Super Sunday 2019: The history behind Mardi Gras Indian tradition and culture (2024)

While the rest of the nation recognizes Super Sunday as the day of the Super Bowl, it has an entirely different meaning in New Orleans.

Super Sunday, first organized in 1969, is a festival and parade featuring roughly 40 Mardi Gras Indian tribes throughout the city. On the third Sunday of March, members from both the Downtown and Uptown tribes come together to celebrate the culmination of the Carnival season.

Mardi Gras Indians are groups — or “tribes” — of people who gather, dance, and parade in areas all across New Orleans. They are well known for their colorful suits and headdresses. Super Sunday is the last official processional, focusing solely on Mardi Gras Indians.

The Mardi Gras Indian Council, one of two governing bodies over Mardi Gras Indian tribes in New Orleans, holds its Super Sunday event on the third Sunday of every March. During the event, Mardi Gras Indians parade along A.L. Davis Park, located at Washington Avenue and Lasalle Street in Central City.

To start, we reached out to Chief Shaka Zulu of the Yellow Pocahontas Tribe to explain the unique history of Mardi Gras Indians. Chief Zulu operates Golden Feather, a Mardi Gras Indian gallery and restaurant, and hosts seminars on the history of Mardi Gras Indians in New Orleans.

According to Chief Zulu, the Mardi Gras Indian tradition dates back to around 1718. Runaway slaves from the transatlantic slave trade were taken in, protected, and hidden by the indigenous people of the continent in the Louisiana area. Throughout the years, the African and Native American cultures began to mix, creating a new masking culture.

In West African culture, the use of masking, beads, and feathers is widespread. Similar headdresses and outfits are common in Native American traditions. Each suit, through the use of hand-sewn patches and handcrafted feathers, aims to tell a story.

As the culture matured in New Orleans, maskers paraded during the Mardi Gras season — permits were hard to obtain, but parading was allowed throughout the city during Mardi Gras. Because they were seen often during Carnival, they quickly became known as Mardi Gras Indians.

Eric Craig

Eric Craig

Mardi Gras Indians are divided into two primary groups: Uptown and Downtown. Uptown Indian groups tend to have more African influence, and create abstract costumes using beads and stones. Downtown Indians designs tend to be more pictorial.

Mardi Gras Indian suits are composed of three main pieces: a crown, a dickie, and an apron, according to Chief Alfred Doucette, a leading chief in the Flaming Arrow tribe.

Eric Craig

The crown is the elaborate headdress worn by Mardi Gras Indians. The Big Chief, the highest-ranking Mardi Gras Indian in each tribe, can have a headdress that weighs upwards of 40 pounds — some are as heavy as 100 pounds.

The dickie is the patched portion of the suit that spans from the upper chest to the waist, with designs that portray a story on the front and back.

The apron is the final part of the suit, visible from the waist to the ankle. It comes in different shapes and sizes depending on the artist behind the suit. It can be a mobile, a teardrop design, or a large canvas.

Chief Doucette has created his own Mardi Gras suits since 1988.

“I was doing some carpentry work at a house and I saw a picture resembling a battle scene, and it gave me an idea of how Indians used to live,” he says.

That idea became the driving force behind his first suit. Deemed “Brother John,” the suit portrays a story of an American Indian warrior fighting off Spanish soldiers. The dickie shows the initial battle scene, while the apron showcases the burial scene of the warrior.

“A lot of Indians sew from a vision or a dream,” Doucette said. “My suits represents people’s pain.”

Eric Craig

Eric Craig

Creating a Suit

Building a Mardi Gras suit can take anywhere from six months to a year.

“The whole suit takes a whole year, working six to seven hours every day, sometimes longer,” says Doucette. “If you say you are going to make an Indian suit, it’s dedication.”

Eric Craig

Traditionally, Mardi Gras is the first day an Indian suit is revealed by its wearer. For most Uptown Mardi Gras Indians, Super Sunday is the last time it is worn for the year.

To start, the designer will develop a concept around which to build the suit. The concept can be anything—from a favorite animal to a pictorial image that depicts a current social issue.

Each of the designs are first drawn freehand on a canvas. After that, beads and sequins are added to enhance the visual effect of the patch.

Eric Craig

After patches are made, each day is spent sewing them together with cloth material and feathers and adding sequins and beads. The materials to create the suits can cost thousands of dollars alone.

Once finished, a well-made Mardi Gras Indian suit can be worth upwards of $30,000, but they’re rarely ever sold. Many Mardi Gras Indians keep their suits as memorabilia.

Chief Kevin Turner of the Black Mohawks, an Uptown tribe, teaches classes on sewing Mardi Gras Indian suits.

“What you sew is what you like,” Turner says. “You draw what you see. We are our own idea and we make it come to life.”

Third Chief Turner says that there are six common colors used when creating Mardi Gras Indian suits: white, purple, gold, green, blue, and red. Traditionally, the color white is reserved for freshman and retiring Mardi Gras Indians.

Turner says that suits are used to make a statement that is important to the wearer.

“Each suit has to tell a story; you are are telling your story,” he adds.

Retiring Suits

Every year, Mardi Gras suits are retired. In general, they’re simply not worn after Super Sunday. Throughout the oral history of Mardi Gras Indians, there have been multiple reasons given to explain why suits can never be reused.

As Third Chief Kevin Turner explains it, suits used to be destroyed because the materials themselves would become spoiled. Until synthetic material became the norm, Mardi Gras Indians made suits from things like fish scales and chicken feathers. After processions, the suits began to smell because of the rotting material, so they would be burned.

Another reason is competition. Each year, Mardi Gras Indians attempt to outdo one another through song, dance, and custom suits, and creating a new suit became a common way to one-up other Mardi Gras Indians.

Storage

For the most part, after a suit has been worn, the designer keeps the suit. Both Chief Doucette and Chief Kevin Turner keep their retired suits in their homes.

Additionally, suits are often donated to museums, such as House of Dance and Feathers and the Backstreet Cultural Museum.

While Mardi Gras Indians may live colorful and elaborate lives during Carnival season, what happens when they’re not participating in processionals?

“There are Mardi Gras Indians who are policemen, educators, lawyers,” says Turner. “It’s not just guys around the corner who have nothing to do. You have a lot of people who are professional people. For most of us, it doesn’t consume our lives 365 days out of the year.”

Other Mardi Gras Indians make a career out of entertainment. Chiefs like Alfred Doucette and the late Bo Dollis have marketed Mardi Gras Indian chants, and sang and danced around the world.

Other Mardi Gras Indians, like Chief Kevin Turner and the Mardi Gras Indian Show Entertainment Agency, entertain on a smaller scale, performing at wedding receptions, private parities, and special events.

There are several museums about the history of Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and three focus primarily on the history and culture of Mardi Gras Indians. Check out Curbed NOLA’s map of where to learn about Mardi Gras Indians.

• What are the Mardi Gras Indians, how many are there and what is their history? [Gambit]
• Mardi Gras Indians Super Sunday around St. Joseph's Day [Mardi Gras New Orleans]
• Five places to learn about Mardi Gras history all year long [Curbed NOLA]
• Where to learn about Mardi Gras Indians before Super Sunday [Curbed NOLA]