Pretty, Pretty, Pretty
The craft of creating a Black Masking Indian suit
It was late autumn. Mardi Gras Day in New Orleans was fast approaching. And Big Chief Lil’ Charles Taylor was focused on feathers. Plumes in particular. He had been working for months on the outfit he planned to debut in 2018. His intricate beadwork was on track and almost finished. Sequins were applied. And the fabric that would be sewn into the underlying ensemble was purchased. However, Chief Taylor had yet to acquire some final key materials, including edge trim, called “marabou,” made of lengths of downy feathers dyed in various colors; the yards of ribbon needed for the rosettes and other adornments; and most importantly, the feathers and plumes for the garment's “crown.”
He had always ordered the plumes for his crown from a company in New York City. But the price of dyed ostrich plumes had almost doubled. A few of his friends—myself included—brainstormed and reached out to his circle of admirers. And, with community support, Chief was able to purchase feathers and plumes in time to finish sewing and debut his art on Mardi Gras Day.
The Black Masking “Mardi Gras” Indians of New Orleans are a photogenic cultural tradition. Many of us may have seen images of New Orleans's Black Masking Indian “tribes” in the streets at dawn on Mardi Gras morning, or parading and dance battling on St Joseph’s night in March, or marching during one of the uptown, downtown, or Westbank “Super Sundays” during which tribes strut their costumes at family-friendly daytime events. But few who aren’t part of the community have witnessed the intricacies of how these amazing “suits” (not “costumes”) are created by local artisanal talents.
Big Chief Lil' Charles Taylor
I met Big Chief Lil’ Charles Taylor soon after I relocated to New Orleans from Boston to work at Tulane University in 2015. Attending a musical event at Buffa’s Bar and Restaurant, I was mesmerized as he performed with a quartet of traditional New Orleans players as a guest artist, singing a repertoire of Black Masking Indian chants to accompany some of their melodies. During the mid-performance break I found him outside, contemplatively smoking a cigarette. Chief Taylor was kind enough to answer my newbie questions about his songs and his tradition; and even invited me to his home to see his next suit in progress.
Chief Taylor lives in the Musicians' Village in the Upper Ninth Ward. Together with New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity, celebrities like Harry Connick, Jr. and Branford Marsalis helped envision and fund this subsidized housing option for qualifying New Orleans culture bearers after Hurricane Katrina. Taylor teaches hand-beading and sewing classes to children at the nearby Ellis Marsalis Center for Music.
Chief Taylor is known in New Orleans as one of the living Black Masking Indians possessing the most extensive personal knowledge of the traditional songs. With his tribe, The White Cloud Hunters, he has performed these chants and songs at Jazz Fest, the Lincoln Center, and in Paris, France.
The Masking Tradition
Though traditional performers like Chief Taylor have long been known as “Mardi Gras Indians” because of the Native American-inspired "suits” debuted each year on Mardi Gras Day, today a number of those involved in the tradition prefer the term "Black Masking Indians” or "Black Indians.” There are at least three dozen active "tribes” in the city, and most are made up of extended families or organized by neighborhood.
Black Indians explain that their masking tradition is an homage to the Native Americans of Louisiana who helped their ancestors escape enslavement, taking them in and making them part of Native communities. Many also claim family lineages that include a Choctaw or Houma or Tunica-Biloxi great-grandmother or other relative—including Chief Taylor, who says he has Cherokee heritage on his mother’s side.
[Read about the ins-and-outs of another Louisiana Mardi Gras tradition, the Cajun "courir"s, here.]
