The Lost Tribe of Coney Island

by Claire Prentice

  Truman returned to Dallas after an absence of several days to find the Igorrote Village doing brisk business. He congratulated Marsh, and went to find Julio. The interpreter gave his boss a warm welcome. Though the tribe had had increasingly mixed feelings about Truman since he’d split them into different groups, Julio found his own job was easier when the showman was around. The Igorrotes still respected Truman and did what he said, even though they didn’t like some of his rules. During his absences, they grumbled more about being locked up and being made to eat dog and about aspects of their performance they didn’t like. Truman asked Julio whether there had been any problems while he was away. The expression on the interpreter’s face told him there had. He invited Julio to come and have a drink with him.

  They took their seats in a nearby saloon. Truman ordered two large whiskeys and asked Julio what was the matter. The showman seemed on edge. He usually made small talk and asked after Maria, and some of his favorite Igorrotes, but today there were no pleasantries. The barman brought the drinks. Truman knocked his back and ordered another. The interpreter knew his boss would not be pleased to hear what he had to say but the others had been nagging him to bring up the subject of their wages. Julio had been keeping a tally of their earnings. Truman had promised to pay each of the tribespeople fifteen dollars a month, and twenty-five dollars to Julio. They had been in America for six months and so far they hadn’t seen a penny of their earnings. By Julio’s reckoning, they were due around five thousand dollars, plus another thousand, maybe even two, from the sale of their souvenirs, money that Truman had been collecting. Taking a deep breath, Julio began: Feloa has a large family back home and he is worried about them. He wants to send some of his money to them. Truman said he would see to it that Feloa’s family were given what they needed right away. He would send a telegram to the lieutenant governor in Bontoc.

  What about the rest of us? Julio asked, his voice sounding braver than he felt. Could we be paid some of our wages now? Truman frowned. He wished he could pay them but the government had asked him to keep the money safe until they returned to the Philippines. If they got hold of it now, the government feared the tribespeople would gamble and drink the money away, like some of them did in St. Louis. Julio’s face fell. It was true that a few of the men had been caught gambling, throwing dice, and betting on the numbers for money, but it was only a small group of men. The interpreter felt compelled to stand up for his Filipino brothers and sisters. The Igorrotes are not gamblers and drinkers, said Julio, eyeing his own full glass sitting beside Truman’s empty one.

  Truman was sorry but his hands were tied. He had given his word to the authorities. However, if they needed money for something, they just needed to ask him for it, as Julio did. He was a man of his word. They could trust him.

  Is there anything else? asked the showman. Yes, said Julio. Where does the money the visitors throw into the village go? Julio was sticking his neck out now. Truman slammed his fist down on the bar. His eyes flashed with anger. Julio recoiled. He’d never seen his boss like this. Who wants to know? demanded Truman. Feloa? That other troublemaker Dengay? Or is it you? The showman didn’t wait for an answer. He stormed out of the bar, leaving Julio rummaging in his pockets for coins to pay the barman.

  Julio was shaken up. As he walked back toward the park, he thought of something Maria had mentioned recently. At the close of the St. Louis Fair, the Igorrotes were told by the organizers of the Philippine Reservation that they would receive the balance of their wages when they reached home, amounting to just under four thousand dollars. It was Truman who had accompanied them on the journey, but back in Manila, he claimed he had not been given the money. Julio, who had been paid before they left St. Louis, had no reason to doubt what his boss said. He’d assumed it was a mix-up. Truman might be a ruthless businessman, but he was not a liar. But now, with Truman withholding all of their wages, including his own, Julio couldn’t help but wonder whether the showman might have pocketed the tribe’s money himself. Could he have already spent their Coney Island wages?

  Julio decided not to mention the incident in the saloon to any of the others. Truman had had a lot to drink. Maybe he’d caught him at a bad moment.

