An interesting read, raising the question of the lines between entertainment and education ( )

The Lost Tribe of Coney Island by Claire Prentice is a very highly recommended nonfiction account of Truman K. Hunt's use and abuse of a tribe of Filipinos, specifically Igorrotes, who were brought to America in 1905 and put on display at Coney Island’s Luna Park. As Prentice points out, "Ultimately, this is a story of a hero turned villain that makes us question who is civilized and who is savage."

Although in the end only Hunt and the fifty-one Filipinos who traveled with him to America knew the precise details of everything that transpired between them, it is safe to say after reading Prentice's remarkable account that the Igorrotes were degraded and essentially became slaves to Hunt's greed. The fact that Hunt brought human beings from another culture to America and then was allowed to put them on display was in and of itself nauseating. Adding insult to injury was the fact that he stole and cheated them out of the compensation he said he would be providing to them.

"Savage or innocent, noble or childlike. The Igorrotes were like one of the distorting mirrors at the Coney funfair. How they were portrayed reflected the views of those looking at them more often than it gave a true picture of the Igorrotes themselves." ( Location 1653) Hunt insisted that they kill and eat a dog daily for the "show" even though dog was not a main staple of their diets.

"The sacrifice of a dog was an important Igorrote custom and, though they were reluctant to say anything at first, some of the tribe felt the daily dog feasts at Coney were undermining their cultural significance. Not only that, but their bodies couldn’t digest all of the meat that they were being given. On behalf of them all, the tribal chief approached Julio [the interpreter] with a request that they be allowed to return to a more varied and authentic diet of chicken, pork, fish, rice, beans, and vegetables, with occasional servings of dog." (Location 1257) This authentic portrayal of their diet, of course, would ruin the show Hunt wanted to put on and profited greatly from.

It was really an embarrassment that the Human Society kept turning up to investigate complaints about the treatment of animals in the context of the Igorrotes. Here was a group of people who were brought to America, being taken advantage of, being treated like animals, and "living in squalor and being forced to put on a degrading show for the public and the only complaint this party had was about the treatment of the dog." It was disgusting that no one stopped Hunt and ended the abuse of human beings, let alone animals.

Prentice does an excellent job presenting the results of years of research and telling the story of this disgraceful side show spectacle. It is much to her credit that in The Lost Tribe of Coney Island all the information she uncovers is disclosed in a sympathetic and informative narrative that is nicely paced. It certainly held my attention right to the end, although it did have me shaking my head over what people will do to others. While this is a difficult book to read in terms of subject matter, it is a well-researched account that is presented in a very accessible format and should appeal to a wide variety of readers.

Prentice includes any additional information she has uncovered about the people involved in an Afterword. The book also includes: Acknowledgments, Notes, a Bibliography, Illustration Credits, and an Index.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for review purposes. ( )

While a fascinating story about the intersection of the rise of American power in the international arena with the popular culture of the day, I'm going to admit that I'm a little put off by the author's tendency to recreate dramatic events that I doubt she can really document; Prentice might have been better served by writing a historical novel. That said, the story of how Truman Hunt allowed himself to be corrupted by being the impresario of his troop of Filipino tribesmen is quite the demonstration of how one can never underestimate how low you can fall. ( )

Exhibition and exploitation

"The Lost Tribe of Coney Island: Headhunters, Luna Park, and the Man Who Pulled Off the Spectacle of the Century" by Claire Prentice (HMH New Harvest, $26).

The freak-show appetite of the late 19th and early 20th century American cannot be underestimated, and Claire Prentice dives into a little-known episode of sideshow hawking that involved the exhibition of some members of the Igorrote people of the Philippines, brought here following the Spanish-American War.

In "The Lost Tribe of Coney Island," Prentice tells the story of the promoter, a hard-drinking bigamist named Truman Hunt, who brought the Igorrote to the U.S., ostensibly as a cultural and educational exhibit. Instead, they were underfed and not paid as they practiced their spear arts for the amusement of gawkers who wanted to see real headhunters.

Prentice weaves a nice narrative, including side trips into discussions of Hunt’s wives, sideshow hucksters and greedy lawyers. Why, yes, since it’s America, the whole thing ended up in lawsuits.

