Looking around the cramped, bare interior of the barracks, Maria experienced a deep longing for home. The damp Chicago air pricked her skin, making her yearn for the day when she would again be able to roam free and toil in the rice fields with the sun beating down on her back. She wanted to feel her muscles ache after a day of hard physical labor. Despite her husband’s presence, Maria felt lonely. As the only woman left, she would miss the camaraderie she felt with Daipan and the other women. They had confided in each other and kept each other’s spirits up. She desperately missed the children, whose innocence and playfulness had been a source of comfort during the darkest moments. Maria blinked back tears and turned her head so no one would see.
Tainan, who was standing at the window, shouted to the others to come and watch the soldiers practicing their drills. Maria saw something of her husband in the boy. He was smart, good-natured, and eager to learn, though not as serious as Julio. She envied Tainan’s resilience. He had known pain in his short life but he had been blessed with a carefree attitude. As an orphan he was concerned not with when he was going home to see his family, but with his new life. Maria knew from chatting to the boy that he was full of excitement about going to an American school. When he had completed his education, he would be expected to take up a civil service job in the Philippines. The post would come with a good wage, but Tainan secretly dreamed of staying on in America.
Barker told Julio that they must stay inside the barracks at all times. They would be provided with three hot meals a day. Did they have everything they needed? The interpreter nodded. There was one other matter Barker wished to discuss with them. For some time now he had been trying to ascertain the whereabouts of the bodies of the two Igorrotes who had died in America. He had appealed to Truman for information, but the showman had callously remained silent on the subject. Barker had recently learned that the Bonney-Watson funeral directors in Seattle were holding Falino’s embalmed body in storage and were on the verge of interring it, having not heard a word from Truman since the showman had left the body in their care seventeen months previously. Meanwhile, the undertaker in New Orleans, Thomas Lynch, had buried Pucuan’s body at his own expense after failing to hear from Truman. Sadly, thought Barker, it was typical of Truman that a perfect stranger had treated the dead Igorrote with more compassion than him. Barker’s face was solemn as he addressed the Filipinos: What would you like us to do with the bodies? They could be shipped to the Philippines for burial in Bontoc, or left where they were and, in the case of Falino, buried in Seattle. Feloa, Dengay, and Julio began to speak among themselves. Turning to Barker, Julio said they would like the government to leave the bodies where they were; they should not be disturbed. Falino should be buried. From the way they spoke, it was clear the tribespeople did not like the idea of disinterring the dead.8 Barker nodded and turned to leave.
When are we going home? Feloa asked. He had asked the same question often and with increasing urgency in recent weeks. Barker felt a good deal of sympathy for Feloa and the others. They had been promised repeatedly that they were on the verge of being sent home and here they were again, in yet another new place, with a trip to Memphis on the horizon.
The trials in Memphis would, he hoped, be called soon and wrapped up quickly, said Barker. If the court cases went to plan, the government hoped to be able to send them home within the month. Feloa, Dengay, and Julio had been unwavering in their determination to see Truman punished. They had also been adamant that they would not leave America without their wages. But with the others gone, Barker sensed that their resolve was beginning to weaken.
Feloa, Dengay, and Julio were vital to the prosecution. If they left America, the cases against Truman would collapse. Barker knew that he could use threats, tell the tribespeople that the government would refuse to pay for their return transport if they did not stay on to see the prosecution through to the end, but he had no desire to be so heavy-handed. These people had suffered enough. It was in everybody’s interests to treat them kindly. Feloa and Dengay were worried about their families, who they feared had run out of food by now. Barker told them he would ask the bureau to make arrangements with the lieutenant governor of Bontoc to provide them with sufficient provisions to tide them over until Feloa and Dengay returned.9
Julio had his own reason for not wanting to be delayed in America too long. He was considering an offer from Schneidewind to become his assistant. From what Barker understood, Schneidewind had made Antero the same offer. The American wanted the two of them to help him gather another, bigger group of Igorrotes and to bring them to America in time for the next show season. The longer Julio was in America, the more likely it was that Schneidewind would ask someone else to take his place. Barker knew Julio was ambitious, but he was surprised the interpreter wanted to have anything more to do with the showmen.
