officers, academicians, battle-garbed tribal chiefs, newspapermen, and movie cameramen hired by Wanamaker.

Following bombastic introductory remarks by “Doctor” Joseph Kossuth Dixon, head of Wanamaker’s “education department” and the leader of his earlier Indian expeditions, President Taft expressed the nation’s gratitude to Wanamaker and proclaimed that the memorial would “tell the story of the march of empire and the progress of Christian civilization to the uttermost limits.” After a slight altercation regarding the crowd’s encroachment on the grinding movie cameras, Taft took hold of a shovel and broke ground, then used the thighbone of a buffalo to do likewise. The resplendent Indian chiefs—thirty-two of them in all—then raised the Stars and Stripes, and ceremoniously signed a document called “Declaration of Allegiance to the United States.” After this, Dr. George F. Kunz, on behalf of the American Scenic and Historical Preservation Society, opened a bag of newly minted Indian-head nickels and passed them out. Finally, a bronze tablet was set into the earth to mark the spot.

Flushed with the success of dedication day, Wanamaker sent off one more expedition in quest of artifacts and photographs. Dixon, as its head, inexplicably donned the uniform of an army colonel and set out to drum up enthusiasm for the memorial on sixty-six reservations requiring some twentytwo thousand miles of travel. The excursion was given the cumbersome title of the “Rodman Wanamaker Expedition of Citizenship to the North American Indian,” and at each stop the Fort Wadsworth flag-raising ceremony was re-enacted. Indians along the way cheerfully signed the Declaration of Allegiance, as well, then gathered around an Edison phonograph to hear a message from the Great White Father himself—Taft’s successor, Woodrow Wilson: “Because you have shown in your education and in your settled way of life, staunch, manly, and worthy qualities of sound character, the nation is about to give you distinguished recognition through the erection of a monument in honor of the Indian people, in the harbor of New York.”

It was then that the great balloon of Wanamaker’s hopes began to leak. First, considering the name of the expedition and all the formalities connected with signing the Declaration of Allegiance, the Indians—most of whom had not yet been granted even second-class citizenship—came under the delusion that they suddenly had been enfranchised as participating members of the Republic. Dixon, backpedaling, hastened to explain that the “citizenship” of the expedition’s title meant only that the Indian was given the right to honor his country, not the right to vote or otherwise become a real citizen. Second, the press, which had bally-hooed the project at the beginning, turned sour, calling it a “philanthropic humbug” and “tomfoolery” among other things. Finally, the public, turning its attention to World War I, lost interest, and even the active sponsors of the idea began squabbling among themselves.

Wanamaker’s monument never got beyond the paper it was drawn upon. The bronze tablet that had been implanted in 1913 mysteriously vanished, never to be seen again. The

concept was resurrected briefly in 1936 as a potential Work Projects Administration program, but died away, then arose again a decade later when a proposed memorial to World War II veterans from Staten Island had to be shifted from Fort Tompkins because of the Indian monument’s previous claim; this brief surge of interest died also.

The Congressional Act of 1911 remains on the books, but it is not likely now that anything will ever be done about it. It is probably just as well; it would be embarrassing to have Wanamaker’s monument rising at the entrance to this land as a kind of preposterous tombstone for the people who would not go away.