New Orleans Mardi Gras Indians: Big Chiefs\u27 Perspectives

New Orleans’ strategic location on the Mississippi River is a centuries-old hub for economic growth, cultural exchange, and has been a prize for competing political forces since colonial times. Its multi-racial, multi-ethnic, and multicultural complexities where Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans transcultural sociopolitical experiences around enslavement and co-habitation produced the New Orleans Mardi Gras Indians. The patriarchal Mardi Gras Indian tribes have been around for more than a hundred years and are known for creating extravagant handcrafted masquerading suits whose prominent features are feathers and beads and, through their traditions constitute a distinct cultural group. This research used oral histories supplemented by literature to explore Mardi Gras Indian history, origin theories, communal relations, class dimensions, and self-identity for understanding cultural transformation and leadership patterns while describing hierarchy, stability, and fluency within and among their tribes. Oral history narratives came from Big Chiefs, who are the paramount leaders and spokespersons for each tribe. The Big Chiefs gave descriptive interpretations that revealed societal structures, development, and sociopolitical dynamics