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Mardi Gras History
Carnival traditions were brought over to North America from Europe along with the first colonists. Louisiana was founded by the French and for about 45 years was ruled by Spain, then briefly by France again before Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States in 1803. The 85 years of combined French and Spanish rule resulted in a strong European cast to the settlements established in this part of the country, which were carried through by their Creole inheritors. When the United States took possession of Louisiana in 1803 and Americans began settling in, establishing their presence in New Orleans, there was, for more than 40 years, a bit of antagonism between the Creole society and the American upstarts, who controlled two separate sections of the developing city. The more puritanical Americans shunned Carnival, while the Creoles continued to celebrate it, though the celebration began slowly to die in the 1850s. The break-out of riots in 1856 did not help matters, and it seemed that Carnival traditions were about to die out altogether in the growing port city. |
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That same year, a group of transplanted citizens from the city of Mobile (which had been celebrating Carnival since 1705) who were members of a marching/ball society calling themselves the Cowbellions, met in the third-floor room of a pharmacy in the Vieux Carre and decided to form a carnival society of their own here in New Orleans. They also decided to do something which had been virtually unknown up to that time in New Orleans carnival --to field a tableaux display consisting of marchers in elaborate papier-mâché costumes, and three floats. They fashioned themselves as a royal court in the traditions of Old England, even down to adapting the word "crew" in Chaucerian fashion so that it came out, forever afterward, as "krewe". They chose, as their central figure representing themselves, the offspring of the Greek god Bacchus and the sorceress Circe, as filtered through the poetry of John Milton, and thus was born the Mystick Krewe of Comus. The Civil War interrupted carnival through the duration. |
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Comus and other marching groups, along with the carnival balls, reappeared between 1866 and 1867, but tensions varied with the occupying Union forces and the Reconstruction government. But when it was announced that Russia's Grand Duke Alexis was going to take in New Orleans as part of his tour of America and that his visit would coincide with Carnival in 1872, a group of leading businessmen and theatre designers quickly formed an organization calling themselves (which they remain, formally) the School of Design, to stage a carnival parade complete with floats, bands, and costumed marchers to honor the Grand Duke on Carnival day. The School of Design grandly proclaimed their monarch the King of the Carnival, and he became synonymous with the name of his parade: Rex. Rex paraded during the day, presenting themselves for the Grand Duke's review at noon, whereas Comus had always paraded at night. By adding a day parade, a whole new dimension had been added to the celebration. |
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Comus' first procession of floats in 1857 had captured the public imagination and had literally saved Mardi Gras from oblivion. Rex merely expanded this beyond any scope known, and the future pattern of the Carnival had been established. The Krewes of Proteus and Momus joined the carnival in the early 1880s, and the krewes began a gentle rivalry to produce not only the most elaborate tableaux balls, but the most beautiful and popular parades on the streets; hiring professional float and prop builders (where previously everything they presented on the streets and at the balls had been fashioned and imported from France), costumers, theatrical designers, and prop-makers. From 1890 onward, the number of parading and ball organizations has steadily grown; some existing only a short time, others having histories extending back decades and even a century and a half (in the case of Comus). Krewes had handed parade favors to certain individuals at selected points along their routes, but Rex began the practice of tossing beads and toys to parade goers in 1920. Every organization since has followed through with the practice and adapted each new trinket, with Rex introducing doubloons in 1960. Cups began to be thrown in the 1980s, along with the increasingly popular medallion beads. |
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*What are the Krewes actually about? How did they start and how do they still flourish today?
The krewes are the actual carnival society organizations. The membership pay in dues to maintain the society, finance the krewe's activities including parading, organizing and staging the carnival balls, and funding the construction of their costumes and props. Some krewes only stage their own carnival balls, since parading with floats is a mighty expensive proposition, and some groups prefer the more dignified celebration characteristic of the upper strata of society. It is not unusual, for example, for debutantes to be presented at the balls, and the older krewes are composed of some of the riches and most socially and politically connected families in New Orleans. To be even a maid at the ball of Comus, for example, is to have attained one of the highest social honors imaginable in New Orleans --the equivalent of the debs' ball in most other cities. There are some 70 separate carnival organizations in the New Orleans metro area, 10 of which, at the least, have been in continuous operation for over 100 years.
