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Professional Savages - Captive Lives and Western Spectacle

By Sue Darling

3 July 2004 - The Rebecca Hossack Gallery in London saw the launch on 24 June of Roslyn Poignant's new book 'Professional Savages - Captive Lives and Western Spectacle' which is the result of many years travel, research and detective work through Australia, America and Europe.

It traces the origins and experiences of 2 groups of Aboriginal people who were brought from Queensland in the late nineteenth century to be exhibited in circuses, museums and gives fascinating insights into the commerical and social elements underlying the exploitation of 'the uncivilised races' and ways in which the groups maintained their identity and humanity.

The book also covers the return from US to Australia of the remains of Tambo and the disturbing similarities between media treatment of that event and the commercial exploitation of Aboriginal people 150 years earlier.

Roslyn is an honorary research fellow at the Dept of Anthropology at University College, London, and member of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. The book was introduced by Profesor Lynette Russell, Director of the Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies, Monash University.

Copies can be obtained from Yale University Press tel 020 7079 4900 or email sales@yaleup.co.uk

Professional Savages - Captive Lives and Western Spectacle
Roslyn Poignant
0868407437, UNSW PRESS, July 2004, 320pp, HB , 234x189mm
In October 1993, news flashed round the world that the mummified body of a North Queensland Aborigine called Tambo had been found in the basement of a recently closed funeral home in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. This macabre event brought to public attention the little known stories of the removal abroad, in the late nineteenth century, of two groups of North Queensland Aborigines.
About the Author
Roslyn Poignant, an Australian based in London for many years, is an independent scholar, writer and exhibition curator. Recent concerns have been two long-term projects involving consultation with and the support of Aboriginal communities in Arnhem Land and North Queensland: 1.The return of photographs, taken by Axel Poignant in 1952, to Aboriginal communities in Maningrida, Arnhem Land that culminated in an exhibition, ‘It’s About Friendship’: The Rom Ceremony in Arnhem Land and the book Encounter at Nagalarramba. 2. The search for the identities and narratives of two groups of North Queensland Aborigines removed overseas in late 19th century and displayed America and Europe, led to the identification of and involvement in the repatriation of the mummified body of Tambo to Palm Island in 1993, and culminated in the exhibition, Captive Lives: Looking for Tambo and his companions, and this present book.   Source: UNSW Press

History of horrors

Raymond Evans

King Bill, centre, with Jenny on his left and six north Queenslanders removed in 1892. These robbed and belittled people gaze back at us across the centuries with a fixed and arresting stare.

7 August 2004 - In Professional Savages, we travel with two groups of Aboriginal performers from the ravaged frontiers of north Queensland through the circuses, dime museums, auditoriums and zoos of America, Britain and Europe, where they were exhibited as "Bestial Australian Cannibals – a monstrous, self-disfiguring and hopelessly embruited race".

Two parties were "toured" by R.A. Cunningham, a Canadian entrepreneur working as agent for the US circus impresario, P.T. Barnum.

The first was composed of nine Manbarra and Biyaygirri people – two couples, four single men and a child from Great Palm and Hinchinbrook islands – who travelled the world from 1883 until 1889.

The second were a party of eight Nyawaygi and Manbarra, probably recruited from among the pastoral workforce at Mungalla station on the Herbert River, near Ingham. These toured during the following decade, from 1892 to 1898.

Probably only four of the 17 who set out returned home alive and immediately vanished from the historical record. The rest died largely from tuberculosis and other respiratory complaints, partially due to the unaccustomed cold of the northern hemisphere winters, but also because they were expected to perform their "war dances" and boomerang-throwing displays partially clad in freezing temperatures before gawping American and European audiences.

Press accounts reveal the "shivering natives" huddled sullenly under blankets before being summoned forth for yet another showing and once, in Copenhagen, we catch them creeping over "to a corner window to lap up the sunshine".

Their story is a compelling and moving one. Roslyn Poignant goes to some lengths to demonstrate that Cunningham's charges were not overtly ill-treated, that they often "enjoyed" their performances and that even Cunningham himself developed a fatherly rapport with them.

But one is not entirely convinced. Cunningham elsewhere in the text is shown to be thoroughly unscrupulous, "a veteran freak hunter" ever-ready for any money-spinning scam.

He refers to his performers as "niggers", "creatures" and "specimens"; and it is hard to determine what he paid them, or whether he paid them. He usually carried around a steel cane.

To the gullible Western crowds who flock to see them, Cunningham's so-called "savage cannibals" are depicted thus: "With bestiality, ferocity and treachery stamped upon their faces; their cruel eyes reflecting but a glimmering of reason; having no gift of speech beyond an ape-like gibberish, they are but one step removed from brutes in human form."

As his maligned players fall ill and can no longer perform, Cunningham abandons them to their fate in foreign hospital wards. And, as one by one they die, he pushes on with his diminishing band of money-spinners into ever-colder climates – Scotland, Scandinavia and Russia.

Poignant works hard to extract glimmerings of individuality for these 17 voyagers, who, as they travel, are invariably portrayed collectively in contemporary print as representatives of a single racial "type".

And in this latter depiction, we see how closely in accord the sideshow barker, the journalist and the scientist were at this time in fashioning and promoting popular racism.

Against this unstoppable ideological tide, the Aboriginal performers themselves try vainly with their dances, songs, boomerang displays and advanced linguistic skills to counter the massive public slander and to reveal something of the truth and humanity of their cultures. But it is mostly lost on audiences jostling to see the "Ranting Man-Eaters" who "gorge themselves upon each others' flesh".

Significantly, it is in those countries least involved in the Imperial take-over of other peoples' lands that the fable about ignorant "cannibals and savages" has the least bite.

Danish audiences in particular are skeptical of the cannibalism claims, while in 1886, the Moscow Paper presents an account of local workmen discussing the visitors over lunch:

"They decide that it is a lie that the Australians are man-eaters. Still they would like their boss to be eaten. Then they decide to leave the cafe because their bosses – their own man-eaters – have come."

This is a sensitively written account, but even more eloquent than the printed text are the photographs of the Aborigines, sometimes captured for show business publicity shots and sometimes for scientific scrutiny.

Gazing upon these faces is not a comfortable, one-way process. For these robbed and belittled people gaze back at us across the centuries with a fixed and arresting stare.

In their eyes one glimpses bewilderment, pride, hurt, regret and disgust. They remind one of the sharply accusing eyes of Truganini.

For their long exhibition in zoos and circuses, alongside other often mistreated "freaks" like "Zip the Pinhead" or "Krao, The Missing Link", is not the only, or perhaps even the main enormity in this sorry saga.

These disorientated people were survivors of a preceding trauma.

Across northeastern Queensland, their societies had been rapidly reduced from thousands to mere handfuls by the scythe of dispossession.

Poignant exposes this "history of horrors" in a staggering chapter entitled Now Enough near the opening of her story. After reading it, one is tempted to suggest that these Aborigines, who sang and danced their way across the northern hemisphere, were perhaps not so much being taken away or cajoled into going but rather reluctantly choosing this objectification under the cruel spotlight of Western spectacle in order to obtain some release from a far worse arena of suffering.

Raymond Evans co-edited Radical Brisbane.

Source: The Courier Mail

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