American Fun (57 page)

32.
“
merciless
,” “
meaningless etiquette
,” “
rigid hierarchies
,” “
slaves lied, cheated, stole
”: Levine,
Black Culture, Black Consciousness,
122.

33.
“
music as a deceptive form
”: Campbell,
An Empire for Slavery,
174.

34.
“
created for others
”: Rawick,
The American Slave,
1
:
32.

35.
“
Negroes like to do everything at night
”: Rivers,
Slavery in Florida,
167.

36.
“
by imitating the voices of slaveholders
”: James A. Colaiaco,
Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 24.

37.
“
underhanded, unsportsmanlike
”: Daryl Cumber Dance,
Shuckin’ and Jivin’: Folklore from Contemporary Black Americans
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 181.

38.
“
divine culture-hero
”: Paul Radin,
The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology
(New York: Schocken Books, 1956), 125. Though Harris declares it “extremely doubtful” that any of “Uncle Remus’s stories” (as he calls them) could have been “borrowed by the Negroes from the red men,” Jay Hansford C. Vest has responded with a thorough and convincing study to the contrary, especially as it concerns the “aboriginal Rabbit-Trickster motif.” Tracing
Brer Rabbit tales to various stories in the Hare cycle as well as charting the countless sites and situations (not the least of them the institution of slavery) where African Americans and Native Americans commingled, Vest establishes the likelihood that more of these stories have North American than African origins. Harris,
Complete Tales,
xxii; Jay Hansford C. Vest, “From Bobtail to Brer Rabbit: Native American Influences on Uncle Remus,”
American Indian Quarterly
24, no. 1 (Winter 2000): 19–43.

39.
And unlike the Trickster’s morality tales
: For a more optimistic response to Levine’s
and others’ arguments for Brer Rabbit’s “amorality and brutality,” which argues that his tales contain a deeper Christian morality, see William Courtland Johnson, “Trickster on Trial: The Morality of the Brer Rabbit Tales,” in
Ain’t Gonna Lay My ’Ligion Down: African American Religion in the South,
ed. Alonzo Johnson and Paul Jersild (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), 52–71.

40.
“
from round Yankees
”: This and subsequent quotations in this and the following paragraph from Benjamin Henry Latrobe,
The Journal of Latrobe, Being the Notes and Sketches of an Architect, Naturalist and Traveler in the United States from
1769 to
1820
(New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1905), 161–63.

41.
general racial “
blending
”: Interview with Henry Kmen, quoted in Stearns and Stearns,
Jazz Dance,
20.

42.
a pungent blend
: Ned Sublette,
The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square
(Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2008), 274–81.

43.
“
However much of the primitive
”: Henry Kmen,
Music in New Orleans: The Formative Years,
1791–1841
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1966), 229.

44.
“
movements, gyrations, and attitudenizing exhibitions
”: Creecy, quoted in Sublette,
World That Made New Orleans,
282.

45.
While it is hard to say with precision
: See Southern,
Music of Black Americans,
161–62.

46.
“
a principal means by which
”: Stuckey,
Slave Culture,
24.

47.
“
‘praise’-nights
”: William Frances Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison,
Slave Songs of the United States
(New York: Peter Smith, 1951), xiii.

48.
“
any assembly of [enslaved] Negroes or Negresses
”:
Code Noir,
cited in Herbert Asbury,
The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1936), 239.

49.
“
Oh, where are our select men
”: Kmen,
Music in New Orleans,
227.

50.
“
a jerking, hitching motion
”: Allen et al.,
Slave Songs,
xiv.

51.
“
unceasing, wave-like ripple
”: T. Amaury Talbot, quoted in Stuckey,
Slave Culture,
11.

52.
“
‘danced’ with the whole body
”: Stuckey,
Slave Culture,
362.

53.
“
sensual, even blatantly erotic dances
”: Crété quoted in Joseph Roach,
Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 65.

54.
“
not altogether to understand
”: Asbury,
The French Quarter,
253.

55.
“
rhythm and excitement
”: Emery,
Black Dance,
121.

56.
“
turning around occasionally
”: Ibid., 122.

57.
“
Some gits so joyous
”: Former Texan slaves Wes Beady and Richard Carruthers quoted in Rawick,
The American Slave,
1:36, 37.

58.
“
worship
,” “
the sole object
”: Schultz and Nuttall quoted in Sublette,
World That Made New Orleans,
281–82.

59.
“
the steps and figures of the court
”: Stearns and Stearns,
Jazz Dance,
28.

60.
“
Long Dog Scratch
”: Ibid., 29.

