Mardi Gras Indian Tribes Suit Up
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Jobless, no car, and living in a 1 bedroom apartment near New Orleans, Darryl Montana feels as rich as kings surrounded by mounds of lavender ribbon, turkey feathers, and bags of yellow sequins, as he toils to create his costume for this year’s Mardi Gras on February 5th.
Photo Tim J. Mueller / USA Today
“It’s going to be real pretty.” says Montana, stitching yet another tiny yellow sequin. “Nobody’s going to be able to front me. Nobody.”
Darryl Montana has spent nearly a year designing this year’s suit which he calls Circle Dance John Scott. The costume is made up from 300 yards of lavender marabou ribbon, 3 pounds of lavender turkey feathers, 30 yards of lavender satin, and several thousand yellow sequins. He’s already spent 5,000 hours laboring over details including the apron.
Montana is big chief of the Yellow Pocahontas, one of about 60 groups of Mardi Gras Indian tribes. Suiting up in colorful, extravagant costumes and parading through New Orleans streets has been tradition dating back to the mid-1800′s.
Joyce Montana displays 2 of the Mardi Gras suits created by her late husband Allison “Tootie” Montana — known as “Chief of Chiefs.” Photo Tim J. Mueller / USA Today
When it’s completed, the suit will be a 12 foot tall walking art expression. The suits become part of Montana’s livelihood — he rents them out to museums to help pay for future costumes.
Each Indian typically makes their own costume with the aid from family and friends to sew elaborate bead and feather work. A chief’s costume can weigh up to 150 pounds (68 kilos) and cost up to $5,000 US to create. Tradition requires a new costume every year.
At one time, beads and materials were reused from one year’s costume on the next. On St. Joseph’s night the Indians would come out and parade their costumes one last time before taking them apart and burning anything they didn’t reuse. But recently there’s been a market for selling costumes after they’ve been worn for display by museums and private collectors.
The Culture
The tribes aren’t actually Native Indians, but African-Americans who perform the ritual in tribute to the Chickasaw, Choctaw and other American Indian tribes that once sheltered runaway slaves.
Photo by Infrogmation
The tribes include “gangs,” such as the White Eagles, the Wild Magnolias and the White Cloud Hunters, ranging in size from 6 to several dozen members. The tribes are largely independent, but a pair of umbrella organizations loosely coordinate the Uptown Indians and the Downtown Indians.
They spend a full year painstakingly hand stitching the costumes, a technique passed from one generation to the next. They mask twice a year — Mardi Gras Day and “Super Sunday,” the Sunday nearest St. Joseph’s Day, and occasionally for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
Historically, Mardi Gras and Super Sunday were bloody days for Mardi Gras Indians. Members would carry decorated hatchets and straight razors and the mock battles would escalate into violent clashes, said Charles Taylor, chief of the White Cloud Hunters, who has been masking since he was 2 years old. A patrolling member of a rival gang — the ‘spy boy’ — would approach the rival gang telling them to “humbah,” or kneel down.
“You had to kneel down or you’re going to get kicked down or cut up or dead.” said Taylor. “They were dangerous back then.”
The two cultures, both suppressed under French, Spanish and American rule, intermingled and often intermarried, while Indian tribes often sheltered runaway slaves in the swamps surrounding colonial New Orleans, said Brenda Square, director of archives for the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University.
Photo Infrogmation
An appearance in town of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in the 1880′s was said to have drawn considerable attention and increased the interest in masking as Indians for Mardi Gras.
When Caribbean communities began to spring up in New Orleans, their culture was incorporated into the costumes, dances and music made by the ‘Indians.’
During the last century, masking as Indians was also a way for black residents of New Orleans to participate in Mardi Gras, which was mostly relegated to white crowds, said Square. “There is a spiritual connection in that tradition.”
The Mardi Gras Indians play various traditional roles — the ‘chief,’ the ‘spy boy’ who goes out in front of the group, the ‘flag boy’ who bears the tribe’s standard and uses it to communicate between the chief, and the ‘medicine man.’
A tradition of male-only tribes ended in the late 20th century as females began appearing as well.
Like His Father Before Him
Montana’s father Allison “Tootie” Montana was a New Orleans cultural icon and a Mardi Gras Indian leader known as the “Chief of Chiefs.” Two months before Katrina, while he was denouncing police interference of the ritual during a special session of City Council, Tootie Montana was struck down by a heart attack and died on the chamber floors surrounded by supporters and other Indian chiefs in 2005.
Tootie Montana had been instrumental in pacifying the Mardi Gras Indian culture. He urged tribes to challenge each other using costumes rather than weapons, and created some of the most extravagant suits to prove his point, said his wife, Joyce Montana. He was soon known as the best, or prettiest, she said. “He didn’t want people fighting anymore. He taught them how to use their suits.”