Some contemporary writers about the Black Indians noted that their suits resemble the garb of Plains Indians of the American West more than Native groups from the South, and they began to research the reasons and possible inspirations. In his book, Mardi Gras Indians (1994), Michael P. Smith noted that Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show toured the South for months in the late 1800s, spending almost a year in New Orleans. Smith theorized that shows like this may have inspired local African Americans—that perhaps, seeing other people of color performing with dignity and panache, they were inspired to incorporate some of the show’s “look” and iconography into their own masking traditions. Later, other writers about the Black Masking Indians have added other historical ideas and conjectures about the tradition. For example, the first images of Black Masking Indians began to appear in local newspapers in the late 1800s (and Cynthia Becker compared historical photographs of their garb with the increasingly elaborate suits of recent decades—see “New Orleans Mardi Gras Indians: Mediating Racial Politics from the Backstreets to Main Street” in African Arts, vol. 46, no. 2, 2013). New authors add evidence that some of the songs may have connections to Native languages (see for example Shane Lief and John P. McCusker, Jockomo: The Native Roots of Mardi Gras Indians 2019). Also, oral histories handed down by Black Masking families and members of today’s tribes date the tradition to decades before Buffalo Bill’s 1884-1885 sojourn in New Orleans (see for example Fire in the Hole: The Spirit Work of Fi Yi Yi & The Mandingo Warriors, edited by Rachel Breunlin and published by The Neighborhood Story Project in 2018).
In any case, Black Masking Indians today are part of New Orleans’ “cultural royalty”. Their suits take months of labor, as each masker hand-sews thousands of beads and sequins onto fabric, canvas, or cardboard forms. Next, there are ribbons, feathers, and plumes attached, plus the underlying garment itself. An Indian suit on average costs between $1,000 and $5,000 to make, even as much as $10,000, and can take a full year to complete.
Creating a Suit & Tribal Roles
Chief Taylor has been sewing since he was a small child, and has memories of crawling around on the floor, picking up feathers and beads. “I started sewing when I was a little bitty kid. My mama’s brother was a Mardi Gras Indian, and he was also a real Cherokee Indian,” he explained. “And as time went on, I got good at it. I take it as a close hobby. It’s just a part of the culture, you know.” He usually makes a suit every other year, because of the labor and expense. In the years when he does not sew a suit for himself, he often makes a smaller, simpler suit for his grandson or goddaughter, because he likes to see the tradition carried on in younger generations. “I took my suit and I broke it down and I made his,” Chief Taylor explained of making suits for his grandson Cam, who have masked as a Little Chief. After he completed the purple suit that he wore for Mardi Gras 2018, adorned with flying creatures, including butterflies, he went on to stitch his magic again the next year—debuting a bright white suit studded with glass jewels in turquoise, beaded golden arrows, and other embellishments.
The pandemic halted the next occasions for celebrating his artistry, and since then Chief Taylor has been working on a suit that has yet to be debuted. We hope to see him step out looking “pretty,” as the Black Masking Indians say, on Mardi Gras Day 2023—though if we don’t see him then, he says to keep an eye out for his new suit in 2024.
“I started sewing when I was a little bitty kid. My mama’s brother was a Mardi Gras Indian, and he was also a real Cherokee Indian...And as time went on, I got good at it. I take it as a close hobby. It’s just a part of the culture, you know.” —Big Chief Lil' Charles Taylor
As a member of a “downtown” tribe originally from the Tremé, Chief Taylor’s suits are three-dimensional and sculptural, whereas the “uptown” style features figurative tableaux created from flatter beadwork. “Me, I was taught the tradition by my uncle, his name was Thomas Sparks,” he explained. "This tradition, it’s in my family.” He explained that he began masking as a child in the 1950s. Back then, “things were done the more traditional way,” said Chief. “You wait years while you slowly work your way up through the tribe … first you just a member, gotta show that you know how to sew and you're committed. Next, you become a Spy Boy, later a Flag Boy. Eventually maybe you’re the third or second Chief.” Becoming a Big Chief, he explained, “that should take decades, but today, some make it go too fast.”
As a Black Indian works his way up through the ranks, a “Spy Boy” crafts a suit that is light enough so that he can easily move around. As the tribe parades, he notes what is happening up ahead—be it another tribe also out walking, oncoming traffic, or police presence—and runs back and forth to communicate with the Big Chief, to keep the tribe safe. A Flag Boy carries the organization’s symbolic banner, announcing its name. The main body of the tribe includes its Queens, children, sometimes a Wild Man or Medicine Man (who guard a tribe’s spiritual energy), possibly sub-chiefs, and finally the Big Chief. As tribes move spontaneously across city neighborhoods on Mardi Gras morning and St. Joseph’s night, or in pre-planned routes on Super Sundays, their encounters with other tribes involve elaborate greetings, gestures, and songs. Sometimes there are dance battles or verbal competitions praising or challenging the artistry of another individual’s or tribe’s suits.
