Mardi Gras Indians

The Mardi Gras Indians (also known as Black Masking Indians or Black Maskers) are African American carnival revelers in New Orleans, Louisiana, known for their elaborate suits and participation in Mardi Gras. The Mardi Gras Indians subculture emerged during the era of slavery from West African, Afro-Caribbean and Native American cultural practices. The Mardi Gras Indians' tradition is considered part of the African diasporan decorative aesthetic, and is an African-American art form.
The Mardi Gras Indian tradition developed as a form of cultural resistance when traditional African religions were banned and Black people could not gather in public or wear masks. Their aesthetic serves as an expression of their culture, religion and spirituality. The tradition of "masking" derives from the West African masquerade ceremony, in which an individual takes on the role of a god or spirit. Some Mardi Gras Indians mask as the Native American allies who shielded their ancestors during slavery; others mask as orisha spirits from the Yoruba religion, or as spirits of the dead, such as the Skull and Bones gangs. Mardi Gras Indians' suits (regalia) and performances provide commentary on social justice issues, political liberation, and transformation. Their ceremonial purposes include healing, protection from the unknown, and communion with the spirits.
Mardi Gras Indians call their krewes "tribes" or "gangs", which should not be confused with Native American tribes. Tribes takes their names from street names, ancestry and important cultural figures. There are more than 40 active tribes, which range in size from half a dozen to several dozen members. Groups are largely independent, but a pair of umbrella organizations loosely coordinates the Uptown Indians and the Downtown Indians. Their suits are displayed in museums in Louisiana and the Smithsonian. The complex designs of these suits are unique to the Mardi Gras Indian artistic community.
In addition to Mardi Gras Day, many of the tribes also parade on Saint Joseph's Day (March 19) and the Sunday nearest to Saint Joseph's Day ("Super Sunday"). Traditionally, these were the only times Mardi Gras Indians were seen in public in full regalia. The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival began the practice of hiring tribes to appear at the Festival as well. In recent years, it has become more common to see Mardi Gras Indians at other festivals and parades in the city. According to Joyce Marie Jackson of Tulane University, the Mardi Gras Indians' fusion of American Indian and West African motifs and music creates "a folk ritual and street theater unique to New Orleans".
Mardi Gras Indians have been practicing their traditions in New Orleans since at least the 18th century. The colony of New Orleans was founded by the French in 1718, on land inhabited by the Chitimacha Tribe, and within the first decade 5,000 enslaved Africans were trafficked to the colony. The West-Central African ethnic groups taken to Louisiana during the transatlantic slave trade were Bambara, Gambian, Akan, Fon, Yoruba, and Kongolese peoples. From 1719 to 1743, almost 30 percent of African people imported to New Orleans came from Ouidah, a port in Dahomey on the Bight of Benin. The largest group came from Senegambia. These ethnic groups influenced the culture of Louisiana in food, music, language, religion, and decorative aesthetics. French slaveholders allowed enslaved and free Black people to congregate on Sunday afternoons at Congo Square, where they performed music and religious practices.
New Orleans is known for its Creole heritage, with traditions coming from Native Americans, Africans, and Europeans. A mixed-race population of free people of color contributed to the history and culture of Mardi Gras in the city. The culture of enslaved Africans fused with Afro-Caribbean, Native American and European cultures that syncretized at Congo Square and was practiced during Mardi Gras. The Mardi Gras Indian tradition developed from early encounters between the region's Indigenous (likely Chitimacha) and Black communities. Most of the enslaved people in Louisiana were Black, but 20% of enslaved people were either Native or mixed-race Afro-Indigenous people before abolition.
When enslaved Africans escaped, they encountered Indigenous peoples of Louisiana who shared skills and resources with them. New Orleans was surrounded by swamps, bayous, and rivers where a number of maroon settlements formed. In Louisiana, the Underground Railroad went south to maroon camps because the northern free territories and Canada were too far. These maroon camps attacked whites, stole cattle from nearby farms for food, and freed or absorbed other enslaved people. The maroons lived in huts and grew their own food of corn, squash, rice, and herbs. African culture thrived in maroon communities, and Native Americans often helped them by providing food and weapons to defend themselves from whites and slave catchers.
In colonial Louisiana, there was a settlement known as Natanapalle of armed maroons and Indigenous peoples. In such spaces, freed and escaped Africans adapted some of the culture of Native Americans. Whites in Louisiana feared an alliance of Africans and Indigenous people.
In 1729, 280 enslaved Africans joined forces with Natchez people during the "Natchez Revolt" to prevent French colonists from taking Indigenous land for tobacco production. The Natchez killed almost all of the 150 Frenchmen at Fort Rosalie, and only about 20 managed to escape, some fleeing to New Orleans. The Natchez spared the enslaved Africans, perhaps due to an affinity between the Natchez and the Africans. Some slaves joined the Natchez, while others took the chance to escape to freedom.
