Indian for a Night: Sleeping with the “Other” at Wigwam Village Tourist Cabins (original) (raw)

Frank Redford of Horse Cave, Kentucky, started a chain of Wigwam Village tourist cabins in 1933, an enterprise that eventually expanded to seven locations stretching from Florida to California. With individual cabins in the shape of tepees, Wigwam Village capitalized on the appeal of kitschy roadside attractions and on Americans’ fascination with Native Americans. In the waxing days of automobile travel by the masses, each Village also served as a practical agglomeration of tourist services – in addition to accommodations, each offered a gas station, restaurant, and gift shop. By drawing on methods of deconstruction and hermeneutic analysis, this paper explores themes related to the appropriation and commercialization of Native American culture represented by this tourism enterprise, including the geographically displaced authenticity of a dwelling style indigenous to the Great Plains, the entrenched American habit of “playing Indian,” the social construction of a pan-Indian identity through markers of generic “Indian-ness” rather than specific tribal cultures, and the surprisingly enduring appeal of this decidedly not politically correct landscape.