The Louisiana Purchase and the Journey of Lewis and Clark through the Mexican-American War
For centuries Europeans had mistakenly believed an all-water route across the North American continent existed. This “Northwest Passage” would afford the country that controlled it not only access to the interior of North America but also—more importantly—a relatively quick route to the Pacific Ocean and to trade with Asia. The Spanish, French, and British searched for years before American explorers took up the challenge of finding it. Indeed, shortly before Lewis and Clark set out on their expedition for the U.S. government, Alexander Mackenzie, an officer of the British North West Company, a fur trading outfit, had attempted to discover the route. Mackenzie made it to the Pacific and even believed (erroneously) he had discovered the headwaters of the Columbia River, but he could not find an easy water route with a minimum of difficult portages, that is, spots where boats must be carried overland.
Many Americans also dreamed of finding a Northwest Passage and opening the Pacific to American commerce and influence, including President Thomas Jefferson. In April 1803, Jefferson achieved his goal of purchasing the Louisiana Territory from France, effectively doubling the size of the United States. The purchase was made possible due to events outside the nation’s control. With the success of the Haitian Revolution, an uprising of enslaved people against the French, France’s Napoleon abandoned his quest to re-establish an extensive French Empire in America. As a result, he was amenable to selling off the vast Louisiana territory. President Jefferson quickly set out to learn precisely what he had bought and to assess its potential for commercial exploitation. Above all else, Jefferson wanted to exert U.S. control over the territory, an area already well known to French and British explorers. It was therefore vital for the United States to explore and map the land to pave the way for future White settlement.
JEFFERSON’S CORPS OF DISCOVERY HEADS WEST
To head the expedition into the Louisiana territory, Jefferson appointed his friend and personal secretary, twenty-nine-year-old army captain Meriwether Lewis, who was instructed to form a Corps of Discovery. Lewis in turn selected William Clark, who had once been his commanding officer, to help him lead the group.
Charles Willson Peale, celebrated portraitist of the American Revolution, painted both Meriwether Lewis (a) and William Clark (b) in 1807 and 1810, respectively, after they returned from their expedition west.
Jefferson wanted to improve the ability of American merchants to access the ports of China. Establishing a river route from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean was crucial to capturing a portion of the fur trade that had proven so profitable to Great Britain. He also wanted to legitimize American claims to the land against rivals, such as Great Britain and Spain. Lewis and Clark were thus instructed to map the territory through which they would pass and to explore all tributaries of the Missouri River. This part of the expedition struck fear into Spanish officials, who believed that Lewis and Clark would encroach on New Mexico, the northern part of New Spain. Spain dispatched four unsuccessful expeditions from Santa Fe to intercept the explorers. Jefferson also tasked Lewis and Clark with paving the way for American trade among the western tribes. Establishing an overland route to the Pacific would bolster U.S. claims to the Pacific Northwest, first established in 1792 when Captain Robert Gray sailed his ship Columbia into the mouth of the river that now bears his vessel’s name and forms the present-day border between Oregon and Washington. Finally, Jefferson, who had a keen interest in science and nature, ordered Lewis and Clark to take extensive notes on the geography, plant life, animals, and natural resources of the region into which they would journey.
After spending the winter of 1803–1804 encamped at the mouth of the Missouri River while the men prepared for their expedition, the corps set off in May 1804. Although the thirty-three frontiersmen, boatmen, and hunters took with them Alexander Mackenzie’s account of his explorations and the best maps they could find, they did not have any real understanding of the difficulties they would face. Fierce storms left them drenched and freezing. Enormous clouds of gnats and mosquitos swarmed about their heads as they made their way up the Missouri River. Along the way they encountered (and killed) a variety of animals including elk, buffalo, and grizzly bears. One member of the expedition survived a rattlesnake bite. As the men collected minerals and specimens of plants and animals, the overly curious Lewis sampled minerals by tasting them and became seriously ill at one point. What they did not collect, they sketched and documented in the journals they kept. They also noted the customs of the tribes who controlled the land and attempted to establish peaceful relationships with them in order to ensure that future White settlement would not be impeded.
CLICK AND EXPLORE
Read the journals of Lewis and Clark on the University of Nebraska–Lincoln website, which has footnotes, maps, and commentary. According to their writings, what challenges did the explorers confront?
The corps spent their first winter in the wilderness, 1804–1805, in a Mandan village in what is now North Dakota. There they encountered a reminder of France’s former vast North American empire when they met a French fur trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau. When the corps left in the spring of 1805, Charbonneau accompanied them as a guide and interpreter, bringing Sacagawea—who had been kidnapped and sold to Charbonneau, who made her his wife—and their newborn son. Charbonneau knew the land better than the Americans, and Sacagawea proved invaluable as an interpreter and diplomat to the Shoshone people. The presence of a young woman and her infant convinced many groups that the expedition was not a war party and meant no harm.
In this idealized image, Sacagawea leads Lewis and Clark through the Montana wilderness. In reality, she was still a teenager at the time. Although she served important roles as an interpreter and diplomat, she did not actually guide the party. Kidnapped as a child, she would not likely have retained detailed memories about the place where she grew up.
The corps set about making friends with Native tribes while simultaneously attempting to assert American power over the territory. Hoping to overawe the people of the land, Lewis would let out a blast of his air rifle, a relatively new piece of technology the Native Americans had never seen. The corps also followed native custom by distributing gifts, including shirts, ribbons, and kettles, as a sign of goodwill. The explorers presented native leaders with medallions, many of which bore Jefferson’s image, and invited them to visit their new “ruler” in the East. These medallions or peace medals were meant to allow future explorers to identify friendly native groups. Not all efforts to assert U.S. control went peacefully; some Indians rejected the explorers’ intrusion onto their land. Lewis unintentionally created tension with the Blackfeet by discussing trade deals made with their traditional enemies. The encounter turned hostile, and members of the corps killed two Blackfeet men.
After spending eighteen long months on the trail and nearly starving to death in the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana, the Corps of Discovery finally reached the Pacific Ocean in 1805 and spent the winter of 1805–1806 in Oregon. They returned to St. Louis later in 1806 having lost only one man, who had died of appendicitis. Upon their return, Meriwether Lewis was named governor of the Louisiana Territory. Unfortunately, he died only three years later in circumstances that are still disputed, before he could write a complete account of what the expedition had discovered.
