To the untrained eye, the indigenous people dancing inEdisonsfilmmake
it seem as though native traditions have carried on, uninterrupted by genocide or disease. By
retracing the historical timeline of this era in American history, I will uncover the connections
betweenwesternentertainmentandtheoppressionofpeople,orOthers.

The concept of foreign cultures as a mode of entertainment coincides with the rise of
Primitivism and Western constructions of life outside industrialized society. Authors Jack D.
Flam and Miriam Deutch write about the rise of Primitivism in their book
Primitivism and
Twentiethcentury Art: A Documentary History,
explain that The idea that the origins of
Primitive art, like those of prehistoric art, were lost in the mist of time, resulted in a fair
amount of romanticspeculation.2During thiseratherewasagreatenthusiasmandadmiration
for primitive works, and manybelievedtheseobjectsevokedadeeper andmoreuniversalsense
of humanity.3 This perspective dominated European mentalities because, historically speaking,
African art has been denied acknowledgement and relegated to the primitive aesthetic. The
absence of primitive culturesfromtheofficialArtHistoricalnarrativeimpliesthattheseworks
are somehow inferior, or less sophisticated than their European counterparts. This information
helps to identify the societal frameworksoperatingduringtheeradiscussedinthispaper. Armed
with thisknowledge,onecanbetter understandthesocialclimateofthatparticulartime.Western

Flam,JackD."Introduction."In
PrimitivismandTwentiethcenturyArt:ADocumentaryHistory,
3.Berkeley,Calif.:Universityof

CaliforniaPress,2003.

3
Flam,JackD.
PrimitivismandTwentiethcenturyArt
,3.2003.

culture was and

is fascinated by cultural Others, knowing this makes it easier to see why this
particularbrandofentertainmenthasenduredforcenturies.

Before Edison attended the 1889 Worlds Fair and Expositions in France he had
envisioned his kinetoscope as a spinning cylinder with a sequence of small images on it. After
visiting the Expositions, Edison shiftedhisdesignstowardsdevelopingamotionpicture system
where the images would appear on a photographicfilmstrip.4Withthisinvention,Edisoncould
show his motion pictures to largeaudiencesat once.Hispreviousinvention,thephonographhad
taken off a few years earlier and became a sensation withpeopleacrossthecountry.Inthebook
The Emergence of Cinema
, author Charles Musser discusses how Edisons industrially minded
invention was turned into amusing coinoperateddevicepopularamongsttheAmericanmasses.5
For Edison, his previous experience with the phonographs popularization became good
reference as he developedhismotionpicturesystem.6Astheinventorexplainedin1888Iam
experimenting upon an instrument which does for the eye whatthephonographdoesfortheear,
which is the recording and reproduction of things in motion, and in such a form as to be both
cheap, practical and convenient.7 This passage reveals Edisons awareness of the potential
popularityofhisdevice,andhisdesiretomakeitaccessibletothemasses.

Higgens,Steven."Edison:TheInventionoftheMovies."2004.AccessedApril19,2015.

http://www.kinolorber.com/edison/intro.html.

Musser,Charles."ThomasEdisonandtheAmusementWorld."In
TheEmergenceofCinema:TheAmericanScreento1907,

55.NewYork:Scribner,1990.

Musser,Charles."ThomasEdisonandtheAmusementWorld."64.1990.

Musser,Charles."ThomasEdisonandtheAmusementWorld."64.1990.