Back in his hotel, the government agent sat in the dining room. He had just finished eating and now turned his attention to composing a report for the bureau. Reflecting that “the situation of these poor homesick people is one of extreme hardship,” Barker suggested that if Truman could not be brought to trial within thirty days, the Filipinos should be put out of their misery and sent home.10
In a bleak reference to Schneidewind’s plans to bring another exhibition group over the following year, Barker said the five witnesses at Fort Sheridan “will all probably be here again next spring anyway.”11 Other enterprising men would undoubtedly follow in Truman and Schneidewind’s footsteps, spurred on by tales of the riches the showmen had earned. And despite the fact that the American dream had turned sour for Truman’s group, Barker imagined that many more Igorrotes would be lured across the Pacific. After all, it was human nature to yearn for adventure and opportunity. Unless the government put a stop to it, Barker predicted that the Igorrote trade would run and run.
29
A Gentleman Criminal
SHELBY COUNTY JAIL, MEMPHIS, LATE OCTOBER 1906
The Shelby County Courthouse in Memphis, c. 1906
TRUMAN SAT ON the edge of his bed and eyed the dirty rim of the toilet bowl. A fly emerged from inside and flew over to the tiny slit that passed for a window. The showman got up and went over to look out. He stared at the twelve-foot-high brick wall topped with iron spikes that enclosed the jail. If he craned his neck he could just about see the little frame house on the other side of North Front Street where the Igorrotes had stayed the last time they were in Memphis. The irony that he was sitting in a cell just across the street from where he had kept the Igorrotes as virtual prisoners was wasted on Truman. Instead he was filled with a raging sense of injustice. He had offered the Filipinos an escape from their filthy mountain hovels, and then they had turned on him. Once he had viewed the tribespeople as guileless, playful children. Now he saw them as ungrateful savages.
He had befriended many of the guards, and the police officers, who were frequent visitors. They didn’t get too many “gentleman criminals” staying with them and “the doc” was treated well.1 The guards lapped up his stories of his exploits in the Philippines and roared for more when he described his life as a traveling showman, touring the country with a group of nearly naked savages. The one about the Filipinos nearly being lynched by an angry mob after they went skinny-dipping in Atlantic City always went down well. So too did his description of a woman fainting and almost falling into the cooking pot at one of their dog feasts.
The man running the jail was Mr. Fleetwood, the very one who had complained to the police about the Igorrotes upsetting his wife and daughter by running around with no clothes on when they were staying across the road. Truman and Fleetwood had laughed after they made the connection. With the jailer on his side, Truman had been spared the inconvenience of having to share his cell. That alone made it worth putting up with Fleetwood’s long-winded stories.
To Truman’s annoyance, Antoinette Funk had been unable or unwilling to travel to Memphis to represent him (his outstanding bills might have been a factor). Wit
h his fortune spent, the showman’s best hope of securing an attorney lay with the Elks. He had been a regular visitor to the lodge on his two previous visits to Memphis and had gotten to know many of its influential members well.
Truman decided to write to the Memphis Elks Lodge appealing for help. His letter was masterly; Truman Hunt, the medical doctor and Spanish-American War veteran, had fallen on hard times, and through a misunderstanding, he had wound up in jail. Might his brother Elks be able to help clear the matter up? One of the Memphis lodge leaders had come to call on him in jail and had insisted that the Elks would provide him with legal representation. The showman could hardly have wished for more. Not only did the lodge leader make good on his promise, the attorney the Elks provided was one of the best in the city and incredibly well connected to boot. Truman had always liked Memphis and now it was smiling on him.
The showman faced two separate larceny charges in the city, for stealing seventeen dollars (worth around four hundred and fifty dollars today) from Dengay and twenty-eight dollars (worth around seven hundred and forty dollars today) from Feloa. Truman’s newly appointed attorney, David Frayser, visited him in his cell to prepare for their day in court. Frayser stood just five feet tall and weighed one hundred and thirty pounds, but despite his diminutive proportions, he was famed among his peers for his combative style and considerable presence. His previous career as a newspaperman had taught Frayser a valuable lesson in the art of storytelling, which he displayed to full effect in his courtroom appearances.
