Old West kept alive in, of all places, Germany
10,000 Germans want to be you and me. One of the bonuses of living in a city sprinkled with big and small campuses of higher learning is the perfectly wonderful lecture programs on incredibly interesting topics that go on all the time. They're free, they're open to the public, and they're full of people who make you wonder what in the world they're doing there.
Which are the very reasons I was at the University of Central Oklahoma one night last week to hear a discussion on "American Indian Celebrations in Germany: The Case of the Indian Hobbyists."
Birgit Hans, a lady of German origins and accent who's a professor at the University of North Dakota, talked about the American Indian hobbyists she has known.
They are the civilized, urban folks of Dusseldorf and Hamburg who belong to clubs that gather on weekends, dress in costumes and "play Indian." And since Germans like to have their beer when they play, there's usually a saloon on the set, so a few people have to play cowboy.
Since almost everyone in Oklahoma has some Indian or some cowboy in some bloodline, that's most of us the Germans are playing like.
If you think I've just lapsed into stereotypes along with bad syntax, that's what we're dealing with, actually.
The club scene began 100 years ago, Hans said, to prepare future emigrants to live with Indians. There are 135 clubs in an umbrella organization called Westernbund. "We are a clubby people," she said.
They want their weekend Indian environment to be authentic and accurate, although people in Germany believe -- or prefer to believe -- that American Indian culture was frozen inside the 19th century.
Evidently, they make the weekend historical re-enactors we know here look like vaudevillians. "They are very serious."
They span classes and professions. Dentists and steamfitters become Indians on weekends, move into tepees or mountain man lodges.
Most have never seen an Indian, but they've been to museums and they've read the accounts of the early European explorers. They know, precisely, what life was like in America before 1900 -- or think they do. They have favorite tribes, some of which are obscure even to us. Plains tribes are the most popular, she said -- playing Lakota, Cheyenne, Blackfoot, Crow.
But in Germany, they are the image of the American Indian experience, as the Germans know it. Our history and our image are being preserved in some faraway place; the process has almost nothing to do with us.
Some, she said, make public appearances at auto lot openings, schools and tourist attractions.
"We see a lot of chiefs," Hans said, "and few warriors."
They may not speak English, but then the Arikara didn't either. And what's important is that they have the outfit.
They create elaborate costumes, which are collectible and museum worthy, so that some are marketed to real American Indians, who wear them to real American Indian ceremonies, Hans said.
She said the most devoted among them believe no real Indians were left after 1890. "Some consider themselves the only real Indians left."
A few authentic American Indians live there and make a living doing public appearances.
But the Germans had to teach them to dress properly.
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Special thanks to Bea Woodward for passing this on!
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January 2006 Reports
Last updated on January 12, 2006