In the midst of Edisons efforts to construct his motionpicture system another form of
ethnographic entertainment was taking American culture by storm. William Frederick Cody is
better known by his stage nameBuffaloBill,andhistouringshowofperformerswasconsidered
the zenith of live entertainment. During this time, American culture was highly nostalgic for
themes related to the wild west. Beginning in 1883,
Buffalo Bills Wild West Show began
touring across the states, featuring Indian war dances, an "attack" on a stagecoach,trick riders,
ropers, and shooters as well as many different wild American animals.8 Buffalo Bills tour
included Chief Sitting Bull himself and his informally adopted daughter Annie Oakley who
joinedtheshowin1895.9Oakleywasavaudevilleperformerwhenshejoined
BuffaloBillsWild
West Show
, and rose to fame over the next decade while touring with the group.10 In fact, the
spectacle became so popular, Cody shipped the entire outfit overseas to England in 1887where
Queen Victoria attended on three separate occasions. By 1889 Cody was touring again in
America,playingforhoardsofpeoplefascinatedbyromanticizedidealsoftheoldwest.11

A few years after Codys return to the states, ThomasEdisonconstructedoneofthefirst

film studios in America by 1892, and his Black Maria Studio was locatedinWestOrange,New
Jersey.12 During the first two years of experimentation with his motionpicture device, Edison
worked at Black Maria to record cock fights, boxing matches, blacksmiths, a man sneezingand

"BuffaloBill'sWildWestShow:AmericanTreasuresoftheLibraryofCongress."LibraryofCongress.July29,2010.Accessed

April19,2015.http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/tri127.html.

9
"AnnieOakleyBiography."Bio.com.A&ENetworksTelevision,2015.Web.

10

"AnnieOakleyBiography."Bio.com.2015.

11

"BuffaloBill'sWildWestShow:AmericanTreasuresoftheLibraryofCongress."2010.

12

Jacobson,BrianR."TheBlackMaria:FilmStudio,FilmTechnology(cinemaandtheHistoryofTechnology)."Historyand
Technology27,no.2(2011):233.

the ever popular Exposition spectacle: Oriental belly dancing. Even in these early films one
can see classic themes of sex and violence as entertainment emerge.13 In 1894 Edison set outto
document
Buffalo Bills Wild West Show
. However, Edison did notreproducetheentiretyofthe
Buffalo Bills show, instead he selected seven acts which were most popular. The acts chosen
included Annie Oakley demonstrating her sharp shootingabilities,BuffaloBillhimself,bucking
broncos and the traditional Ghost and Buffalo Dance as performed by Sioux and Paiute
tribesmen.14 These tribal dancers offered a sense of authenticity to Buffalo Bills show, while
performing their dances, audiences could be transported back to a preindustrialized America.
While the time of the pioneers was bygone to Buffalo Bills patrons, his show pandered to a
nationalidentitythatmythifiedandromanticizedthiswildera.

William Buffalo Bill Cody was not only anentertainer,butaprolificwriterandauthor

of multiple autobiographies and fictional works. In the book
The Life of Hon. William F. Cody,
Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide. An Autobiography
Cody writes
about his experience securing NativeAmericanperformersforhisshowin1887:Whileplaying
in Washington I suddenly learned thatmyIndians weretobeseizedbytheGovernmentandsent
back to their agency.15 It is important to note thatBuffaloBillwasaformersoldierandveteran
of manySettlerIndianconflicts.Asaresult,Codyhaddevelopedarelationshipwithmanytribes
in the western territories and used his connections to leverage the acquisition of Indian men,

13

14

Higgens,Steven."Edison:TheInventionoftheMovies."2004.

Sagala,SandraK."BuffaloBillontheSilverScreen:TheFilmsofWilliamF.Cody."BuffaloBillontheSilverScreenDigital

Companion.2013.AccessedApril19,2015.http://www.codystudies.org/sagala/sources.php.

15

Cody,W.F."ANewPlay."In
TheLifeofHon.WilliamF.Cody,KnownasBuffaloBill:TheFamousHunter,ScoutandGuide:
AnAutobiography
,364.F.E.Bliss,HartfordCT.1879.

women and children as performers in his wild west show.16 While it seems unlikely, Cody may
not have been aware of FederallawswhichlimitedNativeAmericanexistencetotheconfinesof
designated reservation lands. Byremovingthese
Nativesfromtheirreservation, BuffaloBillwas
committing a crime, which is why the government intended to seize them. Ultimately, he
successfully negotiated with the Secretary of the Interior for permissiontouseNativeAmerican
actors in his wild west show. He was appointed a Federal Indian Agent andawardedcustodyof
histroupeofNativeactors.17

