The Lost Tribe of Coney Island

by Claire Prentice

  The air in the street was infused with chemicals, but it was preferable to being stuck inside that stuffy box. Julio wondered when they’d see Truman again. He usually reappeared every week or so. Julio guessed he’d gone to Kentucky to see Sallie. Truman had told him she’d had the baby recently. A girl. Maybe seeing them would improve Truman’s mood.

  The interpreter had noticed that his boss had been drinking more heavily recently. His breath stank of alcohol at all times of the day. The Filipinos had long observed the effect alcohol had on the men in their host country, noting, “the Americans often make themselves mad by things that they [drink]. They [run] about the place shouting or fighting till they [fall] down asleep.”3 Increasingly, Julio tried to stay out of Truman’s way. Though the two men were still cordial, the trust between them had never been the same since the incident in the Dallas bar. Julio had become more outspoken. He had been standing up for the tribespeople and challenging his boss, and Truman resented it.

  The interpreter wrapped his fingers tightly round the small bundle of notes in his pocket. Over the past six months, he had managed to save over four hundred dollars for the tribe from their souvenir money and tips, which he’d so far kept successfully hidden from Truman.4 As the only one in the group who wore an American suit at all times, he had more places to hide it. Julio had asked Maria to cut a small hole in the lining of his jacket and waistcoat. He tucked most of the money away in there, then got Maria to sew the lining up again. You could hardly see the joins. He kept a little cash handy inside his pocket, just enough to buy provisions. As far as he knew, Feloa, Dengay, and some of the other men had been keeping some of their own money too.

  Julio’s fingers were still gripping the money in his pocket as he approached the grocery store and saloon on the corner of North Front and Auction Streets. A weathered sign hanging over the doorway announced that the proprietor was Mrs. Patton. Stepping inside the dark interior, Julio said good morning to the woman behind the counter. The woman, presumably Mrs. Patton, stood silently taking in every inch of him. Julio turned and walked down an aisle. He could feel several sets of eyes boring into his back. Any strangers excited a good deal of interest in this part of town, but Julio’s smart clothes, his hat, and his strange accent made him a real oddity. Picking up a bag of rice, Julio turned around to look for potatoes and found that he was being followed by the woman. Can I help? she asked abruptly. Lifting a sack of potatoes from a pile on the floor, Julio said no, he could find everything he needed. He picked up a bag of dried beans, watched by two men in oil-stained overalls. Ignoring them, Julio grabbed a box of cookies and some candies as a treat for his friends and put them on the counter.

  The woman eyed him suspiciously as she added up the items. There had been a great deal of talk in the store since the previous day about the queer new residents at number 446. Some said they were immigrant laborers, brought in to work on the railroads. According to others, they were prisoners who had recently been released from jail. One of the regulars in the saloon that adjoined the store said he had heard they were a freak show. But, looking at Julio, Mrs. Patton thought he was dressed mighty smart for a circus act. Ignoring all the stares, Julio handed over his money and exited the shop. As he walked back down North Front Street, the young Filipino was trailed by a handful of scruffy-looking children who should have been in school.

  Julio couldn’t face going back to the house yet. As he approached, he noticed the windows were still covered, so he walked on quickly down the street, his arms laden with groceries. He wouldn’t go far, not with Callahan waiting for him, no doubt counting every minute. Julio instinctively followed the noise of the timber yard and stopped outside the gates to watch. The railroad ran alongside it and workers were busy loading freight cars. Julio breathed in the hot, sweet smell of the freshly cut logs. He could have stayed watching the lively scene all morning, but he didn’t want to aggravate Callahan. Besides, he felt a little guilty being out, knowing that Maria and the others were cooped up. He turned back toward the house, their own private prison.

  Julio knocked on the door. While he waited for it to open, he turned around and gazed up at the towers of the Shelby County jail. This wasn’t the first jail he’d seen in America, but he’d never stood so close to one before. He wondered what the inmates were doing inside. Smiling bleakly, he thought their lives might not be all that different from those of their Filipino neighbors. At least the inmates would have work to keep them occupied. Turning back to face the house, Julio noticed someone lifting a corner of the blanket and peering out the window. It was Friday. Julio shook his head at the boy. The last thing they needed was anyone getting caught breaking the rules. Callahan could be easygoing when Truman wasn’t around, but he had a quick temper.

