Contributed by Rainer Lotz

Craig Carlisle Williams Kawbawgam was an African American who successfully posed as
Chief Kawbawgam and toured Britain from 1913 to 1923. Born Craig Carlisle Williams in Marquette, Michigan on 3 October 1881 he appears to have studied in France and Germany (claims to have studied at Carlisle Indian School and Yale School of Medicine have not been supported by recent research) and his claim to be the son of Charles Kawbawgam ‘The Last Chief of the Chippewa’ is untrue. He married Alma Lopez, ‘a Chilean woman of Aztec descent’ another lie. The couple married in 1909. The 1910 census locates them in Chicago, his profession being music publisher.

Carlisle is known to have performed in Berlin in October 1912 and then Vienna, as ‘Chief Carlyle Kawgawgam’. From 1913 the couple made the UK their permanent home. In May 1913 there is a reference to ‘the Princess Kawbawgam, who has just arrived in England. The princess is a direct descendant of Red Eagle, a famous warrior who fought for many years against the Americans. The princess is shortly appearing on the stage in a native costume and will recite Indian love idylls’. ‘Red Eagle’ is an invention. From now on only ‘Chief Carlisle Kawbawgam’ appears regularly; there is no evidence that Alma ever performed on stage. Bogus Native Americans took advantage of the popular Buffalo Bill shows (so large they needed three trains to transport everything), and even the well reputed baritone Harry Burleigh’s son and wife, who were in England from 1909, used ‘Princess Redfeather’ until the genuine princess objected and Louise Burleigh became the Ojibway Princess Nadonis.

In 1913 Carlisle made one side of a gramophone record for the Edison Winner label in London. Only one cracked copy has been located, in a private collection. He is credited as Chief Carlisle Kawgawgan (sic). The couple with two London-born children left for the USA in December 1922. Carlisle died in Chicago in October 1923. A couple of years later the widow Alma married her brother-in-law, Avon ‘Hugo’ Williams. In the 1930 census Hugo, Alma and the children are in Chicago; Hugo is a heating and plumbing contractor while Alma is a Christian Science practitioner. Craig’s son, Craig (b. 1916 in the UK) was a Tuskegee Airman during the Second World War. Hugo died around 1953 and Alma died in 1965.

British comments on the bogus Indian started when he was still in Germany: The Leicester Chronicle of 30 November 1912 noted: ‘A Red Indian Star Artist. It is curious to hear from Berlin and Vienna of an operatic star of the first magnitude who is a full-blooded Red Indian. This is Carlisle Kaw-Baw-Gam, a Craig Carlisle Williams Kawbawgam Chippewa Indian six feet high and a completely typical red man in appearance. A graduate of the Yale School of Medicine, his friends, discovering that he possessed a magnificent voice, induced him to go into the musical profession. He is now preparing for grand opera. I hope we may yet hear him at Covent Garden.’ He appeared at the Hippodrome, Manchester in February 1913, then at the Empire in Middlesbrough which the showbusiness weekly the Era noted ‘Kawbawgam, Chippewa Indian tenor vocalist’. He then made his debut in London at the Alhambra: ‘A real American Indian, Kawbawgam, who has earned in the United States the title of “The Red Caruso” will make his debut in this country at the Alhambra this evening. Kawbawgam is chief of the Chijewa tribe, and is a magnificent specimen of young manhood, being 6ft in height and sturdy in proportion. He is said to possess a tenor voice of great richness and power’ (Referee, 6 April 1913; Evening Standard, 7 April 1913). The Globe of 7 April was light-hearted: ‘Kawbawgam, An American Indian vocalist, who is making his first appearance in England this week, has been called the “Red Caruso” in the United States. Curiously enough, nobody has yet thought of calling Signor Caruso the ‘White Kawbawgam”’. The People published his photograph on 20 April, captioned: ‘Chief Kawbawgam, The Red Indian Chief of the Chippewa Tribe, who is singing at the Alhambra’.

He was in Birkenhead that week, then back to the Alhambra in London. On 14 May The Tatler noted that ‘The Princess Kawbawgam. Who has just arrived in England. The princess is a direct descendant of Red Eagle, a famous warrior who fought for many years against the Americans. The princess is shortly appearing on the stage in a native costume and will recite Indian love idylls’ but no evidence of her appearance has been located. In May 1914 he was in London, where the Dancing Times of June reported ‘Victor Joyner’s Imperial Four are back again at the Lotus and now play several tangos each evening. Chief Carlyle Kawbawgam, Chief of the Chipewa tribe, has been singing at the Club during May’. In the winter of 1914-1915, he appeared in Exeter, Richmond, Dewsbury and Cheltenham.

The Stage Yearbook for 1916 has ‘Mr. Carlisle Kawbawgam performed the role of Pan in “The Wilderness”, a Greek ballad-dance in one scene, words by Sturge Moore and music by Gustave Ferrari’. Kawbawgam was in the Christmas pantomime Robinson Crusoe at London’s Lyceum in late 1915 and in January 1916 his son Craig was born at 35 Fairholme Road in West Kensington.

