Entry · catalog no. 1157
big chief
/ /bɪɡ ˈtʃif/ /BIG CHEEF
noun · New Orleans, Louisiana — Seventh Ward, Tremé, Central City, Sixth and Ninth Wards; also carried by post-Katrina diaspora in Houston and Atlanta · 1880s
✓ Verified
1.
The leader of a Black Masking Indian tribe in New Orleans, ranking above the second and third chiefs, the queen, the wild man, the flag boy and the spy boy. The position is earned rather than appointed: a big chief has to sew a new suit every year, hold practice, keep a following, and hold his ground when two tribes meet in the street. Since the mid-twentieth century that meeting has been settled by craftsmanship and bearing instead of by fighting. The chief sets the route on Mardi Gras morning, St. Joseph Night and Super Sunday, leads the call-and-response, and carries responsibility for the people behind him.
“Big Chief came around the corner in all that yellow and the whole block went quiet.”
2.
A lifelong honorific fixed in front of a man name, the way a rank stays with him after the parade is over. Once a man holds the office he is Big Chief on record sleeves, on festival billing, in the newspaper and at his funeral — Big Chief Bo Dollis of the Wild Magnolias, Big Chief Monk Boudreaux of the Golden Eagles, Big Chief Allison Tootie Montana of the Yellow Pocahontas. Inside New Orleans music the title marks a man as a culture bearer, not merely a bandleader, and it is not used loosely.
“Big Chief Monk been masking since before my mama was born.”
Origin & Attribution
The office belongs to Black New Orleans and dates to the 1880s — Seventh Ward Creole families downtown and Black working-class neighborhoods uptown, in the years when Black residents were shut out of white Carnival and Jim Crow was closing around the city. The tribe usually named as the first, Creole Wild West, is credited to Becate Batiste, a Seventh Ward Creole of African American, French and Choctaw descent, around 1885. Each tribe organized under its own big chief, and the rank structure below him has held for well over a century. Two corrections. First, the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show, which wintered in New Orleans in 1884–85, and the Cotton Centennial Exposition of the same season supplied imagery, occasion and a shock of recognition — they did not create the culture. Second, Mardi Gras Indian is itself a misnomer that has stuck: Michael P. Smith argued the label functions as a mask, obscuring what are better understood as urban Maroon societies with African and Afro-Caribbean roots that operate year-round and are only incidentally attached to Carnival. Many practitioners now say Black Masking Indian. These are not krewes, and the suits are not costumes.
1885
Creole Wild West, generally held to be the first Carnival tribe, is organized around Becate Batiste in the Seventh Ward; the big chief structure dates from this period
1964
Earl King and Professor Longhair cut Big Chief for the Watch label in New Orleans; it becomes a permanent Carnival standard
1987
Allison Tootie Montana, Big Chief of the Yellow Pocahontas, receives an NEA National Heritage Fellowship — federal recognition of the office as an American art form
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
New Orleans, Louisiana — Seventh Ward, Tremé, Central City, Sixth and Ninth Wards; also carried by post-Katrina diaspora in Houston and Atlanta · 1880s
Spoken by
Black Masking Indians and their tribes; New Orleans second-line and brass-band musicians; Black New Orleanians generally
$BIGCHIThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Enduring62 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
62/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1964
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Michael P. Smith, "Buffalo Bill and the Mardi Gras Indians," excerpted from The Mardi Gras Indians of New Orleans (Pelican, 1993), republished by 64 Parishes, 2015
book · printed
■
"Allison Tootie Montana," National Heritage Fellow profile, National Endowment for the Arts, 1987
record · government
■
Professor Longhair with Earl King, "Big Chief," Watch Records, 1964
song · recorded
■
Bo Dollis and the Wild Magnolias Mardi Gras Indian Band, "Handa Wanda," Crescent City Records, 1970
song · recorded
■
+ Cite a sourceAl Kennedy, Chief of Chiefs: Robert Nathaniel Lee and the Mardi Gras Indians of New Orleans, 1915–2001 (2018)
book · printed
See also