By ELMO SCOTT WATSON OD) PEAK of the “Vanishing American” e and at once you think of “Lo, the Poor Indian.” While it is true that the number of Indians in the Unit- ed States has greatly decreased since the caravels of Columbus first touched the shores of the New World, yet the presence of nearly a quarter of a million red men within our borders is testimony to the fact that poor Lo has far from e reached the vanishing point. J But there is another type of In- dian that is truly a “Vanishing American,” He is the cigar store Indian, the sign, symbol and guardian angel of the cigar store. There was a time when no tobacco shop was complete without the figure of a stalwart brave or a plump Indian princess standing in front of it. But today, with but few exceptions, you will have to go to a museum or an antique shop to find such an aboriginal symbol of trade in one of the earliest American commodities. And, If by chance, you wish to own one, you'd better be prepared to pay from £200 up for it For the cigar store Indian is now wericana” and his value Is in Inverse ratio to his scarcity, It is one of the paradoxes of history that this “Vanishing American” was not of American or- igin at all. Tobacco was introduced to the Old World by a Spanish physician in 1558 and In 1586 Sir Francis Drake brought the equipment for smoking to Sir Walter Raleigh who made the habit fashionable in England. When E: was Merrie England under James [ (1603-162 there were wooden Indian trade signs In that country. When Pocahontas died, in 1617, the wooden Indian was no strange sight But the early Indians seen In Europe were fanciful figures, made by carvers who had not seen American Indians. As one writer has ob served : “Early Indians showed that Burope had set- tiled down to the belief that American Indians wore no clothes except a kilt of tobacco leaves ~a wonderful triad of utility when one thinks of it—at once nether apparel, currency and the makin's, to be drawn upon up fo the limit of decency London types resembled negroes, and for 200 years were known as ‘black boys'™ While the Indian figure as a trade sign started land, it reached grandeur and true char- acter In the United States. Ameriean sculptors knew the Indian, his features and characteris- tics, and the resulting figures were astounding. Four groups of designs for wooden tobacco trade sign figures developed in the United States—chiefs, squaws, Roman figures and white men. The last named included such figures as Uncle Sam, Walter Raleigh, policemen, “forty- niners” and smoking girls. A plump Pocahontas—the squaw type—was seen In Boston as early as 1730. In 1770, when Christopher Demuth opened a little tobacco shop at Lancaster, Pa, a dainty wooden gentleman offered a snuff box Instead of the traditional cigars. Baltimore claims te have had cigar store fixtures before 1770. jut it was not until shortly before the Civil war that hordes of this race of red men appeared on the American scene, According to one chron- icler the wooden Indian was first Introduced to his Job as guardian angel of clgar stores by a man named Chichester, about 1850. The sculptor of these earliest specimens was Tom Millard In the first days of the fad some of the more aristocratic chiefs were made of metal east in molds. This type, however, was soon abandoned : even from the first most of the figures were of wood. These were all made by hand, generally of white pine, and considerable skill was re quired in their shaping. Logs were first blocked out with an ax for the body, after which the arms were attached and the features marked out with a chisel. Finer carving tools gave the finishing touches, They were then painted and mounted on wheels for delivery. The original sculptors were carvers of ship's figure heads. With the decay of American ship- ping, carvers here, finding their occupation slip. ping away from them, made the wooden Indian more than a part-time job. They turned to him as their mainstay. One of these carvers, per haps the most famous of them all, was Louls Jobin of Ste. Anne de Beaupre In Quebec. When Jobin died there a few years ago at the age of eighty-six he was given wide publicity as “the originator of the cigar-store Indian” although it Is doubtful if that characterization can justly be applied to any one man. But his pre-eminence In this fleld Is Indicated by the following excerpts from his obituary notices In the newspapers at the time of his death: “Louis Jobin's family name does not rest ex. clusively on his bizarre production. He was described as the greatest wood carver in the world. He carved wood for seventy years, though of late his sighs had failed and he had lng} away his chisel, f “While cigar store Indians are becoming ex. tinct, those created by Jobin in his early days yr a ¢ 4 CHIEF SEMLOH, San Francisco. Ee ei ie. ie ay “X= Thelast Cigar Storeindian In the industry are in deep demand by collectors, One of the masterpleces of St. Nicotine stands today at the front door of a tobacconist's shop on the Rue St. Jean, In Quebec city, where it was placed fifty years ago. The owner has re fused £5300 for it “Jobin was a humble artist, who never talked of art for art's sake, but did whatever his hand found to do. What was in demand sixty and seventy years ago