Considering the fact that American culture was in love with the old west and images of
preindustrialized life, Buffalo Bill was smart to include Native American performers in his
display. This element alone lends a certain sense authenticity to the wild west experience for
predominantly city dwelling viewers, who knew Indians only as romanticized stereotypes. By
this time,muchoftriballife hadbeeneffectivelydestroyedthroughEuropean colonization,these
spectacles were often the only way for whites to gain access to Native culture. Yet, the very
performance everyone was clamoring to see: the Ghost Dance, had been outlawed by the U.S.
Government just a few years prior. In fact, the enactment of these religious ceremonies by
NativeswaspunishablebydeathinaccordancewithFederallaw.

In 1884, just ten years before Edison filmed the Ghost Dance, Federal courts passed the
Religious Crimes Code, designed to deny the religious rights of Native Americans. Theselaws

16

17

Cody,W.F.
TheLifeofHon.WilliamF.Cody,
363.

Cody,W.F.
TheLifeofHon.WilliamF.Cody,
364.

explicitly banned what is known as the Ghost and Sun Dances. These dances had become
conflated with Satan and witchcraft by paranoid Christians. This fear further intensified
interactions between natives and whites.18 As a result of this deeply hostile environment, many
Native rituals were driven underground, practiced only in secret. In 1890, justtwoyearsprior to
the film Edison made, more than 300 Minneconjou Sioux were murdered at Wounded Knee on
the Pine Ridge Reservation by U.S. cavalry men. Over 3,000 cavalry arrived at Wounded Knee
in December of 1980 after local settlers expressed fear of the Ghost Dance ritual. After this
conflict, tribes were commanded to stop performing the Ghost Dance by U.S. military officials,
under threat that more Ghost Dancers would be killed.19 Thus, the Ghost Dance performance
Edison filmed was highly illegal and tied to one of the most infamous Indian massacres in
Americanhistory.

Consideringhowaggressivelythegovernmentandmilitary pursued a ban on these

particular rituals just years prior to Edisons documentation, one begins to wonder whythefilm
even exists. Why were Native people allowed off their federally designated reservations to
perform the very dances whichhadresultedinthedeathsofsomanySiouxjustadecadeearlier?
An entire legal framework had been constructed to stop the performance of rituals by Native
people.HowwasitthatBuffaloBillandThomasEdisonsuccessfullyskirtedtheserestrictions?

18

Watts,Tracey."ASelectiveTimelineofAmericanIndianAffairs,Post1865."UniversityofTexasatAustin.2007.59.Accessed

April19,2015.http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~watts/.

19

Watts,Tracey."ASelectiveTimelineofAmericanIndianAffairs.59.2007.

Context changes everything, including the significance of these rituals. When the Ghost
Dance is performed in a traditional environment, its meaning is wholly different from its
production for an audience. When practice in accordance with tradition, these rituals were seen
as unholy, primitive acts with no place in civilized society. The element of amusement is what
signals the shift from a general climateoffear,tooneofspectacle andentertainment.Thismove
converts the audiences fear into passivityandneutralizesthepoliticalintentofthe Ghostdance.
The ceremony has been transformed into performance, expressly crafted for the whiteobserver.
Through this mutation the rite becomes devoid of its original sanctity and is translated to
commodity. This osmosis results in a product which lacks its original religious and spiritual
significance.

