http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-01-10-mardigrastribes_N.htm

Mardi Gras tribes ready to suit up

By Rick Jervis, USA TODAY

NEW ORLEANS — Darryl Montana is jobless, lives in a one-bedroom apartment
15 miles from the city he loves, and doesn't own a car.

Surrounded by yards of lavender ribbon, turkey feathers, and bags of yellow
sequins, he feels rich as a king.

"It's going to be real pretty," Montana says, as he pushes a needle through
a lavender pattern, stitching yet another tiny yellow sequin. "Nobody's
going to be able to front me. Nobody."

Montana is big chief of the Yellow Pocahontas, one of around 60 groups
calling themselves the Mardi Gras Indian tribes.

They are revelers of a different sort during the Feb. 5 Mardi Gras
celebration, suiting up in colorful, extravagant costumes and swaggering
through New Orleans as part of a tradition dating to the mid-1800s.

They aren't Native Americans, but mostly African-Americans who perform the
ritual as a tribute to the Chickasaw, Choctaw and other American Indian
tribes that once sheltered runaway slaves.

In the century that followed, the Mardi Gras Indians became a culture all
their own, forging their own identity as Indians even though they were not.

Like so many other pieces of culture here, the tradition took a hit after
Hurricane Katrina.

About 100 of the city's 300 tribe members were forced outside of New
Orleans after the storm, said Jordan Hirsch, executive director of Sweet
Home New Orleans, which is helping to restore the city's culture. Another
100 are displaced within the city, he said.

Last month, the City Council voted to create a task force aimed at
preserving the tribes.

"Right now, a lot of Indians are struggling with basics like shelter and
health care," Hirsch said. "If these struggles prevent them from returning
to their neighborhoods and raising families in their community, the meaning
of 'masking' may be different in a generation, and certain aspects of the
traditions may be lost."

Stitches in time

The tribes, known as "gangs," have names such as the White Eagles, the Wild
Magnolias and the White Cloud Hunters. Their members are painters,
carpenters, teachers and fathers. They spend a full year hand-stitching the
costumes, a technique that is taught from one generation to the next. They
mask twice a year: Mardi Gras Day and "Super Sunday," the Sunday after St.
Joseph's Day.

Historically, Mardi Gras and Super Sunday were bloody days for Mardi Gras
Indians. Members would carry decorated hatchets and straight razors and the
mock battles would escalate into violent clashes, said Charles Taylor,
chief of the White Cloud Hunters, who has been masking since he was 2 years
old. A patrolling member of a rival gang — known as a "Spy Boy" — would
walk up and tell the rival gang to "humbah," or kneel down.

"You had to kneel down or you're going to get kicked down or cut up or
dead," Taylor, 53, said. "They were dangerous back then."

The tradition of black New Orleanians masking like American Indians
stretches deep into the 19th century, said Brenda Square, director of
archives for the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University.

The two cultures, both suppressed under French, Spanish and American rule,
intermingled and often intermarried, while Indian tribes often sheltered
runaway slaves in the swamps surrounding colonial New Orleans, she said.

During the last century, masking as Indians was also a way for black
residents of New Orleans to participate in Mardi Gras, which was mostly
relegated to white crowds, Square said.

"There is a spiritual connection in that tradition," she said.

In his father's footsteps

Montana says he spends the better part of a year on his suit. This year's
suit required 300 yards of lavender marabou ribbon, 3 pounds of lavender
turkey feathers, 30 yards of lavender satin and several thousand yellow
sequins.

The work is delegated: His mother will help sew some of the apron pieces
and friends help with the headdress while he focuses on the rest of the
suit, which could cost more than $2,000.

When it's done, the suit will be a 12-foot-tall walking art expression.
Such suits become part of Montana's livelihood: He rents them out to
museums and gets paid for it, helping to pay for future costumes.

Montana's father was Allison "Tootie" Montana, a Mardi Gras Indian leader
known as the "Chief of Chiefs." Two months before Katrina, while he was
denouncing police interference of the ritual during a special session of
City Council, Tootie Montana collapsed from a heart attack and died on the
chamber floors.

Tootie Montana had been instrumental in pacifying the Mardi Gras Indian
culture. He urged tribes to challenge each other using costumes, not
weapons, and created some of the most extravagant suits to prove his point,
said Joyce Montana, his wife. He was soon known as the best, or prettiest,
she said. "He didn't want people fighting anymore," she said. "He taught
them how to use their suits."

Hurricane Katrina consumed many suits across the city. Joyce Montana's home
didn't flood, and she was able to salvage nine of Tootie's suits, she said.
The family is trying to raise money for a museum for the suits.

The floods did destroy Darryl Montana's home and displaced him to nearby
Kenner, where he lives with his wife, Sabrina. The sewing has sapped his
social life and kept him from more lucrative teaching jobs in Houston, he
said. His fingertips are covered in angry white scars from needle cuts.

But come 10 a.m. Feb. 5, Darryl Montana will put on his costume and exit
his mom's house in New Orleans, suited, pretty and ready for combat.

"My daddy did it for 52 years and never dropped the ball," Darryl Montana
said. "Neither will I."