These photos arc from a
series of studio photographs
by a New Orleans artist and
photographer who has docu-
mented Mardi Gras Indian
costumes for more than 15
years. Indians create elabo-
rate suits, in a craft form
more than a century old,
competing to be “the
prettiest.”
Among the artists: Top row,
magenta suit: Roy “Buck”
Varnado; second row,
orange suit: Felton Brown;
bottom row, green suit:
Allison “Tootic” Montana
SPIRIT OF CRAFT
Troubles or
No Troubles,
The Suits
Get Made
s t o r y b y
K a ty R eckdahl
p h o t o g r a p h y b y
C hristopherPorché W est
024 american craft fcb/m arn
F IV E Y E A R S A G O , T H E FUTURE
of the Mardi Gras Indians in New
Orleans was in doubt, because
the levees that burst after Hur-
ricane Katrina deluged the city’s
working-poor neighborhoods,
where most tribes were based.
Viewers of the HBO series
Treme
have had a front-row seat
to the problems faced by those
who call themselves Indians.
For one thing, it has been un-
clear how these New Orleani-
ans, who were scattered and
basically homeless after the hur-
ricane, would find the time and
thousands of dollars needed to
create new suits every year, as
is the tradition.
But tradition has proven re-
silient. Despite the blows New
Orleans has suffered, several
hundred Indians are thought to
be active still in the city’s roughly
three dozen tribes.
The Mardi Gras Indian
tradition, which dates back to
at least the 1880s, is a spiritual
and artistic homage to Ameri-
can Indians who took in run-
away slaves. Sometimes called
“black Indians,” the Mardi Gras
Indians are ethnically African-
American, in some cases with
American Indian ancestry as
well. The tribe leaders, called
big chiefs, “earn their feathers”
and climb a hierarchy that in-
cludes “wild men,” who incor-
porate fur and animal skin into
their suits and wear horns in
their crowns. (Bigger tribes
may also include tiers of
chiefs, spy boys, flag boys, and
a few other designations.) For
four days each year, the Indians
don their suits, pick up tambou-
rines and drums, and roam the
city streets.
On Mardi Gras morning,
crowds gather outside the
homes of big chiefs like Monk
Boudreaux, who emerges in full
regalia. Chiefs conceive of their
suits’ themes and images by
dreaming about them, they say,
then sketching designs onto
heavy cloth. Then they sew
beads, sequins, and glass stones
onto the cloth to create “patch-
es.” The final suits, created
around the patches, use satin,
velvet, and several hundred
dollars’ worth of feathers,
plumes, and fluffy marabou.
Arts supporters worried
that the nation’s financial crisis
might further curb the Indians’
capacity to spend $2,000 to
$3,000 on a suit. (An elaborate
big chiefs suit can cost several
times more.) But maybe the
tradition is recession-proof.
Boudreaux has created an
annual suit for a half-century
by sewing every day, buying
beads a little bit at a time, and
as Mardi Gras nears, leaving
strategic bills unpaid.
“We were born poor,” he
says. “It’s been a bad economy
for us our entire lives.”
+
Katy Reckdahl is a writer
in New Orleans.