Frayser listened as Truman described his long relationship with the Igorrotes and the accusations he expected them to make against him. When the showman mentioned that the tribespeople were pagans, Frayser closed his eyes and stroked his mustache, imagining the compelling narrative he would weave before the judge and jury. Before he left Truman’s cell, Frayser reassured his new client that their case was as good as won.
On Friday, November 2, 1906, Barker and Blum came face-to-face with Frayser for the first time. The setting was Shelby County courthouse, formerly a smart hotel named the Overton that had once played host to the Grand Duke Alexis of Russia. The room was filled with potential jurors who were waiting to find out if they would be selected for the State of Tennessee v. Truman Hunt, which would try Truman for the theft of seventeen dollars from Dengay.
Barker eyed Frayser. He was a small, wiry man, balding and with sharp features. But when Truman’s attorney got up to speak, Barker observed that everyone in the room listened. He had a deliberate, direct way of speaking and a penetrating gaze that would be enough to make the toughest of witnesses squirm like a bug on a pin. Clutching his lapels, he fixed the first potential juryman with a beady eye and asked, do you believe in God? Yes, sir, stammered the man. Did you attend church on Sunday? Frayser continued. His manner of questioning would have been enough to send any man of lapsed faith running for the pews.2 When Frayser quizzed one particularly wretched-looking farmhand about the last time he had attended church, Blum thought he saw a tear of remorse in the young man’s eye as he confessed it had been some time. Frayser dismissed the man as unsuitable to be on the jury. Blum raised an eyebrow. It wasn’t hard to work out what Frayser’s game plan was: no doubt with Truman’s encouragement, he was going to play up the Igorrotes’ paganism and their nonbelief in the Bible in order to undermine their testimony.
If religion was Frayser’s trump card, then Blum knew the prosecution had another potential weakness to overcome. In a city “where the color line is drawn more strictly than perhaps anywhere else in the United States”3 Blum fully expected that the Igorrotes would encounter a degree of racial prejudice. When it was his turn to speak, Blum got slowly to his feet. He tipped the scales at two hundred and fifty pounds and what he lacked in speed he more than made up for in intellect and determination.
Blum questioned the potential jurors and found three men who expressed a bias so strongly in favor of a white man over anyone else that he felt compelled to dismiss them as unsuitable.4 This would be a difficult case to win, but, after a lifetime prosecuting crooks and scoundrels in Chicago, Blum wasn’t easily intimidated. One of the many lessons he had learned during his long career in the law was that subtlety was often more effective than force.
As Barker and Blum predicted, the jury thus selected was “composed almost entirely of God-fearing men of the farming class.”5 Blum couldn’t resist leaning over to Barker and remarking that the trial should open not with swearing on the Bible but with a prayer.6 The two men exchanged a wry smile. With the jury selected, the trial was set to begin the following Monday, November 5, 1906, before Judge John Moss.
Blum was characteristically relaxed but Barker felt anxious. The day’s events did not augur well. How could a collection of Tennessee farmers, rural men of limited education who’d never left their home state, empathize with the plight of a group of Filipino tribespeople? Would an all-white, all-Christian jury ever convict a white, professional, supposedly Christian man based on the testimony of dark-skinned pagan savages?
The people of Memphis knew the Igorrotes well. They had been popular visitors when they had appeared at the city’s East End Park a year earlier. On the day of the trial, the street outside the Shelby County court took on a festive atmosphere as spectators began arriving early in the hope of catching a glimpse of the tribespeople. To their disappointment, the tattoos, G-strings, and bare flesh they’d come to see had been covered up by long skirts and sober suits, the result of yet another shopping expedition that Barker had undertaken—himself this time—on their behalf. Despite their dismay over the Igorrotes’ clothes, the public were thrilled to see the Filipinos and gathered around to inspect them in their new garb.
It took several minutes for Barker and the five witnesses to get through the crowds. Inside the court building, Barker gathered the Filipinos for a pep talk. He knew that they would be judged not just on what they said, but also on their appearance. It was a fact that, Julio aside, the tribespeople found non-native clothes uncomfortable and, as they stood in the corridor, he pleaded with them not to scratch and fidget in court.
