The lost tribe of Coney Island Headhunters, Luna Park, and the man who pulled off the spectacle of the century

Review by Choice Review

This especially well-written and well-documented account of a shameful episode in the early-20th-century US began in St. Louis with the 1904 World's Fair. The dominant anthropological theory then posited that societies had gone through three developmental stages: savagery, barbarism, and civilization. Fair organizers decided to illustrate this to the American people by presenting examples of the stages at the fair. A group of Aeta hunter-gatherers and an entire Bontoc village from the Philippines, complete with houses, were shipped to St. Louis. It was the most popular "exhibit" at the fair. In 1905, an unscrupulous doctor in the Philippines, Truman Hunt, persuaded a group of Bontoc people to travel to the US with him to present "shows" about their culture. They were promised wages and any tips they received. The shows of the "dog-eating headhunters" were very popular with millions of American viewers. Hunt became rich and never paid the Bontoc tribespeople. He was on the run across the US with the tribe and pursued by newspaper reporters and US marshals. The Bontocs returned to the Philippines without money, and Hunt never went to jail for his crimes. This book tells the incredible story. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. --William A. Longacre, emeritus, University of Arizona

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

---

Review by New York Times Review

IN 1904, two years after America's victory in the Philippine-American War, the United States government tried to put the best face on its colonization of the archipelago of more than 7,000 islands. Thirteen hundred Filipinos from a dozen tribes were put on display at the St. Louis Exposition, in replicas of their home villages, intended to reinforce an underlying message that our "little brown brothers," in the words of William Howard Taft, were not ready to govern themselves. The most popular exhibit in this "human zoo" were the Igorrotes, who ate dog meat and hunted heads. The man in charge of the Igorrote village, Truman Hunt, had served as a medical doctor during the war and stayed on, eventually rising to become the lieutenant governor of Bontoc Province. When the exposition closed, Hunt returned to the Philippines to audition his own band of dog-eating headhunters and bring them to America to tour venues around the country for a year. Comprising 51 men, women and children, the group eventually made its way to Coney Island, where they became the hit of Luna Park in the summer of 1905. The Igorrotes performed countless shows for thousands of day-trippers: mock battles, dog feasts, sham weddings, dances and craft displays, all in their makeshift compound, ruled by a chief appointed by Hunt, and outfitted with a "headhunters' watchtower" and a quarters for a "medicine man." Hunt's evil genius was in dreaming up one exploitive and sensational publicity stunt after another to keep a novelty-addicted public titillated. He hatched a scheme in which the Igorrotes would throw a dog into their stew pot, to provoke his elephant companion to break her shackles and tear apart the village in a bid to save her beloved. The public didn't witness the scene, of course, but the newspapermen who toured the aftermath of the destruction gladly sold it to them. In the months that followed, Hunt made hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Igorrotes - on top of ticket receipts, enthralled bystanders threw coins at the feet of the performers. Instead of allowing the Igorrotes to keep their tips from the crafts they sold, as he had promised, he insisted that they turn over the proceeds for safekeeping. He withheld their salaries as well. What followed over the next year and a half, as chronicled by Claire Prentice in "The Lost Tribe of Coney Island," was the enslavement of the Igorrotes by their self-appointed benefactor. Ignoring the fact that they ate dog meat only under prescribed circumstances, Hunt insisted they slaughter dogs and eat them on a daily basis, which brought them to the brink of illness and despair. He split the group against their will and farmed them out to equally unscrupulous confederates across the country, moving them whimsically and forcing them to remain in America well past the year he had promised. Today, we would call it human trafficking. In short order, Hunt grew increasingly violent, as his lavish spending and drinking diminished his fortune, and he took to physically attacking the Igorrotes and robbing them. In turn, they tried to hide their money, wadding it up and sticking it in their ear canals and between their buttocks. While this wasn't the spectacle of the century, as the subtitle proclaims in carnival barker fashion, Prentice brings to life a shocking story of exploitation and degradation that should not be forgotten. What's best about the early chapters is the full portrait of Coney Island that emerges as backdrop to the Truman Hunt debacle. Less convincing are the author's attempts to embellish emotions and motivations. The thoughts she attributes to the characters are so obvious (such as Hunt's gaze following a pretty woman, or his desire for a drink after a difficult episode) that they read like an amateur fiction writer's strained efforts at dramatic tension, sagging with flabby prose and the telegraphing of plot points: "Truman was about to encounter his nemesis." But the second half of the book is engrossing. We follow the determined pursuit of Hunt by the government agent Frederick Barker, assigned to track him, free the Igorrotes from their bondage and bring Hunt to justice. Americans gone rogue, as Prentice puts it, have long been a part of the Philippines' landscape, but Truman Hunt, an inveterate liar, a bigamist and a slave driver, seems nearly unparalleled as far as scoundrels go. In some sense, this slick-talking charlatan becomes a stand-in for America itself, or a certain version of America in its more opportunistic historical moments, blind to its own faults and willing to do anything to turn a buck. As Antoinette Funk, Hunt's lawyer, declared at one of his trials: "The government set the example of exhibiting the people. The government was the first to bring them to this country for show purposes." She had a good point, if not a defense. Hunt's evil genius was in dreaming up one exploitive publicity stunt after another. ROBIN HEMLEY is the author of "Invented Eden: The Elusive, Disputed History of the Tasaday," and is writer in residence at Yale-NUS College in Singapore.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [November 2, 2014]

