In “On the Frontier”, I explored the life of John Ojijatekha Brant-Sero, a North American Indian actor, writer, and public speaker who was brought low by his inability to navigate the disconnect between his image of himself and the “stage Indian” persona he was expected to adopt in the public eye. In this article, I present short sketches of three performers who—through very different means—were better able to navigate that disconnect.

The annual Albert Hall productions of “The Song of Hiawatha”, a trilogy of cantatas on a North American Indian theme composed by a Black Briton from a poem by a White American, were for many years lent a spurious sheen of authenticity by the presence in the cast of a singer of genuine North American Indian heritage, the baritone, Os-ke-non-ton.

Programme, 1927 performances of The Song of Hiawatha at the Albert Hall, and Os-ke-non-ton’s credit in the cast list. Author’s own collection.

Os-ke-non-ton (“Deer” or “Running Deer”) was of Mohawk heritage and had been born Rowi Tharakonnente (aka Louis Tarakonente aka Louis Deer) in Caughnanaga (modern Kawnawake), Quebec, Canada, around 1890. He first began singing in public in the US (New York) in 1914 and toured the US and Canada throughout the 1910s and 1920s, appearing at church events and “Indian fairs” and in stage musicals. In 1923, he made his first visit to the UK, and the following year, made the first of what would become annual appearances as the ‘Medicine Man’ in “The Song of Hiawatha” at the Albert Hall. He combined these appearances with performances around the country of “Indian songs, stories, war whoop, and fire-lighting”, appearances marketed using photocalls of him paddling his canoe across the lake in Regent’s Park. It is not clear how much of a claim he had to the title of ‘Chief’. He certainly had no claim to the Lakota Nation headdress and buffalo bone breastplate that he wore in public, and there are suggestions that other North American Indian performers found his act laughably inauthentic [2].

However, these failings must be viewed through the lens of performers’ incomes depending on giving audiences what they wanted; and what audiences in England wanted from North American Indian performers was the North American Indians that they saw on stage and screen. And, so, Os-ke-non-ton, a performer of genuine North American Indian heritage, had to adopt a “stage Indian” identity to make a living. It was a price he was, at some level, willing to pay.

Os-ke-non-ton in a publicity photo for the Broadway show, “Toot, Toot”. Evening public ledger (Philadelphia, Pa.), 16 February 1918. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress. Public Domain.

When considering the career in England of Os-ke-non-ton, the most direct comparison can be made with that of “Chief Carlisle Kawbawgam”, the “North American Indian Tenor”, who was active in Germany in 1912 and then in England from 1913 until 1918 and was billed variously as the “Red Caruso”, the “Indian Tenor and Ragtime Soloist”, and the “Ragtime Tenor” [3]. Kawbawgam was said to be the son of the famous Chief Kawbawgam of Marquette, Michigan, and a graduate of the Carlisle Indian School, Pennsylvania, and Yale Medical School. His voice was described as ‘of dulcet tone and more than useful range’, although not powerful, and he performed in full “Indian costume and warpaint” while accompanying himself on a grand piano. As his billing suggests, his act included ragtime numbers—which was not greeted well by critics on his first appearances in England who were expecting something more…operatic [4]—and he performed exclusively in music halls and not opera theatres or concert halls, although it was said that his ambition was to do just that. He and his wife, Alma—described as a “Chilean woman of distinguished ancestry”—and their two children, born in the UK, returned to America in 1921 when work dried up [5].

At first glance, the story of Kawbawgam follows quite closely that of Os-ke-non-ton in the tension between the classical training and voice and desire to appear in concert and the prosaic reality of needing to make a living, which required creating a music hall act built around the persona of a “stage Indian”. However, modern scholarship has shown that, in all likelihood, “Chief Carlisle Kawbawgam” was in reality, Craig Carlisle Williams (1882–1923), a man of African American heritage [6]. This identification was made by researchers based on the matching of biographical details for Carlisle Kawbawgam, his wife Alma, and their two children, Carlisle Jnr and Alma, to those of Craig Carlisle Williams, his wife Alma Nash Pitts, and their two children, Craig Jnr and Alma. Critically, the researchers discovered that Williams grew up in Marquette, Michigan, the home of the real Chief Kawbawgam, and described himself as a singer in the 1900 US Federal Census.

To support the conclusions of these researchers, we can here point to at least one African American tenor by the name of Craig Williams active in the second half of the first decade of the 20th Century. The “Craig Williams” name appears in the Indianapolis press in October 1907 in the cast of a new musical play “The Oyster Man”. In its review of the play, the Freeman newspaper of Indianapolis praised him for his tenor singing and his range.

Craig Williams in the cast list of “The Oyster Man”, Freeman (Indianapolis, Ind.), 26 October 1907. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress. Public domain.

