In 1870, “Chinese” was the first time an Asian category for race was included in the U.S decennial census. By 1890, “Japanese” was the second. It was not until the 1910 census that other Asian categories were identified as “Filipino,” “Hindu” (used incorrectly for Indian Americans), and “Korean.” That year, 160 Filipinos lived in the U.S. Two of them reported Missouri residency.1 It had been eight years since the end of the 1899-1902 Philippine-American war, a conflict prompted by Spain’s loss of the 1898 Spanish-American war and cede of Philippine colonial occupation to the United States. Fearing foreign rule and a loss of national sovereignty, revolutionary leader Emilio Aguinaldo and thousands of other Filipinos rose up in resistance, culminating in over 4,200 American deaths, 20,000 Filipino deaths, and 200,000 Filipino civilian deaths. Eighteen years after, in 1920, the numbers of Filipino Americans skyrocketed to 5,603 Filipinos, 33 of whom lived in Missouri1.
But immigrants seeking refuge in the country responsible for their humanitarian crisis is not new. Particularly for America. What was new, however, was the largest human zoo in the world modeled in our own backyard2, two years after the Philippine-American war ended. The 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition whose girth spanned 1,272 acres. 615 acres of it, privately owned by Washington University3. Better known as the 1904 St. Louis World Fair whose lighter themed trivia like the popularization of ice cream cones, peanut butter, puffed rice, and Jell-O overshadowed its flagrant morbid main attraction: human subjects displayed in intentionally degraded, animalistic settings.
For $19.6 million dollars, people from 22 countries were shipped, put on trains, or otherwise brought to St. Louis as “uncivilized” props for a larger publicized spectacle.3 Most notably, Pygmies from Congo, Sinhalese from Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon), Ifugao from the Philippines (Igorot or “the Mountain People” native to the Cordillera Mountain Range), Tlingit tribe of Southeast Alaska, Ainu (indigenous peoples from Japan), Patagonians (or Tehuelche, natives from Patagonia, South America), and Native Americans (in particular, Mary Knight Benson, a Pomo basket weaver and the Ndendahe Apache Chief, Geronimo).
Some participants were promised money; Truman Hunt, an American veteran of the Philippine-American war, promised recruits $15/month but was later convicted and sentenced to 11 months and 20 days for defrauding and robbing Igorots.4 Others, like Ota Benga, were bought from slavery then immediately trafficked to the United States for display.
Some, to my stupefaction, came in style.
On March 7, 1904, one month before the Fair opened, an issue of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch declared, “First Picture of Prince Pu Lun Printed in U.S.” Below it, a grainy black and white illustration of his royal visage. Below that, the subtitle, “World’s Fair Commissioner. Scion of China’s Noblest Blood Hastens to Fair.” The column’s text detailing, in practically scintillating tones, “The exhibit will include something of everything produced or manufactured in the empire, together with illustrations of the methods by which it is developed. Life sized figures will be shown to illustrate the dresses and costumes worn in the different parts of China, in court circles and on the streets and in every walk of Chinese life. There will be models and miniatures of everything prominently characteristic of Chinese life.”5 Prince Pu lun, pictured at the Fair’s opening ceremony. At a Chinese restaurant (whose owner, Moy Kee, was dubbed “Chinese mayor” of Indianapolis). Touring Purdue University. And visiting the Columbia Club, a private social club founded in 1889.
It was the nephew of the Emperor of China himself, an imperial representative of the Qing dynasty who traveled to the U.S in an effort to expose China’s culturally rich practices and dispel xenophobic fears two decades after the Chinese Exclusion Act. The cost of that goal, a hefty $500,000 that China spent building and prepping the “Chinese Pavilion” display6.
But besides the impressive pagoda built to resemble a summer palace and Prince Pu Lun’s extravagant traveling accouterments (that the same St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper column lists as “18 persons, including secretaries, interpreters, and servants), one thing stands out to me7.
His story was notably different. For one, he lived in a palace. And while “Chinese Performers” were mentioned, their title implies prerogative. Their trip back to China, guaranteed. Choices that were not promised to other Fair inhabitants, let alone their South Asian counterparts populating more primitive exhibits.
And though, of course, his nobility played a large part in bearing his unique honorary treatment, why was it that his country was offered the opportunity to represent themselves when others were simply annexed, locals taken for profit? Was it due to the old familiar tune of imperialist attitude? Colonial superiority?
And who was there to tell their stories?
Disturbed, I visited Forest Park with my friend, Sam.
All was quiet.
It was 9am, and much of the land across from Kaldi’s on the corner of De Mun Ave and Northwood Ave was still. Unlike the aforementioned business. The air, crisp. Motley ochre leaves curled at the edges like parchment paper, prickling the top layer of grass Sam and I strolled through. The only sound, the audible crunch of fall foliage under foot.
We sat on a bench. Consulted Google Maps.
The Philippine Village Historical Site was somewhere within our vicinity. Or so it seemed. Even if we had passed it, we should have seen it from our perch.