61.
“
mass of nonsense and wild frolic
”: Douglass,
My Bondage,
155.

62.
“
The Majesty of the People had disappeared
”: Margaret Bayard Smith,
The First Forty Years of Washington Society: Portrayed by the Family Letters
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906), 295.

63.
“
Hangings and public executions
”: Edward Pessen,
Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics,
rev. ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 12.

64.
“
expressive
,” “
recreational
”: Michael Feldberg,
The Turbulent Era: Riot & Disorder in Jacksonian America
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 55.

65.
“
friendly rivalry
”: Discussion following April Masten’s presentation, “Shared Traditions: The Origins of Negro Jigging in Early America,” at the conference Triumph in My Song: 18th & 19th Century African Atlantic Culture, History, & Performance,
University of Maryland, College Park, June 2, 2012. For Masten’s groundbreaking analysis of the “friendly rivalry” between dancers and musicians during this period, see “Partners in Time: Dancers, Musicians, and Negro Jigs in Early America,”
Common-Place
13, no. 2 (Winter 2013),
http://www.common-place.org/vol-13/no-02/masten/
.

66.
White acknowledges that these fancy-dress balls
: The following quotations are from Shane White,
Stories of Freedom in Black New York
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 49, 191–98.

67.
“
at a signal
”: Asbury,
The French Quarter,
243.

68.
“
abhor & detest the Sabbath-day
”: Mark Twain,
Mark Twain–Howells Letters: The Correspondence of Samuel L. Clemens and William D. Howells,
1872–1910
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), 520.

69.
“
frightful triumph of body over mind
”: George Washington Cable, “The Dance in Place Congo,”
The Century
31, no. 51 (February 1886): 525.

70.
“
what havoc
”: Ibid., 522.

71.
“
Now for the frantic leaps!
”: Ibid., 525.

72.
“
social death
”: For a brilliant response to recent historical trends that argue for “social death” in slavery, see Vince Brown, “Social Death and Political Life in the Study of Slavery,”
American Historical Review
114, no. 5 (December 2009): 1231–49. See also Orlando Patterson,
Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).

73.
“
all this Congo Square business
”: Cable, “Dance in Place Congo,” 527.

74.
“
No wonder the police stopped it
”: Ibid., 525.

1.
“
quite dejected and sulky
”: J. D. Borthwick,
Three Years
in California
(London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1857), 10.

2.
“
grumbled at everything
”: Ibid., 150.

3.
were often ungoverned, ungodly fun
: Susan Lee Johnson, whose study of
gold rush “
leisure” includes church attendance, saloons, gambling, dancing, and popular
blood sports like bull and bear baiting, makes the strong claim that “like domestic and personal service work, leisure was one of the key locations in which gendered and racialized meanings got made, unmade, and remade … When immigrant men laid down their picks and shovels, they found that the oppositions which created both social order and social relations—that is, society—back home were all out of kilter in California.” Anglo-American men, in particular, used to enjoying positions of social domination, experienced what Johnson calls a “crisis of representation.”
Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 144.

4.
“
The streets were full of people
”: Bayard Taylor,
El Dorado, or Adventures in the Path of Empire
(1850; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), 43.

5.
“
Northern barbarians
”: Ibid., 30.

6.
“
for action
”: This and subsequent quotations come from ibid., 44–46.

7.
“
beggarly sum
”: Ibid., 62.

8.
“
disposition to maintain
,” “
In the absence of all law
,” “
thousands of ignorant adventurers
”: Ibid., 77. Taylor also exposes self-government’s dark side. He watches in Stockton as two defenseless blacks were apprehended, tried, accused, and sentenced for allegedly assaulting a Chilean woman in her tent—all in the course of one day. Their respective sentences of fifty and twenty lashes were administered on the
spot: “There was little of that order and respect shown which should accompany even the administration of impromptu law; the bystanders jeered, laughed, and accompanied every blow with coarse and unfeeling remarks” (ibid.).

9.
“
They struggled to gain freedom
”: Sucheng Chan, “A People of Exceptional Character: Ethnic Diversity, Nativism, and Racism in the California
Gold Rush,” in
Rooted in Barbarous Soil: People, Culture, and Community in Gold Rush California,
ed. Kevin Starr and Richard J. Orsi (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 69. For a penetrating study of African-American life in the diggings, see Rudolph M. Lapp,
Blacks in Gold Rush California
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977).

10.
“
ideological overtones
”: W. J. Rorabaugh,
The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 151. See pp. 149–83 for vivid examples of Americans’ fidelity to alcohol—as a test of character, mark of freedom, and lubricant to community—in the early years of the republic.

