South Sea Savages, or Maori War Dancers. The List including a Troupe of Genuine South-Sea Savages tattooed from head to foot, and faithfully giving The Great Maori War Dances.

[Advertised and illustrated on] A double-sided poster for W. W. Cole’s World-Famous, Five-Continent New Mammoth Circus, appearing at Binghamton, New York on Monday, April 24, 1882 (the location and date are wet stamped at foot of the verso). Buffalo, NY : The Courier Company Show Printing House [for W. W. Cole], [1882]. Lithograph printed in black on yellow paper, 700 x 260 mm, recto with 7 illustrations including the Maori War Dancers; Flemish Trick Stallions; Capt. A. H. Bogardus, the Idolized Hero of Marksmen; European Bicycle Experts; A Wild Milk-White Buffalo; Waxork Statuary; and the circus Menagerie; verso with full-length illustration of A Dazzling Oriental Spectacle featuring an Ottoman band chariot drawn by twelve Egyptian camels. Among the huge variety of other acts and attractions described on the poster are: A Drove of Giant Australian Kangaroos, Some of them Six Feet High, the Largest ever Captured; Barbaric Relics, Implements of War etc. from the Naked Natives of New Guinea and the Cannibal Islands; African Performing Lions; 40 Dens of Wild Animals; Snakes! Snakes! Snakes!; Hindoo Snake Charmers; Nautch Dancing Girls; Patagonian Whirling dervishes; Aerial, the Man-Bird; The Phantom Lady; a Thrilling Balloon Ascension; and Japanese Daylight Fire-Works. In very good condition, no folds or tears.

Other examples of this rare poster are held at Princeton University Library (for a show in Portland, Oregon), and The Huntington Library (for a show at Dayton, Ohio); we can trace no example in Australasian collections.