Until the mid-1760s, maroon colonies lined the shores of Lake Borgne, just downriver of New Orleans. The maroons controlled many of the canals and back-country passages from Lake Pontchartrain to the Gulf of Mexico, including the Rigolets. The San Malo community was a long-thriving autonomous community. These settlements were eventually eradicated by Spanish militia led by Francisco Bouligny. Despite this, people who escaped enslavement in ante-bellum America continued to find refuge and freedom in the areas around New Orleans.
The first recorded slave dances on plantations in Louisiana were recorded by the French in 1732. Archival records documented the first enslaved Africans apparently dressing as Indigenous people in a celebratory dance called Mardi Gras in 1746. In 1771, free men of color held Mardi Gras in maroon camps and in the city's back areas. Some of these men wore their masks to balls, causing the Spanish administration to grant "a prohibition of black persons from being masked, wearing feathers, and attending nightballs. This forced them to dress and roam only in the black neighborhoods and Congo Square." Author and photographer Michael P. Smith quotes Brassea and stating: "By 1781, under Spanish rule, the attorney general warned the City Commission of problems arising from 'a great number of free negroes and slaves who, with the pretext of the Carnival season, mask and mix in bands passing through the streets looking for the dance-halls.'" In 1804 and 1813, a German American and Swiss traveler saw Black men dressed in oriental and Native American attire wearing Turkish turbans of various colors.
In the late 18th century, Spanish officials increased immigration and trade in the lower Mississippi valley by granting French merchants permission to import enslaved people from Saint-Domingue and other Caribbean islands. American merchants in New Orleans invested in capital by importing enslaved people from British colonies such as Jamaica. After the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in 1807, the port of New Orleans became the center of the slave trade in the United States before the American Civil War. Enslaved people were brought from other southern states to supply the demand for labor on the plantations. In addition, during and after the Haitian Revolution, enslavers fled the island of Hispaniola, bringing their enslaved Africans with them to New Orleans.
In 1810, free and enslaved Haitian refugees came to New Orleans from Cuba, thus doubling the local enslaved population and tripling the population of free people of color. The port received immigrants from Cuba, Germany, Ireland, and the rest of the Caribbean. Carnival cultures from Haiti, Jamaica and other parts of the West Indies blended with festival traditions in local Black communities. Influences such as Jonkonnu, Rara, Gaga, Canboulet, and others came from the West Indies.
In 1857, The Pickwick Club, an all-white gentleman's club, formed the Mystick Krewe of Comus, a white-only carnival krewe. They were soon followed by similar all-white, men-only krewes across the city. These groups often wore blackface and redface, and took part in public celebrations as well as private balls. Black people were initially forbidden from wearing masks during carnival; in response, groups of young Black men used "war paint" to hide their identities instead. After the state legislature allowed masking "from sunrise to sunset", Black people began masking according to the style of West African masquerade ceremonies.
By the 1880s, Becate Batiste, a young creole man of African, French and Choctaw heritage formed the Creole Wild West, in Seventh Ward. Others soon formed their own "tribes". Their visual style, drawing from African and Indigenous traditions, served to satirize and invert the racist masquerades of white krewes. It also allowed Black people, whose African culture had been suppressed by slave laws and the Code Noir, to practice their traditions openly.
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina destroyed African-American neighborhoods in New Orleans. Tremé is considered to be the oldest Black neighborhood in America and during post-Katrina continues to experience gentrification. From the 18th and 19th centuries, free Black people owned businesses and mixed with Haitian immigrants at Tremé. It is estimated that Black people owned eighty percent of the neighborhood. After Hurricane Katrina passed through, over 1,000 Black households along Clairborne Avenue were wiped-out and replaced with 120 white households. According to research from author Shearon Roberts, the changing of racial demographics in post-Katrina affects the continuation of culture for some Black residents. Occupation by white residents of spaces that were once Black-owned and where Black masking and cultural traditions were perpetuated resulted in three consequences: "...economic loss through appropriation, increased forms of criminalization, and the rupturing of Black safe communal spaces." Black New Orleanians experience cultural intrusion and appropriation from outsiders that affects the meaning and history of their traditions.
Experts generally agree that Mardi Gras Indian culture is a combination of African, Caribbean, Indigenous, and European influences, which underwent a process of creolization and syncretism in New Orleans. For instance, the beadwork, drumbeats, and aprons worn by Mardi Gras Indians resembles the cultures of West and Central Africa. The masking of the Mardi Gras Indians resembles West African masquerade ceremonies and warrior dances, but also draws on Indigenous motifs. The closest comparisons are between Caribbean carnival cultures—some scholars have even suggested New Orleans should be considered part of the pan-Caribbean region because of its shared heritage.
