46 Biography of a Yogiwill examine in the next chapter, we see a denunciation of Yogis as unsavory char-
acters practicing black magic while at the same time certain superhuman powers
are affirmed through an appeal to the universal power of the mind.
Some Yogis, like Vivekananda, came to the United States for the specific pur-
pose of giving lectures or demonstrations and quickly departed back to India.
Shri Yogendra, for instance, can be credited with some of the first āsana demon-
strations in the United States in the early 1920s.^72 Overall, Vivekananda’s success
brought a number of Indian intellectuals, Yogi types and otherwise, to America’s
universities and the communities surrounding them. Some came with the goal of
attaining degrees, others simply to engage in intellectual exchange. Most of these,
however, were temporary visitors rather than permanent settlers.
In addition to the swamis associated with the Vedanta Society and other visi-
tors, a number of more “professional” Yogis slowly trickled in during the first
few decades of the twentieth century. The first wave of South Asian immigrants
arrived chiefly between 1907 and 1924. The Immigration Act of 1917, also known
as the “Asiatic Barred Zone Act,” effectively added Indians to the growing number
of Asian groups whose entry into the United States was barred alongside other
“undesirable” categories of individuals. In 1923 a Supreme Court decision deny-
ing South Asians access to citizenship and the subsequent Immigration Act of
1924 reinforced these prohibitive laws. This first wave of immigrants came pri-
marily from the Punjab, with small numbers originating in Oudh, Bengal, and
Gujarat, and consisted primarily of Sikhs and a small Muslim minority. More
precisely, Sikhs constituted approximately 85 to 90 percent of these early immi-
grants, Muslims accounted for another 10 percent, and actual Hindus (as distinct
from members of the aforementioned groups, which were popularly referred to as
“Hindus” once in the United States) were consequently quite rare.^73
For many of these early South Asian immigrants, the desire to spread spiritual
knowledge was low on the list of considerations when choosing to leave their
homeland. Instead, they were part of a vast labor diaspora fleeing exploitative
colonial economic policies. A small minority were radical intellectuals who saw
themselves as political refugees in the face of repressive British rule.^74 Most of
the former group settled on the Pacific Coast, working on the Western Pacific
Railroad and in the lumber mills of Oregon and Washington. Because many were
agricultural workers, a large number also settled in or were driven down to the
Central Valley of California, where such labor was available and opportunities for
a small measure of social mobility were more plentiful. Some, primarily Bengali
Muslims, made their way into the American South, earning a living as traveling
“peddlers” who appealed to Americans’ growing taste for the Oriental.^75 A few
men, however, some formally educated and some less so, were ingenious enough
to realize that the same aspects of their identity that made them so vulnerable