Part 2: Nanzeta, Prince of Tibet

At the outset, I want to give some necessary credit to David Corp, who, during his time as president of the Danville Historical Society, covered this story before I did and since that time has been a tremendous help in finding clues and photos that I had overlooked or failed to find. I continue to work with DHS to put this story together, and I look forward to a cooperative effort between our organizations, as well as others. When I wrote my piece in 2020, I was ignorant of Dave’s work, but I would be remiss if I proceeded any further in recounting this story if I did not mention his diligent research.

It’s also potentially necessary to cover some ground on the general history of medicine shows, patent medicine, and the pitchmen who sold them, so I’ve written a separate post on that subject: The American Medicine Show

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A Plot with a Few Holes

Whatever consistency Nanzeta’s story maintained in 1902, it completely goes off the rails in 1903. The cracks actually became evident earlier on as minor details in the “prince’s” story show inconsistences: his references to Venezuela and Guatemala and his interchanging of Inca with Aztec as if the two civilizations were one and the same, or at least very friendly neighbors despite there being 2,800 miles between them. It’s also true that the landscape Nanzeta describes in his account of his ancient home in Sacred City, Mexico, replete with craggy cliffs and bottomless crevasses, sounds much more like the royal seat of the Incas, Cuzco, many miles south in Peru.

The most significant deviation, and the one that marks a whole new chapter in the story of Prince Nanzeta, comes in the form of an off-handed embellishment in December of 1902 when the “Prince” arrives in Oklahoma City. Here he claims that he was among the party who accompanied the famed English explorer, Harry Landes, into Tibet. As if to provide proof, he displays a scar on his forehead (one previously attributed to the duel with the Mexican soldier) as a testament of all he endured at the hands of the hostile Tibetans. This side story of Nanzeta’s journey into Tibet eventually becomes THE story of Prince Nanzeta, and while it is based in some fact, it is not possible Prince Nanzeta is telling the truth here.

Harry Landor was, indeed, an English explorer who took many expeditions into some of the world’s most remote and impenetrable regions, but though it is accepted as a certainty that he went to Tibet, many experts contend that Landor exaggerated his story to the point of near fantasy. Mr. Landor (not Landes, whose name also appeared in newspapers of this time for his occupation as a serial rapist in Port Townsend, Washington) dressed in the costume of a Chinaman when he set off on his adventure to the East. He took with him two assistants—most certainly not Nanzeta who no doubt would remember correctly the name of the man with whom he was supposed to have survived seven months of torture at the hands of the otherwise peaceful Tibetans. (We’ll talk more about Landor and the Tibetan adventure later, but for now I want to bookmark it as an important deviation in the Nanzeta chronicle.)

During this time, too, some major variations appear in the spelling and arrangement of Nanzeta’s name. Where before the variances might have mostly been dismissed as reporter error (or the “Prince’s” own poor penmanship) now it seems he’s actually experimenting with his very identity. It may not be necessary to state that, apart from two or three individuals of Italian origin, there is virtually no Nanzeta of any spelling from1850 up to the present day that are not connected to the Nanzetta of our story. It was hardly a common name.

A Few Aliases for Flavor

In March of 1903, a K.V. Zenda Nanzeta of Cocuta, India signs into the Westminster in Los Angeles. “Nanzeta, who is touring the world, is of princely lineage.” Though it may not be the exact wording we’ve heard before, the theme is certainly the same. (In 1928, Dr. Nanzetta described himself as Indian “of noble lineage”). Are these the same person? One would think it would be that simple, but nothing ever is when one is dealing with history and the career liars who populated it.

A month later, in Napa, Prince Diez Manzeta of Calcutta, India signs the register of a hotel there.

On the 6th of May, Prince Nanzeta Montezuma, now 25 years old “but to all appearances is not more than a boy of 18” arrives in Zion (aka Salt Lake City, Utah) from San Francisco on his way East—or so he informed those who gathered to pay him audience. (He was here the year before, as well under the same name, and his time in Utah is something we will need to look at more closely, but for now we’ll put a pin in it and move on.) In his introduction to the people there, he has conveniently rearranged his CV. Now his education has occurred since his exile, not before it. As his youthful looks have come into question repeatedly already, no doubt he has found it wise not to insist he attended Stanford so many years ago. To the people of Utah, he looks Mexican with his “hair that he wears to his shoulders,” which is “coal black, curly and fine as silk”. As for his attire, “he is very plain. Were it not for his long hair he might pass unnoticed.”