  Callahan opened the door and began grumbling that Julio had been away too long. Ignoring him, Julio hurried into the front room to show the others what he’d bought. He dug his hand into his packages and began handing out cookies. Maria smiled as he slipped a candy into her open palm. She was pleased to see him in bright spirits. He hadn’t been himself lately; he’d been distracted and downhearted. Maria knew he’d been shaken by Truman’s lies. Julio had always regarded Truman as a friend. He’d continued to trust him and defend him, even when the others had grown suspicious of the showman’s motives. It had taken awhile for Julio to admit it to himself, but there was no hiding from the fact that Julio too had been taken for a ride.

  Maria’s first responsibility was to her husband, but she also cared for the rest of the group. She was upset by the thought that they were being cheated and taken advantage of. Equally troubling was the knowledge that the tribe’s faith in Julio had waned over the past year. Maria dearly hoped that this could be remedied. Julio had never given up arguing their case, even if he hadn’t had much evidence of it lately.

  Julio offered Feloa a cookie. The tribal chief smiled and helped himself to two. He had developed a very sweet tooth and his growing belly had become a running joke among his countrymen. The roll of fat around his middle helped hide the top of the cloth belt that Feloa wore under the waistband of his G-string. The women had made it for him in New York. The belt was intended to be decorative. But recently he’d begun slitting it open and putting his money inside, then getting the women to sew it back up. It was getting full and he planned to ask Julio if he knew how they could send some of the money back home.5

  Though Truman demanded that the tribe hand over all their souvenir money, Feloa, Dengay, and Julio were not alone in having hidden some of it from him. The tribespeople no longer dared hide it inside their trunks, for they knew Callahan and Truman had started searching through them. Instead they’d found other, more imaginative places, tucking it under their basket hats, down the fronts of their G-strings, and between their buttocks.

  Five hundred miles away, Truman was checking in to the Burnett House hotel in downtown Cincinnati. Though the showman didn’t know it, there was a peculiar historical irony to his choice of hotel; not only had the Great Emancipator himself, Abraham Lincoln, stayed in the Burnett House on his journey to Washington, DC, to be sworn in as the sixteenth president of the United States, the hotel’s other former guests included Horace Greeley. The antislavery activist would have been horrified by Truman’s treatment of the Igorrotes, though the newspaper Greeley founded, the New York Tribune, had devoted numerous column inches to the story of the Filipinos at Coney Island.

  Truman’s brief stay in Cincinnati was packed with business meetings. He had a most enjoyable dinner with the well-connected editor of Billboard, the paper of record for carnivals, amusement parks, fairs, and vaudeville. The two men got along famously and spent a long night cementing their new friendship over a bottle of Scotch.

  The showman had been traveling a lot that year, arranging bookings, meeting associates, seeing Sallie whenever he could, and keeping tabs on his business partners. Truman visited his Igorrote groups often and always arrived unannounced to collect his share of the takings
. The business was full of scam merchants and Truman had learned to trust no one, not even the friends and family he had employed to help in his Igorrote venture. He always studied the gate receipts and admission figures to make sure nothing was amiss. If there was an opportunity to cheat him, he knew someone would take it.

  A month had passed since Truman had written to McIntyre at the Bureau of Insular Affairs. At the time Truman had promised to send a monthly report on the Igorrotes. Eager to keep the government at arm’s length, Truman decided he would be true to his word and send another report. He was leaving Cincinnati that day and figured he had nothing to lose. His letter wouldn’t reveal anything to McIntyre about the current whereabouts of the tribe. He would postdate it and leave it with the bellboy to mail the following week. By the time McIntyre received it, Truman would be long gone.