A fascinating popular history, in "The Lost Tribe of Coney Island" it quickly becomes apparent that the so-called “primitives” were the most civilized people in the bunch.

Reviewed on Lit/Rant: www.litrant.tumblr.com ( )

It's really hard when reading a book about an earlier time period, not to impose our modern feelings on any aspect that we find distasteful or inhuman. But while we cannot change our own feelings, we must try to read the book without too much judgment. That is indeed very difficult to do when reading Claire Prentice's impeccably researched non-fiction tale, The Lost Tribe of Coney Island, about a tribe of Filipino people brought to the US and exhibited like zoo animals at Coney Island and across the country, a group of people who were treated appallingly badly, were lied to, were stolen from, were dismissed as ignorant savages, and to top it all off, were then failed egregiously in the American judicial system.

In 1904 at the St. Louis World's Fair, a tribe from the Philippines called the Igorrotes were a wildly popular part of the exhibitions. In light of this, a former army officer who had spent time in the Philippines doctoring to the tribe and who had been a part of the group that brought the Bontoc Igorrotes to this country for the World's Fair, decided that he wanted to bring another group to the US to exhibit them around the country in a commercial venture. The US government agreed to his initial plan, giving him the right and responsibility for the well-being of the people.

Truman Hunt was initially benevolent and caring and the tribe members felt as if he was their friend. He personally chose the 51 members of the tribe who would be allowed to accompany him to the US, promising them monthly pay and the proceeds from any souvenir sales they made in return for a year in the US. People flocked to him to be considered. Once he had assembled the group, they made their way to the coast and embarked for a long and ultimately horrific experience in the US. When they arrived, Hunt made a token effort to display the group in an educational manner as he had promised the US government he would but quickly backed out of that agreement and headed to Coney Island to Luna Park where the Igorrotes became the biggest, most profitable exhibit of the season. Billed as head-hunting, dog-eating savages, the Igorrotes settled into the boring mundanity of a life purporting to be faithful to their life at home but in actual fact without any real purpose. Right from the start, their usual way of life was sensationalized and exaggerated in order to draw people in and increase ticket sales. The Igorrotes wore very little clothing in comparison to the Americans gawking at them. They sported tattoos inked after taking an enemy's head, and they celebrated major events with a dog feast. In America, they existed mainly to be looked at and to eat dog at every opportunity, something that tribe members would tell the interpreter was disrespectful of their actual culture but which would not be remedied.

Hunt quickly changed from a considerate guardian of the people to an avaricious huckster, seeding the newspapers with false stories about the tribe, creating things out of whole cloth, and treating the Igorrotes as ignorant side show exhibits rather than as human beings. If that wasn't enough, Hunt became even more greedy and brutal, forcibly stealing the money that the Igorrotes had hidden from him as their trust for him deteriorated and compelling them to live in appalling conditions. Personally Hunt was in trouble as well, being charged with bigamy, a charge he evaded, and then tracked by the government, which had finally woken up to Hunt's abuse and misuse of the Igorrotes, a potentially charged political situation.

The treatment these people endured at Hunt's hands is atrocious. That the media aided and abetted Hunt by printing his assertions and tall tales without bothering to check into even one of them is reprehensible and the height of yellow journalism. That the judicial system valued fraternal connections over the truth is completely and indefensibly shameful. Prentice's careful and extensive research brings this forgotten chapter of our history to vivid and disturbing life. She tells the story as if it was fictional, allowing herself to discuss what the people involved were thinking or feeling at each stage and while this is often supported by quotes from the individuals in question, sometimes she goes just over the line in trying to develop a person's character. She has easily shown Hunt as the con man he was and the devious ways he found to exploit the Igorrotes for his own profit. The Igorrotes, though, remain much more mysterious as individuals, perhaps because so few of them spoke English and so there's little reliable record of their feelings on their experiences beyond the court records in the end. Prentice does offer as much information as she could uncover to tell readers what happened to many of the major players in the story and that is much appreciated. The tale as a whole speaks to our fascination, a fascination that unfortunately continues to this day, with "otherness" and to the way that we are nowhere near as civilized, caring, and compassionate as might be hoped. ( )