In Kansas City three days later, under the name Prince Diez Nanzeta of Gatamo, he declares himself the rightful ruler of Guatemala. His business in Missouri, or so he insists, is in regards to an investment he has made in a zinc mine in Joplin. He remains in Kansas City for several weeks as he awaits his departure for “Europe to begin his tour as a violinist” and where “he expects to meet in Scotland his fiancée, the daughter of an American diplomat whom he met in China a few years ago.” When pressed, he will not divulge her name. Indeed, I doubt he knows it yet. I’m not certain whether or not he is actually engaged at this point (I think not), but I am certain he is, as Jane Austen once put it, “in want of a wife” and it’s possible he clapped eyes upon her in Utah, but we’ll circle back to that in the next episode.

About this time, an ad in the papers appeared announcing Prince Nanzeta’s arrival in New York, though I’ve found no records that he actually went there. The ad follows right on the heels of the visitations of several foreign dignitaries, and so he may have been hoping that the publicity would add to the lore of his story and thereby build up some credibility as well as some anticipation ahead of his arrival in other parts.

Interestingly enough, this announcement, undoubtedly written and published by the “Prince” himself, received a reply.

This cryptic reply is in reference to the theatrical poster above, which was written, scored, and produced by the famous religion of Utah, of whom he had recently been a guest. The lore, as it relates to the history of the Americas and her native people, is I suspect, one Nanzeta used to his advantage, and which I’ll examine in depth in a future chapter.

Tiger-Fat and Eggs for a Tibetan Prince

In June we have our first major deviation in the Prince’s narrative, when, on the 11th, “Prince Diaz Nanzito of Lahas Thibet” arrives in Marshall, Missouri “claiming to be the son of President Diaz of Mexico and banished from his native country”. Where, previous to this, Nanzeta’s story was genuinely believed or, at the very least, received with mild suspicion and very little hostility (excepting Hempstead, Texas, of course) here he almost is immediately chased from the town under a shower of rotten eggs and threats of violence.

It can be argued that Nanzeta brought much of the Marshall ire upon himself, but it also seems that his claims were difficult to believe because they did not fit his appearance. Or maybe it was simply too much to ask the people of this small Missouri town located 85 miles east of Kansas City to believe that this very young man was both a prince of Mexico and Tibet.

The people of Marshall described Nanzeta on this occasion as a “black-haired creature” who might have been half-black, half-Mexican but who certainly resembled no Asian person, with his “grey eyes” which were “not of the proper slant”, despite his having been “dressed up fantastically in various violent bright colors and evidently trying to represent some oriental costume”. According to theSaline County Citizen of Jun 13, 1903, the “prince” was there three days and made presentations three times on each of those days, but on the last, he began abusing the crowd, but not before going to a local grocery store where he bought five cans of Cottolene, a type of shortening made from a blend of cottonseed oil and beef tallow (and sold as a healthy alternative to lard). Nanzeta repackaged this and sold it as “Tiger Fat”, a salve he claimed was made from the marrow of a tiger’s backbone. Having mounted his box with the aforementioned “remedy” he began telling the story of how he had descended from an Aztec father who had drifted from Mexico to Thibet in north Asia and there married the daughter of a Virginia Faulkner (meaning a Faulkner from Virginia), who represented the U.S. there!” He followed this history up with a Buddhist sermon and “made abusive remarks about the Christian religion in all its forms and beliefs.” His “show” consisted of locals (a cheap but unconvincing lineup) including a young Marshall boy who was hired to perform “acrobatic” tricks and “Rufus Haggin (colored) to sing, but he never got to that. When he began to speak, the boys let fly and filled his long hair with rotten eggs, at which point he took out his knife of Tibet and made a dash at the crowd,” which, as a person of color himself, nearly cost him his life, and a threat was made regarding the means by which he might be made to dangle like an ornament from a nearby tree. He fled to his hotel, but the harassment didn’t end there, and he found no peace until he boarded a train for the next town. By the time he got to Slater, word had been sent ahead and he arrived with to find eggs at the ready to greet him. He returned to Marshall (a through route to Kansas City) by hiding himself in the baggage car.