  Truman took out his pen and a piece of the hotel’s letterhead stationary, and wrote: “I have the honor to report that there has been no sickness among the people [Igorrotes] with me during the last month. About ten (10) have expressed a desire to return home and will be send [sic] with a competent man as soon as Transportation can be arranged also bodies of Dead. Yours Respectfully TK Hunt.”6

  In fact, Truman hadn’t seen the tribespeople for days. But there was no harm in letting McIntyre think they’d been in Cincinnati with him. Truman assumed they were all fine. If there was anything to report, Callahan, Fox, or one of his other associates would have been in touch. Most of the Igorrotes were in Memphis with Callahan, where they would soon be joined by the others who had been exhibiting in Hot Springs and Little Rock, Arkansas, with Fox. Truman planned to go and check up on them all very soon.

  Back in the house on North Front Street, the Igorrotes thought wistfully of their Coney Island days. If Coney had felt like a prison at times, in hindsight it seemed like liberty itself. Little had they known when they left New York that life was about to get so much worse. At Luna Park they had resented the distortion of their cultural traditions, but now they longed for the days when they were allowed out all day in the fresh air and had work to occupy them. They loathed being idle. With no work to fill their time, they spent their days smoking, chatting, and wondering what might happen to them next. The walls were paper-thin, but the tribespeople were free to speak since Callahan didn’t understand them. They rarely spoke about the money Truman owed them anymore. It seemed pointless, especially since they had learned that even Julio hadn’t been paid his wages. All he got was a small weekly allowance, taken from their earnings, to buy food and tobacco for the group.

  Mealtimes and trips to the privy were the only activities that punctuated the monotony of their wretched existence. As the days passed, they dreamed of the day when the door would be unlocked and they would emerge from the house with its blacked-out windows into the daylight again.

  One afternoon there was a loud knock at the door. Callahan ushered the tribespeople into a front room and told them to keep quiet. Feloa peeled back a corner of the blanket covering the window and saw two policemen standing outside on the front porch.7 Callahan chatted with them for a few minutes. When he came back inside, Julio could see that something was the matter. Callahan called the interpreter aside.

  The jailer across the street, a man named Fleetwood, had complained to the police that the Filipinos had been exposing themselves, running around in their skimpy tribal costumes, and upsetting his wife and daughter.8 From now on, Callahan said irritably, they must all put on their clothes whenever they went outside to use the toilet. Truman had left Callahan in charge and he had no intention of messing up and getting on the wrong side of the boss. Julio thought the jailer was a racist and a fool. His wife and daughter couldn’t possibly see around the back of the house unless they’d come looking. Besides, even then, the most they could have seen was an inch of buttock. If the tribe were on show in the city, Julio imagined the jailer’s wife and daughter would be rushing to see them. But Julio knew better than to share his opinions with Callahan. He was a racist and a fool himself. What’s more, Julio knew that if word of the complaint got back to Truman, the showman would take his anger out on them all. Though it rankled him, it seemed safest to keep quiet and go along with the jailer’s request.

  That day happened to be Friday, the thirteenth of April, 1906. In five days’ time it would be exactly a year since Truman and the Igorrotes had arrived in Vancouver, full of hope and ambition. Julio was the only one who’d been keeping track of the days and he was alone in following the Western calendar, not the ten-month Igorrote version. If Truman had been good to his word, they would all be back in the Philippines by now. Julio wouldn’t mention the significance of the date to Maria. There was no point in making anyone else feel worse than they already did.

  Most of the tribespeople were already asleep when there was another knock at the door. Julio jumped up and ran over to the window. He lifted an edge of the blanket. He could hardly believe his eyes. Outside were Tainan and the rest of the Igorrotes who’d left New Orleans with Fox. Soon the hallway was filled with familiar voices. They’re back, Julio shouted in Bontoc, the others are back! The sleeping Igorrotes stirred and followed Julio out into the hall. The two groups hadn’t seen each other since New Orleans and were overjoyed to be reunited again.

  Tainan began to chatter excitedly, telling them they’d just got off the train from Little Rock. That evening Tainan and the others in Fox’s group entertained their countrymen and women with stories of their travels. The tribespeople laughed as Tainan told them about the large dog Fox had started traveling with, which he pretended was a fierce guard dog. The Igorrotes had had to pose with the mutt for a photographer from a local paper in Little Rock, pretending they were about to skin it alive for one of their feasts. But instead of looking afraid, the dog had kept rolling over to have its belly tickled.