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In addition, there are several marching organizations, such as Pete Fountain's Half-Fast Walking Club and the Jefferson City Buzzards, and the various Mardi Gras Indian tribes, which have been an Afro-American carnival tradition going back a century and having its roots both in the local voudoun religion and the long history of amity between black and Indians extending back to the days of slavery. These people will spend their days year round --every spare moment-- sewing together some of the most elaborate and beautiful Indian costumes to be seen anywhere; outfits which rival the splendor of the court costumes at any of the carnival balls. Every Mardi Gras, they are to be found marching through the streets of the Treme neighbourhood, and photographs don't quite do them justice for the spectacle they present on Carnival day and on any other days they field a march during the year. |
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The deaths of any of the chiefs of these groups are celebrated with full jazz funerals. Of course, no discussion of black carnival can be complete without Zulu. In the days of Jim Crow, when blacks were shut out of all meaningful intercourse in white society, the black community proceeded to create societies and traditions of their own. From the turn of the 20th century, there had already been the Original Illinois Club, an organization which was not only was the first major black carnival group to hold an annual ball, but also a venue to educate blacks in the etiquette of polite society. In 1916, a group of black businessmen and jazz musicians, along with working-class individuals, formed the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, which existed in part to satirize white carnival and the whole structure of the traditional organizations. Whereas Rex, in the old Lundi Gras tradition, arrived at the foot of Canal St. aboard a Coast Guard cutter to be handed the keys of the city at noon on the day before Mardi Gras, Zulu mocked Rex by having their king arrive on an oyster lugger docking at the downtown jetty of the New Basin Canal (filled in around 1956). They decked out in parody tribal dress, mocked the blackface makeup of the minstrel show entertainers by painting their eyes and mouths white, and after a while fielded deliberately crude floats fashioned out of junk and festooned with palmetto fronds, moss, and palm leaves. |
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Their particular carnival favor became that signature favor of the Mardi Gras season, the Zulu coconut. Eventually, the parade became much more elaborate, fielding more traditional floats, though they fashion them less around the nominal theme and more around the continued mockery of the structure of carnival societies. The one and only time Zulu has ever had a celebrity king was when Louis Armstrong took the honor in 1949. In answer to your other questions: The present media image of Mardi Gras has much more to do with laziness on the part of the reporters covering our celebration than the actual acts, which are fewer and farther between than has been portrayed. Though there are those who seem to regard Mardi Gras as little more than a larger-scale frat party, the reality is that there are several different ways to celebrate the Carnival, all taking place simultaneously. |
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You can have Mardi Gras in the form that best suits your temperament and particular taste; from going to the parades to finding the various carnival parties with open invitations. You can go into the Quarter to catch the wildness there or walk through to sample everything that takes place --from the wildness of those flashing body parts for beads to seeing all the many and varied forms of costume to catching the drag-queen costume contests in the gay sections of the Quarter, to catching the marchers parading through the Bywater and lower French Quarter streets to finding carnival on Basin Street and the processions of the Indians. The locals all have their own little traditions, most involving parties with friends which have been going in the same spots and with the same groups for 10, 15, 20, 30 years. |
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You can even form a marching group of your own and parade on Mardi Gras day, or join one of the many sub-krewes of the amateur and satirical Krewe du Vieux parade, which usually rolls/marches twenty days after the beginning of the season on Twelfth Night (January 6th). Bourbon Street is a focus of party activity because of the number of music and strip clubs and bars to be found on the street, and their central proximity to the other clubs, pubs, and eateries to be found in the Quarter. If you want to do more in-depth research on the topic, I can recommend the very excellent books on Mardi Gras and golden-age carnival float, invitation, and costume design by Henri Schindler, available from Pelican Books. Also Robert Tallant's Mardi Gras As It Was, and Leonard V. Huber's Mardi Gras. |
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