A Few Clues

All of this is rather humorous, but it’s tragic, too. On the one hand, here’s a guy who is not white, not black, effeminate, apparently educated, and just trying to make a living based on his talents of storytelling with a few weird skills and tricks thrown in, all so he can defraud an undereducated and relatively poor population. He’s a liar and a cheat and probably a dozen things more. But he hardly deserves to be hanged. In modern parlance, we might accuse him of cultural approbation, but the fact is, we don’t know his story. Certainly he did not journey to Tibet with Henry Landor, but he may well have been a Mexican boy who grew up on the streets of California, or Texas or somewhere … was somehow educated and who dreamed of bigger things … like being the long lost great-great-great grandson of Montezuma at a time when that name evoked wonder, mystery, romance, and even heroism (there was more than one Montezuma, after all, but that, too, we’ll get to later).

The fact is, all of his stories were based in some truth, but it’s difficult to know what parts of it were factual in relation to his own identity and origin story. So far, I’ve been unable to validate any part of his history, including the various names, dates and places of birth he gave over the years he traveled as a medicine man. This account, however, gives us some major clues. Firstly, and this may seem like a small thing, but we know he was selling “Tiger Fat”. Tiger Fat was a proprietary medicine sold by the Oriental Remedy Company, one of the largest players in the medicine show game (and I’ll do an entire post on that as background to the next chapter), but secondly, and not entirely unrelated, this account of him gives us the real-life impression of his potential ethnicity. He was at least half-Mexican. He might even have been Native American. One could be both, after all. He was not Asian, and he was not Italian, as he was later described. And this Nanzeta, whether he be the one that eventually lands in Virginia or not, is most certainly not Russian. Accounts of “Prince Nanzeta” as described in Violet McNeal’s autobiography Four White Horses and a Brass Band described him as “a half-breed Mexican” who was only 18 when she met him in 1904 as part of the Oriental Remedy Company. Violet is also an unreliable narrator, and photos she herself provided to newspapers around the time of the original publication of her book included those of someone who meets none of these descriptions apart from his costume, which anyone might have worn (and probably did).

“Prince Nanzetta’s story,” Violet recalls (she spelled his name with two t’s) “was a variation of the Indian-abducts-child pitch. As a youngster, so the pitch went, he had accompanied his father on an expedition into the remote vastness of the Himalayan Mountains. There the natives had captured the group. With the bloodthirsty callousness historically associated with their race, they had put to death, employing intricate tortures, the entire party with the exception of young Nanzetta. Him they had spared for training as a slave. He was taken to the forbidden city of Lhasa, where he was made to wait on the priests. So proficient did he become in the art of medicine as practiced by the priests that they made him a prince. It was their hope that he would come to live and think like a native Tibetan, but he resisted this change and plotted a means of escape. A grown man, he finally eluded his captors and was now bringing their wonderful secrets of healing to his own people.”

McNeal also describes Nanzeta’s Oriental costume. “He wore a long crimson robe lavishly decorated with with gold tinsel and tiny round mirrors. He carried a short sword in an ivory case. This he referred to as the royal sword of Tibet. round his neck was a chain, hanging almost to his knees, which supported a round seal inscribed with some Chinese characters. This was the royal seal of Tibet.”

“Nanzetta was either a natural actor,” wrote Ann Anderson in her book Snake Oil Hustlers, and Hambones: the American Medicine Show, “or a lunatic: He appeared to believe that he was what he claimed to be.” Whether it’s Prince Nanzeta or Nanzetta Montezuma we are talking about, his act was far more than a costume. He lived his story. Perhaps he believed it. Possibly he was a method actor who embodied his chosen persona. Either way, he dressed the part, acted the part, spoke the part—and expected others to believe the part—every day, all day, day after day.

