Between April 28 and May 16, 1888, during his continental journey across the United States, and again during the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1889, Rizal confronted two dramatically different representations of Indigenous Americans: one as commercial stereotype, the other as dignified performers. These encounters shaped what would become Indios Bravos, the fraternity founded by Rizal and his compatriots in Paris.

Rizal’s initial exposure to Native American imagery occurred during his transcontinental train journey across the United States in May 1888. Hosted initially at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco after a six-day quarantine (April 28–May 4), he proceeded eastward via Oakland, Sacramento, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado. On May 11, upon arriving in Chicago, he made a brief but telling note in his travel diary:

“In every tobacco shop there are Indian statues.” (Rizal, José. Reminiscences and travls of José Rizal. Philippines: José Rizal National Centennial Commission, 1961., p.149.)

These statues—popularly known as “cigar-store Indians”—were widely used as commercial signage in U.S. cities during the late nineteenth century. They depicted Native Americans as exoticized frontier figures and were part of a racialized visual economy that commodified Indigenous identity for advertising.

Rizal did not elaborate further, but the observation demonstrates that even before 1889, he was attentive to how Western societies represented and consumed Indigenous peoples. This awareness deepened as he observed broader patterns of discrimination in America: the exclusion and detention of Chinese and Japanese passengers, the inferior status accorded to Black Americans, and what he described as “some cities without real civil liberties” (Letter to his Mariano Ponce, 6 May 1888, Epistolario Rizalino, Vol. II). These experiences provided a comparative frame for assessing how colonized peoples were seen in the West.

Rizal’s more consequential encounter occurred during the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889, one of the largest fairs of the nineteenth century. Though technically outside the formal exposition grounds, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show became the event’s most popular attraction. It featured Lakota, Oglala, and other Native American performers who enacted horseback riding, ceremonial dances, and dramatized frontier battles.

Unlike the stereotyped statues he saw in Chicago, these Indigenous performers were greeted in Paris with fascination and esteem. French newspapers of the time described them as “fiers cavaliers” and “nobles sauvages”, romanticized yet publicly admired. European crowds applauded their bearing, horsemanship, and sense of communal identity.

It was this stark contrast—between commodified caricature in America and respected performers in Paris—that struck Rizal. He attended the show with members of the Kidlat Club, an informal fraternity formed by Filipino expatriates to welcome him to the city during the exposition.

The transformation of the Kidlat Club into Indios Bravos is documented in the memoirs of José Alejandrino, one of Rizal’s closest compatriots in Paris. According to Alejandrino’s La Senda del Sacrificio (1949):

After witnessing the Native American performers at Buffalo Bill’s show, Rizal told his companions that if these “Indians” were admired by Europeans, then Filipinos should reclaim the word Indio and make it respectable. He proposed the name “Indios Bravos.” (Kramer 2006, 76)

This moment is additionally supported by recollections from Edilberto Evangelista and Valentin Ventura, who confirm that the Wild West Show sparked Rizal’s reflection on the dignity and representation of colonized peoples.

Thus, the group’s name—Indios Bravos, meaning “brave Indians”—was directly inspired by the spectacle of Native American performers being received with respect and admiration in Paris. Rizal saw in them a model of performative racial pride, an opportunity to reclaim a term Spaniards had weaponized against Filipinos.

Although Rizal does not explicitly mention Indios Bravos in his surviving correspondence, two key letters from June 1 and 2, 1889, addressed to Marcelo H. del Pilar, illuminate the intellectual climate from which the group emerged.

In his letters from early June 1889, written from Paris during the Exposition Universelle, Rizal repeatedly reflects on the humiliations Filipinos endured at the hands of Spaniards abroad and stresses the need for intellectual rigor and moral self-cultivation to counter colonial stereotypes. While the exact phrasing varies across this period of correspondence (the relevant early-June letters do not yet appear in the extracted portion of Epistolario Rizalino, Tomo II), his broader argument is consistent: Filipinos must present themselves with seriousness and capability in an international setting in order to avoid being treated as ethnographic curiosities. (See Epistolario Rizalino, Tomo II, 1887–1890, letters from Paris, June 1889.)

This ethic of disciplined self-representation aligns directly with the founding principles of Indios Bravos, whose existence is confirmed in the collective letter sent to Rizal on 22 September 1889. In that document, signed “L. Indios Bravos,” members acknowledge their association under that name and look to Rizal for guidance in shaping the group’s identity and aspirations. Antonio Luna adds a personal note—“Aunque soy Indio Bravo…”—underscoring both the group’s chosen self-designation and its ironic reclamation of a racialized term.

José Alejandrino recalls that they practiced fencing, marksmanship, and swordsmanship, and incorporated the judo techniques Rizal had learned during his 1888 stay in Japan.¹ Their purpose was clear: to demonstrate that Filipinos could embody the discipline and refinement admired in other non-European peoples, and thereby overturn Spanish assumptions of indolence and inferiority.

Rizal’s encounters with Native Americans frame the emergence of this political imagination. During his American journey in 1888, he observed how Indigenous identity had been commercialized into caricature, noting in his diary that “Indian figures” appeared in every tobacco shop in Chicago—a representation fixed, wooden, and racialized.² By contrast, at the 1889 Paris Exposition, he witnessed real Native Americans performing in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, where they were presented with public admiration as skilled riders and cultural representatives.³ The contrast between these two forms of representation—one caricatured, the other dignified—offered Rizal a vivid lesson in how empire stages, distorts, or exalted colonized peoples.

1. José Alejandrino, La Senda del Sacrificio (Manila: Oriental Commercial Co., 1949), esp. chapters on Rizal in Paris and the founding of Indios Bravos.
2. José Rizal, travel notes from May 1888, summarized in Ambeth R. Ocampo, “Rizal in America: He Was Not Impressed,” Positively Filipino, June 16, 2021.
3. On Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show at the 1889 Exposition Universelle, see Paul Reddin, Wild West Shows (University of Illinois Press, 1999), 93–108.
4. Epistolario Rizalino, Tomo II: 1887–1890. Letter No. 295, “De Indios Bravos y Antonio Luna a Rizal,” 22 September 1889, pp. 280–281 (as extracted)