Information
on Gypsy & Traveler Cultures
Several groups,
generally known to outsiders as "Gypsies," live today
in North America. In their native languages, each of the groups
refers to itself by a specific name, but most translate that name
as "Gypsy" when speaking English. The distinct groups
of Irish Travelers and Scottish Travelers do not refer to themselves
as Gypsies, however. Each of these groups had its own cultural,
linguistic, and historical tradition before coming to this country,
and each maintains social distance from the others. They differ
from one another in social organization: form of marriage, internal
politics and social control. With the exception of the Hungarian-Slovak
musicians, Gypsy and Traveler groups share elements of economic
organization. The Rom and Romnichels share elements of an ideology
which stresses the separation of pure from impure and Gypsy from
non-Gypsy. The Rom, Romnichels, and Hungarian-Slovak musicians share
a linguistic prehistory, but their ethnic languages are not, for
practical purposes, mutually intelligible. The scattered and, for
the most part secondhand, reports of Gypsies in North America before
the middle of the 19th century, while frequently repeated, have
not been examined critically nor verified independently. What has
been demonstrated is that the present populations of North American
Gypsies and Travelers date from immigrations of 1850 and thereafter.
Romnichels
The Romnichels, or Rom'nies, began to come to the United States
from England in 1850. Their arrival coincided with an increase in
the demand for draft horses in agriculture and then in urban transportation.
Many Romnichels worked as horse traders, both in the travel-intensive
acquisition of stock and in long-term urban sales stable enterprise.
After the rapid decline in the horse trade following the First World
War, most Romnichels relied on previously secondary enterprises,
"basket-making," including the manufacture and sale of
rustic furniture, and fortune telling. The slight literature on
this group was produced steadily but sporadically from 1880 to 1920;
after that date material appeared rarely until the 1980s. With the
exception of one language study, this literature is intended for
a popular audience; only recently has scholarly work treated this
group. The literature usually refers to this group as English Gypsies.
The Romnichel language, which native speakers refer to as Rom'nes
(used as a noun), uses common Romani lexical terms in a matrix of
English grammar and syntax. T
Rom
The Rom arrived in the United States and Canada from Serbia, Russia
and Austria-Hungary beginning in the 1880s, as part of the larger
wave of immigration from southern and eastern Europe in the late
19th and early 20th centuries. Primary immigration ended, for the
most part, in 1914, with the beginning of the First World War and
subsequent tightening of immigration restrictions. Many in this
group specialized in coppersmith work, mainly the repair and refining
of industrial equipment used in bakeries, laundries, confectioneries
and other businesses. The Rom, too, developed the fortune-telling
business in urban areas.
Virtually all the anthropological
and sociological work on North American Gypsies concerns the Rom,
an emphasis which has led a British observer to label the North
American academic tradition "Kalderashocentric," Kalderash
being one of the Rom subgroups. The first work covered in this bibliography
to concern the Rom appeared in 1903. Material appeared sporadically
after that, and steadily from 1928 onward. This group is also referred
to in the literature as Nomads, Coppersmiths, Nomad Coppersmiths,
Vlach (or Vlax) Gypsies, or by reference to a country from which
they immigrated to North America, as Brazilian Gypsies, Bulgarian
Gypsies, and so forth. The individual subgroup terms Kalderash and
Machwaya are also used. While in the Kalderash dialect of the Romani
language, Rom is both singular and plural, the Machwaya dialect
has plural Roma, which is also found in the literature. The inflected
language of the Rom belongs to the "Vlach" branch of the
Romani language family. Native speakers refer to "speaking
Romanes" (adverb) "in the Gypsy fashion."
A group of Rom who began immigrating
to the United States and Canada from eastern Europe in the 1970s
is represented primarily in the police literature, where they are
referred to as Yugoslavian Gypsies.
Ludar
The Ludar, or "Rumanian Gypsies," also emigrated to North
America during the great immigration from southern and eastern Europe
between 1880 and 1914. Most of the Ludar came from northwestern
Bosnia. Upon their arrival in North America they specialized as
animal trainers and show people, and indeed passenger manifests
show bears and monkeys as a major part of their baggage. Only a
handful of items covering this group have been published, beginning
in 1902. The ethnic language of the Ludar is a form of Romanian.
They are occasionally referred to as Ursari in the literature.
"Black Dutch"
Gypsies from Germany, generally referred to in the literature as
Chikeners (Pennsylvania German, from German Zigeuner), sometimes
refer to themselves as "Black Dutch." They are few in
number and claim to have largely assimilated to Romnichel culture.
In the past known as horse traders and basket makers, some continue
to provide baskets to US Amish and Mennonite communities.
Hungarian
Gypsies
The Hungarian (or Hungarian-Slovak) musicians also came to this
country with the eastern European immigration. In the United States
they continued as musicians to the Hungarian and Slovak immigrant
settlements, and count the musical tradition as a basic cultural
element. The sparse literature on this group begins in 1921. Curiously
the proportion of scholarly efforts is higher than for the literature
on other groups.
Irish
Travelers
The Irish Travelers immigrated, like the Romnichels, from the mid
to late nineteenth century. The Irish Travelers specialized in the
horse and mule trade, as well as in itinerant sales of goods and
services; the latter gained in importance after the demise of the
horse and mule trade. The literature also refers to this group as
Irish Traders or, sometimes, Tinkers. Their ethnic language is referred
to in the literature as Irish Traveler Cant.
Scottish
Travelers
The present population of Scottish Travelers
in North America also dates from about 1850, although the 18th-century
transportation records appear to refer to this group. Unlike that
of the other groups, Scottish Traveler immigration has been continuous.
Also unlike the other groups, Scottish Travelers have continued
to travel between Scotland and North America, as well as between
Canada and the United States, after immigration. Scottish Travelers
also engaged in horse trading, but since the first quarter of the
20th century have specialized in itinerant sales and services. With
the exception of one researcher's master's and doctoral theses and
material culture studies, the literature on this group consists
almost wholly of warnings to prospective consumers accompanied by
information, derived from consumer protection agency records, of
doubtful accuracy.
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