Indian Congress - Background

Background

After steady lobbying by the organizing committee of the Trans-Mississippi International Exposition, in December 1897 a bill was introduced in the United States Congress that provided an appropriation of $100,000 to carry out an Indian Congress at the same time as the Expo. After passing the Senate, preparations for the Spanish-American War monopolized the United States House of Representatives. In July 1898, $40,000 was made available for the event in the Indian Appropriations Act by President William McKinley. That was a month after the rest of the Expo opened. Funding was also made available by the Bureau of American Ethnology, a part of the Smithsonian Institution.

In 1898 W. A. Jones, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, sent a letter to each Indian Agency to appeal for attendees. The purpose of the Indian Congress, as he stated, was:

It is the purpose of the promoters of the proposed encampment or congress to make an extensive exhibit illustrative of the mode of life, native industries, and ethnic traits of as many of the aboriginal American tribes as possible. To that end it is pro posed to bring together selected families or groups from all the principal tribes and camp them in tepees, wigwams, hogans etc., on the exposition grounds, and permit them to conduct their domestic affairs as they do at home, and make and sell their wares for their own profit.