Then, we consulted the map on Janna Añonuevo Langholz’s website. A Filipino American interdisciplinary writer and researcher based in St. Louis, with Igorot ancestry, who spent years unearthing and documenting the history behind the 1904 St. Louis World Fair, Janna is the caretaker for the Philippine Village Historical Site we soon realized was yet to be permanently commemorated by a sign (though purportedly, installation has been in process since its approval in July 2023)8.
We continued our walk.
After sharing my research and Janna’s website, Sam shared with me that she was of mixed Filipino heritage. I, mixed Chinese heritage. The week prior, I had reached out to Janna for a guided walking tour (which she offers on her site) but failing that, we decided to explore the area anyway.
Bright sunlight filtered through, deepening the patches of green and flaxen leaves rustling from tree branches. The ground opened down in a wide furrow then sloped upward.
Out of all the odd things to come out of the last century, it was hard to imagine Forest Park’s evolution from recreational to ghoulish circus, then pastoral. Certainly, the people held here for the Fair would have guessed differently for the park’s future. Its size, 26 acres short of what it used to span when it opened in 1876 but still considerably expansive, whose optimistic slogan (digitally advertised on the City of St. Louis webpage), “Located in the heart of the city, it is the heart of our city.”
Forest Park, named after its “virgin forest land,” hosting those forced, either by coercion or false promises of financial reward, to touch its soil.
“It’s strange to walk here and know that years ago…,” I did not finish but Sam nodded.
But walking with her, looking around, feeling a bit befuddled, I did not know exactly what I meant. There was something missing. Or rather, something I could not verbalize but anticipated all the same, some cryptic yet self-evident profound sign whose significance, when visiting historically important sites, I came to expect.
Where were the scuff marks of a little over a thousand Filipinos? Where were their homes? What was the meaning behind those lots, vacated from the Fair, whose business owners now profited from caffeinated products produced by a roastery in Midtown St. Louis, whose title pays homage to an Ethiopian folktale, Kaldi the Goat Herder of the ninth century who noticed first, serendipitously, his goats eating berries and acting, afterwards, “alert” and “lively.”9
In researching the Fair, I realized I bit off more than I could chew. The sheer proliferation of human zoos between the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth century made it difficult to even track. Let alone the countless roadside shows and circus attractions that exploited folks for the same goal with less grander backdrops.
But to list just a few: the 1877-1912 Jardin d’Acclimatation. The 1883 International Colonial and Export Exhibition. The 1887 Palacio de Cristal del Retiro. The 1889 Parisian World Fair. The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. The 1897 Brussels International Exhibition. The 1907 Jardin d’Agronomie Tropicale. 1904 Colonial Exhibition of Semarang. Among many others.
Birthed by the New Imperialist Era where Western European nations seized much of Africa and Asia, these “ethnological exhibitions” were a global phenomenon across at least 19 countries 10, 11. They were prodigious affairs that intentionally juxtaposed select members of a native populace with a larger colonial audience to “scientifically” legitimize violent land grabs, access to raw materials, settler territory, and subjugation. The likes of which an estimated 1.5 billion visitors worldwide celebrated, including major metropolitan capitals like London, Paris, Brussels, Madrid, and Amsterdam. Germany alone boasted 400 Völkerschauen. Some even became testing grounds for human samples as eugenists stole from the cadavers of those who populated the Fairs, brains, skulls, and other parts of their remains for “anthropological study.”12
“I mean,” I tried again, pointing to the Kaldis where we began our excursion, “I can’t imagine… it all looks so pristine but a century ago, people were held here like animals and there’s no sign of it! Just grass.”
My friend nodded again. “But there’s got to be some landmarks left from the Fair. A building or two left?” Her baby, giving up science, ceased playing with the guardrail and simply looked out at the trees as we passed.
I did, indeed, remember reading about a few buildings left from the Fair, the St. Louis Art Museum, for one. The Louis IX bronze statue in front of it paid by Fair proceeds in 19053. But we were nowhere near it.
After brief deliberation, we crested the hill, and headed toward what we thought was a church. A slight breeze ruffled the grass. Only when we got near did we realize it was a seminary. We scanned our surroundings. The map’s topography was hard to decipher and the Fair’s map included “Arrowhead Lake,” a manmade body of water that was nowhere to be found today.
Later, on my laptop, I came across a digital mapping project by Kathryn Stovall, overlaying current maps with archival maps of the St. Louis World Fair grounds.13 Checking the St. Louis Public Library’s map collection, I realized that the Fair map was rotated 180 degrees.14 My friend and I had, in fact, walked the same block where the “Igorot Village” was held; now a popular stretch of one cobblestone street, cafe, and beauty shop.
