Description
A group of 12 Indigenous North Americans went on a goodwill tour of England, on behalf of the US Travel Services, a branch of the Department of Commerce. They “sang, danced, appeared on British television, visited hospitals, schools, rest homes, and participated in the Mayflower ’70 program.” The group, which included a couple of champion fancy dancers (Joe Bointy and George Watchetaker) danced for an audience of several thousand in front of Plymouth’s Town Hall. They also visited the Torquay area, attending a performance of “Don’t Tell the Wife” at the town’s Pavillion Theatre and having a champagne supper with the cast afterward. In nearby Ashburton, the group performed as part of Carnival Week, visited the town museum and its Paul Endacott North American Indian Collection, and went for a Devonshire Cream Tea at the Golden Lion Hotel afterwards. As one newspaper report remarked, the group were “fervent in their praise of the English,” apart from the food. Watchetaker told he reporter that “the English food left something for a Comanche to desire. At restaurants, they were served bread and water and ice only when they asked for it. And good beef”was “˜virtually non-existent.'” Watchetaker “partially solved this problem by eating all his meals in Plymouth at “˜The Golden Dragon,’ a Chinese restaurant.”
Bibliographic sources
Paul McClung, “Touring Southwest Oklahoma Indians Find Common Ground with English,” Lawton Constitution Morning Press, 16 August 1970, 8B; “How! It’s Champagne for the Reds***s,” Torbay Express and South Devon Echo, 10th July, 1970, 10.