Although the Corps of Discovery failed to find an all-water route to the Pacific Ocean (for none existed), it nevertheless accomplished many of the goals Jefferson had set. The men traveled across the North American continent and established relationships with many Native American tribes, paving the way for fur traders like John Jacob Astor who later established trading posts solidifying U.S. claims to Oregon. Delegates of several tribes did go to Washington to meet the president. Hundreds of plant and animal specimens were collected, several of which were named for Lewis and Clark in recognition of their efforts. And the territory was now more accurately mapped and legally claimed by the United States. Nonetheless, most of the vast territory, home to a variety of native peoples, remained unknown to Americans.
This 1814 map of Lewis and Clark’s path across North America from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean was based on maps and notes made by William Clark. Although most of the West still remained unknown, the expedition added greatly to knowledge of what lay west of the Mississippi. Most important, it allowed the United States to solidify its claim to the immense territory.
AMERICANA
A Selection of Hats for the Fashionable Gentleman
Beaver hats were popular apparel in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in both Europe and the United States because they were naturally waterproof and bore a glossy sheen. Demand for beaver pelts (and for the pelts of sea otters, foxes, and martens) by hat makers, dressmakers, and tailors led many fur trappers into the wilderness in pursuit of riches and encouraged trade and relationships with Native American nations. Beaver hats fell out of fashion in the 1850s when silk hats became the rage and beaver became harder to find. In some parts of the West, the animals had been hunted nearly to extinction.
This illustration from Castrologia, Or, The History and Traditions of the Canadian Beaver shows a variety of beaver hat styles. Beaver pelts were also used to trim women’s bonnets.
Are there any contemporary fashions or fads that likewise promise to alter the natural world?
SPANISH FLORIDA AND THE ADAMS-ONÍS TREATY
Despite the Lewis and Clark expedition, the boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase remained contested. Expansionists chose to believe the purchase included vast stretches of land, including all of Spanish Texas. The Spanish government disagreed, however. The first attempt to resolve this issue took place in February 1819 with the signing of the Adams-Onís Treaty, which was actually intended to settle the problem of Florida.
Spanish Florida had presented difficulties for its neighbors since the settlement of the original North American colonies, first for England and then for the United States. By 1819, American settlers no longer feared attack by Spanish troops garrisoned in Florida, but militant groups within the Creek and Seminole Nations raided Georgia and then retreated to the relative safety of the Florida wilderness. These tribes also sheltered self-emancipated enslaved people, often intermarrying with them and making them members of their tribes. Sparsely populated by Spanish colonists and far from both Mexico City and Madrid, the frontier in Florida proved next to impossible for the Spanish government to control.
In March 1818, General Andrew Jackson, frustrated by his inability to punish Creek and Seminole raiders, pursued them across the international border into Spanish Florida. Under Jackson’s command, U.S. troops aided by Cherokees and Creeks defeated the Creek and Seminole militants, occupied several Florida settlements, and executed two British citizens accused of acting against the United States. Outraged by the U.S. invasion of its territory, the Spanish government demanded that Jackson and his troops withdraw. In agreeing to the withdrawal, however, U.S. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams also offered to purchase the colony. Realizing that conflict between the United States and the Creek and Seminole fighters would continue, Spain opted to cede the Spanish colony to its northern neighbor. The Adams-Onís Treaty, named for Adams and the Spanish ambassador, Luís de Onís, made the cession of Florida official while also setting the boundary between the United States and Mexico at the Sabine River. In exchange, Adams gave up U.S. claims to lands west of the Sabine and forgave Spain’s $5 million debt to the United States.
The red line indicates the border between U.S. and Spanish territory established by the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819.
The Adams-Onís Treaty upset many American expansionists, who criticized Adams for not laying claim to all of Texas, which they believed had been included in the Louisiana Purchase. In the summer of 1819, James Long, a planter from Natchez, Mississippi, became a filibuster, or a private, unauthorized military adventurer, when he led three hundred men on an expedition across the Sabine River to take control of Texas. Long’s men succeeded in capturing Nacogdoches, writing a Declaration of Independence (see below), and setting up a republican government. Spanish troops drove them out a month later. Returning in 1820 with a much smaller force, Long was arrested by the Spanish authorities, imprisoned, and killed. Long was but one of many nineteenth-century American filibusters who aimed at seizing territory in the Caribbean and Central America.
DEFINING AMERICAN
The Long Expedition’s Declaration of Independence
The Long Expedition’s short-lived Republic of Texas was announced with the drafting of a Declaration of Independence in 1819. The declaration named settlers’ grievances against the limits put on expansion by the Adams-Onís treaty and expressed their fears of Spain:
The citizens of Texas have long indulged the hope, that in the adjustment of the boundaries of the Spanish possessions in America, and of the territories of the United States, that they should be included within the limits of the latter. The claims of the United States, long and strenuously urged, encouraged the hope. The recent [Adams-Onís] treaty between Spain and the United States of America has dissipated an illusion too long fondly cherished, and has roused the citizens of Texas . . . They have seen themselves . . . literally abandoned to the dominion of the crown of Spain and left a prey . . . to all those exactions which Spanish rapacity is fertile in devising. The citizens of Texas would have proved themselves unworthy of the age . . . unworthy of their ancestry, of the kindred of the republics of the American continent, could they have hesitated in this emergency . . . Spurning the fetters of colonial vassalage, disdaining to submit to the most atrocious despotism that ever disgraced the annals of Europe, they have resolved under the blessing of God to be free.
How did the filibusters view Spain? What do their actions say about the nature of American society and of U.S. expansion?
Another stage of U.S. expansion took place when inhabitants of Missouri began petitioning for statehood beginning in 1817. The Missouri territory had been part of the Louisiana Purchase and was the first part of that vast acquisition to apply for statehood. By 1818, tens of thousands of settlers had flocked to Missouri, including slaveholders who brought with them some ten thousand enslaved people. When the status of the Missouri territory was taken up in earnest in the U.S. House of Representatives in early 1819, its admission to the Union proved to be no easy matter, since it brought to the surface a violent debate over whether slavery would be allowed in the new state.