was figureheads for ships In was a center of the wooden shipbuild- ing industry. So the young Jobin, although he went for a brie! period to New York, found more ample scope for his talents at home. Cana “'Forty years I carved for ships’ Jobin sald. Then the steamers cams in and iron bad no use for wood carved Indians, I also carved the fizure of a notary for a notary's door In Montreal. But for years 1 have done mostly angels and apostles and saints’ “Jobin’s art will not altogether die with him. He leaves behind him a nephew, Edouard Mar- cotte, trained in his eraft, and Ste. Anne, though the great master of wood carving is no more, will not be deprived of sacred iconography.” While some dealers “commissioned” home talent carvers to “execute” their Indians, the wide demand gave birth to a new trade. le. search has failed to disclose any evidence of a factory for making wooden Indians, but the braves were carried as a line by the “drum mers” for wholesale tobacco houses and ple tures of Indians graced their eatalogues, Edward len, one of the leaders in the to- bacco business in the East, found profit In the propagation of the new Indian race and ad. vertised the braves for sale as early as 1858 In 1871 Hen assembled In an old five.story building in New York city a congress of wooden Indians, certainly a fearful sight. Hundreds of red men, squaws and white fizures, all freshly and daringly painted, lined the walla Twenty-five dollars was the average price for the commonest variety of wooden Indian—often braves which bad been traded for other figures, and repainted. But what a difference time has made in the cigar store Indian market! It might be possible to buy one for £25 in these depressed times, but it's very doubtful. Several years ago the Cleveland Plain Dealer conducted a “wooden Indinn contest,” which brought to light a number of these interesting relics and as a result one of them, “Seneca John,” alias “The Tiffin Tecumseh” achieved a lasting place in the annals of American an- tiquities when he was sold by Albinus Elehert, a farmer living near New Riegel, Ohio, for $100 to Henry Ford, who has given the redskin a permanent home in his museum of American antiques at Dearborn, Mich. Mr. Ford had had a “squaw” for some time, but desiring a mate for her, he instituted a search for one which resulted in his acquiring “Seneca John" A year or so ago Mark Sallivan, writing In the New York Herald Tribune on the many signs of a rapidly changing America, sald “An. other news item that makes vivid the quick pass Ing of recently familiar features of American life is this In the New York Herald Tribune: “Penn Yan, N, Y.—One of the last members of a vanishing tribe of wooden Indians has been purchased for $100 by an antique dealer here. A year ago the hand-carved Indian was sold by a Montour Falls tobacconist for $10. “A 1,000 per cent increase in value within a year suggests extreme rapidity In the process of antiquation. So quickly does change come In 1 Raa 10ND ‘BLACK HAWK,” Galena, Ill. America that before one knows it, an institution or a familiar detall of the surface of life be- comes antique” As a matter of fact it would seem that both Mr. Ford and the antique dealer in Penn Yan, N. Y, got real bargains when they pald only $100 for their wooden Indians, For M. I. Blt enthal, writing In the Saturday Ei only a short time ago. reported find 1 battered Indian of the sort which no cigar store was considered an fait wooden even de rigueur twenty-five years ago” in a funk shop and the dealer asked $3750 for it ds that the price was “n oO It’s a male Indian 8 good example of early But his stat is not borne out appeared soon Mercury : “It Indians, former! stores, have become gpecimens bring a ers has been negotiating = company for the very squaw tl has graced Main for more than forty years, owner and n has, it Is said, turn her. ‘You see he ns and never knocked tion or the weather trip, or changed the cut of her clothes, that It would be erucl anager. is a iid, ‘she's heen here a about either the conversa never so much as taken a to uproot er and sell her either down the river or up. 1 have known her since a small boy, and am downright attached to her Some things mean more than money. My squaw iz not for sale. She knows too mnch about Paris, past and present, to risk out of sight, and in enn boast of that rarest of all earthly blessings. a wooden squaw who cannot talk. Yon have no | Bat sfactory ghe Is at times" “Chief.” who stands in front of a clgar store in Colorado Springs, Colo Frank and Clinton Oshorn, proprietors of the store, say that they have had frequent £500 up to $1,000 addition I know of no other man who des Consider also the case of offers ranging all the way from for this 800.pound metal warrior whom they ob tained at an auction sale of unclaimed goods In a storage watchouse in that eity some 20 years ago. But they have steadfastly refused all offers for “Chief,” Like the Osborns there are other owners of cigar store Indians who won't part with their prizes for any price. There's Bob Parsons, plo- neer tobacco dealer at Ashland, Wis, whose store still is guarded, after 40 years, by flerce eyed Chief Sitting Bull, Parsons is intensely proud of his Indian. Thousands of tourists have