  To celebrate their reunion, the women cooked up a big pot of rice, potatoes, and beans. Afterward they ate what remained of the candies Julio had bought in Mrs. Patton’s store. Some of the younger ones began to talk about what they would do when they went home. Though she knew it was foolish, Maria allowed herself to imagine her own reunion with her family. What a feast they would have. The thought made her happy and sad all at once. Over the past year, Maria and Julio had almost always enjoyed the luxury of having their own place to sleep. But in Memphis they had no choice but to bed down with all the others. Maria missed the privacy, but at the same time she was glad that she and Julio had the opportunity to bond with the others again.

  The tribespeople were eating a meal together the following day when another visitor came to the house. Hardly anyone had visited in the ten days or so that they had been staying there, just the police officers who’d been once, maybe twice, and Fox and the other Igorrote group. The tribespeople crowded round the window of the front room and listened. Tainan lifted the edge of the blanket and peered out, but he couldn’t see anyone. The person at the door seemed to have come inside. Feloa pulled Tainan away from the window. The Igorrotes heard voices in the hallway. A moment or two later the door swung open. Truman walked in, followed by Callahan.9

  Julio could see that Truman was holding a letter of some sort. He seemed stirred up, possibly drunk. Usually their boss made small talk. Not today. Standing in the doorway, Truman held up his hand containing the piece of paper. He said it was a telegram from Washington he had just received. The telegram instructed him to take all of the Igorrotes’ money from them. He offered no explanation as to why. The tribespeople began to protest. Feloa, Dengay, and Julio pushed to the front. Standing before Truman, Feloa said the showman had already taken all their money. They had just a few dollars left between them and it was theirs. Julio translated, his face solemn.

  But the showman persisted. Give it to me, he yelled, holding out his hand. Feloa took another step forward. He could smell the liquor on Truman’s breath. Drawing himself up to his full height, the tribesman shouted one of the few English words he’d learned during his time
in America: No. His face flushed. He began to speak in his own tongue, his words tumbling over each other in his anger. None of us are giving you our money. It is ours. You cannot take it.

  Truman seemed momentarily thrown by their defiance. Suddenly the showman’s face was contorted by a rage he couldn’t control. At Truman’s signal, Callahan grabbed Feloa and pulled off the coat he had draped over his shoulders. Raising his right hand, Truman lunged at the tribal chief. Feloa ducked, thinking Truman was going to hit him again. But instead Truman thrust his hand under his waistband and ripped off the money belt the chief had been hiding there. The others looked on, aghast. They had never seen Feloa look so vulnerable. Taking a knife from his pocket, the showman slit Feloa’s belt open. Silver half-dollars rained down on the floor. There were dozens of them. Truman stared angrily at the tribal chief as if in silent rebuke. The men wanted to do something to help, but they felt powerless. They had never seen Truman like this.

  Delighted to have made an example of their leader, Truman bent down to scoop up the money. The room fell silent while he counted out twenty-eight dollars in coins which Feloa had earned selling rattan rings at five, ten, and fifteen cents each. The knowledge that someone in the park must have helped change the money into half-dollars made Truman madder still.

  The women began to wail. Their high-pitched cries made Truman’s head ache. Shoveling the money into his pockets, Truman yelled at them to stop. A few began to moan, “Why does he take our money, it is our own.”10 The women’s sobs grew louder. Truman leaped to his feet, his arms flailing. He grabbed the nearest woman by the shoulders and began shoving her, screaming at her to get out. He couldn’t stand listening to her for a moment longer. Callahan joined in. Together the two of them pushed the women out and into the next room.

  The showman returned to address the men. He opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted by the sound of the women’s cries coming from the next room. Truman stormed through to find them cowering in a corner and yelled at them to shut up. He slammed the door, and stomped back to where the men were waiting, still clutching the telegram in his hand.