Edisons Ghost Dance footage also confirms my suspicions related to the production of
Native rituals as amusement for white audiences. In his four minute film Buffalo Bill Wild
West Show the footage begins with Buffalo Bill and his performers as they lead a parade
through crowded streets. After about twominutesofparadefootage,AnnieOakleyisintroduced
and she demonstrates her excellent marksmanship. Finally after about two and a halfminutes,a
new title appears: Sioux Ghost Dance cueing the very first film footage ever recorded of
Native Americans and their traditional dances. This section is followed by another Nativeritual
entitled The Buffalo Dance. Each of these dances take up approximately one minute of the
entire four minute film. The amount of time given to the Native performances indicates their

level of entertainment value, rivaling the screen time allotted to both Buffalo Bill and Ms.
Oakley.20

It is clear based on his experiments with film including the Turkish belly dancer, along
with his visit to the Expositions in Paris, EdisonfeltcomfortableportrayingtheforeignOtheras
an object of entertainment. By the time he captured the Ghost Dance, cultural voyeurism had
infected most of the American population by way of various wild west themed shows like
Buffalo Bills. The stage was set for the objectification of Native religion which became
associated with a mythified past of pioneers and the Manifest Destiny of European Colonizers.
These performances have now become explicitly tied to entertainment. Therefore their
productionconformingtoconditionsaccessiblebytourists.

This idea is further supported by the fact that the Ghost Dance, as it is traditionally
performed, happens over the course of five days total. The filmthatEdisonhasproduced,along
with the acts performed in
Buffalo Bills Wild West Show is a Ghost Dance that has been
neutered, truncated and commodified for easy digestion by white audiences. This reduction of
ritual for entertainment is merely a symptom of colonization which has appeared in various
forms. For example, the Hawaiian language and traditional dances were banned in 1896,
similarly to Native Americans. Now,Hawaiiansperformtheirtraditionaldancesfortouristswho
truly believe their having an authentic experience. This technique of religious and cultural

20

Edison,Thomas."ThomasEdison'sBuffaloBillWildWestShow."YouTube.2009.AccessedApril19,2015.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w__1GyfQPQ.

oppression remains a powerful tool for assimilating others and maintaining societal
constructionsofraceandclass.

This colonial pattern of converting cultural oddities into mass entertainment helps to
further obscure the reality of Native Americans living at the time.Reservationlifeinthe1880s
was far removed from the idealized and romanticized images portrayed in
Buffalo Bills Wild
West Show
. There were no more wild indians roaming the plains. The Dawes Act of 1887
ensured Natives could not roam, by legally justifying the seizure of over 90 million acres of
Native land. The Dawes Act also further defined Reservationboundariesandsoughttomaintain
the physical detainment of indigenous people across thecountry.21Muchofthelandsdesignated
for Native inhabitants were least desired by whites. Areas set aside for reservations were often
located indesolate,aridenvironmentswherefoodproductionandhuntingwasnearlyimpossible.
Many tribal people experienced famine, disease and death as a result of these inhumane, horrid
conditionsimposedbytheU.S.Government.

By allowing Edison and Buffalo Bill to produce these romanticized spectacles of the
Other, Native American culture was effectively made accessible and digestible for white
audiences. The truncation of indigenous experience to 30 second snippets allows the viewer to
remain ignorant to conspiring forces which have lead to this point. It is a way for people to
justify the assimilation and extermination programs occurring atthattime.ToseeIndianswitha
regular job was surely some proof of their attempt to assimilate. By reducing a culture to

21

Watts,Tracey."ASelectiveTimelineofAmericanIndianAffairs.59.2007.

spectacle the problematic relations shared between the oppressor and oppressed are rendered
invisible.

Things have changed since Buffalo Bills time, now one must have a keen eye to spot
racist constructions and underlying ethnographic bias. While he is beloved by American
audiences, Anthony Bourdains No Reservations, and Parts Unknown television series are
contemporary examples of how ethnographic programming continues to be a staple of Western
entertainment. Bourdain adamantly maintains an antitourist position, proclaiming a love for
locations off the beaten path.22 However, author Marcus Banks defines ethnographic film in
his article
The NonTransparencyofEthnographicFilm
,andexplainstherearekeyethnographic
methods which include the documentation of dailylifeandritual.Thisapproachisfirmlyrooted
in early anthropological practices, which were ethnographic in their genesis. Shows like Parts
Unknown and Anthony Zimmermans Bizarre Foods play offofculturalstereotypesfortheir
audiences in order to spoon feed them apolitical content. This condition allows the viewer to
forget the hosts presence alone isatestamenttowhiteprivilege,andtheinherentbiaspresentin
thesedocumentaryadventures.

