Columbia's Turkeys

A fairly typical Thanksgiving theme involved a patriotic figure displaying turkeys for the viewer. Most often this was Uncle Sam, but others could also fulfill this ritual task of handing turkeys over for Thanksgiving consumption, including soldier boys and flag waving children.

There were specific themes being communicated in these postcards. Uncle Sam (or his substitute) holds turkeys both living and dead (sometimes somewhere in between as when Uncle Sam appears to be throttling a bird) in the act of delivering or providing something. That Uncle Sam stands in for the nation is understood—he is the ultimate citizen, encouraging the viewer to join in a celebration of national prosperity and abundance. The turkeys then represent that national prosperity and abundance. Americans were frequently reminded of the links between purchasing all those turkeys for Thanksgiving, and America's overall bounty. The New York Observer and Chronicle wrote in 1910 “I have heard it stated on good authority that if the ‘turkey money’ of the nation were applied to the national debt, it would be wiped out within ten years.” 1 Kenneth Ames makes a similar point about Thanksgiving postcards, writing of his example: “This postcard employs allusions to triumphal chariots and parade floats, metaphorically harnessing traditional conceptions of abundance and bounty to American energy, under American direction.”2

But where this genre of postcards gets interesting is that in all my searching, I have only found one example of Columbia standing in this same roll as Uncle Sam and his almost always-male surrogates. Columbia was widely employed in popular culture of the period as Uncle Sam's female counterpart. She pops up in everything from political cartoons to sheet music to magazine covers. And yet in connection to a holiday dominated by female ritual, skill, and creativity, why isn’t the female figure of Columbia used to embody larger messages relative to the strength and bounty of the nation? Why doesn't the feminine Columbia stand in the same role as Uncle Sam as a presenter of national bounty in more than just this one postcard?

Putting Columbia in context

It should be remembered that the postcard fad corresponded to a period when suffrage was hotly debated. The personification of the nation as a woman carried politically-charged implications. Life made just such a point in its October 16, 1913 “Pro-Suffrage Number.” The pages include a Harrison Cady illustration in which Uncle Sam hands Columbia a bouquet of roses marked “ballot,” to which Columbia replies, “Oh, thank you so much, Uncle Sam. I never doubted your gentlemanly instincts.”3 Pageants, plays, and tableaux in support of suffrage also employed the Columbia character, such as when the entire Metropolitan Opera Company came to Washington DC for a suffrage procession in 1913, with famed opera singer Lillian Nordica posing as Columbia on the Department of Treasury steps.4 Even though postcards circulated primarily among women, the men who ran postcard printing firms may have opted to avoid even the appearance of controversy in their traditional lines of cards.

Equally important, historian Marilyn Watkins specifically singles out Germans as a group which showed lackluster support for suffrage: “Studies of Midwestern communities have shown strong opposition to women’s suffrage among German immigrants, whether Catholic or Lutheran, because of religiously based gender beliefs and fear of prohibition.”5 If German women, a core of the postcard user base (see the research), were not supporting more images of Columbia in this personification-of-the-nation role, this might explain why only one postcard seems to have emerged in the postcard marketplace.

Seeing Columbia's Substitute

The Indian Maiden served as the feminine surrogate to Uncle Sam and thus the nation

There is one more facet to this whisper that helps explain Columbia's absence. When we look closely, we can find a much more politically-neutral female figure who stands in this presentation role: The Indian Maiden. The difference between the two highlights the use of the Indian maiden as a national symbol unencumbered by the baggage of suffrage. As Alan Trachtenberg suggests in Shades of Hiawatha, “In the early twentieth century it was much easier for white Americans to imagine a Pole or Serb eventually qualifying as an equal American citizen than a Mohawk or an Arapaho.”6

While not speaking specifically of women or suffragettes, Tracthenberg’s point is applicable to other processes of imagination taking place at this time. As both anachronistic and non-threatening, the Indian Maiden served as the feminine surrogate to Uncle Sam and thus the nation. They could do so because unlike other personifications of women as the nation (like Columbia), there was no impulse to imagine these women as voters. They were quite unlike the middle class white women for whom Columbia was a model. Americans had to visualize women in line at polling places and inside voting booths, as part of the process of debating whether they were either for or against suffrage. Such visualizations and imaginations didn’t include Mohawks or Arapaho, be they men or women, and thus diffused the link between an embodiment of nationhood as a woman and a potential suffragette.

Uncle Sam and the Indian Maiden can thus be seen as acceptable presenters of national prosperity at Thanksgiving--embodied in all those turkeys--in a way Columbia never could.

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