Black masking traditions were sustained by African Americans despite colonialism, slavery, Black Codes, and racism. After the French required Black people to convert to Catholicism, African and Christian religious traditions were combined to continue traditional practices from African religions without notice. For enslaved and free Africans in the Americas, this included singing, dancing, drumming, and wearing masks and costumes at carnival. In its early history, masking culture resembled the all-male West African secret masquerade societies practiced among the Igbo and Yoruba. As Black people continued to practice their traditional cultures, they also incorporated Native American and Caribbean elements, in turn creating the diverse Black masking carnival traditions in the diaspora and in New Orleans.
Scholars Fehintola Mosadomi and Joyce M. Jackson noted similar ceremonial practices of the Yoruba Egungun and Mardi Gras Indians—both are performed in the streets with music and folk rituals, have elaborate colorful costumes, and are male-dominated. Masking Indian culture is a rite of passage for Black men and provides manhood and comrade training. Women's role in the tradition was, historically, as embellishment, but over the years, women began to participate too.
Black people in the African diaspora have traditionally used masquerade carnivals to protest oppression. Black carnivals provide a space for African Americans to unite, free from exploitation by white Americans. Mardi Gras Indian culture is a form of Black creative resistance to the white supremacy of colonialism and represents a rejection of white carnival norms.
Mardi Gras Indians today have their own secret coded symbols, songs and language only initiates within the community know. In the 19th century, Creole dialects developed differently within each neighborhood because of the diversity of African languages spoken, each having its own syntax and phonetics. This contributed to a diversity of coded dialects sung by Black masking Indians.
Mardi Gras Indian music and dance is informed by the Black New Orleanian experience. In 1740, New Orleans' Congo Square was a cultural center for African music and dance; the city was also a major southern trade port that became a cultural melting pot. On Sundays, enslaved African people gathered to sing folk songs, play traditional music, and dance. The lively parties were recounted by a Northern observer as being "indescribable ... Never will you see gayer countenances, demonstrations of more forgetfulness of the past and the future, and more entire abandonment to the joyous existence of the present moment."
On these occasions, Mardi Gras Indians would play traditional music using belled wrists and ankle bands, congas, and tambourines. The music of Mardi Gras Indians played at Congo square contributed to the creation of jazz. Mardi Gras Indian music is derived from African polyrhythms and syncopated beats combined with African and Creole languages, and French and European musical influences. These African rhythms, such as the Bamboula, have been continued to this day. The traditional New Orleans Black masking Indian song Iko Iko, which emerged around this time, is believed to derive from a combination of the Native American Choctaw and Chickasaw languages, Louisiana Creole, French, and West African languages.
Black Masking Indian parades typically have a "second line" of street performers and revelers with brass instruments and drums. These second line brass bands often attend local jazz funerals to play for the funeral procession. Historian Richard Brent Turner says that Central African cultures from Bakongo peoples, Haitian carnivals, and Black American culture which blended at Congo Square are expressed in the Mardi Gras Indians' regalia and music. Mardi Gras Indian musicians include the funk band Cha Wa, singer and "Big Chief" Monk Boudreau, and The Wild Tchoupitoulas.
The Code Noir in French colonies banned all non-Catholic religions and required enslaved and free people to convert to Catholicism. Curator and author Paulette Richards suggests that masquerade performances in the Black Atlantic during and after slavery, in which African and Christian religious traditions were combined, were a way for African peoples in the Americas to continue honoring their ancestral spirits after colonial officials had banned Black people from practicing African religions. Many maskers describe masking as aiming "to enter the spirit world of possession". During jazz funerals, spirits control the bodies of the dancers so the spirit of the deceased can transition peacefully. During Mardi Gras, the masks symbolize spirituality and freedom.
Mardi Gras Indians often form second lines for jazz funerals in Black neighborhoods, marching behind the coffin and mourners. The music is typically somber when they head to church, but becomes celebratory when leaving the church. These funerals feature African customs such as intense drumming, dancing, and call-and-response. Similar funeral processions are seen in West African, Afro-Caribbean, and Afro-Brazilian communities. Mardi Gras Indians also perform healing rituals during their street performances to unite and heal communities.
Before a Mardi Gras Indian observance begins a prayer or chant is said in Louisiana Creole. The song Madi cu defio, en dans day is sung; it is a corruption of a Louisiana Voodoo Creole song, M'alle couri dans deser, associated with the Afro-Caribbean dance called Calinda. Calinda (or Kalinda) developed in the Caribbean, and was brought to New Orleans by enslaved people from San Domingo and the Antilles. In New Orleans, Calinda became "the dance of Congo Square", and was integrated into Mardi Gras Indian traditions.
Mardi Gras Indians attend Spiritual churches because of a shared interest in the history of Native American resistance and spirit possession. Mardi Gras Indians also attract churchgoers when they perform ring shout dances with percussion in inner city clubs. In New Orleans, the Spiritual church movement was influenced by Louisiana Voodoo, folk Catholicism, Protestantism, Spiritualism, Bakongo and Nkisi culture, and other African diaspora religions such as Espiritismo and Palo Mayombe. Native American images were incorporated into the practices of New Orleans Spiritual churches as early as 1852.
