Claire Prentice’s ‘Lost Tribe of Coney Island’

Americans gone rogue, as Prentice puts it, have long been a part of the Philippines’ landscape, but Truman Hunt, an inveterate liar, a bigamist and a slave driver, seems nearly unparalleled as far as scoundrels go. In some sense, this slick-talking charlatan becomes a stand-in for America itself, or a certain version of America in its more opportun

In the months that followed, Hunt made hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Igorrotes — on top of ticket receipts, enthralled bystanders threw coins at the feet of the performers. Instead of allowing the Igorrotes to keep their tips from the crafts they sold, as he had promised, he insisted that they turn over the proceeds for safekeeping. He

In 1904, two years after America’s victory in the Philippine-American War, the United States government tried to put the best face on its colonization of the archipelago of more than 7,000 islands. Thirteen hundred Filipinos from a dozen tribes were put on display at the St. Louis Exposition, in replicas of their home villages,

The most popular exhibit in this “human zoo” were the Igorrotes, who ate dog meat and hunted heads. The man in charge of the Igorrote village, Truman Hunt, had served as a medical doctor during the war and stayed on, eventually rising to become the lieutenant governor of Bontoc Province.

Comprising 51 men, women and children, the group eventually made its way to Coney Island, where they became the hit of Luna Park in the summer of 1905. The Igorrotes performed countless shows for thousands of day-trippers: mock battles, dog feasts, sham weddings, dances and craft displays, all in their makeshift compound, ruled by a chief appointed

Ignoring the fact that they ate dog meat only under prescribed circumstances, Hunt insisted they slaughter dogs and eat them on a daily basis, which brought them to the brink of illness and despair. He split the group against their will and farmed them out to equally unscrupulous confederates across the country, moving them whimsically and forcing