---

Review by Booklist Review

In the early 1900s, with American presidents and advisors pondering whether the U.S. involvement in the Philippines was morally and economically worthwhile, showman Dr. Truman Knight Hunt brought a group of Filipino Igorrote tribe members men, women, and children to exhibit in various fairs in the U.S. and in Coney Island's Luna Park. Advertising them, not altogether inaccurately, as dog-eating, head-hunting savages, he charged admission to watch them sing, dance, and engage in pretend battles. The Igorrotes were a popular sensation, in their G-strings, tattoos, and greased-up hair; yet Hunt intended for them to illustrate to the U.S. that most dark-skinned peoples needed U.S. aid and instruction to be civilized. Author Prentice ferreted this true tale from a variety of sources, and the pages of this incredible story are peppered with maps, period memorabilia (such as telegraphs and newspaper headlines), and weathered but fascinating photos of the Igorrotes themselves. Hunt, though initially much loved by the cheerful, hardworking, and honest Igorrotes, broke his promises to them of fame and fortune, absconding with the proceeds. This story of an astonishing spectacle is enhanced by Prentice's sparkling prose.--Kinney, Eloise Copyright 2014 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

---

Review by Library Journal Review

In freelance journalist Prentice's nonfiction debut, the author tells a riveting tale of the American dream gone wrong. In 1905, physician-turned-impresario Truman K. Hunt lured 51 Filipino Igorrotes to Coney Island's Luna Park, where he exhibited them to an American public eager to ogle the tribespeople's scantily clad bodies, tattoos, communal dances, and dog meat feasts. This "human zoo" netted Hunt a fortune. But the showman began drinking heavily, burned through his cash, stole the Igorrotes' promised wages, and relentlessly exploited their trust. As Igorrote discontent flared and federal agents investigated, Hunt fought to evade justice. This scandalous tale of greed and exploitation played out before a more momentous backdrop: America's occupation of the Philippines. Sympathizers hailed the Igorrotes' reputed simplicity and honesty but other Americans invoked them to rationalize American imperialism, insisting that Filipinos were too "primitive" to rule themselves. Extensive footnotes notwithstanding, Prentice is creative with her history, attributing feelings and dialog to her characters and confining subjective analysis to her introduction. VERDICT Without scholarly pretensions, Prentice has crafted an entertaining popular account likely to appeal to fans of true crime and social history.-Michael Rodriguez, Hodges Univ. Lib., Naples, FL (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