Joyce Montana’s workspace includes a picture of her late husband.
Photo Tim J. Mueller / USA Today
Hurricane Katrina consumed many suits across New Orleans. Joyce Montana’s home didn’t flood, and she was able to salvage 9 of Tootie’s suits. The family is trying to raise money for a museum for the suits.
The floods did destroy Darryl Montana’s home and displaced him to nearby Kenner where he lives with his wife Sabrina. The sewing has sapped his social life and kept him from more lucrative teaching jobs in Houston, he said. His fingertips are covered in angry scars from needle cuts.
But come 10 a.m. February 5th, Darryl Montana will put on his costume and leave his mother’s house in New Orleans, suited, pretty and ready for combat.
“My daddy did it for 52 years and never dropped the ball.” Darryl Montana said. “Neither will I.” Tootie began making his own Mardi Gras Indian costumes at the age of 10.
Photo Tim J. Mueller / USA Today
Tootie Montana on Indian Hierarchy
“You’ve got first chief, which is Big Chief; First Queen; you’ve got Second Chief and Second Queen; Third Chief and Third Queen. First, Second, and Third chiefs are supposed to have a queen with them. That’s just tradition. I found them doing that. Your fourth chief is not called fourth chief, he’s the Trail Chief. From there on it’s just Indians, no title.
You also have your Spy Boy, your Flag Boy and your Wild Man. Your Spy Boy is way out front, three blocks in front the chief. The Flag Boy is one block in front so he can see the Spy Boy up ahead and he can wave his flag to let the chief know what is going on.
Today, they don’t do like they used to. Today you’re not going to see any Spy Boy with a pair of binoculars around his neck and a small crown so he can run. Today a Spy Boy looks like a chief and somebody carrying a big old stick. It’s been years since I seen a proper flag. Today everybody has a chief stick. The Wild Man wearing the horns is there to keep the crowd open and to keep it clear. He’s between the Flag Boy and the Chief.”
Hurricane Katrina
The tradition took a major blow after Hurricane Katrina — about 100 of the city’s 300 tribe members were forced outside of New Orleans after the storm, said Jordan Hirsch, executive director of Sweet Home New Orleans, which is striving to restore the city’s culture. Another 100 are displaced within the city, he said.
The City Council created a task force aimed at preserving the tribes last month.
“Right now, a lot of Indians are struggling with basics like shelter and health care.” Hirsch said. “If these struggles prevent them from returning to their neighborhoods and raising families in their community, the meaning of ‘masking’ may be different in a generation, and certain aspects of the traditions may be lost.”
Mardi Gras Indians
Sources: USA Today and Wikipedia
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A very interesting post especially foe me !! These costumes are so pretty !
Thanks Gattina, glad you enjoyed it
It’s no small wonder they’re so elaborate, with up to a full year in the making.
There are some things I always wanted to know that relates to the mystery of New Orleans and Mardi Gras. In my 70 years I have learned that the new age news is something you
don’t need to know and old age news id something that they don’t want you to know.
I youth I was listening to an old timer that was about my age now. . .maybe a little older. He was letting me what he had been told about how New Orleans really became predominately French.
He said that all the Countries in Europe being run by one person or family had a big problem for the need to purge itself of criminals,disagreeables,etc. so they would ship them off to foreign desolate places kinda regulated by the degree of how much trouble they represented to their government.
France had made huge land clam West of the 13 United States. Which later became known as the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. There was much effort to get these undesirables out of this area which included the French castoffs, Indians and Black runaway slaves, etc. . . . .and being that New Orleans was close to the end of the Mississippi River. . . French families told that there was a better place for them were dumped in the Great Lakes never intended to be taken up the St.Lawrence River
and sent home because now they didn’t have a home. Most of them drifted down the Mississippi and wound up in becoming the melting pot culture of New Orleans.
The other thing I would like to know is. . . “Was this the birthplace of the Banjo?.” I tried to buy music for one in the 60′s and was told “There is no music for a banjo, It lives in it’s natural state along the Mississippi River.”
you write is as you go. . . . .”
It’s good to see articles that stress the resilience of the people of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
Nola, I actually know some people that survived the Hurricane Katrina. Things are a long way from being back to where they were, but it’s great to see the wonderful spirit people still have there
Open invitation to all Mardi Gras Indian tribes to be presented at our official preliminary to Miss Crescent City New Orleans Jan 3rd at Tulane University please be a part of our production.
I could never imagine how heavy the costumes are, being several hundred yards of different layers of cloth – and the thousand sequins about to be sewn on the costume. This is not a joke. Going on a parade in this costume is definitely a sacrifice. And Daryl must be really proud of himself sewing the best Mardi Gras costume.
it look so tite i am one so her i come yellow ponchonis