I got a haircut yesterday – in a place that bore no resemblance to the barber shops that were everywhere when I was younger. Barber shops were places were guys hung out, talked about sports, politics and “manly” things — and often they got their hair cut there, too. Oh yea, and those places always had a barber pole.
When we first moved to Shepherdstown, there was a barber shop on main street that was also a cigar/tobacco shop. They had a beautiful carved wooden Indian by the door. The shop has since closed, giving way to the more “modern” way to cut hair — and of course the use of tobacco had decreased dramatically.
Well, this mental trip down memory lane got me to wondering — what logic decided that a wooden Indian stand out side a tobacco store? Turns out there are a couple of explanations — one more well known than the other.
When Europeans arrived in this country, it was the Native Americans that introduced them to tobacco, so the Indians, like it or not, became the “spokespeople” for the tobacco industry, I guess kind of like the little green lizard represents car insurance. Anyhow, because of this association and the fact that many of the immigrating masses were highly illiterate, a picture of an Indian was used to tell people where they could buy tobacco.
The wooden Indian carvings first appeared in Europe when tobacco was gaining popularity there and the early tobacco sellers used these carvings to peddle their wares. One problem when this trend started, was that the carvers in Europe had never seen a Native American and their creations were created to be more fanciful, fictional characters. But by the time the wooden Indian made its way to America, it began to to take on a more genuine, authentic appearance.
The first wooden Indians were both male and female. The female wooden Indian was initially used four times more often than the male. Female wooden Indians were sometimes carved with a papoose and donned with a headdress of tobacco leaves instead of feathers — males were usually dressed in the traditional warbonnets of the Plains Indians.
The height of the wooden Indian fad occurred in the 1800s when a carved statue stood outside nearly every tobacco shop. Today, the clientele are more literate, lessening the need for a visual advertisement, and sidewalk obstruction laws and vandalism has almost completely wiped out the wooden cigar store Indian, although some tobacco shops still have them inside as a decoration — and possibly as a reminder of the history of the tobacco industry. Another reason for their disappearance, of course, is the sensitivity of the subject….
The second, lesser known and accepted reason for the cigar store Indian can be blamed on the Navy. Early Navy ships, like galleons, all had their bows adorned with figureheads. The figureheads were massive wooden sculptures and they were a beautiful art form. When the Navy started building ironclad warships, the figureheads became a thing of the past. That put the ship carvers out of business — after scouting around to find an appropriate place to apply their talents, they arrived at two likely areas of business. One was making carousel figures, like the horses and animals on the ride. The second “industry” the ship carvers created was that of the cigar store Indian. Most of the ship carvers began to die off by the early 1900s and so did the popularity of carousels — and — cigar store Indians.
I’m not sure how much attention you’ve given cigar store Indians, but if you’re fairly observant, you’ve probably noticed that almost all the carvings are holding a cup or container that holds seven cigars. I don’t know why the number is always seven, but I do know that the number seven has a lot of significance to American Indians. The number seven is very sacred in Native American spirituality and many significant elements are numbered in sevens including seven feathers, seven fires, seven shells, seven gifts and seven sources of spiritual teachings….
When I was in high school, I remember a Hank Williams song about wooden Indians. He originally wrote the song as a serious story about two Native Americans, but was convinced to re-write it as a novelty tune. It was called “Kaw-liga” and tells the story of a wooden Indian in a cigar store who fell in love with a female wooden Indian in an antique store, but never expressed his affection. Some of the lyrics went like this…
He always wore his Sunday feathers and held a tomahawk
The maiden wore her beads and braids and hoped some day he’d talk
Kaw-liga, too stubborn to ever show a sign,
Because his heart was made of knotty pine….
Maybe its a good thing, maybe its a bad thing, but they don’t write songs like that anymore….
I imagine if you lined up all the wooden Indians from the first in the 1600s to the present in chronological order, they’d tell their own unique story of the history of America.
— 30 —