---

Review by Kirkus Book Review

This bright story of a shameless huckster evokes a unique bit of Americana at the turn of the 20th century, when the nation dabbled in empire-building and the display of human beings as objects of curiosity was a staple of show business. Not long after the United States took control of the Philippines, 50 members of the Igorrote tribe, indigenous to the mountains of Luzon, agreed to travel to America for a year with Dr. Truman Hunt to display salient features of their culture. The happy tribespeople's native costume was smaller than a stripper's final revelation, and they excelled in spear chucking and tobacco smoking. On occasion, too, they were headhunters and ready to feast on dogs. Fatherly Dr. Hunt booked his troupe into venues like Luna Park in Coney Island, where they continuously performed in G-strings for gawkers. They ate boiled mongrel until they were quite fed up with their canine diet. Managed by the ever demanding, ever drinking Hunt, the show was a great hit, playing in many cities across the continent. Of course, it was more fakery than ethnography. Journalist Prentice artfully reveals the growing mendacity of the promoter/doctor. The Igorrotes were degraded, robbed of their earnings and held against their will, unable to return home. Throughout their ordeal, the purported savages proved considerably more dignified and civilized than the many showmen charged with their care. In this nicely paced popular history, the author ably develops the diverse ancillary characters, such as the wives of bigamist Hunt, the promoters and the shady lawyers. Eventually, the government pursued the evasive Hunt. The tale ends, improbably, with strange lawsuits. Prentice presents the story of the innocent tribe with sympathy; in her telling, the Igorrotes charm and entertain us once again after more than a century. The edifying, colorful adventures of headhunters captured in America by a sideshow rascal. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