The image to the left was part of an advertisement issued in 1907 for The Great Nanzeta Herb Remedy. A similar image (same person) appeared in another ad in that same year for “Oriental Doctors”, undoubtedly another iteration of the Oriental Remedy Co. The image to the right was featured in the Dec 16, 1916 issue of Billboard Magazine (pg. 122). It’s hard to believe from the distorted image that this can be our Nanzetta of Danville, VA, but there is one hint in this photo that makes me think it’s possible, and that is the horseshoe pin that appears between the buttons of his cloak. Nearly every picture of the Nanzetta I am in search of features a pin of that shape worn in exactly that position in exactly that orientation.

The pictures on each end are photographs we know to be the Nanzetta of North Carolina and Virginia fame. The one in the middle is that which accompanied almost the first record we have of Nanzeta in April of 1902. Are they the same person?

Sometimes a tale is too tall to be believed, and the Nanzeta of 1902 seems to have understood this. Perhaps his success got to his head, or possibly he was becoming bored of his own story. It’s possible, too, that he simply enjoyed the thrill of convincing people to believe in something that was so obviously a lie. Or, and this is a realization I have been reluctant to accept … there was more than one person working the Nanzeta character. The Oriental Remedy Company was as large and successful as it was, partly because of its method of enlisting independent representatives (a little like missionaries) to canvas the country demonstrating, lecturing, and selling their “remedies” which were trademarked but not patented and often made on location out of ordinary drug and grocery store products.

Chicago

On the 13th of June, Nanzeta checked into the Palmer House in Chicago. Reports of his arrival are misleading.

As you can see, the article to the right suggests there were two in Nanzeta’s party, but more likely, his name took up two lines on the register, and the reporter mistook it as being two people.

To his good fortune, Nanzeta arrived in Chicago in time for the 1903 Teamsters Sympathy Strike. The strike shut down hotels and restaurants in an effort to show support for those in the hospitality industry who wanted the right to join unions in order to demand better pay. A wandering reporter happened to find him at a nearby lunch counter.

“‘What do I care about the griefs of waiters?'” he rhetorically demanded of the reporter who questioned him in regard to the inconvenience felt by so many as a result of the strike and “raising his slender brown hands in a gesture of unconcern. ‘What are waiters to me? I expect someday to sit on the throne of Guatemala. Have I had anything to eat today? I do not remember-—yes, certainly I have. But I am indifferent to the trifling perplexities that vex the souls of the common man.'”

A benefit of his Buddhist training no doubt.

“Would you know my history? Aeons ago, the Lord expelled one of his angels from heaven. the angel had sinned. He was exiled to earth, and here he married a princess of the ruling house of Guatemala. I am a descendant of that marriage, and Guatemala should be mine.. No, I am not worrying about my dinner tonight. Who ever heard of a prince worrying?”

Late in June, he seems to have tried the Tibet story again, only this time he was no captive but simply a traveler who had been fortunate enough to penetrate the sacred city of Lhassa. Here we find another important discrepency in the way of his description.

According to The Post-Crescent of Appleton, Wisconsin, “The Count speaks English but apparently with some difficulty. … In appearance the count is the typical explorer, of athletic figure and forceful physiognomy, and his skin has that indescribable bronzed and hardened appearance gained only from long exposure to the sun and wind, and in his case acquired in the mountains on the high, windy plains of Tibet.” What’s more, he extolled his own virtues in describing the remarkable circumstances of his being admitted into the “Forbidden City of Lhassa “where no white man … is knowingly permitted to set foot.”

In Petoskey, MIchigan, on the 21st of July, he tried the full blown Thibetan prince schtick once again and received in response the rotten egg treatment. He also added a new name to the roster in that of “Nanzeta Kaschato Di Velasco, et Comte de Incas, the Oriental Diamond Prince.” That’s a mouthful, ain’t it? (Notice the commonality of alphabetical characters when compared to K.V. Nanzeta of India.) Here the “Prince” was selling—or attempting to sell Tiger Fat and Vital Sparks, the famous nostrums ofthe Oriental Remedy Company.

And then, in November, things get really weird when Nanzeta makes the astonishing announcement, while seemingly in two places at once, that he is to be married!

Which, I promise, deserves its own chapter.

In the meantime, don’t forget to read the supplemental post on the general background and history of the phenomenon that was the American Medicine Show.