After Leafy Anderson moved to New Orleans in 1920, many Spiritual churches introduced traditions associated with Mardi Gras Indians, including summoning the spirits of Native American resistance leaders such as Black Hawk, White Eagle, Red Cloud, and White Hawk. Anderson wore a Native American chief's mantle during her services to call the spirit of Black Hawk, her favorite spirit guide, who today symbolizes protest and empowerment for the marginalized women in the churches. This summoning tradition continued into the late 20th century. In the 1980s, James Anderson wore the suit of deceased tribal member Big Chief Jolley to a Black Hawk ceremony at Infant Jesus of Prague Spiritual Church. One church minister reportedly dressed as a Mardi Gras Indian to summon the spirits of Black Hawk and Reverend Adams, resulting in a "séance". Many Spiritual churches have altars to Indigenous figures, Catholic saints, ancestors, Archangel Michael, and other spirits. In one Spiritual church, a three-foot-high Indian statue is decorated with a Mardi Gras Indian headdress and bead patches.
Scholars have noted the similar musical, dance, and regalia practices of Black people across the African diaspora. The arrival of Haitian slaves during the Haitian Revolution and Dominican slaves in 1809 brought Caribbean carnival culture to the Black Americans of New Orleans. Many of the Dominicans had Yoruba ancestry, and their masquerade culture of Egungun syncretized with the culture of New Orleans enslaved communities.
By the 20th century, more Haitian immigrants settled in Louisiana where some elements of rara festival culture blended with Black American carnivals. When other Afro-Caribbean communities started to settle in New Orleans, their culture was incorporated into the suits, dances and music, too.
Historian Jeroen Dewulf describes similar masking traditions—where Black people dress as Indigenous people—in Cuba, Peru, Trinidad, and Brazil. Feathered headdresses are worn in the Americas and by Kongo people in Central Africa. In African and Native American cultures, feathers have a spiritual meaning; they elevate the wearer's spirit and connect them to the spirit realm. Kongo people wear feathered headdresses in ceremonies and festivals; they are worn by African chiefs and dancers; and feathers are placed on Traditional African masks to bring in good medicine. These practices continued in the Americas. The designs of African headdresses blended with headdresses worn by Indigenous people, creating unique styles across the diaspora.
Mardi Gras Indian performances tell a story about their ancestors escaping slavery on the Underground Railroad. Author Natalie Medea describes the Young Seminole Hunters, a tribe which sculpts elaborate suits to honor the roles the Seminole people had in liberating enslaved Black people.
Many Pan-American carnivals in the African diaspora have performances and regalia which resemble those of Mardi Gras Indians, such as:
Black masking traditions in New Orleans are a combination of Caribbean and African folk art that was sustained by African Americans as "an expression of Black resistance to [a] white supremacist environment" and a rejection of white carnival norms. Author Raphael Njoku says: "While masquerading is reminiscent of the communal sociopolitical structures in precolonial Africa, the African Diaspora masked carnivals challenged the political powers and interests of the dominant White elite."
For many Black people, Mardi Gras—and masking in particular—is a cultural and a spiritual experience with strong ties to the African diaspora. Some Black masking Indians describe a "successful" masking experience as including "a sensation of being possessed". Masking Indian Chief Zulu says: "Once you put a mask on, you're not a person any more. You become the energy or entity of what it is you're masking." Mardi Gras Indian Albert Lambreaux describes transforming into "Big Chief" when he wears his suit. As Big Chief he becomes an authority in the community. This change of identity only occurs during Mardi Gras when Black maskers wear their regalia. This is a continuation of Sub-Saharan African masking traditions where a person's identity changes when they mask; the masks invite the gods to possess the individual, take them to another plane of existence, or relay messages to the community.
While the tradition began as a male right of passage, as were the masquerade traditions in West and Central Africa, today many Black women partake in this tradition as well. Cherice Harrison-Nelson says partaking in the Mardi Gras Indian tradition was a spiritual and personal choice. Five generations of her family have masked as Indians. Harrison-Nelson notes the similar cultural practices of Mardi Gras Indians and West Africans in the music, polyrhythms, and regalia. She says: "I would say this tradition is an African-American community neighborhood-based tradition that often uses a Native American motif, which includes the feather headdresses and beadwork. But basically, everything else about it is West African."
From the 1960s, Mardi Gras Indians began to intentionally incorporate more imagery from African cultures and African diaspora religions in their regalia.
In the 1720s, the dance called Calinda (or Kalinda) developed in the Caribbean, based on African martial arts. It was brought to New Orleans by enslaved people from San Domingo and the Antilles. In Haiti and Trinidad, Calinda was a form of stick fighting and was performed during carnivals by the enslaved. In New Orleans, it became a voodoo dance and "the dance of Congo Square". The Calinda dance was integrated into Mardi Gras Indian traditions. Other dance influences were the chica, an Afro-Caribbean dance, and bamboula, an African derived dance, that were performed at Congo Square by free and enslaved people.
