Because they’ve seen a million images of American Indians dancing around fires and it looks cool?
Yeah, I didn’t put that as well as I might have done. What I meant was that if there was a special reason why those particular people were dressed as American Indians on that specific occasion, I don’t know what it was.
As you say, though, they don’t need to have had a special reason.
Oh, ok. Fun costume just because.
This was the 9/11 of it’s day - except that this one was foiled ‘in the nick of time’. Today they’d make movies about it, back then they celebrated the fact that the King and government had been preserved. It served two purposes. For the common people it demonstrated that God was preserving the King from the machinations of his enemies by exposing them just in time. For the more sophisticated audience of upper-class recusants and Occasional Conformers, who had money and connections to be dangerous, it was intended to send the message that “we know what you’re up to, and we’re keeping our eye on you. Don’t think you can work something”
It could as well have been, but on a hunch I’ve had a look on the Lewes Bonfire Council website, and it turns out that there is, in fact, a reason the Commercial Square Bonfire Society traditionally dress as American Indians:
Looking at the picture again, is the chief holding a burning cross? People in the US would probably stop smiling.
Apparently yes, although they have nothing to do with well-known cross-burning traditions in the USA.
Ex pat confirming this checklist (I’ve been to a school-organised fireworks night about two years back, but this was my first home-made one). Our host narrated events in the vocal style of Richard Ayoade from his role in The Mighty Boosh.
- check, although add some sideways rain where we were, and a vicious wind that blew all of the firework and rocket smoke directly back on us, completely kippering everything we wore
- check - there was mulled wine, but as an abstainer, I opted for about nine layers of woolly clothing
- ‘Oh, I don’t think that last one went off; let me stand directly over it and look down into it to see if the fuse is still lit’ - check
- check
- I think they were serving soup and jacket potatoes
- check
- spending the next four days suffering from a sinus and chest infection brought on from the smoke inhalation and dose of cold so that one completely loses one’s voice during the lecture one’s chairman is invigilating to determine if one’ll be promoted to full time in the dept next term - check.
One of my husband’s friends said to me while we sat shivering and watching the guys attempt to daisy chain together giant rockets, ‘You Americans have your fireworks night in July, don’t you? That’s so sensible, weatherwise.’ 
I still find it pretty amazing the types of firepower you can get right from the supermarket; fireworks are illegal in my home state (Delaware), so my brothers used to drive to Virginia and smuggle them back (this is in the '70s, when I was little). He had enough weaponry in the trolley, nestled next to the cat’s milk and Shreddies, to send my car into Earth’s orbit, and I don’t even drive a Robin Reliant.
Also, fireworks have hilarious names.
I did Austerity Fireworks this year - i.e. turn up down the road from a big, ticketed fireworks event and watch the display from outside, for free.
More likely an accidental cook off by not having correct launch angle and fire raining down from previous fireworks.
Not cool, Lewes Borough Bonfire Society, not cool at all. The costume is one thing, very cool. The … other thing? Not cool.
Just a minor nitpick - it’s Guy Fawke’s Night, or sometimes Bonfire Night, never day.
What other thing?
I’m guessing burning of effigies of the Pope?
By the way, I used to go to Bonfire nights with my Catholic Aunt and cousins- it’s not something that’s generally celebrated in an anti-Catholic way. There’s normally not much mention of the religious aspect of the background outside of school (and, apparently Lewes).
Everyone somehow manages to forget John Bellingham… Triers versus doers, or rather that Fawkes’ actions were part of a Catholic plot that it was politically expedient to remember (and perhaps still is - there was a great deal of harumphing until Camilla switched codes as 't’were before marrying Prince Charles).
A Catholic-influenced friend of my mum’s was mentioning the other day how her mum wouldn’t give a penny for the Guy because of some historical bollocks or other.
Talk about holding a grudge.
Are the Lewes Bonfire Society doing that? I couldn’t find it.
There’s a guy dressed as a ‘Zulu warrior’, in blackface, on MrDibble’s linked page - maybe that’s the other thing.
The blackface, yes. It’s OK (IMO), to dress like a Zulu warrior without going all gollywog about it. Especially since Zulus aren’t anywhere near that dark
That’s what the news stories are reporting was the cause but, as I said, due to where it was I was harbouring a suspicion it was deliberate… Apparently it was just an accident though.
Indeed. My Catholic girlfriend was taught (by her parents? Catholic school? Can’t remember) that Bonfire Night was a celebration of Catholics fighting oppression. She isn’t yet convinced by my alternative interpretation.