Indians at the Corn Palaces: Race and Reception at Two Midwestern Festival Buildings

Harvest festivals in the late 19th century took a spectacular form in several Midwestern cities, including Sioux City, Iowa and Mitchell, South Dakota. Huge grain palaces were built from wood and covered inside and out with mosaics made from ears of corn and coloured glasses; the interiors were large open spaces for a variety of activities like exhibitions and concerts. They were places where Euro-Americans and Native Americans negotiated safely, but they were also contested places which indicate racial identities. Corn, as a New World product, is closely identified with the Indians and features in Longfellow's 'Hiawatha'. This mythology allowed white people to play at being Indians, while the Indians themselves participated in corn palace festivities, the palaces being a symbol of their conquered, tamed and newly "civilized" status; little is known of their reasons for participating but it is likely that doing so gave them some means of self-expression. Mitchell's corn palaces have continued into the present day, and Oscar Howe (born in 1915) was an Indian artist who designed murals for the city's Corn Palace Committee from 1948 to 1971; he is notable for abandoning the Studio Style in favour of abstraction and for his protest against white domination of the Indian, as well as for depicting the growing importance of ranching to Native Americans.