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Chief's Greatest Triumph Comes After
his Death
By Marcel Diallo
The funeral procession for Big Chief Allison
"Tootie" Montana meanders through
the neighborhoods of
New Orleans on the way to Cemetery Number 2
New Orleans—Tamnourines, umbrellas,
feathers and beads. Brass bands, African drums and thousands of
funeral goers dancing in the hot summer streets of America's
oldest black neighborhood. So we gathered, one recent day, in the spirit
of the late Allison Marcel Montana.
Big Chief "Tootie" Montana, as he
was affectionately called, was the foremost figure to emerge
from the Mardi Gras Indians, a New Orleans tradition of Black
folks dressing as Indians for Mardi Gras. Montana died June 27 at the podium in New
Orleans City Hall while addressing the City Council about the
foul treatment of Mardi Gras Indians by police. With all his
chiefs gathered around him, his last words were "This has
got to stop!" Hundreds attended a three-hour mass July 9,
followed by the colorful procession.
Since returning to New Orleans from a brief
wartime stint working the shipyards of Richmond and Oakland
between 1943 and 1947, Montana has been sewing a new Mardi Gras
suit each year and is the undisputed master of the craft. Because of his unique three-dimensional
innovations and his elaborate beadwork he stood out among other
Mardi Gras Indians, and was known as "The Prettiest."
So pretty that one of his suits was purchased by the
Smithsonian.
The Mardi Gras Indian culture from its very
beginnings more than 130 years ago was an expression of Black
resistance to a white supremacist environment in New Orleans.
As Jim Crow gained a foothold in the city,
the "Indian" presence in New Orleans' Mardi Gras
Carnival street processions grew more intense and visible. In a
nutshell, the socially acceptable ritual of Mardi Gras Day
activities in this Roman Catholic city served as a battleground
for oppressed, Creolized, Louisiana-born Black men to masquerade
in an Africanized version of the garb of their Native American
ancestors.
To the Black men involved, the image of the
Indian represented the warrior spirit that resisted European
domination. The Maroon spirit — the mixing of the Indians and
blacks — of self-determination and independence lived outside
of white supremacy's reach, in the swamps and forests that were
too difficult to colonize in the early days of Louisiana. By
invoking and allowing themselves to be possessed by these
spirits, the Black men of New Orleans transcended the reality of
their daily oppression to exercise serious spiritual power on
New Orleans society.
Within this culture laced with violence, many
internal battles ended in bloodshed. But Big Chief "Tootie"
Montana of the Yellow Pocahontas tribe emerged and changed the
game from battling with knives and guns to battling with skill
and craftsmanship. He became known as the peaceful warrior and
he was crowned as the first and only Chief of Chiefs.
At his funeral, one of the officiating
pastors said, "The Chief of Chiefs is being sent to see the
King of Kings and the Lord of Lords."
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Allison "Tootie" Montana
was a long-time Big Chief of the Yellow Pocahontas tribe
in New Orleans. Each year he meticulously created a
unique costume with hand-strung beads and ornaments. |
That Montana died fighting for the Mardi Gras
Indians before the City Council has sealed his legacy. Many in
New Orleans' Black community view Montana's death as a
sacrifice, and Montana as a martyr for the cause.
The irony is that a civic fight for the right
to parade the streets of New Orleans has culminated into perhaps
the largest second-line funeral parade in the city.
As we stood on Rue St. Claude between the
doorway of St. Augustine Roman Catholic Church and the
horse-drawn hearse a few feet away, awaiting Montana's casket,
the tension mounted. After about 30 minutes, someone from the
crowd shouted "Inyuuuun!" and hundreds of tambourines
shook and beat and the crowd yelled and whistled responding to
the anonymous call. Then another voice shouted "Canafaye!"
and all at once, the tambourines and the rest of the noise
stopped on a dime.
All the Indians wearing masks — called
masking — crowded the street between the church and the hearse
and bowed down on the ground as pallbearers in black suits with
bright white gloves marched slowly, carrying the casket of the
Chief of Chiefs to the horse-drawn hearse. Then another voice
yelled "Maudi kudi fiyo!" and the entire crowd
answered with the slow-paced, traditional chant, "Indian
Red." Before long, Indian Red gave way to a faster paced
"Tuway Packiway," the horseman snapped the reins, the
horse started walking and the parade began to move.
Traditionally in New Orleans, jazz funerals
maintain a slow, sorrowful pace until the point of "cutting
the body loose," but the burial of a man of Montana's
stature proved difficult to pace. The thousands of second-liners
seemed to be busting at the seams, celebrating all the way to
the cemetery, doing the samba-like second-line strut to the
rhythm of the brass bands, twirling umbrellas, chanting old
songs and shaking tambourines. Dozens of Mardi Gras Indian
tribes, from Montana's Yellow Pocahontas, to the Golden Star
Hunters to the Spirit of Fi YiYi, met each other in the streets
enacting ritual war dances, stand-offs, and peace treaties.
Even for New Orleans, it was a rare occasion
to witness. On Mardi Gras Day, St. Joseph's Day and Super Sunday
the Indians usually come out in large numbers. But on this day,
even old Indians who hadn't masked in years came out in full
regalia complete with new feathers and plumes on old suits for
the funeral of funerals for the Chief of Chiefs.
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Marcel Diallo, 32, is an Oakland-based
musician, writer and cultural historian. His family came to the
Bay Area from New Orleans as part of the great migration West by
blacks in search of jobs, a topic Diallo is researching for a
book.
* * *
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BlogOn:
The Mardi Gras Indians in New Orleans have made immense
contributions to New Orleans' cultural landscape. Still, they
are constantly harassed by the police. Why are expressions of
Black culture by Black people repressed and marginalized only to
be re-packaged and re-sold to mainstream masses? WhatchuThink?
Source:
http://www.whatchusay.com/archives/2005/07/chiefs_greatest.html * * *
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He’s The Prettiest
A Tribute To Big Chief Allison "Tootie" Montana's
50 Years Of Mardi Gras Indian Suiting
By Kalamu ya
Salaam
The Mardi Gras Indians are called folk
artists essentially because they are self-taught,
non-institution sponsored, seemingly craft-centered
artisans. They have been studied but never definitively
defined, documented but never successfully duplicated. Do we
understand them by focusing on their hand-sewn suits or on
their rituals, the skill of a particular chief at sewing,
singing, or dancing--can any part be comprehended without
some feel for the whole? Indeed, who and what are the Mardi
Gras Indians? . . .
Louisiana Folk Life
Big Chief Allison
Tootie Montana |
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Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All
By Russell Simmons
Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons
became one of America's shrewdest
entrepreneurs, achieving a level of
success that most investors only dream
about. No matter how much material gain
he accumulated, he never stopped lending
a hand to those less fortunate. In
Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
blend of spiritual savvy and
street-smart wisdom to offer a new
definition of wealth-and share timeless
principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy." |
* * * * *
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
 |
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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January 2012
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