Title supplied by cataloger. Twelve Inuit families, including a pregnant 15-year-old Esther Enutseak and her parents Abile and Helene, arrived in Chicago on October 17, 1892 for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago; the Inuit had been recruited and were to be exhibited in a living "Eskimo Village". The World's Columbian Exposition, popularly referred to as the Chicago World's Fair, had its dedication ceremony on October 21, 1892 but the fairgrounds were not actually opened to the public until May 1, 1893. On January 16, 1893, Esther gave birth to daughter Nancy Helena Columbia Palmer at the Exposition's "Esquimaux Village". When the fairground closed on October 30th, most of the Inuit went back to Labrador, but Nancy and her family remained in the U.S. deciding to earn their livelihood in exhibitions at other state fairs, circuses and carnivals. In the early 1900s, Esther married a promoter by the name of John Caspar Smith and they had four children. Under Smith's management, their exhibitions became a family business and it was clear early on that Nancy Columbia, or simply Columbia (as she was often called), was the star of the business. She had turned into a 16-year-old beauty and was often photographed wearing her trademark costume of sealskin trousers, kamiks, and a sealskin or caribou coat. In 1909 the family performed at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle, referred to as the Seattle World's Fair. On August 19, after a heated popularity contest, Columbia was declared Queen of the Carnival, becoming the first (and possibly only) Inuit Queen ever. When the Exposition ended, Columbia and her family continued living in Seattle for a while. By the mid-1910s they had moved to California and established an independent Eskimo Village attraction in Ocean Park, until a fire in 1915 destroyed Fraser's Pier. In 1911, Columbia wrote and starred in "The Way of the Eskimo", an early silent motion picture produced by the Selig Polyscope Company, but no prints of the film exist today. Sometime during the early 1920s Columbia married motion picture operator Ray Melling, and she retired from show business; they had daughter, Esther Sue in 1927. It is believed that Nancy (Columbia) Melling spent her later years living in Encino, California managing an apartment/hotel. She died on August 16, 1959, almost exactly half a century after her dazzling coronation as Queen of the Pay Streak, and six months after Alaska achieved statehood. Shown is an Inuit beauty, identified as Nancy Columbia, dressed warmly in Eskimo tog's.
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