1914 Tompkins' Real Wild West: Native American Ceremonial Dance
The Vintage Map Shop, Inc.
Regular price $45.00
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By: The Donaldson Litho.
Date of Original: 1914 (circa) Newport, KY
Size of Original: 28 x 42 inches
This is a fine print reproduction of a scarce chromolithograph broadside featuring a Native American Ceremonial Dance scene from the Tompkins Real Wild West show, issued by the Donaldson Lithograph Company around 1914.
The composition presents a ceremonial dance scene with figures carrying shields and tomahawks and wearing feathered headdresses and ceremonial dress, including one performer adorned with a buffalo head. At right, drummers keep the rhythm while a larger group looks on, with teepees and open grassland extending across the background.
Wild West shows were widely popular from the late 19th into the early 20th century, rising to prominence with Buffalo Bill’s shows around the 1893 Columbian Exposition and declining with the onset of World War I. The Tompkins Wild West show operated from 1913 to 1917 with the Cooper-Whitby Circus, touring Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey during the summer before moving through Maryland and Virginia in the fall. Performers included Charles and Mabel Tompkins, Chief Running Deer, Hank Drake, Dixie DeVere, Owasso, Bulldogger, and Lafe Lewman.
Charles H. Tompkins, born in Round Rock, Texas in 1873, began working as a ranch hand at twelve and later joined several cattle drives, including one that moved 25,000 head from Dalhart, Texas to Montana. After winning first prize in a Chicago roping contest in 1895, he earned recognition as a skilled rider and roper and later directed the Congress of Champion Ropers and Riders at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.
It captures the theatrical pageantry that helped define the Wild West show as a powerful form of early American popular entertainment.
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