Olympic Profiles-Anthropology Days (or St. Louis used to be the most racist city in America)

The organizers of the 1904 World's Fair and Olympics in St. Louis had sent out people to search the world over to bring odd and different types of people, and by odd and different what I mean is anyone who was not white, to be exhibited at the Fair. They brought back Pygmies from Africa, a few Patagonians from South America, some Ainu people from Japan, a few Turks, Moro folk from the Philippines, and a smattering of Cocopas Indians from Mexico. Some American Indians, most notably among them was a warrior you may have heard a little something about by the name of Geronimo, were jerked off their reservation and shown along with the other “savages.”

Under the direction of the Department of Physical Culture all the “odd” foreigners were rounded up and forced to compete in some odd and Olympic style sporting events. They competed in these events for the amusement of the white crowds who, no doubt, sat and laughed heartily at the antics of the dirty savages.

On the first day of Anthropology Days the headline in the St. Louis Post Dispatch shrieked, “BARBARIANS TO MEET IN ATHLETIC GAMES.” With a headline like that things could only go down hill from there, and predictably they did.

The Pygmies, it had been decided, were going to amuse the crowds of jeering slack jawed yokels by having a mud fight. They were split into two teams and each team was given, according to the Post Dispatch, “several heaps of nice, soft, clay” with which they were to throw at one another until one team was “put to rout.”

The Pygmies did not disappoint. As soon as the signal was given they began pelting one another. It was quite a sight as the Africans heaved clumps of mud at one another. The crowd cheered lustily and the Post Dispatch called it the “most amusing feature of the meet.”

But as so often happens when mud or most anything else is flung at someone, it’s, as your mother no doubt told you many times, all fun until someone loses an eye. One of the Pygmies got an eyeful of mud and he faltered in battle, in fact he was “almost blinded by the ammunition.” His team, unable to keep up their barrage of mud throwing, soon surrendered. The “civilized” crowds in the stands ate it up.

The other “savages” did not get off easy while the Pygmies fought it out on a field of mud however. They were forced to, among other things, run a mile race, climb poles, throw weights, and toss javelins. The Patagonians and everyone else who had been roped into participating did not want to be performing for the heckling crowds and it became more than obvious when they did their best to do their worst in the events. They listlessly tossed the heavy shot put ball, they leisurely ran the races they were roped into running, and they barely got off the ground in the jumping events.

Perhaps the best of the worst performers were the Ainus. When it was their turn to shot put, their chosen representative mustered the strength to toss the heavy metal ball just over one yard.

Geronimo was also trotted out to participate in shame of Anthropology Days. The Post Dispatch poignantly noted, “Geronimo, the old Apache chief, was on the field but took no part in the sports. He leaned silently against the track-rail and looked on but gave no other sign he was at all interested.” He probably had other things on his mind as he stood there and watched those other aborigines compete in the white man’s sporting events. One of the things on his mind might have been the thought of burning hatred over how his people had been slaughtered and his tribe's land was taken for the use of the louts in the stands who sat laughing as they watched the other “savages” compete. Or he may have been wondering what life would have been like if the whites had actually kept their word and honored their treaties. Or maybe he was just stand there against that “track-rail” praying silently for the sweet release of death. We’ll never know for sure.

In the end though the officials in charge of Anthropology Days declared them to be a success. They had taught the aboriginal savages some “civilized” Olympic style sporting events and even if they were not good at them now, in the future they might get good enough to compete in the Olympics of their own free will.

And what was the response of the man who had revived the Olympic games to the outright racist and shameful Anthropology Days? The Baron De Coubertin, as is so often quoted in Olympic histories, said, “In no place but America would one have dared place such events on a program-but to Americans everything is permissible, their youthful exuberance calling certainly for the indulgence of the ancient Greek ancestors, if, by chance, they found themselves at that time among the amused spectators.” De Coubertin was, as this patronizing quote shows, all for forgiving the St. Louis organizers and the knuckles dragging yokels who watched the atrocity called Anthropology Days. It's important to remember that the Baron had his own racist and misogynistic sides. When he began his revival of the games he did not women to participate in the more strenuous events and he wanted all events limited to those athletes who were classified as amateurs. In the Baron’s heyday and for many years afterwards the word “amateur” meant someone who not only did not take money for his or her sport, but who took no money at all for any type of job whatsoever, so effectively what he wanted then was an Olympics in which only the upper classes would compete since his definition excluded anyone who had to work for a living.