Politicians had sought to avoid the issue of slavery ever since the 1787 Constitutional Convention arrived at an uneasy compromise in the form of the “three-fifths clause.” This provision stated that the entirety of a state’s free population and 60 percent of its enslaved population would be counted in establishing the number of that state’s members in the House of Representatives and the size of its federal tax bill. Although slavery existed in several northern states at the time, the compromise had angered many northern politicians because, they argued, the “extra” population of enslaved people would give southern states more votes than they deserved in both the House and the Electoral College. Admitting Missouri as a slave state also threatened the tenuous balance between free and slave states in the Senate by giving slave states a two-vote advantage.
The debate about representation shifted to the morality of slavery itself when New York representative James Tallmadge, an opponent of slavery, attempted to amend the statehood bill in the House of Representatives. Tallmadge proposed that Missouri be admitted as a free state, that no more enslaved people be allowed to enter Missouri after it achieved statehood, and that all enslaved children born there after its admission be freed at age twenty-five. The amendment shifted the terms of debate by presenting slavery as an evil to be stopped.
Northern representatives supported the Tallmadge Amendment, denouncing slavery as immoral and opposed to the nation’s founding principles of equality and liberty. Southerners in Congress rejected the amendment as an attempt to gradually abolish slavery—not just in Missouri but throughout the Union—by violating the property rights of slaveholders and their freedom to take their property wherever they wished. Slavery’s apologists, who had long argued that slavery was a necessary evil, now began to perpetuate the idea that slavery was a positive good for the United States. They asserted that it generated wealth and left White men free to exercise their true talents instead of toiling in the soil, as the descendants of Africans were better suited to do. Enslaved people were cared for, supporters argued, and were better off exposed to the teachings of Christianity as enslaved than living as free heathens in uncivilized Africa. Above all, the United States had a destiny, they argued, to create an empire of slavery throughout the Americas. These proslavery arguments were to be made repeatedly and forcefully as expansion to the West proceeded.
Most disturbing for the unity of the young nation, however, was that debaters divided along sectional lines, not party lines. With only a few exceptions, northerners supported the Tallmadge Amendment regardless of party affiliation, and southerners opposed it despite having party differences on other matters. It did not pass, and the crisis over Missouri led to strident calls of disunion and threats of civil war.
Congress finally came to an agreement, called the Missouri Compromise, in 1820. Missouri and Maine (which had been part of Massachusetts) would enter the Union at the same time, Maine as a free state, Missouri as a slave state. The Tallmadge Amendment was narrowly rejected, the balance between free and slave states was maintained in the Senate, and southerners did not have to fear that Missouri slaveholders would be deprived of their human property. To prevent similar conflicts each time a territory applied for statehood, a line coinciding with the southern border of Missouri (at latitude 36° 30′) was drawn across the remainder of the Louisiana Territory. Slavery could exist south of this line but was forbidden north of it, with the obvious exception of Missouri.
The Missouri Compromise resulted in the District of Maine, which had originally been settled in 1607 by the Plymouth Company and was a part of Massachusetts, being admitted to the Union as a free state and Missouri being admitted as a slave state.
Thomas Jefferson on the Missouri Crisis
On April 22, 1820, Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Holmes to express his reaction to the Missouri Crisis, especially the open threat of disunion and war:
I thank you, Dear Sir, for the copy you have been so kind as to send me of the letter to your constituents on the Missouri question. it is a perfect justification to them. I had for a long time ceased to read the newspapers or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were in good hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant. but this momentous question [over slavery in Missouri], like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. it is hushed indeed for the moment. but this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. a geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once concieved [sic] and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper. I can say with conscious truth that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would, to relieve us from this heavy reproach, in any practicable way. . . . I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves, by the generation of 76. to acquire self government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be that I live not to weep over it. if they would but dispassionately weigh the blessings they will throw away against an abstract principle more likely to be effected by union than by scission, they would pause before they would perpetuate this act of suicide themselves and of treason against the hopes of the world. to yourself as the faithful advocate of union I tender the offering of my high esteem and respect.
CLICK AND EXPLORE
Access a collection of primary documents relating to the Missouri Compromise, including Missouri’s application for admission into the Union and Jefferson’s correspondence on the Missouri question, at the Library of Congress website.
As the incursions of the earlier filibusters into Texas demonstrated, American expansionists had desired this area of Spain’s empire in America for many years. After the 1819 Adams-Onís treaty established the boundary between Mexico and the United States, more American expansionists began to move into the northern portion of Mexico’s province of Coahuila y Texas. Following Mexico’s independence from Spain in 1821, American settlers immigrated to Texas in even larger numbers, intent on taking the land from the new and vulnerable Mexican nation in order to create a new American slave state.
AMERICAN SETTLERS MOVE TO TEXAS
After the 1819 Adams-Onís Treaty defined the U.S.-Mexico boundary, the Spanish Mexican government began actively encouraging Americans to settle their northern province. Texas was sparsely settled, and the few Mexican farmers and ranchers who lived there were under constant threat of attack by tribes, especially the Comanche Empire, which supplemented its hunting with raids in pursuit of horses and cattle.
To increase the non-Native population in Texas, provide a buffer zone between its tribes and the rest of Mexico, and provide a bulwark against potential American expansion, Spain began to recruit empresarios. An empresario was someone who brought settlers to the region in exchange for generous grants of land. Moses Austin, a once-prosperous entrepreneur reduced to poverty by the Panic of 1819, requested permission to settle three hundred English-speaking American residents in Texas. Spain agreed on the condition that the resettled people convert to Roman Catholicism.
On his deathbed in 1821, Austin asked his son Stephen to carry out his plans, and Mexico, which had won independence from Spain the same year, allowed Stephen to take control of his father’s grant. Like Spain, Mexico also wished to encourage settlement in the state of Coahuila y Texas and passed colonization laws to encourage immigration. Thousands of Americans, primarily from slave states, flocked to Texas and quickly came to outnumber the Tejanos, the Mexican residents of the region. The soil and climate offered good opportunities to expand slavery and the cotton kingdom. Land was plentiful and offered at generous terms. Unlike the U.S. government, Mexico allowed buyers to pay for their land in installments and did not require a minimum purchase. Furthermore, to many White people, it seemed not only their God-given right but also their patriotic duty to populate the lands beyond the Mississippi River, bringing with them American slavery, culture, laws, and political traditions.
By the early 1830s, all the lands east of the Mississippi River had been settled and admitted to the Union as states. The land west of the river, though in this contemporary map united with the settled areas in the body of an eagle symbolizing the territorial ambitions of the United States, remained largely unsettled by White Americans. Texas (just southwest of the bird’s tail feathers) remained outside the U.S. border.
THE TEXAS WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE
Many Americans who migrated to Texas at the invitation of the Mexican government did not completely shed their identity or loyalty to the United States. They brought American traditions and expectations with them (including, for many, the right to enslave individuals). For instance, the majority of these new settlers were Protestant, and though they were not required to attend the Catholic mass, Mexico’s prohibition on the public practice of other religions upset them and they routinely ignored it.
Accustomed to representative democracy, jury trials, and the defendant’s right to appear before a judge, the Anglo-American settlers in Texas also disliked the Mexican legal system, which provided for an initial hearing by an alcalde, an administrator who often combined the duties of mayor, judge, and law enforcement officer. The alcalde sent a written record of the proceeding to a judge in Saltillo, the state capital, who decided the outcome. Settlers also resented that at most two Texas representatives were allowed in the state legislature.
Their greatest source of discontent, though, was the Mexican government’s 1829 abolition of slavery. Most American settlers were from southern states, and many had brought enslaved people with them. Mexico tried to accommodate them by maintaining the fiction that the enslaved workers were indentured servants. But American slaveholders in Texas distrusted the Mexican government and wanted Texas to be a new U.S. slave state. The dislike of most for Roman Catholicism (the prevailing religion of Mexico) and a widely held belief in American racial superiority led them generally to regard Mexicans as dishonest, ignorant, and backward.
Belief in their own superiority inspired some Texans to try to undermine the power of the Mexican government. When empresario Haden Edwards attempted to evict people who had settled his land grant before he gained title to it, the Mexican government nullified its agreement with him. Outraged, Edwards and a small party of men took prisoner the alcalde of Nacogdoches. The Mexican army marched to the town, and Edwards and his troop then declared the formation of the Republic of Fredonia between the Sabine and Rio Grande Rivers. To demonstrate loyalty to their adopted country, a force led by Stephen Austin hastened to Nacogdoches to support the Mexican army. Edwards’s revolt collapsed, and the revolutionaries fled Texas.
The growing presence of American settlers in Texas, their reluctance to abide by Mexican law, and their desire for independence caused the Mexican government to grow wary. In 1830, it forbade future U.S. immigration and increased its military presence in Texas. Settlers continued to stream illegally across the long border; by 1835, after immigration resumed, there were twenty thousand Anglo-Americans in Texas.
This 1833 map shows the extent of land grants made by Mexico to American settlers in Texas. Nearly all are in the eastern portion of the state, one factor that led to war with Mexico in 1846.
Fifty-five delegates from the Anglo-American settlements gathered in 1832 to demand the suspension of customs duties, the resumption of immigration from the United States, the granting of promised land titles, and the creation of an independent state of Texas separate from Coahuila. Ordered to disband, the delegates reconvened in early April 1833 to write a constitution for an independent Texas. Surprisingly, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, Mexico’s new president, agreed to all demands, except the call for statehood. Coahuila y Texas made provisions for jury trials, increased Texas’s representation in the state legislature, and removed restrictions on commerce.
This portrait of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna depicts the Mexican president and general in full military regalia.
Texans’ hopes for independence were quashed in 1834, however, when Santa Anna dismissed the Mexican Congress and abolished all state governments, including that of Coahuila y Texas. In January 1835, reneging on earlier promises, he dispatched troops to the town of Anahuac to collect customs duties. Lawyer and soldier William B. Travis and a small force marched on Anahuac in June, and the fort surrendered. On October 2, Anglo-American forces met Mexican troops at the town of Gonzales; the Mexican troops fled and the Americans moved on to take San Antonio. Now more cautious, delegates to the Consultation of 1835 at San Felipe de Austin voted against declaring independence, instead drafting a statement, which became known as the Declaration of Causes, promising continued loyalty if Mexico returned to a constitutional form of government. They selected Henry Smith, leader of the Independence Party, as governor of Texas and placed Sam Houston, a former soldier who had been a congressman and governor of Tennessee, in charge of its small military force.
The Consultation delegates met again in March 1836. They declared their independence from Mexico and drafted a constitution calling for an American-style judicial system and an elected president and legislature. Significantly, they also established that slavery would not be prohibited in Texas. Many wealthy Tejanos supported the push for independence, hoping for liberal governmental reforms and economic benefits.
REMEMBER THE ALAMO!
Mexico had no intention of losing its northern province. Santa Anna and his army of four thousand had besieged San Antonio in February 1836. Hopelessly outnumbered, its two hundred defenders, under Travis, fought fiercely from their refuge in an old mission known as the Alamo. After ten days, however, the mission was taken and all but a few of the defenders were dead, including Travis and James Bowie, the famed frontiersman who was also a land speculator and slave trader. A few male survivors, possibly including the frontier legend and former Tennessee congressman Davy Crockett, were led outside the walls and executed. The few women and children inside the mission were allowed to leave with the only adult male survivor, a person enslaved by Travis, who was then freed by the Mexican Army. Terrified, they fled.
The Fall of the Alamo, painted by Theodore Gentilz fewer than ten years after this pivotal moment in the Texas Revolution, depicts the 1836 assault on the Alamo complex.
Although hungry for revenge, the Texas forces under Sam Houston nevertheless withdrew across Texas, gathering recruits as they went. Coming upon Santa Anna’s encampment on the banks of San Jacinto River on April 21, 1836, they waited as the Mexican troops settled for an afternoon nap. Assured by Houston that “Victory is certain!” and told to “Trust in God and fear not!” the seven hundred men descended on a sleeping force nearly twice their number with cries of “Remember the Alamo!” Within fifteen minutes the Battle of San Jacinto was over. Approximately half the Mexican troops were killed, and the survivors, including Santa Anna, taken prisoner.
Santa Anna grudgingly signed a peace treaty and was sent to Washington, where he met with President Andrew Jackson and, under pressure, agreed to recognize an independent Texas with the Rio Grande River as its southwestern border. By the time the agreement had been signed, however, Santa Anna had been removed from power in Mexico. For that reason, the Mexican Congress refused to be bound by Santa Anna’s promises and continued to insist that the renegade territory still belonged to Mexico.
CLICK AND EXPLORE
Visit the official Alamo website to learn more about the battle of the Alamo and take a virtual tour of the old mission.
THE LONE STAR REPUBLIC
In September 1836, military hero Sam Houston was elected president of Texas, and, following the relentless logic of U.S. expansion, Texans voted in favor of annexation to the United States. This had been the dream of many settlers in Texas all along. They wanted to expand the United States west and saw Texas as the next logical step. Slaveholders there, such as Sam Houston, William B. Travis and James Bowie (the latter two of whom died at the Alamo), believed too in the destiny of slavery. Mindful of the vicious debates over Missouri that had led to talk of disunion and war, American politicians were reluctant to annex Texas or, indeed, even to recognize it as a sovereign nation. Annexation would almost certainly mean war with Mexico, and the admission of a state with a large enslaved population, though permissible under the Missouri Compromise, would bring the issue of slavery once again to the fore. Texas had no choice but to organize itself as the independent Lone Star Republic. To protect itself from Mexican attempts to reclaim it, Texas sought and received recognition from France, Great Britain, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The United States did not officially recognize Texas as an independent nation until March 1837, nearly a year after the final victory over the Mexican army at San Jacinto.
Uncertainty about its future did not discourage Americans committed to expansion, especially slaveholders, from rushing to settle in the Lone Star Republic, however. Between 1836 and 1846, its population nearly tripled. By 1840, nearly twelve thousand enslaved Africans had been brought to Texas by American slaveholders. Many new settlers had suffered financial losses in the severe financial depression of 1837 and hoped for a new start in the new nation. According to folklore, across the United States, homes and farms were deserted overnight, and curious neighbors found notes reading only “GTT” (“Gone to Texas”). Many Europeans, especially Germans, also immigrated to Texas during this period.
Americans in Texas generally treated both Tejano and Native American residents with utter contempt, eager to displace and dispossess them. Anglo-American leaders failed to return the support their Tejano neighbors had extended during the rebellion and repaid them by seizing their lands. In 1839, Mireau B. Lamar, the second president of the Lone Star Republic, instituted a program of ethnic cleansing aimed at pushing all Native American tribes out of Texas.
The impulse to expand did not lay dormant, and Anglo-American settlers and leaders in the newly formed Texas republic soon cast their gaze on the Mexican province of New Mexico as well. Repeating the tactics of earlier filibusters, a Texas force set out in 1841 intent on taking Santa Fe. Its members encountered an army of New Mexicans and were taken prisoner and sent to Mexico City. On Christmas Day, 1842, Texans avenged a Mexican assault on San Antonio by attacking the Mexican town of Mier. In August, another Texas army was sent to attack Santa Fe, but Mexican troops forced them to retreat. Clearly, hostilities between Texas and Mexico had not ended simply because Texas had declared its independence.
Tensions between the United States and Mexico rapidly deteriorated in the 1840s as American expansionists eagerly eyed Mexican land to the west, including the lush northern Mexican province of California. Indeed, in 1842, a U.S. naval fleet, incorrectly believing war had broken out, seized Monterey, California, a part of Mexico. Monterey was returned the next day, but the episode only added to the uneasiness with which Mexico viewed its northern neighbor. The forces of expansion, however, could not be contained, and American voters elected James Polk in 1844 because he promised to deliver more lands. President Polk fulfilled his promise by gaining Oregon and, most spectacularly, provoking a war with Mexico that ultimately fulfilled the wildest fantasies of expansionists. By 1848, the United States encompassed much of North America, a republic that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
JAMES K. POLK AND THE TRIUMPH OF EXPANSION
A fervent belief in expansion gripped the United States in the 1840s. In 1845, a New York newspaper editor, John O’Sullivan, introduced the concept of “manifest destiny” to describe the very popular idea of the special role of the United States in overspreading the continent—the divine right and duty of White Americans to seize and settle the American West, thus spreading Protestant, democratic values. In this climate of opinion, voters in 1844 elected James K. Polk, a slaveholder from Tennessee, because he vowed to annex Texas as a new slave state and take Oregon.
Annexing Oregon was an important objective for U.S. foreign policy because it appeared to be an area rich in commercial possibilities. Northerners favored U.S. control of Oregon because ports in the Pacific Northwest would be gateways for trade with Asia. Southerners hoped that, in exchange for their support of expansion into the northwest, northerners would not oppose plans for expansion into the southwest.
President Polk—whose campaign slogan in 1844 had been “Fifty-four forty or fight!”—asserted the United States’ right to gain full control of what was known as Oregon Country, from its southern border at 42° latitude (the current boundary with California) to its northern border at 54° 40′ latitude. According to an 1818 agreement, Great Britain and the United States held joint ownership of this territory, but the 1827 Treaty of Joint Occupation opened the land to settlement by both countries. Realizing that the British were not willing to cede all claims to the territory, Polk proposed the land be divided at 49° latitude (the current border between Washington and Canada). The British, however, denied U.S. claims to land north of the Columbia River (Oregon’s current northern border). Indeed, the British foreign secretary refused even to relay Polk’s proposal to London. However, reports of the difficulty Great Britain would face defending Oregon in the event of a U.S. attack, combined with concerns over affairs at home and elsewhere in its empire, quickly changed the minds of the British, and in June 1846, Queen Victoria’s government agreed to a division at the forty-ninth parallel.
This map of the Oregon territory during the period of joint occupation by the United States and Great Britain shows the area whose ownership was contested by the two powers.
In contrast to the diplomatic solution with Great Britain over Oregon, when it came to Mexico, Polk and the American people proved willing to use force to wrest more land for the United States. In keeping with voters’ expectations, President Polk set his sights on the Mexican state of California. After the mistaken capture of Monterey, negotiations about purchasing the port of San Francisco from Mexico broke off until September 1845. Then, following a revolt in California that left it divided in two, Polk attempted to purchase Upper California and New Mexico as well. These efforts went nowhere. The Mexican government, angered by U.S. actions, refused to recognize the independence of Texas.
Finally, after nearly a decade of public clamoring for the annexation of Texas, in December 1845 Polk officially agreed to the annexation of the former Mexican state, making the Lone Star Republic an additional slave state. Incensed that the United States had annexed Texas, however, the Mexican government refused to discuss the matter of selling land to the United States. Indeed, Mexico refused even to acknowledge Polk’s emissary, John Slidell, who had been sent to Mexico City to negotiate. Not to be deterred, Polk encouraged Thomas O. Larkin, the U.S. consul in Monterey, to assist any American settlers and any Californios, the Mexican residents of the state, who wished to proclaim their independence from Mexico. By the end of 1845, having broken diplomatic ties with the United States over Texas and having grown alarmed by American actions in California, the Mexican government warily anticipated the next move. It did not have long to wait.
WAR WITH MEXICO, 1846–1848
Expansionistic fervor propelled the United States to war against Mexico in 1846. The United States had long argued that the Rio Grande was the border between Mexico and the United States, and at the end of the Texas war for independence Santa Anna had been pressured to agree. Mexico, however, refused to be bound by Santa Anna’s promises and insisted the border lay farther north, at the Nueces River. To set it at the Rio Grande would, in effect, allow the United States to control land it had never occupied. In Mexico’s eyes, therefore, President Polk violated its sovereign territory when he ordered U.S. troops into the disputed lands in 1846. From the Mexican perspective, it appeared the United States had invaded their nation.
In 1845, when Texas joined the United States, Mexico insisted the United States had a right only to the territory northeast of the Nueces River. The United States argued in turn that it should have title to all land between the Nueces and the Rio Grande as well.
In January 1846, the U.S. force that was ordered to the banks of the Rio Grande to build a fort on the “American” side encountered a Mexican cavalry unit on patrol. Shots rang out, and sixteen U.S. soldiers were killed or wounded. Angrily declaring that Mexico “has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon American soil,” President Polk demanded the United States declare war on Mexico. On May 12, Congress obliged.
The small but vocal antislavery faction decried the decision to go to war, arguing that Polk had deliberately provoked hostilities so the United States could annex more slave territory. Illinois representative Abraham Lincoln and other members of Congress issued the “Spot Resolutions” in which they demanded to know the precise spot on U.S. soil where American blood had been spilled. Many Whigs also denounced the war. Democrats, however, supported Polk’s decision, and volunteers for the army came forward in droves from every part of the country except New England, the seat of abolitionist activity. Enthusiasm for the war was aided by the widely held belief that Mexico was a weak, impoverished country and that the Mexican people, perceived as ignorant, lazy, and controlled by a corrupt Roman Catholic clergy, would be easy to defeat.
Anti-Catholic sentiment played an important role in the Mexican-American War. The American public widely regarded Roman Catholics as cowardly and vice-ridden, like the clergy in this ca. 1846 lithograph who are shown fleeing the Mexican town of Matamoros accompanied by pretty women and baskets full of alcohol. (credit: Library of Congress)
U.S. military strategy had three main objectives: 1) Take control of northern Mexico, including New Mexico; 2) seize California; and 3) capture Mexico City. General Zachary Taylor and his Army of the Center were assigned to accomplish the first goal, and with superior weapons they soon captured the Mexican city of Monterrey. Taylor quickly became a hero in the eyes of the American people, and Polk appointed him commander of all U.S. forces.
General Stephen Watts Kearny, commander of the Army of the West, accepted the surrender of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and moved on to take control of California, leaving Colonel Sterling Price in command. Despite Kearny’s assurances that New Mexicans need not fear for their lives or their property, the region’s residents rose in revolt in January 1847 in an effort to drive the Americans away. Although Price managed to put an end to the rebellion, tensions remained high.
Kearny, meanwhile, arrived in California to find it already in American hands through the joint efforts of California settlers, U.S. naval commander John D. Sloat, and John C. Fremont, a former army captain and son-in-law of Missouri senator Thomas Benton. Sloat, at anchor off the coast of Mazatlan, learned that war had begun and quickly set sail for California. He seized the town of Monterey in July 1846, less than a month after a group of American settlers led by William B. Ide had taken control of Sonoma and declared California a republic. A week after the fall of Monterey, the navy took San Francisco with no resistance. Although some Californios staged a short-lived rebellion in September 1846, many others submitted to the U.S. takeover. Thus Kearny had little to do other than take command of California as its governor.
Leading the Army of the South was General Winfield Scott. Both Taylor and Scott were potential competitors for the presidency, and believing—correctly—that whoever seized Mexico City would become a hero, Polk assigned Scott the campaign to avoid elevating the more popular Taylor, who was affectionately known as “Old Rough and Ready.”
Scott captured Veracruz in March 1847, and moving in a northwesterly direction from there (much as Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés had done in 1519), he slowly closed in on the capital. Every step of the way was a hard-fought victory, however, and Mexican soldiers and civilians both fought bravely to save their land from the American invaders. Mexico City’s defenders, including young military cadets, fought to the end. According to legend, cadet Juan Escutia’s last act was to save the Mexican flag, and he leapt from the city’s walls with it wrapped around his body. On September 14, 1847, Scott entered Mexico City’s central plaza; the city had fallen. While Polk and other expansionists called for “all Mexico,” the Mexican government and the United States negotiated for peace in 1848, resulting in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
In General Scott’s Entrance into Mexico (1851), Carl Nebel depicts General Winfield Scott on a white horse entering Mexico City’s Plaza de la Constitución as anxious residents of the city watch. One woman peers furtively from behind the curtain of an upstairs window. On the left, a man bends down to pick up a paving stone to throw at the invaders.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in February 1848, was a triumph for American expansion under which Mexico ceded nearly half its land to the United States. The Mexican Cession, as the conquest of land west of the Rio Grande was called, included the current states of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and portions of Colorado and Wyoming. Mexico also recognized the Rio Grande as the border with the United States. The United States promised to grant Mexican citizens in the ceded territory U.S. citizenship in the future when the territories they were living in became states, and promised to recognize the Spanish land grants to the Pueblos in New Mexico. In exchange, the United States agreed to assume $3.35 million worth of Mexican debts owed to U.S. citizens, paid Mexico $15 million for the loss of its land, and promised to guard the residents of the Mexican Cession from Native American raids.
As extensive as the Mexican Cession was, some argued the United States should not be satisfied until it had taken all of Mexico. Many who were opposed to this idea were southerners who, while desiring the annexation of more slave territory, did not want to make Mexico’s large mestizo (people of mixed Native American and European ancestry) population part of the United States. Others did not want to absorb a large group of Roman Catholics. These expansionists could not accept the idea of new U.S. territory filled with mixed-race, Catholic populations.
CLICK AND EXPLORE
Explore the U.S.-Mexican War at PBS to read about life in the Mexican and U.S. armies during the war and to learn more about the various battles.
CALIFORNIA AND THE GOLD RUSH
The United States had no way of knowing that part of the land about to be ceded by Mexico had just become far more valuable than anyone could have imagined. On January 24, 1848, James Marshall discovered gold in the millrace of the sawmill he had built with his partner John Sutter on the south fork of California’s American River. Word quickly spread, and within a few weeks all of Sutter’s employees had left to search for gold. When the news reached San Francisco, most of its inhabitants abandoned the town and headed for the American River. By the end of the year, thousands of California’s residents had gone north to the gold fields with visions of wealth dancing in their heads, and in 1849 thousands of people from around the world followed them. The Gold Rush had begun.
Word about the discovery of gold in California in 1848 quickly spread and thousands soon made their way to the West Coast in search of quick riches.
The fantasy of instant wealth induced a mass exodus to California. Settlers in Oregon and Utah rushed to the American River. Easterners sailed around the southern tip of South America or to Panama’s Atlantic coast, where they crossed the Isthmus of Panama to the Pacific and booked ship’s passage for San Francisco. As California-bound vessels stopped in South American ports to take on food and fresh water, hundreds of Peruvians and Chileans streamed aboard. Easterners who could not afford to sail to California crossed the continent on foot, on horseback, or in wagons. Others journeyed from as far away as Hawaii and Europe. Chinese people came as well, adding to the polyglot population in the California boomtowns.
This Currier & Ives lithograph from 1849 imagines the extreme lengths that people might go to in order to be part of the California Gold Rush. In addition to the men with picks and shovels trying to reach the ship from the dock, airships and rocket are shown flying overhead. (credit: Library of Congress)
Once in California, gathered in camps with names like Drunkard’s Bar, Angel’s Camp, Gouge Eye, and Whiskeytown, the “forty-niners” did not find wealth so easy to come by as they had first imagined. Although some were able to find gold by panning for it or shoveling soil from river bottoms into sieve-like contraptions called rockers, most did not. The placer gold, the gold that had been washed down the mountains into streams and rivers, was quickly exhausted, and what remained was deep below ground. Independent miners were supplanted by companies that could afford not only to purchase hydraulic mining technology but also to hire laborers to work the hills. The frustration of many a miner was expressed in the words of Sullivan Osborne. In 1857, Osborne wrote that he had arrived in California “full of high hopes and bright anticipations of the future” only to find his dreams “have long since perished.” Although $550 million worth of gold was found in California between 1849 and 1850, very little of it went to individuals.
Observers in the gold fields also reported abuse of Native Americans by miners. Some miners forced Native Americans to work their claims for them; others drove them off their lands, stole from them, and even murdered them as part of a systemic campaign of extermination. Some scholars view the resulting loss of Native American life as a clear example of genocide in the United States. Foreigners were generally disliked, especially those from South America. The most despised, however, were the thousands of Chinese migrants. Eager to earn money to send to their families in Hong Kong and southern China, they quickly earned a reputation as frugal men and hard workers who routinely took over diggings others had abandoned as worthless and worked them until every scrap of gold had been found. Many American miners, often spendthrifts, resented their presence and discriminated against them, believing the Chinese, who represented about 8 percent of the nearly 300,000 who arrived, were depriving them of the opportunity to make a living.
CLICK AND EXPLORE
Visit The Chinese in California to learn more about the experience of Chinese migrants who came to California in the Gold Rush era.
In 1850, California imposed a tax on foreign miners, and in 1858 it prohibited all immigration from China. Those Chinese who remained in the face of the growing hostility were often beaten and killed, and some Westerners made a sport of cutting off Chinese men’s queues, the long braids of hair worn down their backs. In 1882, Congress took up the power to restrict immigration by banning the further immigration of Chinese.
“Pacific Chivalry: Encouragement to Chinese Immigration,” which appeared in Harper’s Weekly in 1869, depicts a White man attacking a Chinese man with a whip as he holds him by the queue. Americans sometimes forcefully cut off the queues of Chinese immigrants. This could have serious consequences for the victim. Until 1911, all Chinese men were required by their nation’s law to wear the queue as a sign of loyalty. Miners returning to China without it could be put to death. (credit: Library of Congress)
As people flocked to California in 1849, the population of the new territory swelled from a few thousand to about 100,000. The new arrivals quickly organized themselves into communities, and the trappings of “civilized” life—stores, saloons, libraries, stage lines, and fraternal lodges—began to appear. Newspapers were established, and musicians, singers, and acting companies arrived to entertain the gold seekers. The epitome of these Gold Rush boomtowns was San Francisco, which counted only a few hundred residents in 1846 but by 1850 had reached a population of thirty-four thousand. So quickly did the territory grow that by 1850 California was ready to enter the Union as a state. When it sought admission, however, the issue of slavery expansion and sectional tensions emerged once again.
This daguerreotype shows the bustling port of San Francisco in January 1851, just a few months after San Francisco became part of the new U.S. state of California. (credit: Library of Congress)
The 1848 treaty with Mexico did not bring the United States domestic peace. Instead, the acquisition of new territory revived and intensified the debate over the future of slavery in the western territories, widening the growing division between North and South and leading to the creation of new single-issue parties. Increasingly, the South came to regard itself as under attack by radical northern abolitionists, and many northerners began to speak ominously of a southern drive to dominate American politics for the purpose of protecting slaveholders’ human property. As tensions mounted and both sides hurled accusations, national unity frayed. Compromise became nearly impossible and antagonistic sectional rivalries replaced the idea of a unified, democratic republic.
Source: Adapted from P.S. Corbett, et.al., U.S. History, Houston, OpenStax, 2024. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License
1800–48 in the United States, an introduction
by Dr. Bryan Zygmont
Emanuel Leute, Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way, 1862, installed in the House Wing, west stairway of the U.S. Capital, stereochromy mural, 20’ x 30’ (Architect of the Capital)
If the United States of America was born during the final quarter of the eighteenth century, it became a toddler during the opening decades of the nineteenth century, and progressed to early adolescence by mid-century. And if toddlers begin to exert a wary independence from their parents, and if teenagers often grapple with ideas of identity—that is, determining the kind of person they wish to become—then it was during the first half of the nineteenth century that the United States initiated the transition from infancy to adulthood.
Three interrelated events framed this half century of American history. The first is westward expansion that changed the United States from a country isolated on the eastern seaboard to one spanning the entire continent. The second was the conflict with Great Britain during the War of 1812 and later, the Mexican-American War, both military skirmishes that reaffirmed the increasing presence of the United States on the world’s stage. The final issue is the continuation and expansion of slavery, a problem that had begun to tear the fabric of the country apart.