  Truman rarely turned a booking down. Sometimes that meant double booking the tribespeople if one fair or amusement park wanted them before their previous engagement was over. As a result they were frequently late in arriving for a new engagement. Truman reasoned that by the time they got there, the fair organizers would be so relieved to see them and the crowds would be so big that all would be forgotten. Besides, he always had the excuse that shepherding a group of savages around America brought inevitable delays.

  The group led by Edwin Fox turned up late at the Georgia State Fair in Macon, hot on the heels of Governor Terrell and his staff, whose train from Atlanta pulled into the train depot an hour ahead of the Filipinos’ special car.11 The excitement surrounding the arrival of the guest of honor was nothing compared to that generated by the first appearance on Georgian soil of the special guests from the Philippines.

  Among the tribe’s visitors at the Fair was Judge James H. Blount, who had lived in the Philippines for six years, where he’d been a judge in one of the Philippines’ highest courts and had helped codify a new legal system for the islands. Like many Americans who had worked there, Judge Blount had returned home with the conviction that America should not hold on to the islands indefinitely, but should give the Filipinos independence. He had become an outspoken member of the Anti-Imperialist League, regularly expounding his views at political gatherings across the country.12

  Describing his travels among the headhunters in northern Luzon, the judge said he never went anywhere without an armed guard. “The Igorrotes are not at heart a malicious people, and regret as much as anybody the necessity of cutting off people’s heads, but they regard it as a part of their duty, for neglect of which they will suffer,” said the judge, adding that he tried to avoid being anywhere near the Igorrotes when a particular native plant with red flowers was in bloom, as this was a time when the tribe believed that by sacrificing a human head and putting it on a pole, they would be rewarded with a good crop.13 Edwin Fox chuckled over this novel piece of native trivia. The tribespeople seemed to inspire people to great heights of storytelling wherever they went.

  Ever since Else had resurfaced in New York, Truman had become increasingly wary of being in the spotlight and frequently made himself scarce when reporters came to the village. The last thing he wanted was for Else to find out where he was and start making trouble again. But one October day a reporter from the Dallas Morning News happened to catch him in ebullient spirits. Truman told the reporter to call on him later in his rooms at the Oriental Hotel. He would give him an exclusive interview.

  Dr. Hunt must be a wealthy man, thought the reporter as he walked up Akard Street toward the handsome redbrick hotel with its distinctive onion-domed turret. The Oriental was the priciest hotel in the city. It was where politicians and other dignitaries stayed when they came to town. That very year, the president himself had spent the night there. Stepping in off the street, the reporter stood silently for a moment as he took in the full splendor of the lobby: the marble floors, the huge exotic plants, the sweeping staircase. The desk informed him that Dr. Hunt was waiting for him in his rooms.

  The showman invited the reporter to make himself at home. Then, handing him a generous tumbler of whiskey, Truman launched into a medley of his favorite stories, without any questions or prodding. The newspaperman sat back in his seat, his notebook resting on his lap. Anyone who knew the showman well was accustomed to the exaggerations and embellishments that made a good Truman Hunt story a great one, but the reporter was a novice who took everything the Igorrote manager said over the next couple of hours at face value, and wrote it down verbatim.

  Truman went back to the beginning, describing his decision, in April 1898, to volunteer with the medical corps at the outbreak of the Spanish-American War
. The showman described sailing to the Philippines with the First Washington Volunteers in the capacity of captain assistant surgeon (in reality he was a far more junior private, then a hospital steward). When the regiment returned to the US in 1899, “Surgeon” Hunt said that he remained in Manila, where he was commissioned “Major Surgeon of the volunteer medical staff” (in reality, he received an honorable discharge from his position as a hospital steward with the army in August 1899 and went off prospecting for gold in the mountains of the northern Philippines).14

  Refilling their glasses, the showman moved on to his arrival in the remote wilds of the Bontoc region, emphasizing his bravery and the dangers he encountered in the home of the ferocious headhunters. Without so much as a guide or translator, he lived in a simple army tent while a frame house was built for him. The Igorrotes were suspicious of him at first, but Truman described how he won them over with his medical skills. “I had a cinch on all the local medical men because I could not only cure various bodily ills, but I could also set a bone and pull a tooth. Neither of the latter feats could be performed by native medicine men and I was, therefore, looked upon as the greatest of them all.

