cigar store Indian

Definitions

A sculpture, typically wooden and painted, of a Native American Indian, of the sort prominently used in tobacco stores.

US

Examples

“... Fenimore Cooper's Indian is a fraud. ... The cigar-store red man and the statuesque Pocahontas of the "vuelta abajo" trade⟳ as they are paraded in literature and thus pervert the public conceptions of our Indians, THEY—I want⟳ to destroy⟳ first if possible.”

“"Do you think⟳ I'm going to stand⟳ here on one foot all night like⟳ a dodgasted cigar store Indian?"”

“"You had plenty of time to get⟳ under that ball, too. But you lost your nerve at the end⟳, and stood there like⟳ a cigar store wooden Indian while it fell safe."”

“Still staring straight ahead, his pale eyes like⟳ wood set⟳ into his wooden face⟳, he crosses the floor in four strides with the rigid gravity of a cigar store Indian dressed in patched overalls and endued with life from the hips down, and steps in a single stride⟳ through the opposite window and into the path again just as I come⟳ around the corner.”

“She sat there in the waiting room, solid Kansas/Stiff as a cigar-store indian from the Bowery/Such as one saw⟳ in " the nineties ",/First sod of bleeding Kansas/That had produced this ligneous solidness; ...”

CEFR level