The Lost Tribe of Coney Island Quotes

“There is nothing edifying or educational enough in these exhibitions to atone for their evil effects upon the poor savages who are supposed to be the nation’s wards, not its playthings.”
― Claire Prentice, The Lost Tribe of Coney Island: Headhunters, Luna Park, and the Man Who Pulled Off the Spectacle of the Century

“Here were eighteen human beings living in squalor and being forced to put on a degrading show for the public and the only complaint this party had was about the treatment of the dog.”
― Claire Prentice, The Lost Tribe of Coney Island: Headhunters, Luna Park, and the Man Who Pulled Off the Spectacle of the Century

“We were carried for many days in houses that went on wheels and flew along like birds. And now it seemed as if the land would never end. We must have come nearly a hundred days’ journey in a week.”
― Claire Prentice, The Lost Tribe of Coney Island: Headhunters, Luna Park, and the Man Who Pulled Off the Spectacle of the Century

“In 1904, the American government spent $1.5 million taking thirteen hundred Filipinos from a dozen different tribes to the St. Louis Exposition. The Philippine Reservation became one of the most popular features of the fair, and the Igorrotes drew the largest crowds of all. By displaying the tribespeople in this manner, the US government hoped to gain popular support for its occupation of the Philippines by showing the American public that the Filipinos were innocents, a people far from ready for self-government, and in need of paternalistic American protection.”
― Claire Prentice, The Lost Tribe of Coney Island: Headhunters, Luna Park, and the Man Who Pulled Off the Spectacle of the Century

“Puc Aa-Un [sic], one of the biggest chiefs of the Igorrote tribes on the Island of Luzon, died here of heart disease yesterday at the winter quarters of the band of Igorrotes which were brought here by Dr. TK Hunt a year ago,” reported the Fort Wayne News,”
― Claire Prentice, The Lost Tribe of Coney Island: Headhunters, Luna Park, and the Man Who Pulled Off the Spectacle of the Century

“They had journeyed halfway across the world, and had rattled across eleven US states, through wide-open plains and busy railroad junctions. They had grown accustomed to new sights and sounds but nothing could have prepared them for their arrival in America’s greatest city.”
― Claire Prentice, The Lost Tribe of Coney Island: Headhunters, Luna Park, and the Man Who Pulled Off the Spectacle of the Century

“pecuniary advantage, demoralization and dishonesty”
― Claire Prentice, The Lost Tribe of Coney Island: Headhunters, Luna Park, and the Man Who Pulled Off the Spectacle of the Century