11.
American Temperance Society (ATS)
: Thomas R. Pegram,
Battling Demon Rum: The Struggle for a Dry America
(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1998), 3–42.

12.
Not content with just reforming hard drinkers
: Ian R. Tyrrell,
Sobering Up: From Temperance to Prohibition,
1800–1860
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979), 77, 87, 159–60.

13.
“
the natural bad passions of men
”: Borthwick,
Three Years in California,
67.

14.
“
sufficiency of schools and churches
”: Quotations in this and the following paragraph are from ibid., 68–69.

15.
the “disease” of “drunkenness”
: This and other quotations in this paragraph are from ibid., 71.

16.
“
a farewell whiff of smoke
”: This and other quotations in this paragraph and the two following paragraphs are from ibid., 318–22.

17.
Such happenings were common
: Gary F. Kurutz, “Popular Culture on the Golden Shore,” in
Rooted in Barbarous Soil,
294–97.

18.
“
cotillions upon the green prairie
”: Paula Mitchell Marks,
Precious Dust: The Saga of the Western Gold Rushes
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 77.

19.
“
generous, hospitable, intelligent
”: Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe,
The Shirley Letters from California Mines,
1851–52
(San Francisco: Thomas C. Russell, 1922), 165.

20.
“
the ‘ladies,’ after their fatigues
”: Borthwick,
Three Years in California,
321.

21.
“
a very good move indeed
”: Alfred Doten,
The Journals of Alfred Doten,
ed. Walter Van Tilburg Clark, vol. 1,
1849–1903
(Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1973), 20.

22.
“
slaves of King Alcohol
”: Ibid., 26.

23.
“
several of the Americans drunk
”: Ibid., 37.

24.
“
the most civil country
”: Ibid., 52.

25.
serious gold rush fun
: A small sample indicates Doten’s daily frolics: “Harry sang her some of his naughty songs—We had the tallest kind of dancing and when we started for home again about one o’clock we were all more or less thick tongued and top heavy” (ibid., 144). “Ranch routine during the days, partying at night—Many snakes killed in the hayfields” (15). “The house was crowded—dancing, singing, and kicking up was the order of the night … waltzes and polkas … a most glorious
jollification
and we kept it up till daylight” (153). “We danced and kicked up to hearts’ content till just before daybreak” (159). “We marched up and down the road and went through all the military maneuvers—We had a glorious time and kept it up till about two o’clock” (164). “Tom Locke, John Fernandez, Mike and a lot more of the boys came in and we had a most joyful jollification—We had plenty of the ‘oh be joyful’ and were very joyful and jolly—we had music and dancing and lots of songs” (165).

26.
“
drinking and gambling
”: Ibid., 97.

27.
“
howling drunk
”: Ibid., 98, 117.

28.
“
a hell of a spree
”: Ibid., 125.

29.
He “astonished” crowds
: Ibid., 128–30.

30.
“
This is one of the best
‘benders’
”: Ibid., 141.

31.
“
jollification
”: Ibid., 137, 192, 779.

32.
“
plum cake
”: Ibid., 198.

33.
“
Mexicans are robbing and killing the Chinese
”: Ibid., 141.

34.
“
thieving Mexicans
”: Ibid., 107.

35.
“
it perfectly thunder beneath
”: Quotations in this and the next paragraph are from ibid., 168.

36.
“
little Spanish village
”: Ibid., 177.

37.
“
As usual in California
”: This and other quotations in this paragraph from ibid., 190.

38.
“
as fast as [they] could load
”: Quotations in this and the next paragraph are from ibid., 227–32.

39.
“
far famed
,” “
No use for my pencil
”: Ibid., 716.

40.
“
considerable drunks & some fights
”: Ibid., 723.

41.
“
got on a big spree
”: Ibid., 727.

42.
“
skylarking
”: Ibid., 762.

43.
“
Evening stage brought a noted correspondent
”: Ibid., 763.

44.
“
Every feature of the spectacle
”: Mark Twain,
Roughing It
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 156; see also 1–284. Further, see Ron Powers,
Mark Twain: A Life
(New York: The Free Press, 2005), 110–30, and Paul Fatout,
Mark Twain in Virginia City
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964), 3–33.

45.
“
Oh,
don’t
he buck
”: Twain,
Roughing It,
161.

46.
“
Here was romance
”: Ibid., 67.

47.
“
It was dark as pitch
”: Ibid., 145.

48.
“
Unassailable certainty
”: Ibid., 274.

49.
“
could take [his] pen and murder
”: Ibid., 277.

50.
Clemens’s hoax of a “petrified man”
: Mark Twain, “Petrified Man,” in
Early Tales & Sketches,
ed. Edgar Marquess Branch and Robert H. Hirst, vol. 1,
1851–1863
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 159.

51.
But a medical journal
: Kelly Driscoll, “The Fluid Identity of ‘Petrified Man,’ ”
American Literary Realism
41, no. 3 (Spring 2009): 214–31.

52.
“
Unreliable
”: Mark Twain,
Mark Twain of the
Enterprise:
Newspaper Articles & Other Documents,
1862–1864,
ed. Henry Nash Smith (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957), 59.

53.
“
April Fool & Co.
”: Doten,
Journals,
146.

54.
“
that most incorrigible of jokers
”: Dan De Quille [William Wright],
The History of the Big Bonanza: An Authentic Account of the Discovery, History, and Working of the World Renowned Comstock Silver Lode of Nevada
(Hartford, CT: American Publishing Company, 1877), 357.

55.
“
12 pound nugget
”: William P. Bennett,
The First Baby in Camp: A Full Account of the Scenes and Adventures During the Pioneer Days of ’49
(Salt Lake City: Rancher Publishing Company, 1893), 6–7.

56.
One famous prank
: Twain,
Roughing It,
221–27, 631–32
n
. For an earlier account of the landslide case, see also Mark Twain, “A Rich Decision,” in
Early Tales & Sketches,
vol. 1, 280–81, 481–82
n
.

57.
“
to provoke cascades of inextinguishable merriment
”: Lucius Beebe,
Comstock Commotion: The Story of the Territorial Enterprise
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1954), 40, 60.

58.
At a time when eastern culture
: Ann Douglas,
The Feminization of American Culture
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977), especially 227–56.

59.
a rash of murders
:
Mark Twain and Dan De Quille took a room in a house shared by the family of Tom Fitch, editor of their rival
Union,
and Twain managed to offend Fitch’s hospitable wife, Anna, with the rumor that De Quille had hanged her cat. (He hadn’t.) Making matters worse, Fitch had become the object of the
Enterprise
’s vicious ridicule for turning against the Union cause, a war of words that peaked, on September 27, in a Colt .44 duel between the two editors in chief. It was the season’s best-attended social outing—numbering “gamblers, pimps, touts, bartenders, teamsters, newspaper reporters, con men, shills, spielers, gold-brick artists, and snake-oil venders” among the witnesses—and though it spared Fitch’s life, it cost him a kneecap. Beebe,
Comstock Commotion,
63–65.

60.
“
great pine forest
”: Mark Twain, “A Bloody Massacre near Carson,” in
Early Tales & Sketches,
vol. 1, 324–26.

61.
“
Presently his eyes spread wide open
”: Mark Twain,
Mark Twain’s Sketches New and Old
(Hartford, CT: American Publishing Company, 1882), 296.

62.
“
as baseless as the fabric of a dream
”: Richard G. Lillard, “Contemporary Reaction to ‘The Empire City Massacre,’ ”
American Literature
16, no. 3 (November 1944): 198–203.

63.
“
fun
,” “
gold as large as peas
”: These quotes and the story of Tom and Pike are in De Quille,
History of the Big Bonanza,
542–53.

64.
“
Three Saints
”: Nigey Lennon,
The Sagebrush Bohemian: Mark Twain in California; Samuel Clemens’s Turbulent Years on the Barbary Coast
(New York: Paragon House, 1993), 30.

65.
“
very wild
”: Artemus Ward [Charles Farrar Browne],
(His Travels) Among the Mormons,
in
The Complete Works of Charles Farrar Browne
(London: Chatto and Windus, 1889), 204.

66.
“
‘opinions and reflections’
”: Twain,
Mark Twain of the
Enterprise, 122–25.

67.
“
composed of two desperadoes
”: Twain,
Roughing It,
321.

68.
“
infinitely varied and copious
”: Ibid., 309.

69.
“
the wildest mob
”: The story is told ibid., 293–98. See Lennon,
Sagebrush Bohemian,
31–35.

70.
“
All Politeness
”: Anthony, Third Earl of Shaftesbury,
Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times,
vol. 1 (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2001), 42; emphasis added. Shaftesbury countered Hobbesian egotism with the idea that citizens don’t strive just for their personal happiness, but also for their neighbors’ happiness, and have what he called
sensus communis
. He argued that a sense for the “common good” is an instinct every bit as natural as hunger.