[ Golden Gater Online - February 20, 1997 ]
Michael Joe
Staff writer
NEW ORLEANS--The warriors of the Creole Wild West tribe revive a hard history every Mardi Gras, hunting the narrow streets here for their enemies and posing for pictures between battles.
Their traditional chants echo through the beaten, brown buildings of the Magnolia Projects. They're part African, part Native-American costumes, woven with needle and thread, nimble fingers and late-night sweat for almost a year, overwhelm the eyes. They are flamboyant. They are colorful.
"They're beautiful, ain't they," said Willie Jackson, a 46-year-old filmmaker from just down the street. "And they do all this for us."
Since the turn of the century, tribes like the Creole Wild West have been the standard-bearers of a uniquely New Orleans tradition -- the black Indians of Carnival.
With drums beating, dancing and singing they march through the neighborhoods where the tourists do not go, places called Central City, Gert Town, Treme, and the Seventh Ward. On most days, the streets throughout the inner city where the Indians meet are true-life battlegrounds of drugs, gun-play, and poverty. But today, their mock battles -- intense posturing, dance, and call-and-response songs -- are peaceful confrontations of words and beauty to honor the Chickasaw and Choctaw Indians, who gave escaped slaves sanctuary in Louisiana.
Yet, this ceremony is not an escape from reality. It is the black community's response to a history of systematic exclusion by the once-secret societies -- or krewes -- that now dominate the crazed, alcohol-soaked side of Carnival that is seen in the French Quarter.
The origins of Carnival are found in the Christian season before Lent, or Ash Wednesday. Mardi Gras day, or Fat Tuesday, is the blow-out before fasting begins. In New Orleans, the celebration goes back to the 1830s, when the first krewes of wealthy whites and Creoles paraded.
In many respects, the Indians of Carnival are as secretive as the societies that once shunned them. No one, not even their neighbors, will see their magnificent costumes, painstakingly made of ostrich feathers, plumes, velvet, rhinestones and beads, until the morning of Fat Tuesday. Many tribes work themselves into a frenzy for battle by drinking, non-stop, a mysterious concoction many days before.
Their celebration is more spiritual than it is religious, said Christopher West, a photographer who has documented the Indians for more than 10 years.
"This is the real deal. This is to live and die for," he said. "Here's a whole community of people with all their dice on the table -- and a lot of sevens are coming up."
And the community loves the home-grown Indians, because the Indians represent the tradition neighborhood.
"Me and my husband been driving all around trying to see them all. I got hooked a long time ago. The Wild Magnolias, Yellow Pocahontas, the Golden Star Hunters. There's a big sense of community today. Cause they do it for the community," said Delores Cooper, a 50-year-old from Gretna, La. She has not missed a Mardi Gras with the Indians since she was nine.
They dance Downtown, Uptown and even across the river in poor sections of Algiers, led by their Big Chiefs, those who sew and sing the best in the neighborhood. There are Flag Boys - the flag bears - and Witch Doctors. There is a Second Line, neighborhood residents who follow the tribes from battle to battle. The Spy Boys are always a block or two ahead, looking for other chiefs.
The corner of LaSalle Street and Washington Avenue, near the Magnolia Projects, has by tradition been one of many battlegrounds where the tribes meet. At this intersection, a whirlwind of celebrants circle two chiefs engaged in battle. Tambourines and drums stir up a rollicking intensity. The Big Chiefs square off, their headdresses held high. On-lookers, knowing the biggest battle is moments away, sing and groove.
But at the center of the chaos, there is order to these battles of pride.
One chief will explode into a chant or song, while the other watches and waits his turn patiently. Then it will be the other chief's turn. They will go back and forth in this ritual, until they come very close together, as if they are kissing, and one chief will concede to the other in a whisper, "You are the prettiest."
"This is something they can't take away. Here everybody is equal. There's no such thing as rich or poor, because today we celebrate," said Harold Fontenette, a 57-year-old local politician.
As with any urban American city facing the threat of drugs, gangs and violence the future of this neighborhood and the future of the Indians is uncertain. The number of tribes have dwindled in recent years. Where there once more than 40 tribes in the 1950s, there are now no more than a dozen.
"You come out here and everything is beautiful," said Jackson, the filmmaker. "It's the last dying art of Mardi Gras."
[ Golden Gater - February 20, 1997 ]