visited his store to view the brave. Indians, too, come sometimes, but reverently. “Ritting Bull is an exact model of the great chief who ruled the Dakota plains when white men first pushed beyond the Mississippl river” says Parsons. “He was carved for me by hand from white pine by Herman Kruske, a wood- worker at Ashland, half a century ago" Sitting Ball, a tall, bright yellow figure, dom- inates the drab street that is his tribal domain. The black, braided hair, that holds a single upright feather, falls over the shoulders of his fringed buckskin coat. His left hand grips his tomahawk ; hig right supports the end of a huge cigar, He is the glorified realization of mem- ories of cigar store Indians, position before Parson's shop, which clings to Each night he's rolled back into his tepee to keep a vigil over the darkened shop, Parsons has refused several offers for Sit ting Bull and declares he'll never sell him, He hopes that when he's gone, the old chief will be cared for by the Chequamegon Bay Old Settlers’ association, shop of 8 E. Holmes In San Francisco, This on a sailing vessel in 1850 from New York, con. signed to a pioneer tobaceonist in Marysville, Calif, Marysville, 140 miles from San Francisco, then was thronged with prospectors Chlef Semloh did duty for 60 years in this town, mitted Chief Semloh to the basement, Resur- rected by his present owner, the old chief ander went surgery a year ago and now is perhaps the most modern Indian in the United States. At a cost of several hundred dollars, Chief Semioh was equipped with a speaking voice and the faculty of smoking cigars, Now he puffs away and gives advice to smokers as he keeps guard before Holmes shop. An eighty-two-year vigil before the door of the Maltzberger cigar store, in Reading, Pa, ended in 1920 for Old Eagle Eye, a blue-eyed wonden Indian cut from a solid block of wood hy a New York carver. He was purchased by cigar store proprietors of the city and pinced In the Reading museum, (© by Western Newspaper Union.) WITH HUMAN HAND Instrument.” The French are so continually erit clzing us for our subserviency to the machine that it Is interesting to find a Frenchman who takes a somewhat different point of view, Monsieur Dubreuil Is a working man himself, who has spent his life operating machines, and who is en- thusiastic over their Iabor-saving qualities, Yet he finds that in the last analysis the human hand Is the master Instrument, and will alwnvs remain so. He illustrates the point by describing some operations which he witnessed at an automobile face tory. Some stamping dies weighing two or three tons are here first shaped by machine tools the die Ig almost completed hy me chanical means, it Ig given to work small electric finer files, The die finer measuring. the worker holding his breath in the Intensity of his con grinders, and then curve, ment has been used for the attain ment of this perfection, “I saw.” he When every possible instru termined by the eallpers, and to the sensitive touch of his fingers are re. vealed minute humps imperceptible to the calipers, “Whenever he feels any irregular. ity In the curve, he gives a few light touches with the file until his hand feels only the harmonious continuity of the curves the die is to reproduce in the sheet iron to be stamped, “Thus 1 saw with emotion that in gpite of the instruments invented by modern mechanical Ingenuity, the human hand had still the lust word, beiving all the somber predictions recklessly made on the disappear- ance of the traditional trades and the gradual transformation of the en tire working class into automatons,” Dr. Pierce's Pellets are best for liver, bowels and stomach, One little Pellet for a laxstive—three for a cathartic.—Adv. 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[3 | throat is sore, honddissolve 3 yer Aspirin 7 lets in a half plors | of warm waler and | gargle according fo | | directions. if you have a coldé-don’t take id killers” and chances with “cold nostrums. A cold is too dangerous to take chances on. The simple method pictured above is the way doctors through. out the world now treat colds. It is recognized as the QUICK- EST, safest, surest way. For it will check an ordinary cold almost as fast as you caught it. That is because the real BAYER Aspirin embodies certain medical qualities that strike at the base of a cold almost INSTANTLY. You can combat nearly any cold you get simply by taking BAYER Aspirin and drinking plenty of water every 2 to 4 hours the first day and 3 or 4 times daily there after. If throat is sore, gargle with 3 BAYER Aspirin Tablets crushed Ask your druggist about the and dissolved in a half glass of warm water, repeating every 2 or 3 hours as necessary. Sore throat eases this way in a few minutes, incredible as this may seem. Ask your doctor about this. And when you buy, see that you get the real BAYER Aspirin Tablets, They dissolve almost instantly. And thus work almost instantly when you take them. And for a gargle, Genuine Bayer Aspirin Tablets dissolve with speed and complete ness, leaving no irritating particles or grittiness. Get a box of 12 or bot- tle of 24 or 100 at any drug store. recent price reduction on the our local merchants.
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers