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Completing Lewis and Clark's Westward March: Exhibiting a History of Empire at the 1905 Portland World's Fair

2005; Oregon Historical Society; Volume: 106; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/ohq.2005.0046

2329-3780

Lisa Blee,

Archaeology and Natural History

Lisa ?lee Completing Lewis and [lark's Westward March Exhibiting a History ofEmpire at the1905 Portland World'sFair Statuary of ferocious bobcats and enormous plaster-of-paris bulls menaced visitors from across manicured lawns. Stone im I ages of dancing American Indians broke through the shrubbery and flowers of the carefully styled gardens. Visitors who en countered these statues and gardens entered a fantasy of colonial majesty in the Columbian Court of the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial and American Pacific Exposition and Oriental Fair in Portland, Oregon. Sur roundedbygrandexhibit buildings thatconjured imagesof theimperial power of Byzantium, Spain, and Great Britain, visitors were expected to imagine theAmerican West as conquered and tamed. The American flag was ever-present at speeches and other events, and it flew above all of these imperial structures and throughout the exhibits of exotic people and places. The symbolism of the fair layered representations of imperial might and ingenuity with expressions ofAmerican heritage and promised a bright future for the United States, finally realized in the farwestern town of Portland. Nowhere were these themes more played out at the fair than in the statuary of Native Americans. Fairgoers were faced with incongruous depictions of Indians as either doomed by their adherence to traditional lifeways or as a hopeless race in need of assimilation into white ways of life.Alice Cooper's statue of Sacagawea, as well as the speeches that ac 232 OHQ vol. 106, no. 2 ? 2005 Oregon Historical Society OHS neg.,OrHi 36789 U.S. flags were ubiquitous at the Lewis and Clark Exposition. In this image, theyfly above and within a section of The Trail exhibiting Japanese cultural symbols, foods, and people. companied itsunveiling, connected the conquest of Indians and western lands in the nineteenth century with futureU.S. commercial expansion. The exposition's events, exhibits, and design suggested that the nation could draw upon traditions of western empire to justifymoving ever westward and into Pacific and Asian markets. In the speeches, statues, and grand structures, the fair told the story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which not only paved the nation's way through the West but also laid the groundwork for expansion intoAsia. The Portland fair's planners hoped to bring the West into an international spotlight and sought to create im ages that offered both justification and self-congratulation for those who lived at the far edge of an old expansionist push and at the beginning of a new one. The Lewis and Clark Exposition was intended tohelp theUnited States define itself in theworld marketplace. Blee, Completing Lewis and Clark's Westward March 233 In the 1870s, U.S. industrial production increased at such a rate that exports exceeded imports for the first time in the nation's history. In dustrial capitalists insisted that new markets be secured to support the pace of production and economic growth and to ensure thatAmerican overproduction would not bring economic ruin. They looked west, across the Pacific, tomarkets in the Philippines, Japan, and China. The situation only seemed more pressing as the industrial economy continued to grow. "Many of our manufacturers have outgrown or are outgrowing theirhome markets," Theodore C. Search, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, proclaimed in 1897. "The expansion of our foreign trade is the only promise of relief."1 The search for overseas markets in the early twentieth century fit into a larger pattern of territorial expansion that Frederick Jackson Turner had argued was a major factor in the shaping of theAmerican character. In 1893, Turner predicted that,with the settlement of the frontier, internal social turmoil would boil over in a population previously shaped and quieted by patterns of conquering, settling, and expanding farther west. In this interpretation, expansion was necessary, not only for the health of the economy but also for the stability of society. Anxieties about the changes that accompanied industrialization could be calmed by looking to past patterns of expansion. Some Americans were quick to translate fears of economic collapse and social turmoil into a desire for new, foreign com mercial frontiers.2 Before the close of the nineteenth century, those new frontiers began tomaterialize. The Spanish-American War concluded in 1898with U.S...