Chief Taylor begins designing each suit by envisioning a color scheme and motifs, sketching his ideas, and drawing templates. While the “uptown” style of masking includes hand-beaded scenes that often reference Native American culture, such as depictions of spirit animals (eagles, wolves, horses, and more) or tableaux of battles between Native Americans and colonizers (with Natives as heroes)—the “downtown” style of suit is more abstract and given to three-dimensional representations of embellishments, often depicting Louisiana flora and fauna or sigils such as chevrons or the fleur-de-lis. But in recent years, many suit-makers in both styles have featured more Afrocentric themes, including portraits of Black educators and activists, Civil Rights heroes, African deities, and the use of cowrie shells as part of the beadwork.
When it comes time to craft the suit, Chief Taylor sets out to purchase the beads, sequins, and colored glass stones in the colors needed for his vision. During the year, he also saves household items such as Rice Krispies cereal boxes and plastic microwave ramen noodle bowls, piling them neatly and cleanly in his work room. The thin cardboard of the cereal boxes and the rounded form of the noodle bowls can be used as the underlying three-dimensional forms for decorative pieces such as butterflies, birds, medallions, or other adornments. These will later be attached to the various components of his garment. “Whatever you find, you use, you know,” Chief Taylor said. “One guy masking with us, he took his mama’s curtains to make his Indian suit.” For the tunic top and pants that form the underlying base, he purchases textiles from stores such as Jo-Ann Fabrics. He prefers satin or other materials “with some shine to them.” Chief spends months and months hand-sewing rows and rows of beads, sequins, rhinestones, and colored glass gems, following the drawings and templates he has made. Once the beaded components are finished—the most intensive and meticulous part of crafting a suit—they are attached to base garments in layers. Piece by piece, Chief creates the front of the suit, including a moveable panel called the “apron” and smaller pieces called “patches,” as well as the back of the suit, its headdress or “crown,” plus armbands, leggings, and boots. The final stages of suit-making include hand-sewing the feathered “marabou” trim, as well as placing and attaching short- and medium-length goose feathers and the tall, colorfully-dyed ostrich plumes.
“Whatever you find, you use, you know,” Chief Taylor said. “One guy masking with us, he took his mama’s curtains to make his Indian suit.”
For his white suit of 2019, Chief Taylor chose to buy his marabou from Broadway Costume on Canal Street, where many Mardi Gras Indians shop. Next, as he asked me, I drove him to the best place to acquire satin ribbon, a wholesale florist shop in Arabi called Earl J. Doescher Co Inc. At home, Chief Taylor ran the ribbon through a little machine that twirls it into rosettes and frills—used to adorn components of his suits. Finally, with the support of the community, Chief Taylor bought ostrich plumes—one of the most expensive suit materials.
This labor-intensive traditional art form is unique to New Orleans, and sewing techniques are passed from elders to youngsters in the community. Members of Black Indian tribes, be they a Big Chief, a Queen, a Wild Man, Flag Boy, or Spy Boy, all “sew, sew, sew,” as one of their traditional songs says, until it is time to debut each year’s new suit.
The grand debut takes place on the morning of Mardi Gras Day, as tribes walk the streets of uptown and downtown in New Orleans neighborhoods including the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Wards, the Tremé, and Central City. Groups compete to see who has made the most dazzling, elaborate, and “prettiest” suits. Later, on St Joseph’s night in March and during three “Super Sundays” (Uptown, Downtown, and Westbank) in April and May, they take to our city’s streets again—marching, parading, strutting, greeting, competing, dancing, and singing call-and-response chants with lyrics such as:
Caller: “Hi-yo, hi-yo, hi-yo! I won't bow down…”
Choir responds: "No, I won't bow down…”
Caller: “I won't bow down…on that dirty ground…”
Both: “Indians of the Nation! Of the whole wide creation! How I love, love, love….my Indian red! My Indian re-eeed!”
Black Masking Indians can often be seen on Mardi Gras day at the corner of Second and Dryades streets Uptown, or near the Backstreet Cultural Museum in the Tremé.