Conscious that Frayser would try to make religion an issue, Blum and Barker had quizzed each of the Filipinos beforehand on their beliefs. After doing so, they concluded that “while not by any means orthodox from a Christian’s point of view, [the Igorrotes] have decided religious doctrines. They believe in one God, who is omniscient and omnipotent; in a purgatory or Heaven where the wicked will suffer for their misdeeds on earth and the good will enjoy eternal ‘leisure.’ ”7 This will suffice, thought Barker, acknowledging that he couldn’t hope to change the tribespeople’s religious beliefs in a matter of hours. To Barker’s surprise, Julio, who described himself as Christian, and his wife, Maria, were less religious than the others. Their Christianity appeared “to be confined to a knowledge of the fact that a man by the name of Jesus Christ once lived.”8
A voice announced that the State of Tennessee v. Truman Hunt was up next. Barker gave the tribespeople one last piece of advice before they entered the courtroom. Truman and his attorney might try to put them off, but they must not be intimidated. They just needed to tell the truth.
Frayser had sent a barber to Truman’s jail cell that morning, along with a new suit, and the showman looked characteristically immaculate, though thinner and lined. Barker reflected that his adversary looked as full of himself as ever. How he hoped the jury would be able to see through his posturing and lies.
Dengay was the first of the tribespeople to be called to the stand. Truman was in court to answer the charge that he had stolen seventeen dollars from him, and what Dengay said that day would be crucial. Barker and Blum had done their best to prepare him, but even they had to concede that the language and cultural barriers would be huge hurdles to overcome. The Igorrotes were simple mountain people who described things exactly as they saw them, without emphasis or embellishment, and their matter-of-fact way of speaking could make it difficult to distinguish betwee
n what was trivial and what was important.
Dengay looked solemn as he stood before Judge Moss and placed his hand on the Bible. The Igorrote looked down at the battered leather-bound book under his palm and ran the tips of his fingers over the cover. American customs could be so strange. In Bontoc a man could be trusted to tell the truth. Crime was almost unheard of, but in the rare event that someone in the village was suspected of stealing or of committing an assault, adultery, or even murder, then the suspects would be gathered together and made to chew a mouthful of uncooked rice. When the rice was thoroughly masticated, each person would be told to spit it out onto a dish. Each sample was then inspected. The person whose rice was the driest would be considered guilty, for the tribespeople believed the guilty one would be the most nervous during the “trial,” thus interfering with normal saliva flow and giving them a dry mouth.9 Dengay thought how much simpler it would be if they could perform this trial on Truman. But the showman was so wicked and unrepentant, he would probably pass the test.
With Julio standing next to him, translating, Dengay swore to tell the truth. Before he could finish, Frayser leaped to his feet. How, wondered Truman’s attorney aloud, could Dengay’s testimony be trusted, given that he didn’t believe in the Holy Bible on which he’d just sworn? Frayser’s gaze wandered from the judge to his handpicked, God-fearing jury. Let the man speak, said Judge Moss, urging Frayser to sit down and instructing the prosecution to begin.
Sitting next to Blum was the Shelby County assistant attorney general, Alexander Humphreys Kortrecht. An avid churchgoer, a Democrat, and the father of five children, Kortrecht was highly respected even among his courtroom opponents for his “wide research and [the] provident care with which he prepares his cases.”10 Despite the tough exterior the forty-six-year-old’s job frequently demanded, Kortrecht was kindly and approachable and immediately succeeded in putting Dengay at ease. He began by asking the Filipino when and why the Igorrotes had come to America. They had come the previous year to earn money, and had exhibited for Truman Hunt in many towns and cities, said Dengay. Kortrecht moved on to their stay in the house on North Front Street. He asked his witness whether he had willingly given Truman Hunt his souvenir money on that April day when Truman had come to the house. Why would I give him the money? It was mine, responded Dengay. He came to the house and stole my money. He tore at our clothes and stole the money we had hidden inside them.
The Lost Tribe of Coney Island Page 31