---

Introduction Sitting on my desk is a tattered black and white photograph of a group of tribesmen, women and children, naked but for their g-strings. They are squatting on their haunches around a camp fire. Several of them look directly into the camera. One points, another laughs and holds up a stone, as if pretending he is about to throw it at the photographer. Some of them are smiling, apparently sharing a private joke. In the background, a young boy and girl are making something out of bits of broken wood. Behind a low fence, a group of men in formal American clothes and derby hats stand watching them. If you look closely, you can see a few of them are laughing too. If it wasn't for the observers in Western clothes, it could be a scene taken from an ethnographic journal. But this is no documentary image of a distant people unaccustomed to contact with the rest of the world: this tribe is very aware we are watching, and they seem frankly amused by it. When I first came across this photograph, I knew nothing about it, but the energy of the tribespeople drew me in. I immediately knew I had to find out who these people were. Where and when was the picture taken? What became of them? My quest to unravel the story of the tribespeople in the picture has taken over several years of my life. It has been an addictive, fascinating, sometimes frustrating, but always fulfilling journey. Now I know that the picture is one of a handful of photographic relics of an extraordinary episode in American history. It was taken more than a century ago at Coney Island, just a few miles from Downtown Manhattan. The tribespeople are Bontoc Igorrotes, who became known in America simply as Igorrotes,1 meaning 'mountain people.' Fifty of them were brought from their remote home in the mountains of the Northern Philippines to America and put on show at Luna Park in 1905. They were billed as "dog eating, head hunting savages" and "the most primitive people in the world." The tribespeople became the sensation of the summer season and were soon in demand all over the US. Millions of Americans flocked to see the Igorrotes. The crowds were captivated by the tribe's vitality, and thrilled and scandalized in equal measure by their near nudity, their dog feasts and their tattooed bodies which, the public learned, indicated their prowess as hunters of human heads. As I study the Igorrotes' faces in the picture on my desk, I have often wondered what it was that persuaded them to leave their homes to set up camp in America's most famous amusement park. What did they think of America and Americans? How did they find life under the gaze of an audience? What was it like for the freedom-loving tribe to be locked up day and night at Luna Park? Did they regret their decision? What did they tell their families about their adventure when they returned home? It is impossible to imagine what it was like for these pre-modern people to be thrust into the heart of the quintessential modern metropolis, New York. This story is set at a time when disagreements about the political future of the Philippines had created a schism in American domestic politics. America had won the Philippines from Spain at the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898. But, far from being welcomed with open arms by the Philippine people, the U.S. had seventy thousands soldiers fighting in the islands to try to quash a rebellion of Filipino nationalists led by Emilio Aguinaldo. America won but was widely criticized for using excessive force and brutality to overcome the opposition to her rule. The assumption of American control over the overseas territory prompted deep soul searching at home. Was it right for America to acquire an overseas empire? When, if ever, would the Fillipinos be ready to take over the responsibility of governing themselves? The Philippine issue was the determining foreign policy concern of the day, and the thread which connected the three presidencies of the early 20th century. William McKinley led the U.S. into the war with Spain and won the Islands. Theodore Roosevelt, who assumed the presidency in 1901 after McKinley's assassination, had unsuccessfully coveted the job of Governor General of the Philippines above any other political office, and dreamed of guiding the people of the islands towards self government, while William Howard Taft, Roosevelt's successor as President, had previously served as Governor General of the Islands. The Philippine Islands were not just a concern for the upper echelons of the American Government. Later in life, back in the US, many of the men who had served in the Philippines saw their service there as a bond: time and time again in this story we encounter men and women who worked in the islands, as government servants, policemen, lawyers, doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, preachers, soldiers and politicians. As America was taking control of the Islands, she was also sizing up her new subjects. Ethnologists were sent into far corners of the country to assess and report on the country's many indigenous tribes. The Islands' people were then categorized according to their level of 'civilization,' from barbaric to semi-barbarous to those deemed cultured and educated. The earliest American visitors to the Philippines were particularly taken with the 'savage' Bontoc Igorrotes. In his major study 'The Bontoc Igorot,'2 compiled in 1903, the American ethnologist Albert Ernest Jenks observed that, aside from cutting off the heads of neighboring villagers, the Bontoc Igorrotes were a peaceful, good atroniz, honest, industrious, and likeable people with low rates of crime. Jenks noted that they were true primitives who had no words for many items in modern culture, including shoes, pantaloons, umbrellas, chairs or books. In 1904, the American Government spent $1.5 million taking thirteen hundred Filipinos from a dozen different tribes to the St. Louis Exposition. The Philippine Reservation became one of the most popular features of the Fair, and the Igorrotes drew the largest crowds of all. By displaying the tribespeople in this manner, the U.S. Government hoped to gain popular support for its occupation of the Philippines by showing the American public that the Filipinos were innocents, a people far from ready for self-government, who were in need of paternalistic American protection. From the first time the Filipinos arrived on American soil they were subject to endless newspaper articles which drew comparisons between their culture and that of their American hosts. Many articles focussed on their distain for Western clothes and what was portrayed as their insatiable appetite for that most domesticated of American pets, the dog. But the Igorrotes were also invoked in articles about pre-marital sexual relations, hard work, the simple life versus the complexities of modern living. Their trusting and trustworthy nature often drew comment. During the Igorrotes' first visit to America for the 1904 St Louis World's Fair, the Macon Telegraph provided its readers with an insight into the Filipinos: "The Igorrote is more honest and more atronizi than the American. Knowing the value of money, he would not be tempted for one single instant to take that which did not belong to him, even if he were sure that his theft would never be found out. The property of another is absolutely safe in his possession." [Macon Telegraph, September 11, 1904] The Igorrotes were like a mirror which was held up to American society. America might be the more "advanced" culture but whilst it took pleasure in atronizing at the primitive tribe, it was not entirely immune to the idea that it might learn something from it. Displaying human beings for the entertainment and edification of the paying public seems shocking today but "human zoos" were nothing new in the early 1900s. For more than 400 years, exotic humans from faraway territories had been paraded in front of Royal Courts and wealthy patrons from Europe to Japan, and more recently at world's fairs and expositions as far afield as New York, Paris and London. But what happened in Coney Island in 1905 was the result of two modern forces meshing: American imperialism and a popular taste for sensationalism. The Igorrotes who were brought from the Philippines became caught up in the debate about America's presence in South-East Asia. They were used to push the case that America had a duty to protect, educate, and civilize such I and savage beings and, later when the treatment they experienced became a national scandal, they were used to argue that America had no place in the Philippines at all. The other force was equally irresistible. Early 20th Century America was addicted to novelty and sensation. The human zoo which came from the Philippines and unpacked its bags at Coney Island in 1905 became the most talked-about show in town. The tribespeople were gawped at by everyone from ordinary members of the public who were willing to pay a quarter for the privilege of seeing human beings in the raw, to anthropologists, politicians, celebrities and even the daughter of the President. But there was another ingredient in this potent mixture, a volatile one which propelled the Igorrotes onto the front pages. Sitting next to the picture of the Igorrotes on my desk is another photograph, faded and torn on one side. In it, a man in a panama hat and an expensive looking three-piece suit stands with a fat cigar in his hand, smiling for the camera. He is surrounded by a group of bare-chested Filipino tribesmen. He is Dr. Truman Knight Hunt, a former medical doctor who met the Igorrotes after he went to the Philippines following the outbreak of the 1898 Spanish-American War. It was Truman's idea to take the Igorrotes to Coney Island. There he transformed himself into one of the great publicists of his age, spinning a colorful web of stories about "his" tribe that the press and public lapped up. No one could have predicted what would happen next. Excerpted from The Lost Tribe of Coney Island: Headhunters, Luna Park, and the Man Who Pulled off the Spectacle of the Century by Claire Prentice All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

---