A television series, by its very nature can not and should not be expected to address the
entirety of life anywhere...in 30 minutes. Inevitably information gets left out, and only themost
benign, sponsorfriendly footage survives the editing process. Host Bourdain is forced to
glossover political tensions in the places he visits, and can never seriously address the Wests

22

Banks,Marcus."TheNonTransparencyofEthnographicFilm."AnthropologyToday4,no.5(1988):2.

role in these tensions. Furthermore, whatever footage his crew collects is edited and tailored to
thetastesofWesternaudiences,furthercomplicatingtheimpliedrepresentationof
truth
.

The very act of a whitemaletravelingtoforeignlandsisinherentlytiedtoalonglineage

of European colonization. This fact exposes Bourdains own privilege and
orientation to the
world. This orientation is defined as the phenomenology of whiteness by authorSaraAhmed.
And she describes the experience of living in a whitebodythatfunctionsasahabit,evenabad
habit, which becomes a background to social action.23 Bourdains white bodygiveshimaccess
to places most will never see, by the very nature of possessing a white body he moves freely
abouttheworld.However,asAhmedarguesthisisnotthesamefor
Other
bodies.

In his article The NonTransparency of Ethnographic Film,

Marcus Banks states
The
reason audiences, and anthropologists, can 'read' ethnographic films so easily and thereforefind
them unproblematical is that many such films present a familiar functionalist view of reality.
These films and television pander to what westernaudiencesthinktheyknow aboutanygiven
culture and do not challenge, but reinforce stereotypes. Typically ethnographic works todayuse
subtle cues that indicate their underlying bias, by focusing on specific aspects of a society that
make it interestingtoaudienceswhileglossing overdeeperissuesbysketchingintherestofthe
functionalist checklist (politics, kinship and cosmology) with wallpaper shots and voiceover
commentary.24 Furthermore, Banks asserts that all ethnographic texts and filmsareconstructed
through an outside bias, and do not directly represent reality. This confirms my own suspicions

23

Ahmed,Sara."APhenomenologyOfWhiteness."FeministTheory8.2(2007):149.Print.

Banks,Marcus."TheNonTransparencyofEthnographicFilm."2.

24

of these original Ghost Dance performances and films, as thinly veiled attempts to define a
culturebasedonthebiasesofthetourist/colonizer.

Buffalo Bills Wild West Show and Edisons subsequent films featuring Native
Americans performing the GhostandBuffalodanceswereperceivedasauthenticrepresentations
of an archaic culture, which allowed for the romanticization of Indigenous people and religious
practices. Following thereleaseofEdisonsfilms,imagesoftheNobleSavagebecamedominant
in American culture. Nonnative citizens dreamed of becoming Indians so they could forget
work, go back to nature and true happiness.25 While this fantasy did not match the reality that
NativeAmericanslivedoutonreservations,perceptioninaway,becamereality.

By accepting stereotypes of any culture, a great loss of information occurs. Buying into
the myth that Indians still lived free in the wildness, allowed nonnatives to forget thegenocide
and destruction that occurred via colonization. This allows the widespread denial of
responsibility for inhumane government policies and oppressive structures which restrict the
rights of various subgroups within any population. Films like Thomas Edisons and Anthony
Bourdains show help reaffirm racist stereotypes and oversimplify the complexityofhumanlife
in order to provide entertainment totheuninitiatedmasses.Throughthismodeofamusementwe
have made a monument to global imperialism as it has been played out for eons. Itisimportant
to recognize when these types of cultural reductions are occurring and reject them consciously
andcompletely.

25

Watts,Tracey."ASelectiveTimelineofAmericanIndianAffairs.60.2007.