The performances of Mardi Gras Indians also display influences from mock-war performances by warriors called sangamento from the Kingdom of Kongo. The word is derived from a verb in the Kikongo language, ku-sanga, denoting ecstatic dancers. In Portuguese ku-sanga became sangamento. Kongo people in Central Africa performed dances decorated in African feather headdresses and wore belts with jingle bells. Sangamento performers dance using leaps, contortions, and gyrations, similar to the dance styles of Mardi Gras Indians. During the transatlantic slave trade, Bantu people were enslaved in the Americas. Sangamentos were a brotherhood of men with a semi-underground culture that resembles the Mardi Gras Indian tradition at Congo Square. Scholars at Duke University found that Kongo peoples' culture influenced African diaspora religions, Afro-American music, and the dance and musical styles of Mardi Gras Indians.
Masking Indians honor the assistance given their ancestors by incorporating American Indian symbols into their carnivals. Native American resistance is also a key theme in Mardi Gras Indian performances. Black Mardi Gras Indians tell these stories of African–Indigenous solidarity through their regalia. Scholars have found reports of Native American motifs on costumes and in parades in New Orleans since the 18th century, though Mardi Gras Indians began to incorporate more imagery from African cultures and African diaspora religions into their regalia from the 1960s.
During the late 1740s and 1750s, many enslaved Africans fled to the bayous of Louisiana where they encountered Native Americans. The Underground Railroad went through several Native American communities (local tribes included the Chitimacha, Natchez, Houma, Atakapa, and Tunica). In 1729, 280 enslaved Africans joined the Natchez to resist the French in the Natchez revolt. During these contacts, Black people adopted elements of local Native culture and blended it with their own West African and Afro-Caribbean traditions. The Chitimacha were the first to make a public musical procession in New Orleans called Marche du Calumet de Paix; this practice was likely inspired similar processions by Black New Orleanians, who gathered at Congo Square. Accounts describe Black gangs dressed as "Native American militia" as early as 1836. A source from 1849 refers to Black performers on Congo Square fully covered in "the plumes of the peacock".
From 1884 to 1885, Buffalo Bill's Wild West show wintered in New Orleans, and had a multicultural cast and crew of Black, Chinese, Mexican, European and Indigenous people. Some scholars suggest the show may have been an indirect influence on the Mardi Gras Indians. Michael P. Smith suggests that, given the racial conditions in New Orleans at the time, these shows would have galvanized local Black audiences to identify with the plight of the Native Americans and see a shared enemy in white supremacy. Ann Dupont believes this "rekindled" the "allegiance and affinity" between Black people and Native Americans. In 1885, the first recorded Mardi Gras Indian gang was formed by Becate Batiste, a putative Black Indian; the tribe was named "The Creole Wild West". Though the New Orleans traditions of Black masking predate Buffalo Bill's show, Smith suggests the name of Batiste's tribe may have been an intentional response to it. That same year, 50 to 60 Plains Indians reportedly also marched in native dress for Mardi Gras. Towards the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century, the presence of Native American ancestor worship in the city's Spiritual church movement may also have influenced Mardi Gras Indian traditions.
The use of some Native American motifs, such as in the names for tribes or gangs, has begun to decline among some Mardi Gras Indians; alternate names for the subculture have also been suggested, such as "Black Maskers" and the "Maroons of Urban New Orleans". Some tribes have removed the words "Indian Red" from their music. Author Michael Smith says that "Indian Red" is a Mardi Gras Indian prayer song that honors various gang members past and present, and calls for peace and justice. Andrew Pearse suggests the origins of "Indian Red" comes from a carnival song in Trinidad, "Indurubi", which may have come from the Spanish Indio Rubi ("Indian Red").
Mardi Gras Indian suits cost thousands of dollars in materials alone and can weigh upwards of one hundred pounds (45 kg). A suit usually takes between six and nine months to plan and complete, but can take up to a year. Mardi Gras Indians design and create their own suits; elaborate bead patches depict meaningful and symbolic scenes. Beads, feathers, and sequins are integral parts of a Mardi Gras Indian suit. The beadwork is entirely done by hand and features a combination of color and texture. The suits incorporate volume, giving the clothing a sculptural sensibility. Uptown New Orleans tribes tend to have more pictorial and African-inspired suits; downtown tribes have more 3D suits with more Native American influences. The suits are revealed on Super Sunday. Some of the suits are displayed in museums throughout the country.
Even though men are more numerous among the Mardi Gras Indians, women can become "Queens" who make their own regalia and masks. Author Cynthia Becker states the Mardi Gras Indian suits "express people's religious beliefs, historical pride, and racial heritage". Cherice Harrison-Nelson says her suits tell her family's history—the story of an ancestor who was stolen and enslaved. Harrison-Nelson adds the Ghanaian Adinkra symbols to her suits to emphasize that the tradition has origins in West Africa. Tiara Horton, Queen of the 9th Ward Black Hatchet tribe, created a Black Lives Matter suit in 2020 before the murder of George Floyd, showing beaded images of Sandra Bland, Trayvon Martin, and the Obamas. For Horton, the Mardi Gras Indian tradition is her way of protesting.