However, as can be seen in the quote above, this Craig Williams was new to the stage in 1907, whereas Craig Carlisle Williams was already describing himself as a singer seven years earlier. I will discuss this below after looking at some more evidence. A year after reviewing “The Oyster Man”, the Freeman reported that a Craig Williams “notable tenor singer” had decided to settle in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

I will also return to this reference to Williams planning to take up dentistry. The Williams and Walker Company was an African American minstrel troupe most famous for their pioneering theatrical musical “In Dahomey” [9]. There is no suggestion that Bert Williams, the co-leader of the troupe, and Craig Williams were related (Bert Williams was born in the Bahamas [10]). It is worth noting that at the end of October 1908, Williams—now described as “late tenor soloist in St Anne’s Cathedral, New York”—gave a recital that included selections of the songs of Bert Williams [11].

Craig Williams song recital, The Appeal (Saint Paul, Minn.), 21 October 1908. Images created by Library of Congress. Public domain.

Is this the same Craig Williams as the man who appeared in Indianapolis? If we assume that he joined the Williams and Walker Company after his appearance in “The Oyster Man”, he certainly could be. The reference to “this” Craig Willaims being a tenor soloist at a church (Saint Anne’s, which is actually in Brooklyn) could also explain the seeming contradiction between Craig Carlisle Williams describing himself as a singer in 1900 and “this” Craig Williams being new to the stage in 1907 if they are one and the same—Craig Carlisle Willaims began his career as a chorister, not a stage artist.

We can trace “this” Craig Williams back further to Washington, D.C.: a newspaper report in early October 1908 reported that Craig Williams, a tenor soloist at St Luke’s Episcopal Church in the city, was moving to Saint Paul to take up a similar post at an episcopal church there [12]—again pointing to “this” Craig Williams being a chorister for some time before he went on the stage. This Washington D.C. connection has a further significance, which I discuss at the end of this section. Finally, in what may or may not be a connected story, a few years earlier, in 1905, the Freeman had reported that Craig Williams of Washington D.C., a “musician” and “medical student” who was formerly “in charge of the music department at Howard University” was “visiting friends in [the] Manhattan and Brooklyn boroughs” and was planning to perform at the Waldorf Astoria alongside white artists [13]. The reference to Brooklyn chimes with the Saint Paul Craig Williams being described as having sung at Saint Anne’s Brooklyn, suggesting that they may be the same man. However, if that is the case, then this would seem to create problems for the contention that this is also Craig Carlisle Willaims, as it seems impossible that Craig Carlisle Willaims, who would have been all of 26 in 1905, could have been in “in charge of the music department at Howard University”.

At the same time, it is tantalising that this Craig Williams was said to be a medical student—or, perhaps more the point, claiming to be—given that Carlisle Kawbawgam would later claim to be a graduate of Yale Medical School. In this respect, it is interesting to note that by 1909, the Saint Paul press would be describing this Craig Williams as the brother of the local dentist, H I Williams, which would both explain why Williams had moved to Saint Paul, and perhaps what had put into his mind the idea of claiming to be first a medical student and later a dentist-to-be. Similarly, it is interesting to note that Craig Carlisle Williams had an older brother called Harry, although I have not, to date, been able to discover his occupation [15].

Finally, there is one more major point to consider concerning possible connections between the Saint Paul Craig Williams and Craig Carlisle Williams, and that is that Alma Pitts, Craig Carlisle Williams’ [future] wife, was a school teacher in Washington D.C. in this period—we can place her in the city as early as 1901, which was when she qualified as a teacher at a school in the city, and as late as January 1910, which is when she resigned her post (although she had been on sick leave since the previous autumn, which would coincide with her marriage to Craig Carlisle Williams in Indiana in December 1909, precipitating her resignation)—and what’s more, she also appeared on stage, giving dramatic readings at church events, while in the city [16]. This places Alma Pitts in Washington D.C. and leading a public life at the same time that the Saint Paul Craig Williams was in Washington D.C. and leading a public life.

Ultimately, there is no direct evidence that I know of that definitively connects the Saint Paul/Washington D.C. Craig Williams to the Craig Carlisle Williams who would later adopt the persona of Chief Carlisle Kawbawgam, and there are several points—like the Howard University post—that, if taken at face value, actively speak against the identification, pointing as they do to a much older man. However, there are enough points of intersection that suggest that this is a line of enquiry worth pursuing, not least because the contradictions would then point to Craig Carlisle Williams having a history of inventing elements of his biography long before he adopted the identity of Chief Carlisle Kawbawgam. Research is ongoing.

Regardless of the exact nature of Craig Carlisle Williams’ movements and career in the USA before Chief Carlisle Kawbawgam first appeared in Europe in 1912, the evidence suggests that, rather than being a genuine North American Indian performer forced to take on a fake, “stage Indian” identity to satisfy his audience, like Os-ke-non-ton, Kawbawgam/Williams was instead a man who had set aside an ethnic identity that lacked cachet for one that, at the time, was in vogue in Europe, and the fact that this required him to play the “stage Indian” was of little import. In this light, the Kawbawgam/Williams story intersects with those of the stage magicians of European heritage who in the late 19th and early 20th centuries adopted East Asian stage personalities to exploit the vogue for Japanese and Chinese magicians—most famously, William Elsworth Robinson, who stole the act of genuine Chinese magician Ching Ling Foo (金陵福, Jīn Língfú) to create the fake Chung Ling Soo [17].

