Inuit Entertainers in the United States: From the Chicago World's Fair through the Birth of Hollywood By Jim Zwick 217 pages, 99 illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Infinity Publishing, 2006. Available at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Buy Books on the Web, and other bookstores.

Inuit Entertainers in the United States documents 30 years of Inuit involvement in American entertainment before the 1922 release of Nanook of the North. Inuit from Labrador and Alaska performed at world's fairs and expositions, with Barnum and Bailey's Circus, at dime museums, at amusement parks, and in Hollywood movies during the silent film era. Eskimo Village exhibits at eleven world's fairs and expositions are discussed:

• World's Columbian Exposition (Chicago, 1893)
• California Midwinter Fair (San Francisco, 1894)
• Cotton States and International Exposition (Atlanta, 1895)
• Exposition Universelle (Paris, 1900)
• Pan-American Exposition (Buffalo, 1901)
• South Carolina and Interstate and West Indian Exposition (Charleston, 1901-1902)
• Louisiana Purchase Exposition (St. Louis, 1904)
• Jamestown Exposition (Norfolk, Virginia, 1907)
• Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (Seattle, 1909)
• Festival of Empire (London, 1911)
• Panama-Pacific International Exposition (San Francisco, 1915)

Inuit from Labrador worked in the "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" and "New York to the North Pole" attractions at Luna Park at Coney Island and in an independent Eskimo Village on Fraser's Pier at Ocean Park between Santa Monica and Venice, California. During the first decade of the Hollywood studios they worked on numerous early movies set in Labrador, Alaska and Northwest Canada. Among the early silent films discussed are:

• In the Frozen North (Selig Polyscope Company, 1910)
• In the Great Northwest (Selig, 1910)
• The Way of the Eskimo (Selig, 1911)
• Lost in the Arctic (Selig, 1911)
• The Spoilers (Selig, 1914)
• God's Country and the Woman (Vitagraph Company of America, 1916)
• The Flame of the Yukon (Triangle Film Corp., 1917)

The successful careers of Esther Eneutseak and her daughter Columbia (aka Nancy Columbia), a World's Fair baby born in 1893 at the Chicago World's Fair, are featured. Chapter 2 focuses on the tragic story of "Eskimo twins" Zaksriner and Artmarhoke from Port Clarence, Alaska, brought to the United States in the 1890s by Capt. Miner W. Bruce.

Back cover text:

Twelve Inuit families from Labrador were brought to the United States in October 1892 to perform in an Eskimo Village at the Chicago World's Fair. Before the exposition officially opened, they produced four World's Fair babies, brought the Eskimo Village concessionaires to court, and formed a new company to establish an independent Eskimo Village outside the fairgrounds. That was only their debut performance. A profusely illustrated history, Inuit Entertainers in the United States documents performances at eleven world's fairs and expositions, at dime museums, with Barnum & Bailey's Circus, at Coney Island, on Fraser's Pier at Ocean Park, California, and in the film industry throughout the first decade of the Hollywood studios. At the center of the story are two extraordinary women. Esther Eneutseak led a group of Labrador Inuit from the Paris World's Fair to Hollywood. Born at Chicago in 1893, her daughter Columbia wrote and starred in the first Hollywood film with a credited Inuit cast -- eleven years before Nanook of the North. Tracing thirty years of Inuit involvement in multiple entertainment venues and forms, Jim Zwick contributes to our understanding of ethnic cultural performance in the development of modern American entertainment.

Contents

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