By the end of 1916 he was in Belfast then Dublin. He worked in Yorkshire where he was billed as ‘Chief Kawbawgam, the North American Tenor and Ragtime soloist’ in the Halifax Evening Courier, of 10 February 1917. The St Helen’s Examiner of 24 February when he was at the Hippodrome in Warrrington published a lengthy and largely false biography: ‘For two years he practiced as a doctor in his native town of Marquette. Michigan, but all the time he was dispensing drugs, music was, as he expresses it. Tugging at his soul, and the family traditions were not strong enough to hold him back. The final break came in Vienna, where he was coaxed into singing for charity. Quite by chance he had with him his most cherished possession, a real native costume worn by his ancestors. He appears this week at the Hippodrome in the same costume – a lovely garment of the softest doe, adorned with beads – and in this costume he was introduced to the Viennese public.
Although it was the first time that he had sung in public, he was rapturously received by his impressionable audience and was engaged to sing on the concert platform for a month. The result was that he decided to leave the medical profession. He entered into training under Frank King Clark, one of the greatest European voice producers, and later toured Russia, Germany and France and the States. He declares that his happiest memories are of his impecunious student days in the Paris of pre-war days, when life was to him, all song. His family have never forgiven his forsaking their medical traditions, but Chief Kawgawgam is one of those born musicians whose life is in their music. And if invalids away in Michigan suffer for his desertion of the healer’s art, music-lovers in England are the gainers’.

In March 1917 he was in Aberdeen and Cambridge, and then Oxford where the Oxford Chronicle of 6 April noted: ‘Chief Kawbawgam, North American Indian Tenor has made his first appearance before an Oxford audience. He is an artiste of great merit and there is a wealth of beauty in his voice. He explained that he were a full-blooded Red Indian and that there were only 5 tones in his native music and this has made it unusually hard for him while learning music. He received repeated encores from the delighted spectators’. Then followed Southampton, Rochdale, Manchester, Eccles and Southport. In November in Glasgow he played the piano, which became standard from now on.

On 9 March 1918 his daughter Alma was born in London. Later that month the Runcorn Examiner noted ‘Kawbawgam, North American Indian tenor has a good voice and scores a
success as a pianist and vocalist’. Touring continued – the war was drawing to a close. ‘Chief Kawbawgam. North American Indian tenor from the Comedy Theatre, was a lovely turn, and had to do a great many items before he was allowed to go’ noted the Shields Daily News, on 16 January 1919. The family was still at Fairholme Road in mid-1919 when he advertised in the local Kensington News (11 July 1919). ‘Carlisle Kawbawgam, Voice Production, Pupil of best English and Continental masters. 35 Fairholme road, West Kensington’. ‘Employment Wanted / Music and Singing’.

1921 Census taken in June at Ventnor, Isle of Wight, where he performed the summer season, has:
Carlisle Kawbawgan, (sic) 37 years 8 months, born La Cross WI, concert artist, Ventnor, work: Summer Theatre. Alma Kawbawgan, 30 years 8 months, wife, born in Valparaiso, Chili, and their children
Craig H. Kawbawgan, 5 years 5 months, born London and Alma E. Kawbawgan, 2 years 3 months, born London.

Researcher Howard Rye advised there was no birth record for Alma Kawbawgam/Williams adding More surprisingly, I can find no passport applications for the family. They must have had passports to return to the U.S.A. This census schedule is in Kawbawgam’s handwriting, and he filled in the cover sheet but census respondents wrote down whatever they wanted. It was legal for him to use his stage name rather than his legal name. As no information was ever checked, so whether Alma was really Chilean is open to question.
In December 1922 the family departed from Southampton to New York, on the Finland.
Last address: Croft House, Ventnor. Address in USA: 827 Tatmall Street, Wilmington, Delaware.

Other African Americans posed as Native Americans in Britain. It is necessary to recall that all showbusiness memoirs are dubious but the story of Craig Carlisle Williams Kawbawgam in Britain does seem to be special.

Acknowledgements

Beth Gruber
Konrad Nowakowski
Howard Rye
Tyler T. Tichelaar

For further reading:

Linda Stratmann, The Crooks who Conned Millions (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2006) details ten people in Britain, in the 19th century.

David Killingray and Willie Henderson, ‘Bata Kindai Amgoza ibn LoBagola and the Making of An African Savage’s Own Story‘ in Bernth Lindfors (ed.), Africans on Stage: Studies in Ethnological Show Business (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999) documents an African American who posed as an African from Dahomey in the 1920s and 1930s.

Jeffrey Green, Black Edwardians: Black People in Britain 1901-1914 (London: Cass, 1998) pp 53-55 details the Jamaican Isaac Brown who, in England in 1907, posed as a prince from Zululand and the nephew of the emperor of Ethiopia. This was also detailed in Robert A. Hill, ‘King Menelik’s Nephew: Prince Thomas Mackarooroo, aka Prince Ludwig Menelek of Abyssinia’, Small Axe 26, June 2008.

Paul Willetts, King Con: The Bizarre Adventures of the Jazz Age’s Greatest Impostor (New York: Crown, 2018) details the white Rhode Islander Edgar Laplante and his lies, including posing as Chief White Elk into the 1920s, appearing in the USA, France, Britain, Italy, Switzerland etc.

The Hastings-born Archie Belaney (1888-1938) migrated to Canada and developed a deep interest in conservation, posing as Grey Owl and having widespread fame including meeting the British royal family. Pierce Brosnan played him in Grey Owl, a film made in 1999.