In 2024, to preserve this practice for younger generations, the Arts New Orleans' Young Artist Movement provided funding for local young Black artists to create Mardi Gras Indian suits.
When making their suits, Mardi Gras Indians incorporate cultural designs from West African and North American Indigenous cultures, making their regalia a unique form of African-American folk art. Mardi Gras Indians initially decorated their ornaments with pearls, rhinestones, turkey feathers, fish scales, discarded beads, and sequins—along with their brightly colored ostrich feather headdresses, these can weigh over 150 pounds. Maskers have adopted a range of visual styles over the centuries, such as those in 1781 who were banned for "exhibitions against the public quietness" or those from the 1823 carnival who wore crowns of gold oblong boxes stacked on their heads. In 1804 and 1813, a German American and Swiss traveler saw Black men in "oriental and Indian dress" wearing different colored Turkish turbans. Over the years, their suits became more elaborate and colorful and incorporated cultural elements from Africa. West African cultural elements include cowrie shells, kente cloth, raffia, and traditional face masks and shields. Researchers have described a Nigerian beading technique in "Uptown styles" while Bakongo influences are seen in the suits of "Downtown styles."
Over the years, Mardi Gras Indians have increasingly incorporated designs from African and African diaspora cultures in their suits such as beadwork, conch shells, dried grass strands, and designs from Bahamian Junkanoo dancers. Victor Harris, a Black Louisianan, reflects the design work of Bambara and Mandinka cultures with the use of animistic designs, raffia, and feathers.
After Emperor Haile Selassie I visited New Orleans in 1954, Rastafari influences also began to appear in suit designs. Demond Melancon incorporates Rasta colors (red, green, and gold) into his suit, and beads into his regalia historical people associated with the movement, such as the Ethiopian Emperor and his wife, Empress Menen Asfaw. By sewing these Black figures into his suits, he conjures their spirits. The Rastafari movement also inspired Eric Burt to bead cultural symbols from the religion. Some Black Mardi Gras Indians are Rastas and display this in their music and regalia.
Some Black maskers practice traditional African religions in their daily lives and incorporate this into Mardi Gras. Mystic Medicine Man of the Golden Feather Hunters tribe shows his Congo ancestry by sewing the word nganga, a word in Kikongo that means a spiritual and herbal healer in Central Africa, into his suits. Other Black masking tribes such as the Spirit of Fi Yi Yi and the Mandingo Warriors were founded to connect with African masquerade traditions. Members of this tribe mask as Elegba, an orisha (divine spirit) that rules communication and the crossroads. Dow Edwards displays his devotion to the orisha Shango in his suits as Spy Boy of the Mohawk Hunters. Black maskers also turn to the Yoruba religion for inspiration in their designs. They blend European parading traditions and fuse the Yoruba orisha Oshun sacred imagery with the designs of their suits. Other maskers adapt Pan-African, Black Power, and Egyptian iconography into their regalia.
The Black Spiritual church movement in New Orleans in the 1920s may have influenced the regalia of Mardi Gras Indians. Some masking Indians practice Catholicism and blend Catholic saints, traditions, and feast days into their Caribbean and African religious practices during Mardi Gras.
Mardi Gras Indians' suits also include sequined pouches inspired by healers in the Haitian Vodou community. Some masking Indians practice Louisiana Voodoo and incorporate symbols and colors from the religion into their suits. Ty Emmecca is a Big Chief of the Black Hawk Voodoo gang and his gang beads religious symbols from the religion into their regalia and performs Voodoo healing rituals during Mardi Gras. Emmecca makes patches for his suits that are similar to Haitian Vodou drapo, which are handsewn ceremonial sequin flags.
Islamic influences have also been observed in the tradition. During the transatlantic slave trade, enslaved West African Muslims were brought to New Orleans. In the 1960s, many Black people in the city practiced Islam for political and religious reasons. Two Black Masking Indians recently incorporated symbols and Islamic religious beliefs into their suits: Floyd Edwards made a breastplate with an apron honoring Mansa Musa, the 14th-century ruler of the Islamic Mali Empire; and Peteh Muhammad Haroon beaded an image of Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam, and the Muslim symbols of a crescent and star.
Mardi Gras Indians design their suits to emphasize their ancestral connections to African and Afro-Caribbean cultures. They have preserved many of their West-Central African culture by way of decorative folk art, music, and dance. Historian of Black Studies Joseph E. Holloway states that carnivals in New Orleans resemble African-influenced festivals from the Caribbean. The continuation of African and Afro-Caribbean influences in Mardi Gras encourages a Pan-African identity among Black people in New Orleans because of the similar decorative designs seen in regalia across the Black diaspora.
