Native Arizonans at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition – Phoenix

In 1904 the Louisiana Purchase Exposition was held in St Louis. Attending that fair were over 3,000 indigenous men, women and children who were engaged to show middle class American citizens how “the other half of the world lived.”  Included in this group were a group of Pima and Maricopa kindergarten students from the Sacaton Indian School, Navajo weavers,and  Maricopa and Akimel O’odham potters, as well as the stars of the exposition–Geronimo and his relatives from the the White Mountain Apache reservation. Using a wealth of historic photographs and stories, Nancy Parezo documents what it was like to be a demonstrator and the official “other” for turn-of-the century America.

Dr. Nancy J. Parezo is a Professor of American Indian Studies and Anthropology at the University of Arizona. For over 40 years she has worked with Native Arizona Nations documenting histories and working with artists and oral historians. She has also worked extensively to document how anthropologists have affected Indian cultures through collecting and displaying art at world fairs. She is the co-author of Anthropology Goes to the Fair (with Don Fowler) as well as several works on women anthropologists (Hidden Scholars, Daughters of the Desert and On Their Own Frontier), and the first Special Olympics at the 1904 world’s fair.