  “I pulled teeth for several poor people of the tribe who were really suffering from toothache and after the first day I was much surprised to have the chief of the tribe and the majority of the head men call at my tent and insist that I should pull out one tooth for each of them, although they were perfectly sound and such as many an American would have given hundreds of dollars to have retained in his head. As a rule, they all preferred that a front tooth be taken out so as to give them what they considered greater distinction.

  “I had occasion frequently to bandage wounded limbs for the natives and in every instance I found that the next day everyone who could contrive to get a strip of anything in the line of cloth or cotton or even of bark wore strips so as to be in fashion.” The reporter laughed and sipped from his glass.

  What do the natives eat, Governor? he asked eagerly.

  “Their food consists principally of rice, sweet potatoes, chicken, and dogs. They raise the latter just as we do hogs, for food. The species of dog preferred by them is the Chinese ‘Chow’ dog, which grows to the size of about eight or ten pounds. They like full-grown dogs best, but at a pinch will eat a month-old pup or ‘Igorrote broiler,’ as it is known to Americans.”

  Asked whether he had ever eaten dogmeat, Truman replied, “Yes, I am not ashamed to own it, I have eaten dog—in fact, was obliged to or starve. It was not a question of the manner of eating it, or the nature of the thing eaten, it was to eat it at once to keep life in.”

  In the nineteen months he spent living alone among the “naked and savage Igorrotes,” Truman said he “lost the reckoning of the days and months” and didn’t see a single white man or woman, nor did he receive so much as “a letter or message from those of his own race or kin whom he had left behind.” This was a barefaced lie—there were at least five other Americans staying in Bontoc while he was there, including his own wife, Else, along with an American teacher, the constabulary lieutenant, and the ethnologist Ernest Jenks and his wife, Maud. But when Truman got going his storytelling knew no bounds.

  As the interview went on, Hunt exaggerated his qualifications and inflated his job titles, describing how Secretary Taft had personally invited him to take up the position of governor of the Lepanto-Bontoc province (in fact he never rose higher than lieutenant governor). He was given the job, Truman explained, on account of his knowledge of the Igorrote language and his skills as a doctor, which meant he was “feared and held in awe by the superstitious natives.”

  Truman was a busy man, but he enjoyed telling his own story and seemed to have all the time in the world. Bontoc province was “about 235 miles from north to south and from 90 to 190 [miles] wide” with a population of six hundred thousand. “I was judge as well as governor of the province and in four years had only two cases of murder among 600,000. This is truely [sic] a record for the best governed American communities,” boasted Truman. In fact he was lieutenant governor for one year, not four. The showman was happy to take all the credit for his peaceful community, adding that he was so well respected by the tribe that he became their spiritual guide as well as their governor and judge. “The object of my going there was to establish civil government in a crude form—something that would not be contrary to the best that was in their primitive form of tribunal government,” said Truman. “Kindness and not force was the underlying principle of my regime. I was healer of their bodies, father confessor of all their woes and troubles and the final arbiter in all disputed questions. They knew I was perfectly disinterested in every way, as I received nothing for my services, and were also fully convinced that I only sought their good. The result of it all was that I had a well satisfied, contented and orderly lot of subjects.”

  The Igorrotes’ manager said he was under a ten-thousand-dollar bond15 to the US government to care for the tribe; to feed, clothe, and house them; and to return them to their own country at the end of their contracts, even in the event of death. He mentioned the death of one of the Igorrote men from pneumonia in Seattle, and the reporter could’ve sworn he saw tears in his eyes. He regarded all the Igorrotes as his friends—no, scratch that, they are like family, he said. The reporter amended his notes. Truman smiled, lifting his glass to his lips.

