Cigar store Indian

[3] Because European carvers had never seen a Native American, these early cigar-store "Indians" looked more like Africans with feathered headdresses and other fanciful, exotic features.

"[4] According to an 1890 article in The New York Times:[5] The Times further notes that as the market became saturated with Indians, popular taste expanded to figures of Scotchmen, English officers with bearskins, Dolly Vardens, John L. Sullivan, Edwin Forrest in Roman garb, Turks, sultanas, Punch (of Punch and Judy), and plantation Blacks.

[7] Later issues included higher manufacturing costs, restrictions on tobacco advertising, and increased sensitivity towards depictions of Native Americans, all of which relegated the figures to museums and antique shops.

Cigar store figures are now viewed as folk art, and some models have become collector's items, drawing prices up to $500,000.

[7] Others object that they perpetuate a "noble savage" or "Indian princess" caricature or inauthentic stereotypes of Native people,[9] implying that modern individuals "are still living in tepees, that we still wear war bonnets and beads,"[10] drawing parallels to the African-American lawn jockey.

[11] Mining the Museum, an important postmodernist exhibition of the Maryland Historical Society collection curated by Fred Wilson, prominently featured a room of cigar store Indians faced away from the viewer looking towards walls lined with pictures of "real" Native American figures.