The Anthropology Days were in part inspired by the fledgling field of social science, and it is in that historical context that they are best understood. Academics sought methodological rigor in order to put the “science” in “social science.” One form of data that found prominence was anthropometry, whereby researchers used biometric measurements to link race and body type to labels like “natural athlete” and “born criminal.” Anthropologists assumed that race existed as a stable category, and that it correlated with specific physical, psychological, and cultural characteristics. Their supposedly objective measures were shaped by politics and used to justify colonialism and racist subjugation.
The organizers of the Anthropology Days at St. Louis were two World’s Fair officials, William J. McGee and James E. Sullivan. McGee was an anthropologist and proselytizer of anthropometry. Sullivan headed the Department of Physical Culture for the Exposition. He was a former athlete and prolific writer who penned a glorified account of the proceedings for Spalding’s Official Athletic Almanac for 1905 called “Anthropology Days at the Stadium.”
Sullivan initially proposed a “Special Olympics” in order to dispel any popular notions that non-whites were “natural athletes” who could compete at the same level as Caucasians. The “utter lack of athletic ability on the part of the savages,” as Sullivan put it, would prove that Western athletes were the best in the world.116 Sullivan and McGee pulled their pool of participants from the nearly 3,000 indigenous people who traveled to St. Louis from around the world to take part in the Fair. A sizable number of them were enticed, cajoled, or bullied into playing along with Anthropology Days.117 Since the exposition was in the United States, Native groups from the US and Canada predominated, including Arapahos, Chippewas, Kickapoos, Kiowas, Navajos, Nez Perce, Pawnees, Sioux, Wichitas, and First Nations people from Vancouver Island. Even the famous Apache Geronimo was there. Also on hand were indigenous people from the Philippines, recently conquered by the United States in the Spanish-American War: the Bagobos, Igorots, Moros, Negritos, and Visayans. Other indigenous groups included African Pygmies, Argentine Patagonians, and Japanese Ainus.118
At the core of McGee’s belief system sat the assumption that indigenous peoples and Caucasians were subject to scientific laws governing their physical capabilities. In economic terms, the “Special Olympics” were meant to demonstrate anthropology’s use value while conjuring exchange value for his stockpile of anthropological artifacts, which he aimed to sell to procure funding for future research. He also sought to validate his theory that environment determined physical prowess.
Sullivan believed that American athletes and their training methods were unparalleled. As Parezo notes, he “absolutely believed that Caucasians were the best natural as well as the best-trained athletes in the world. Whites (especially those of Northern European heritage) were the superior race and America, because of its racial heritage, was a peerless culture, which would only progress further if it adopted his programs.”119 Both McGee and Sullivan arrived in St. Louis with fully formed conclusions in search of data that would “prove” they were right. If they came across findings in friction with their beliefs, they simply explained them away.120
McGee and Sullivan’s efforts were thwarted in part by Native Americans like the Ojibwe and Osage, who refused to submit to anthropometric measuring. Others, like the Cocopas, Moros, and Visayans, refused to be photographed. Negritos refused to climb trees on demand or to have their feet measured. Unlike other athletic competitors at the World’s Fair, Anthropology Days participants were not offered cash prizes, so many indigenous people just said no. Others declined the invitation because they did not understand the rules for these totally foreign sports. Organizers tried to persuade potential participants by bringing them to witness Olympic trials so they could learn the rules by watching athletes in action. After watching swimming trials, there were no takers, aside from the Samal Moros. It didn’t help that the rules were never explicitly explained—organizers opted not to hop the language hurdles. Further, indigenous athletes were not allowed to practice. The game was rigged; some Native Americans, like the Arapahos and Wichitas, departed en masse instead of playing along with the racial experiment.121
McGee and Sullivan were undeterred—they had theories to prove. Heats for running events were arranged, one for each individual group. As Sullivan reported, there were heats for “Africans, Moros (Philippines), Patagonians, and the Ainu (Japanese), Cocopa (Mexican), and Sioux Indian tribes.”122 A St. Louis University professor explained the rules in English and without interpreters. The goal was to collect the fastest person from each group and place each one in the final. Sullivan was to compare their times with those of his prized athletes from the United States and Northern Europe. But cultural differences wrecked the master plan. Instead of plunging through the finish-line ribbon, indigenous runners would wait for their colleagues or duck under the tape. As Parezo notes, “Cooperation was more important than ‘victory’… waiting for friends was a sign of graciousness and a symbol of respect in many cultures.”123 To Sullivan, these breaches of the rules were unforgiveable; rule-breakers were unceremoniously disqualified.
Even by the standards of the day, many found the Anthropology Days absurd and shameful. Stephen Simms, of the Field Museum in Chicago, was taken aback by the charade of racism masquerading as scientific method.124 McGee himself initially downplayed the results of Anthropology Days over concerns that not enough data were obtained. Such quibbles did not faze Sullivan, who made capacious generalizations about the “utter lack of athletic ability on the part of the savages.”125 He compared indigenous participants to Olympic medal-winners like track star Ray Ewry and pronounced that the comparison “proves conclusively that the savage is not the natural athlete we have been led to believe.”126
Parezo demonstrates how such conclusions carried wide-ranging ramifications: “To Sullivan the Anthropology Days proved that his opinions about sports as a medium for shaping the moral and cognitive development of young people were correct but that Native peoples were intellectually, socially, cognitively, and morally inferior by nature.” As such, “they were not as good prospects for assimilation as European immigrants.”127 McGee apparently agreed. In his final report on Anthropology Days he asserted “the lesson” of their Special Olympics was that “primitive men are far inferior to modern Caucasians in both physical and mental development.”128 Sullivan concurred: “The whole meeting proves conclusively that the savage has been a very much overrated man from an athletic point of view.”129
Although Sullivan deemed his “Special Olympics” a “brilliant success,” Coubertin did not agree. He called Anthropology Days “a mistake,” “inhuman,” and “flawed”130 and feared that they marked the “beginnings of exotic athleticism” that were “hardly flattering.”131 Although the Anthropology Days were “the only original feature offered by the program,” they were “a particularly embarrassing one.”132 Other commentators agreed. Writing more than a quarter-century later, Hugh Harlan declared that featuring athletes “from various backwards nations” created “confusion and mis-direction,” a “sad spectacle” that meant the “St. Louis games could not be anything except a failure as far as an international sport festival is concerned.”133
Some of the racialist assumptions that underpinned the Anthropology Days arguably persist today. Historian Mark Dyreson writes, “The contemplation of racial and national difference remains a central feature of Olympic sport in the twenty-first century. Rather than discrediting scientific and popular measurements of the ‘physical value’ of human populations, Anthropology Days embedded that practice in modern discourse.”134 The episode also helps us better understand modern-day indigenous resistance to the Olympics, a theme I will take up later.
Despite the religious rhetoric that pervades Coubertin’s writings, Sigmund Loland asserts, “we can characterize Olympism as a secular, vitalistic ‘humanism of the muscles’.”135