A year after the St. Louis World Fair opened, another Igorot Village exhibit opened in Coney Island. A year after that, Ota Benga was displayed in the “monkey cage” of the Bronx Zoo.15
And in a final act of dedication, Janna wrote in 2023, “I realized it was no longer a performance and that 1904 had merged with the present day when my trauma was appropriated by Washington Post reporters Claire Healy and Nicole Dungca looking to sell a story.”16
Bereft of any clue, we left the Park. It felt foolish traipsing around Forest Park for a sign of terrible wrongdoing. The past is transitory. Ever fluid. A creation whose shadow is self-destruction. And we were too late. But at that moment, with nothing but the bright sun and an old map, I did not know what else to do. And I was glad we came. Lack of enlightenment notwithstanding.
We had walked where they walked. Breathed where they breathed.
Perhaps that was enough.
And as we walked back to our cars, our small side of Forest Park awash with the first points of midday heat, in the distance, cars rushing past, birds chirping, nestled in small pockets of tree branch, the morning sliding, like all other mornings, slowly into noon, all I could see was tranquility. A heavy serenity. The lead straps of a violent memory sloughed off come first winter like a beast whose mottled skin lay desiccated, its dry vestiges crackling, chittering under a shroud of grass.
• • •
Citations:
1. Gibson, C., & Jung, K. (2002, September). Historical Census Statistics on Population Totals by Race, 1790 to 1990, and by Hispanic Origin, 1970-1990, for the United States, Regions, Divisions, and States. Population Division. https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-papers/2002/demo/POP-twps0056.pdf
2. Johnson, W. (2020, April 14). The largest human zoo in world history: Walter Johnson. Lapham’s Quarterly. https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/largest-human-zoo-world-history
3. Louis MO-GOV. (n.d.). When the world came to St. Louis . . . The History of Forest Park. https://www.stlouis-mo.gov/archive/history-forest-park/fair.html
4. Prill-Brett, J. (2021, June 2). Voices from the other side: Impressions from some Igorot Participants in U.S. cultural exhibitions in the early 1900s. Voices from the Other Side: Impressions from Some Igorot Participants in U.S. Cultural Exhibitions in the Early 1900s. https://thecordillerareview.upb.edu.ph/abstract/voices-from-the-other-side-impressions-from-some-igorot-participants-in-u-s-cultural-exhibitions-in-the-early-1900s/
5. FIRST PICTURE OF PRINCE PU LUN PRINTED IN U. S.: SCION OF CHINA’S NOBLEST BLOOD HASTENS TO FAIR EXHIBITS OF CELESTIAL EMPIRE ARE TO EXCEED ANYTHING EVER UNDERTAKEN BY THAT COUNTRY. ARRIVE EARLY IN APRIL LARGE SUITE OF SECRETARIES, INTERPRETERS AND SERVANTS ACCOMPANY IMPERIAL COMMISSIONER. (1904, Mar 07). Louis Post – Dispatch (1879-1922)Retrieved from https://login.slcl.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/first-picture-prince-pu-lun-printed-u-s/docview/579682005/se-2
6. Kloppe, A. (2023, December 4). China at the Fair. Here’s History. https://hereshistorypodcast.libsyn.com/china-at-the-fair-version-2-0
7. Imperial Commission, L. P. E. (1904) China: catalogue of the collection of Chinese exhibits at the Louisiana purchase exposition, St. Louis. [St. Louis: Shallcross print] [Pdf] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/05032928/.
8. Langholz, J. A. (2023a, December 23). The names of the 17 Filipinos and indigenous peoples who died in St. Louis at the 1904 World’s fair. Janna Añonuevo Langholz. https://jannalangholz.wordpress.com/2022/12/26/17-worlds-fair-deaths/
9. Hue, V. (2023, October 28). The Story of Kaldi the Goat Herder: How an Ethiopian Legend Shaped the World’s Coffee Culture. The Coffee Guru. https://thecoffeeguru.net/the-story-of-kaldi-the-goat-herder-how-an-ethiopian-legend-shaped-the-worlds-coffee-culture/
10. Jarpa, V. (2023). Human zoo. Nome. https://nomegallery.com/exhibitions/human-zoo/
11. Nayeri, F. (2021a, December 29). Remembering the racist history of “human zoos.” Art & Design. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/29/arts/design/human-zoos-africa-museum.html
12. Montgomery, R. L., & Chien, J. (2006). Aleš Hrdlička papers. National Anthropological Archives. https://doi.org/NAA. 1974-31
13. Stovall, K. (2021, May 4). 1904 world’s fair: Then and now. ArcGIS StoryMaps. https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/32343a0f5f3f42c7b91b9fcca3f0d770
14. Louisiana Purchase Exposition. (1904). Cultural landscapes: Maps of Missouri. Landscapes | Maps of Missouri. https://maps.slpl.org/collections/cultural-landscapes.html
15. Qiu, L. (2014, October 28). Tribal Headhunters on Coney Island? Author revisits disturbing American Tale. Tribal Headhunters on Coney Island? Author Revisits Disturbing American Tale. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/141027-human-zoo-book-philippines-headhunters-coney-island
16. Langholz, J. A. (2024, September). Today in 1904, 1904 – 2024. Janna Añonuevo, Langholz. https://www.jannalangholz.com/today-in-1904