There was, perhaps, with Williams the added dimension of “ethnic switching” to evade prejudice [18]; however, at this remove, we can only hypothesise about his motives. It is very probable that he knew enough about the real lived experience of North American Indians from his Michigan childhood to be aware of how fake his “performance” as Chief Kawbawkgam was both on and off stage. It may well be that he did not care because he knew that the audience did not care. He was giving them what they wanted, war paint and all.

Identity theft is a prominent element of the story of Edgar Laplante. Laplante was a vaudevillian and con man of French-Canadian heritage who throughout the 1910s and 1920s assumed the stolen identities of various prominent North American Indians, most notably, the Canadian runner and member of the Onondaga Nation, Tom Longboat [19]. In January 1917, Laplante, exploiting the fact that it had been widely reported the previous year that Longboat had joined the Canadian Army but there had been no reports since of his movements, for obvious reasons, made several public appearances in the American South-West claiming to be Longboat, saying he had been wounded in combat and was in the USA convalescing [20].

Edgar Laplante masquerading as Tom Longboat, a photograph that accompanied articles incorrectly announcing that Longboat ha been killed in combat in France in 1917. Americus times-recorder (Americus, Geo.), 22 October 1917. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress. Public domain.

Laplante as Longboat inveigled his way into the confidences of a US Army unit and travelled with it to New Jersey after it was reassigned to guard duty at the docks at Hoboken. The charade fell apart when it was—incorrectly—reported in October 1917 that Longboat had been killed in combat. In writing a letter to correct this report, the real Longboat also made it known that he was aware that someone was impersonating him.

The publicity put an end to Laplante’s game. Coincidentally, two weeks earlier, one of the US Navy transport service ships based at Hoboken, the USS Antilles, had been sunk by a German U-boat with a large loss of life. Laplante was caught when he tried to obtain information on survivors, presumably in an attempt to steal the identity of one of the men killed in the sinking now that he could no longer pass himself off as Longboat [23].

The real Tom Longboat. Port Gibson reveille (Port Gibson, Miss.), 15 November 1917. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress. Public domain.

Of interest to us here, following his arrest, Laplante claimed that he began impersonating Longboat in late 1916 after fleeing fraud charges while working in a vaudeville show under the name “Chief Johnson” aka “Chief Ray Johnsson”, of the Cherokee Nation, an identity that may have been inspired, or even stolen from the baseball player of the period, George ‘Chief’ Johnson, man of North American Indian heritage [24]. Of even more interest to us here, Laplante also claimed that his true identity was “Chief White Elk” of the Cherokee Nation, as it was in the guise of Chief White Elk, paramount chief of the Cherokee Nation, a “Yale University man” who held “degrees in medicine, philosophy, and the arts” that Laplante arrived in the UK nearly five years later, in December 1922, in an attempt to gain an audience with King George V [25].

Laplante failed to talk his way into a meeting with the King and instead, began/restarted his career as a music hall artist and motivational speaker to gain access to society figures from whom he could extract money (usually women, and usually in the form of unrepaid loans). He left the UK at the end of 1923, a few steps ahead of his creditors. His activities finally caught up with him the next year when he was arrested and jailed in Switzerland. This was followed after his release with another arrest and an even longer jail sentence in Italy. He returned to the USA on his release and died in 1944 [26]. It is doubtful he ever gave any thought to the people he impersonated and the damage he did to their reputations while reinforcing white stereotypes of the nature of Native Americans.

Although the outlier in this examination, being entirely fake in both persona and theatrical performance, Laplante serves as an example of how adopting the persona of a high-status North American Indian could be an entry into UK high society, and how seeming obvious inconsistencies—like performing in music hall while claiming to be a North American Indian chief with degrees in medicine, philosophy, and the arts—could be glossed over by pointing to the barriers that people of colour faced in England when trying to earn a living. This is something of which John Ojijatekha Brant-Sero was well aware. And, yet, this awareness was not enough to stop Brant-Sero from raging against his inability to make his way in the world regardless. Ultimately, what separates Brant-Sero from the three performers in this article is not that he was real and they were, to different degrees, “fake”, as the identities of all four men were staged to different degrees; it was that Os-ke-non-ton, Kawbawgam/Williams, and Laplante found ways to reconcile the distance between the real and fake elements of their public personas, and Brant-Sero did not. That is his tragedy.

Jamie Barras, March 2025

Banner: Postcard showing Edgar Laplante masquerading as Chief White Elk. Author’s own collection