University Archives News

Of Bonfires and Cremations

It will surprise few to learn that Northwestern University students are no strangers to the wilder promptings of spring, and that they have found ways to express such impulses, in one guise or another, since the beginning of Purple time. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the roster of vernal outlets for colorful behavior included such extravaganzas as the Freshman Beach Party, the Sophomore Hop, May Pageant, and University Day. Among the more flamboyant of such displays was the campus tradition that came to be known as Trig Cremation, which flourished in one form or another from 1877 through 1914, or by different reckoning, 1922. As an artifact of another era, Trig Cremation is worth a brief backward, possibly wistful, glance from the high perch of the enlightened present.

Trig Cremation began as an affair of spotty decorum, enacted by the freshman class and designed to express the pent-up frustrations of freshmen trying to master the finer points of arithmetical arcana and, some might say, hormonal assault. For the eponymous “Trig” implied none other than the students’ detested trigonometry studies, given poetic incarnation through the years in a mathematics text book, a balloon (or was a math text affixed to an ascending balloon?), a cannon shot (with a text packed in next to the cannon ball?), and, ultimately, a dramatis persona. The festivities included at one time or another comedic rites and a mock autopsy, satirical poetry, musical sound effects, pyrotechnical displays, and theatrical productions or, as they were then called, “burlesques.” And Trig Cremation unfolded at one time or another around the city of Evanston, before the Woman’s College, at the Davis Street pier, at Sheppard Field, in Fisk Hall, and even Ravinia Park in Highland Park.

The first Trig Cremation took place on May 9, 1877. On that date, a group of freshmen undertook to march around Evanston with drums, fifes, and torches, ending up finally under a stand of oaks, possibly at the old Sheppard Field on north campus. Brandishing the offending text book, the students eulogized the memory of dear “Trig,” then proceeded to “cremate” it in a serious bonfire, to the accompaniment of a dirge.

As far as we can tell, this was followed only intermittently by similar events, with variations on the original theme (such as burying a trig text as well as burning one), until 1893, when Trig Cremation became an annual affair. In 1895, during the ceremony now regularly at Sheppard Field, for the first time a dramatic production was staged by the freshman class as part of the festivities, called “Trigby,” obviously inspired by the then current blockbuster novel, Trilby.

From this point on, plays or musical comedies became a regular feature of Trig Cremation, complete with student actors, scripts, costumes, and accompanying musical score. In the years that followed, “The Trig Plague,” “The Heart of Northwestern,” “Trig,” “Trigobolus,” and “Trigby’s Aunt,” among others, were all staged, sometimes for an admission fee. These productions were material either written by the freshmen themselves or pirated by them from other sources. In a historical sketch of the tradition, the 1922 Syllabus noted that “[The character of] Mr. Trig usually represented as an old man has been variously dealt with. In 1906 he was turned into a Monkey. In 1910 he eloped with Miss Romance and in 1911 he was kidnapped and carried off in an Aeroplane.” The tenor of Trig Cremation is well captured in the cast of characters for the 1912 production, “Under the Trigonometree,” whose cast of characters lists Professor Algernon Trig and his wife, Georgina Nellibel Trig, Algy Bray, Logorithms, Satan, Imps, and coeds Luella Tollgate and (ahem) Flora Morehead.

High creative artistry was obviously the order of the day when the students disciplined themselves to compose for Trig. An example – one probably a cut above the rest – is the following piece of poetic dialogue put in the mouth of Prof. Tobias Trig, the hero of the 1902 Cremation, “The Devils Time-Piece; or, What Became of Trig Just Because She Loved Him So.” Trig, a specialist in Persian literature who plays the iconoclast to bolster his academic reputation, and who some might find reminiscent of early deconstructionists, is made to declare:

‘Tis the rattling bluff that’ll cop the stuff,
When the learned toff falls dead.
For our hats we doff to the rag-time prof.
Who can raise the fanciest Ned;
For the fraud must rule in the modern school,
While the con game is a cinch,
And a song and dance is an ambulance
That’ll pull through in a pinch

Now, I’m on the hunt for a dazzling stunt—
I must take the world by storm;
All the good and great I shall quite cremate,
And the spelling books reform.
On Shakespeare, Lowell, and the rest
I’ll make a stiff assault,
And carve as idol of my breast
A bust of good old Walt.

“Walt” meaning, presumably, Walt Whitman, that incendiary radical of the English language who flouted mundane scholastic convention. As this passage makes clear, the students’ target could also extend well beyond trigonometry, to any likely academic bystander.

It’s worth noting that the traditional rivalry of the era between freshmen and sophomores on college campuses was a vigorous one at Northwestern, and it added spice to Trig Cremation. Sophomores sometimes tried to obstruct the ceremonies – all in good fun!— and did so nicely in June, 1885, as reported in The Northwestern, a predecessor of the Daily Northwestern:

A cremation ceremony of “Greenleaf Trig” [the trigonometry incarnation of that year] proposed by ’88 for Thursday evening was the opportunity presented and accepted by ’87 for some fun. The Sophs conceived the trick of capturing the Freshman president and their orator of the occasion and executed the plan with neatness and dispatch. The prisoners were treated with every courtesy permissible, their gags were removed when they promised to keep their mouths still, and they were not taken to a hotel and their bonds removed only because they preferred to risk the chance of obtaining glory by escaping…. No further attempt was made to interfere with the ceremony and its hastily improvised program, and all sides were at school Friday wreathed in smiles. It was undoubtedly a victory for ’87, but ’88 felt that it could confidently bide its time.

And on June 18, 1891, the Chicago Daily Tribune noted that, “A class fight that ranks with the most notable in the history of the Northwestern University was the outcome of the Freshman ‘Trig.’ burning at Evanston yesterday afternoon and evening.” The account mentions an aborted boating excursion on Lake Michigan, several abductions of freshmen revelers by sophomores and rescues or attempted rescues of their buddies by freshmen, some freshman fireworks stolen and impounded by sophomores using subterfuge, and a freshman train trip to Chicago that sophomores (with help from seniors at Northwestern’s Preparatory School) tried to disrupt through harassment and physical intimidation.

With such shenanigans, it was only a matter of time before someone in authority stepped in to tame Trig Cremation. So it happened after the 1900 presentation, when the custom of freshmen throwing their caps into the cremation bonfire got even rowdier than usual. In 1902 the old ceremony was banned by decree of the faculty and the venue moved indoors to Fisk Hall (and three years later, to Ravinia Park); from that time forward, Trig Cremation comprised simply dramatic performances, under the auspices of a Trig Committee, of which the abovementioned “The Devil’s Time-Piece” was the first.

By 1913 the quality of performances was seen to be in decline, by some who thought that a college of Northwestern’s stature deserved better of its dramatic efforts. In 1915 or 1916, then, Trig Cremation was transmuted into an all-male campus organization called Hermit and Crow, which from then on staged an annual Trig comic opera. This no longer sounds much like the archaic Trig, and the Daily Northwestern commented on May 22, 1916, that such an event would “take the place” of Trig Cremation. But Syllabuses of the period, perhaps construing continuity as identity, did refer to Hermit and Crow as Trig Cremation. Regardless, judging by the reviews and the quality of the musical scores that survive today, Hermit and Crow did its job well, and it established a standard that would be taken up in the 1920’s and relayed to the present by Northwestern’s still vigorous Waa-Mu Show. Thus, by the devious pathways of circumstance, our enlightened present.

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