Big Chief Howard Miller – The 51 year journey of a Mardi Gras Indian

9th March 2020   ·   0 Comments

By Geraldine Wyckoff
Contributing Writer

“The suit is a mask – this is why we call it masking,” Chief Howard Miller of the Creole Wild West Mardi Gras Indian tribe explains. “Behind the mask is what really really counts – there should be some spiritual stretching going on. That’s where the chants come in. The chants are the driving motivator that carries you to the transformation state. Once you transform, you can go downtown and uptown like we used to do.”

Miller, 63, who is also the president of the New Orleans Mardi Gras Indian Council, director of the Creole Wild West Youth Program and president of the Ella Project, was referring to the first Super Sunday Indian parades, which began in 1971, when the processions started at A.L. Davis Park and went all the way to Hunter’s Field on St. Bernard and North Claiborne avenues. On alternate years, the parade would switch directions and go from downtown to uptown. “Of course, we must always give credit to Jerome ‘Big Duck’ Smith with Tambourine & Fan who started this whole Super Sunday parade.”

In 1989, the Mardi Gras Indian Council decided that since the Tambourine & Fan organization held its Super Sunday downtown, it would present its own event, formally called Indian Sunday, uptown. This year, the spectacular parade of Black Indians and the festival presented simultaneously at A.L. Davis Park will be held Sunday, March 15, 2020. The procession that includes several brass bands and social aid and pleasure clubs rolls at 1 p.m.

Miller boasts an intriguing 51-year history with the Indians. As a child living just outside of the Irish Channel, he hadn’t really experienced the Black cultural traditions of Mardi Gras Indians and social aid and pleasure clubs. He clearly remembers the morning when, after his family moved to an apartment over a barroom on the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. and Simon Bolivar boulevards, he heard “screamin’ and hollerin’” outside of his window. “I didn’t know what was going on,” says Miller who then spotted the Indians with their tambourines. “I knew I just had to get closer to that.”

The next year, he was out early in the evening, and realizes now that it must have been St. Joseph’s night. “The Indians were coming and it really drew me. It grabbed hold of me and didn’t let go.”

By age 12, Miller knew a little bit more about the tradition and a few kids that were participants including one friend. “I didn’t know he masked Indian until I saw him and I stayed with him all day,” he says. “A lot of times, back in the 1960s, they didn’t tell you nothing about that they were masking. Everything was sealed in that sacred secret mode.” Miller told his companion he wanted to mask Indian and his friend said he would take him to meet his chief.

“I would go around there (by chief’s house) but they never would let me in and in fact they wouldn’t let me in the yard,” Miller recalls with a laugh. He finally entered the yard and then went onto the porch. “I’m looking through the screen door and I’m seeing all this magical stuff going on in there.” It then started to rain and Miller heard the chief say, “Is that boy still on the porch?’ and he finally asked him in. The chief, John ‘Scarface John Crazy Horse’ Williams, had knocked over some beads and Miller offered to pick them up and also sweep the floor. Then the chief said the words the youngster had been longing to hear: “So you want to mask Indian.” “That’s the chief who gave me my first feather and made me an Indian.”

Miller became a chief scout, which he describes as a learning position, with the Apache Hunters. After several years he was promoted to spyboy. In 1972, Chief Scarface John, who is remembered in the song, “Brother John Is Gone,” was murdered and Chief Ernest Whitfield took over the gang. Two years later, Whitfield landed in prison for murder. Those events played havoc with the members of the Apache Hunters and Miller joined the Wild Magnolias though he was dissatisfied as the gang already had a spyboy. In 1975, the chief of the Creole Wild West, known has Hercules, asked Miller to join the gang assuring him he could run spyboy. Then, after several years, members of the Apache Hunters were eager to rebuild their tribe and talked Miller into becoming their chief.

Soon thereafter, Chief Miller and the Apache Hunters were headed downtown when they met up with a few members of the Creole Wild West led by Chief Walter “Little Walter” Cook. Since Miller had been associated with the Creole Wild West, they asked if they could join the Apaches on their trek.

“That’s how the Apache Hunters and the Creole Wild West merged,” says Miller, who shares the title of Big Chief of the Creole Wild West with Cook. “Walter and I brought the tribes together and it’s been like that from 1978 to today.”

Miller, who holds to old-time Indian ways, feels blessed to have had the privilege of talking to the elders like Chief of Chiefs Robert “Robbe” Lee, who came up under the legendary Brother Tillman, big chiefs Lawrence Fletcher, Donald Harrison Sr., Allison “Tootie” Montana and others of note.

“I’m glad I came up at that time,” Miller offers. “It was really Indian. It was really being played out how it was supposed to be played out. It was a spiritual expression and later it came to be not only a spiritual expression but a spiritual creative expression. That’s what the intentions were when Indians first came on the street. We’re trying to put that back into what Indians are all about.”

Now Chief Howard is a mentor to another generation of eager youths who will soon gather at the Indian Council’s new center. “I like to sew, dance, sing but more than anything, I like to teach,” say Miller who will be on the streets on Super Sunday and St. Joseph’s Night (March 19). I like to share what I know and have learned about this culture over the years. I’m still learning today.”

“Through all my years of masking it’s been a hell of roller coaster ride and I enjoyed it all.”

This article originally published in the March 9, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.