  The reporter had heard that the tribe were not Christians and asked the showman to tell him about their beliefs. “Their religion is Pagan. They believe in a great Spirit behind the sun whom they worship at all times. They also venerate their male ancestors. A woman is not allowed to participate in this worship; the men do it for her, either the head of the family or the oldest boy. In this respect they remind one of the primitive Japanese in their religious forms of worship.”

  If Truman’s earlier tone was self-congratulatory, he also had plenty of praise left over for the tribe. He described the Igorrotes’ defining characteristic as their inherent honesty: “Honesty is . . . held in high esteem by them. I have never known a case of theft. True, this may result, as you say, because they have little in their possession to steal; but they have property that they consider valuable, although we might not think so according to our notions of value. I have had native Igorrotes carry United States Government money to the amount of several thousand dollars for over 200 miles, and not a single cent was missing.”

  Next, Truman launched into a spirited but largely inaccurate account of Igorrote marriage customs. “The marriage tie is held strictly sacred. Boys and girls are all paired off by their fathers as soon as they are born, similar to the Chinese custom. When the girl reaches the age of 12 or 14, and the boy 14 or 16, they are married. The nuptial ceremony consists of feasting and dancing and prayers offered by the oldest man in the village or community, irrespective of his station. Chastity is rigorously enforced under penalty of death. The two murders that I referred to previously were the result of infidelity and both the man and the woman were speared to death.”

  Do you feel the Igorrotes can learn from their American rulers? asked the reporter. Truman was uncharacteristically outspoken in his answer, perhaps due to the speed with which he had been swigging from his glass. “If the present system of educating the natives and preparing them for our form of government is followed and persisted in, there is not the slightest doubt in my mind that in twenty years they will be among our most loyal citizens,” he said. He generously praised the former governor-general of the Philippines: “Governor Taft grasped the situation in a masterly way at the outset in inaugurating a simple and primitive form of government that was immediately accepted by them. This form was outlined so as not to conflict with anything that was good in their pagan form of government, while it aimed at the extermination of all that was bad.”

  It was a bravura performance. The reporter had enough material to fill the entire newspaper. Intriguingly, Truman ended his interview by telling the reporter that in 1898 he was known as Dr. G. T.
Hunt and was living in the Washington town of Spokane Falls, after graduating from Bellevue Hospital College, New York, in 1889. Truman offered no further explanation as to why he, whose parents named him Truman Knight Hunt, might once have gone by the initials G. T. Hunt. Truman had obtained his MD at the University of Iowa, not in New York, and Bellevue did not have any student named Truman K. Hunt or G. T. Hunt enrolled there in the late 1880s. Was it a simple mistake on the part of the reporter? It seemed a careless and unlikely mistake. Odder still, the same information was published twice, in October and November, in two separate stories in two different Texas newspapers.16 If the inaccuracies in the first article were the fault of the reporter, then why had Truman, who loved to read his own publicity, not corrected them before the second article was published? Was Truman simply drunk and lying for the sake of it? Or had he begun deliberately reinventing himself, in an attempt to make it impossible for his past to catch up with him again?

  Previously Truman’s inventions had been joyous exaggerations designed to snare the interest of the public and the press. Now his own story was slipping through his fingers like quicksilver. Within a matter of days, he would be forced to explain exactly who he was and what he had promised the Igorrotes.

  15

  Fighting for Control

  TAMPA, NOVEMBER 29, 1905

  Telegram from H. E. Deputy to the War Department

  IT WAS A pleasant winter’s day with temperatures in the low seventies when the case of Hunt v. Moody was called before Court Commissioner Larimore in Tampa, Florida. The showman looked polished in a three-piece suit he had had made in Dallas, along with a new pair of fine leather shoes. He stared across the room at Charles Moody, the man who had put up the money to get the Igorrotes to America. Moody glowered back at him. The two men were the only people present who knew the precise details of the arrangement between them.