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founder:
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Wingnut71
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date created:
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09/06/2006
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no. of members:
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20
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description/mission statement:
Cigar store Indians are located almost everywhere, but are becoming something of a rarity.
As the introducer of tobacco to the Europeans, the Native American was ubiquitously linked to the industry. Thus, a universal brand for tobacco was created.
Tobacconists did not have a monopoly on the use of anthropomorphic figures as storefront advertisement. While tea shops used idealized figures of Chinese men and women to enhance the authenticity of their product, a women's clothier may have placed a figure of a handsomely dressed woman out front. Although some figures were made of cast metal, the great majority were carved from wood by well-trained artisans. Most of these carvers originally made ship figureheads. The market for storefront figures, driven by both the urbanization of America and the growing popularity of cigars, peaked just as the market for ship figureheads, along with the clipper, waned.
At approximately the turn of the century the era of the "Cigar Store Indian" came to an end. Cities considered the figures impediments to the flow of the urban swarm and required shopkeepers to move them inside, where they lost their original purpose. You can still find them outside occasionally. Shops and websites sell "authentic" cigar store Indians for hundreds of thousands of dollars!
Your mission and rules for logging this waymark are:
1. Find a cigar store Indian statue (must be resonably sized and preferably holding cigars in his hands but other items are ok and standing outside or inside of a tobacco/cigar store or restaurant). No museums please! NO PRE-FAB INDIANS will be allowed! (These are the fiberglass ones for sale in the "Cigarettes Cheaper" and similar stores.)
2. Tell us where it is located (city, state, country)
3. Take a picture of you (or an assistant) holding your GPS with the statue. No "car window" shots -- please take the two seconds it takes to walk up to the statue.
4. Post the coordinates.
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open enrollment: ON
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This group manages the following:
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