Scholars also see Igbo masquerade dances in West Africa as another cultural influence in Mardi Gras Indian communities. Igbo masquerade dancers are an all-male fraternal organization. Egungun regalia also influenced the ceremonies and suits of Black Mardi Gras Indians. The Yoruba wear Egungun masks to invoke and honor ancestral spirits. The masks signify the souls of deceased relatives who return to earth to interact with their living descendants. This cultural influence is also shown in the images of ancestors and Black historical people beaded into Mardi Gras Indians' suits. Beading is often described as a spiritual experience for Black New Orleanians, who have described entering a meditative trance when sewing their suits.
Native American motifs are incorporated into the headdresses and feather designs of Mardi Gras Indian regalia. The Mardi Gras Indians take inspiration from Native American resistance and their fight against white U.S. cavalry soldiers. Some Mardi Gras Indians report that they call on the spirit of Sauk leader Black Hawk for peace and justice.
Some of the Mardi Gras Black Indians' regalia may be influenced by popular depictions of Native Americans and their cultures. For instance, Mardi Gras Indians sometimes wear war bonnets, even though the Indigenous people who helped enslaved Black Americans escape from slavery were from Southeastern Native American tribes that do not wear war bonnets.
The Mardi Gras Indians traditions are considered a unique artform and ritual which represents New Orleans' Black culture. Curators are preserving the history of Mardi Gras Indians by displaying and storing their elaborate suits in museums. To preserve the suits, curators work with the makers to prevent damage.
The Historic New Orleans Collections Museum has partnered with the city's Black arts community to preserve their culture. Curator Loren Brown says of the process:
Mardi Gras Indians organize in groups known as "tribes" (or "gangs"). Typically, they identify by tribe names, rather than as "Mardi Gras Indians" or "Black Masking Indians". Scholars have described the Mardi Gras Indian tribes as spiritual secret societies, mutual-aid organizations, and social clubs. Group names are influenced by street names, ancestry and important cultural figures. For example, some Black Americans in New Orleans descend from Senegalese or Mandinka people in West Africa; others have some Native American ancestry. Tribes with Seminole in their name reflect stories of enslaved people who escaped slavery and found refuge in the Seminole Nation. Plains Indian names may be inspired by depictions of Native Americans in popular culture. During parades, some tribes are identified by their masks.
Groups are largely independent, but a pair of umbrella organizations loosely coordinates the Uptown Indians and the Downtown Indians. The Mardi Gras Indian Council coordinates between more than 40 active tribes, which range in size from half a dozen to several dozen members. Their suits are displayed in museums in Louisiana and the Smithsonian.
Traditionally, Mardi Gras Indians were only seen in public in full regalia on Mardi Gras Day, Saint Joseph's Day (March 19) and the Sunday nearest to Saint Joseph's Day ("Super Sunday"). In recent years, it has become more common to see Mardi Gras Indians at other festivals and parades in the city as well. For example, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival has hired tribes to appear at their festival.
The Mardi Gras Indians play various traditional roles. Many blocks ahead of the Indians are plain-clothed informants keeping an eye out for any danger. The procession begins with "spyboys", dressed in light "running suits" that allow them the freedom to move quickly in case of emergency. Next comes the "first flag", an ornately dressed Indian carrying a token flag in their gang colours. Closest to the "Big Chief" is the "Wildman" who usually carries a symbolic weapon. Finally, there is the Big Chief, who decides where to go and which tribes to meet (or ignore). The entire group is followed by a "second line" of percussionists and revelers. Traditionally, the second line would also have to protect the front line of paraders from violence.
During the march, the Indians dance and sing traditional songs particular to their individual tribes. They use creole dialects or patois, loosely based on different African and European languages. The Big Chief decides where the group will parade; the parade route is different each time. When two tribes come across each other, they either pass by or meet for a symbolic fight. Each tribe lines up and the Big Chiefs taunt each other about their suits and their tribes. The drum beats of the two tribes intertwine, and the face-off is complete. Both tribes continue on their way.
The Northside Skull and Bones gang and other masking traditions continue at Treme during Mardi Gras. According to local oral history, the Skull and Bones Gangs started in 1819 in Treme. Black Maskers dress in black costumes with painted white skeleton bones to honor the dead and to caution the living that death is inevitable. Participants state that the tradition came to New Orleans by way of Caribbean and African cultures where the dead are honored in the Haitian Vodou religion. Skull and Bones masker Bruce "Sunpie" Barnes traveled to Africa and said he saw skeleton-like spirits and Voodoo markets. During Mardi Gras, Barnes recognizes the Guédé, a family of spirits in Haitian Vodou that are guardians of the cemetery. Skull and Bones gangs act as spiritual town guardians and carnival town criers. Jazz historian John McCusker found skeleton maskers were referenced in archives dating back to 1875. A 1902 local newspaper, Times-Democrat, referenced young Black maskers on the streets of North Claiborne Avenue, North Robertson and Annette.
