Life, 1926-11-04 · page 25 of 40
Life — November 4, 1926 — page 25: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**"Lo! the Poor Indian"** satirizes the romanticization and appropriation of Native Americans by wealthy white collectors. The text describes a cigar-store wooden Indian (a common decorative object of the era) that has been purchased by a rich collector. The satire mocks the irony: while actual Native Americans were degraded and impoverished by "superior civilization," this wooden caricature is now treated as a prized artifact surrounded by luxury and fawned over by "great white ladies." The joke exposes the contradiction between how America treated Native peoples and how it fetishized their stereotypical image as decorative objects. It's social criticism dressed as humor—highlighting the hypocrisy of a society that dispossessed Indigenous peoples while simultaneously collecting representations of them as status symbols.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
i Lo! the Poor Indian lived in no hovel, squatting isconsolately in a grimy, flea-bitten blanket, drinking whisky that would poison a white man, brood on the past glories of his race, dying slowly of the miserable degradation into which he had been forced by the su- perior civilization of his conquerors. Proudly he stood amidst rich settings, sur- rounded by price- less objects of ee The Surly Adventures of thing desirable. Great white ladies fawned at his feet. He intercepted the envious glances of millionaires. About him was every evidence of luxury and refine- ment, and with it all he retained the simple, stalwart, even ingenuous air with which he had been created. He was one of the few remaining cigar-store wooden 8 Indians, and he had been snapped up by a rich and enthusiastic ¢ 0 1- WLM AM Keeper: yes, sin, 1N THE OLD DAYS SOME OF THE INMATES THOUGHT THEY WAS NAPOL » SOME ALEX- ANDER THE GREAT, SOME IMBUS, SOME HANNIBAL WELLINGTON. NOW THEY ALL THINK THEY ARE MUSSOLINI, co Mr. and Mrs. Frosting * 8. NEXT DAY IN THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES MR. FROSTING RECEIVED AN ovation. “Ein Bon Guf” was WHAT THEY CALLED HIM, OR THOSE Pleasant Dreams QUGGESTED sl n for the pub- “7 lishers of “The World of Wil- liam Clissold,” H. G. Wells's new virtu—early American glas s- Colonial highboys, ladder- back chairs, lector. Provided ! stretcher tables of fruit wood, old spode, joint stools and soft-shining pewter. The house over lis head was valued at many thousands; it was filled with eve: Che Editors of Life beg to announce that this ts ational pple Weeh WORDS EXACTLY. (Continued to the Southeast) THE representa- tives from the different churches of the town ap- proached an old conservative min- ister with the purpose of urging him to agree to having all the churches go together. “All right,” he finally consented, “I’m willing, provided I can be the pastor of that church,” MASAGER: Why did that flame swallower complain about that to- bacco you sold him the other day? Crerx: He burnt his mouth, says it novel three volumes: “Read 'em and sleep!” The Surly Adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Frosting 9. IT NOW BEGAN TO BE TIME FOR MR. AND MRS, FROSTING TO THINK ABOUT GETTING HOME, BUT How? THE RIVER WAS FULL oP ice! (Continued on page 24) comicbooks.com