Hunting Indians in a Taxi-Cab

In Short

This book serves as a charming, discursive catalog of the "cigar-store Indian"—the hand-carved wooden figures that once stood sentinel outside tobacco shops across America. Part memoir, part amateur history, it documents the author’s own quest to rescue these artifacts for her private collection. Through personal anecdotes, historical tidbits, and a series of photographs, it paints a portrait of a uniquely American relic. It has lasted not as a rigorous academic study, but as a warm, idiosyncratic scrapbook of a forgotten piece of urban folklore.

The Story

The narrative begins with a friend’s eccentric mission: hiring a taxi-cab in New York City to scour the streets for a "desirable Tobacco Sign Indian." This search leads to the discovery of a nine-foot, seven-inch figure in Bleecker Street, which is subsequently "rejuvenated" by a local sign-painter and given a home on a Massachusetts estate. This success inspires the author to begin her own "hunt," primarily using a camera to document these statues before they disappear from the urban landscape due to city ordinances and changing commercial tastes.

As the author delves deeper into her project, she interweaves her own life with the history of the figures. She describes the acquisition of her own "brave" and his spouse—a "squaw" purchased at a discount because she lacked feet—and reflects on the superstition and comfort she finds in these silent sentinels. She shares stories of "spiritual" encounters with the figures, suggesting they possess a protective presence, and recounts tales of how these signs were once central to the identity of small-town shops.

The book then expands into a broader survey of the trade. The author compiles accounts from tobacconists and collectors, detailing how these figures were crafted from the masts of retired sailing vessels, painted in bright, flashy colors, and designed to range from Indigenous archetypes to contemporary figures like soldiers, clowns, and even actors of the period. She describes the transition from wooden carvings to the modern era of printed advertisements and gaudy lithographs, which she views as a sad, soulless replacement.

Throughout the text, the author struggles with the tension between her fondness for these "relics" and the reality of their existence. She acknowledges that these figures are often crude, weather-beaten, and misunderstood, yet she champions them as noble survivors of a "comparatively new country." She recounts lighthearted anecdotes of practical jokes involving the statues, as well as the more somber recognition that the real human history they claim to represent is being systematically erased by the same forces of "civilization" that rendered the wooden signs obsolete.

The arc concludes with the author’s reflections on the "sarcasm of Destiny"—that a nation which displaced the original inhabitants of the land now writes poetry about them and elevates wooden caricatures to the status of art. She ultimately accepts the abrupt nature of her collection, choosing to stop her narrative simply because she has reached the end of her curiosity, leaving the reader with a final, playful nod to the enduring, if somewhat irreverent, appeal of a good cigar.

How It Unfolds

The taxi-cab mission A friend’s quest to secure a weathered, nose-less wooden Indian from a Bleecker Street shop sparks the author's interest. The figure is restored to his former glory and moved to a country estate, becoming a local landmark.

The personal collection The author begins acquiring her own figures, including a "squaw without feet," and constructs a personal mythology around them. She shares peculiar accounts of spirit-healers who seem to advocate for the presence of these statues on her grounds.

The trade and the craft The narrative shifts to the history of the figures themselves, detailing how 19th-century ship carpenters carved them from seasoned mast wood. Tobacconists describe the pride they took in these signs, which often cost more than the store's entire stock.

The vanishing act City regulations regarding sidewalk obstructions begin to force the removal of the figures. The author documents the shift toward modern, mass-produced advertising, lamenting the loss of the hand-carved, street-level personality these signs once provided.

The final inventory The book closes with a collection of letters and anecdotes from across the country, documenting the diverse types of figures—from "Highland Chieftains" to "Humpty Dumpty." The author acknowledges the irony of her project before concluding with a humorous, defiant final thought.

The People

The author, Kate Sanborn, acts as the central consciousness. She is a woman of leisure and literary interests who finds deep, almost mystical personal meaning in the preservation of these objects. She is self-aware, frequently apologizing for her "personal digressions," and views herself as a guardian of tradition.

Her friend, the "taxi-cab hunter," serves as the catalyst. He is a man of action who values the "noble" quality of the statues and treats their rescue as a high-stakes adventure. He is instrumental in showing the author that these items are worthy of serious collection.

Mr. Caspari, the venerable Baltimore tobacconist, provides the practical, historical backbone of the book. He represents the voice of the trade, offering a wealth of technical detail about the cost, construction, and life cycle of the statues. He is proud of his long career and holds a clear sense of how the business has changed for the worse over the decades.

Jacob Riis appears briefly as a correspondent, adding a touch of childhood sentiment to the collection. His inclusion highlights the cultural attachment many felt toward these figures, viewing them not merely as advertisements, but as familiar, silent friends from their youth.

Finally, the "German sculptor" who carved figures for the Capitol stands as an archetype of the anonymous craftsman. Though he had never seen an actual Indigenous person, he took great pride in his work, attempting to capture human anatomy with precision, representing the bridge between high art and commercial signage.

In Its Own Voice

“Yes sir, you do well to purchase one of these figures, for sir, the Indians on the American Continent is fastly disappearing, both in flesh and wood.”

An old man on Bleecker Street offers this grim, double-edged encouragement to the author’s friend as he helps crate a wooden statue for shipment.

“His head is in the skies!”

A child expresses this simple, imaginative wonder upon first seeing the towering statue of "Tacomus" on a Massachusetts knoll.

“A woman’s only a woman—but a good cigar is a smoke!”

The author quotes Kipling in her final paragraph to underscore her playful, slightly defiant attitude toward the cultural significance of the cigar.

What It's Really About

At its core, this book is an meditation on the tension between commercial history and cultural memory. The author explores how a society marks its own identity through symbols, even when those symbols are inherently flawed or contradictory. There is a profound underlying question here: what happens to our sense of place when the familiar, if peculiar, landmarks of our daily lives are swept away by the march of progress and regulation? She treats the "Tobacco Sign Indian" as a proxy for the broader, more tragic erasure of the Indigenous people themselves, acknowledging the irony of preserving a wooden caricature while the original history is ignored. It is an argument for the preservation of the "odd" and the "old" in a rapidly modernizing world.

Why Read It Today

Readers who enjoy the slow, conversational pace of early 20th-century American essayists will find much to admire here. It feels like a walk through an antique shop with a well-read, slightly eccentric guide who is more interested in the stories behind objects than their monetary value. The book is not a formal history; it is a collage of anecdotes, letters, and personal musings that reflects the curiosity of a bygone era.

Modern readers should be prepared for the author’s period-typical attitudes. Her casual treatment of the history of the Indigenous people—often romanticizing them while simultaneously comparing them to wooden statuary—reflects the common, if limited, sensibilities of 1911. The dialect used by some of the characters in the excerpts, along with the author’s occasional penchant for flowery, wandering prose, demands a patient and contextual reader. However, for those interested in the history of American commerce, urban folklore, or the peculiar ways humans attach sentimental value to inanimate objects, the book offers a rare and candid glimpse into a forgotten facet of the American streetscape. You will likely finish it with a new, lingering curiosity about the remnants of history hidden in plain sight.