In the early days of the Mardi Gras Indians, masking and parading was also a time to settle grudges. This part of Mardi Gras Indian history is referenced in James Sugar Boy Crawford's song, "Jock-A-Mo" (better known and often covered as "Iko Iko"), based on their taunting chants. Violence began to decline from the 1950s, and by the 1960s, "Chief of Chiefs" Allison Montana worked to end regular violence between the Mardi Gras Indian tribes. He said, "I was going to make them stop fighting with the gun and the knife and start fighting with the needle and thread." Today, the Mardi Gras Indians settle their fights through the "prettiness" of their suits instead of violence.
The cultural performances of Mardi Gras Indians are rooted in the history of racial discrimination in New Orleans. Free and enslaved Black people were banned from attending Mardi Gras by white New Orleans carnival krewes. Instead, African American communities celebrated Mardi Gras by incorporating West African rhythms, drumming, dance, and masking traditions into their own festivities, and masked as Indians to tell stories of enslaved people escaping slavery and finding refuge in Native American communities. Masking allowed Black Americans to celebrate their African heritage under a more acceptable guise as "Indians", while showing solidarity with, and paying tribute to, Native American ancestors and allies.
Mardi Gras Indians have continued to experience marginalization and police brutality into the 21st century. In response, the Mardi Gras Indian Council formed in 1985 to facilitate better coordination between the 32 tribes and their members.
Indigenous motifs have been employed in carnivals in New Orleans since the 18th century. Such motifs also appear in the suits and regalia of Mardi Gras Indians, although most of the costumes and music used derive from Caribbean traditions, with older West and Central African roots. Some scholars and campaigners have suggested that the use of Native American motifs in Mardi Gras Indian tradition is a form of cultural appropriation. There has also been debate about the use of "war paint" and feathered headdresses, and whether these are based on negative stereotypes of Indigenous people or Afro-Caribbean traditions brought by Haitian and Dominican slaves.
Scholars Shane Lief and John McCusker suggest the Native American motifs used by Mardi Gras Indians were influenced by the minstrel shows and wild west shows of the 19th and early 20th centuries, which portrayed Black and Native people in negative ways. Most scholars agree that Mardi Gras Indian traditions subvert the racial stereotypes used by white New Orleanians in the 18th and 19th centuries. Folklorist Michael P. Smith and historian Ann Dupont suggest early Black maskers "rekindled" their solidarity with Native Americans in part as a response to seeing racist caricatures of Native Americans and Black people. Smith also says that Mardi Gras Indians had masked as Indigenous people before this. Scholars such as Maurice Martinez, Jeroen Dewulf, and Kalamu ya Salaam also say that these Black masking traditions predate popular Eurocentric interpretations of Native Americans; in parts of the Caribbean and South America, Black people "masked" as Indigenous people because of a shared history of oppression. They suggest that ultimately Caribbean cultures influenced the Mardi Gras Indian tradition.
The activist Adrienne Keene (Cherokee Nation) says she is unsure if the Mardi Gras Indian tradition is cultural appropriation, but that it makes many Native Americans uncomfortable. She says, "The history of Mardi Gras Indians comes out of a history of shared oppression and marginality between the Black and Native residents", and says the tradition may have evolved "outside of the realm of cultural appropriation into a distinct culture and community". Donald Harrison Jr., a member of the Congo Nation group, has said that his group changed their name because "some Native Americans may be angry about it", choosing an African name because they are "an African-American tribe of New Orleans."
Demond Melancon, a member of the Young Seminole Hunters, suggests the name of this cultural tradition should change: "It's been a hidden culture for 250 years and you have to know where it really comes from." He says that because the masking tradition originated in Africa, the subculture should be called "Black Maskers". Author Michael P. Smith suggests calling them the "Maroons of Urban New Orleans". Some Mardi Gras Indians have also decided to drop the words "Indian Red" from the song of the same name to avoid offending Indigenous people. The song "Indian Red" has been called a "prayer" for the tradition, and has been used since at least the 1940s.
David Guss suggests that when Black Americans "mask" as Indigenous peoples they are not trying to be Native American; they are telling a visual story of how enslaved Africans escaped slavery in Louisiana and found refuge in nearby Native American villages. He says Black people are not ridiculing or parodying Native Americans. Guss describes the Mardi Gras Indians, Andean natives that dress as European colonists, and other examples of one ethnicity dressing or masking as another ethnicity as practising "ethnic cross-dressing". Scholar Nikesha Elise Williams provides two reason why Black Americans mask as Indigenous people:
New Orleans filmmaker Jonathan Isaac Jackson says the Mardi Gras Indians have their own unique tradition, which emerged from syncretism of West African and Native American traditions, but suggests that white people and outsiders have begun using Mardi Gras Indian practices without these traditional connections to the culture. He says:
Mardi Gras Indians have worked with lawyers to copyright their creations and prevent people from profiting off their designs.