The Louisiana Purchase Treaty
Rhode Island—the last of the original colonies to ratify the United States Constitution—was officially admitted to the union on 29 May, 1790. Over the next thirteen years, four additional states—Vermont (1791), Kentucky (1792), Tennessee (1796), and Ohio (1803)—joined the United States, bringing the number of states to seventeen.
The date when Ohio was admitted—1 March—is particularly interesting. Less than two months later, on 30 April 1803, Robert R. Livingston (the American minister to France from 1801–04) and James Monroe (who had earlier served in that post from 1794–96) met with their French counterpart, François Barbé-Marbois, to sign the Louisiana Purchase Treaty.
The Louisiana Purchase states marked in white (image: David Levy, CC SA-BY 4.0)
The treaty was a pact that greatly increased the land holdings of the United States though at the expense of the numerous Native American nations already there. At the conclusion of the negotiations, Livingston is reported to have said, “We have lived long, but this is the noblest work of our whole lives…From this day the United States take their place among the first powers of the world.”
Indeed, with several strokes of a quill, Livingston and Monroe nearly doubled the recognized landmass of the United States. The final ledger suggests that the Louisiana Purchase added nearly 828,000 square miles at a cost of about $18.10 per square mile.
“Ocean in view! O! the joy”
Bronze statue by Pat Kennedy of Meriwether Lewis, William Clark and Clark’s dog, Seaman, dedicated in 2003, Saint Charles, Missouri (photo: Dr. David Goodrich, CC BY 2.0)
The landmass the United States purchased from France was truly colossal, and contains what is now South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, and parts of Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, and, of course, Louisiana.
Months after the treaty was signed, President Thomas Jefferson commissioned two men—Captain Meriwether Lewis and Second Lieutenant William Clark—to lead the Corps of Discovery in the exploration of this newly purchased land.
Lewis, Clark, and their intrepid colleagues departed Camp DuBois, located at the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers, on the afternoon of 14 May 1804. Over the next 18 months, the Lewis and Clark Expedition explored westwards, chronicling the waterways, flora, and fauna of this vast tract of land.
After arriving at the Pacific Ocean on 7 November (“Ocian in view! O! the joy,” Clark wrote in his journal), the expedition explored the nearby environs before eventually wintering at Fort Clatsop in Oregon. They departed eastward on 22 March 1806 and arrived in St. Louis on 23 September 1806.
Manifest destiny to overspread and possess
In this 8,000-mile round-trip adventure, the Lewis and Clark Expedition tapped into what would become the zeitgeist for much of the nineteenth century: the westward exploration and settling of the North American continent.
The expression that became synonymous with this progression was Manifest Destiny, a phrase first coined by John L. O’Sullivan, the publisher of the New York Morning News. On 27 December 1845, when discussing a boundary dispute between Great Britain and the United States over land in what is now the state of Oregon, O’Sullivan wrote, “And that claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.”
after Frances Flora Bond Palmer, Across the Continent: “Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way,” 1868, hand-colored lithograph (National Gallery of Art, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1985.64.160)
Although this remark dates from the end of 1845, O’Sullivan’s phrase—Manifest Destiny—succinctly captured an idea that had been a part of the American ethos of expansion for almost a half of a century: that the North American continent was there for the taking, and that it was the divinely mandated obligation of the United States to settle this land.
Free states, slave states, and sad compromise
With land acquired and subsequently explored, the federal government began to admit new states into the Union. Between 1812 and 1850, 14 states joined the United States, areas that ranged from Maine (1820) to California (1850). The admittance of Maine played a particularly pivotal role in the development of the history of the United States.
The Missouri Compromise of 1820 from McConnell’s Historical maps of the United States, 1919 (Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, public domain)
On 3 March 1820, the sixteenth congress of the United States passed the so-called Missouri Compromise, an act that prohibited slavery north of the 36°30′ parallel, excluding the state of Missouri, a state north of that designation. Maine was admitted as a free state less than two weeks later, and in order to keep the ratio of slave states to free states in balance, Missouri was admitted as a slave-holding state on 10 August 1821.
In the Missouri Compromise lay the foundation of the continuation of slavery in the United States of America, and the genesis of the American Civil War that would tear the country apart between 1861 and 1865. As states were added to the union in the decades that followed this important act of legislation, it further reinforced a geographical divide between the free states in the north and the slaveholding states to the south.
It also all but guaranteed a political stalemate as it pertained to the abolishing of slavery, for when a free state was admitted to the union, another slave holding state was added, too. Arkansas joined as a slave state in 1836; Michigan was admitted as a free state less than eight months later. Florida and Texas were admitted as a slave states in March and December 1845; Iowa and Wisconsin joined as free states in 1846 and 1848. The divide—both in numbers and in geography—that existed at the opening of the nineteenth century had only deepened and expanded fifty years later.
The Second War for American Independence
The opening years of the nineteenth century were turbulent and exciting for the new nation. The first decade was not yet over when the Louisiana Purchase essentially doubled the landmass of the United States. In doing so, the United States quite suddenly became a world power in mass if not yet in might. Immediately following the signing of the Treaty of the Louisiana Purchase, Napoleon is noted to have said, “The accession of territory affirms forever the power of the United States and I have given England a maritime rival who will sooner or later will humble her pride.” Napoleon was correct.
Michel Felice Corne, Action between USS Constitution and HMS Guerriere, 19 August 1812, c. 19th century, oil on canvas, 32″ x 48″ (U.S. Naval Academy Museum)
The American victory in the War of 1812, a conflict sometimes called The Second War for American Independence, provided the young country with a great sense of confidence in relation to the world at large. So much so that that in 1823, President James Monroe created a policy that in time has come to bear his name, the Monroe Doctrine. In it, the United States created a policy that all but barred European countries from intervening in North America.
In essence, the Monroe Doctrine suggested what O’Sullivan wrote two decades later: the land between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans belonged to the United States, and it was our obligation—and no one else’s—to settle it. At the conclusion of the Mexican-American War, the United States took possession of what is now Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.
A new (old) world
It can be said that the acquisition of territory and the prohibition of European influence upon that land was the United States growing up and away from its old-world parents. But wrestling with the profound issues of slavery was the true adolescence of the United States, the moment in its history when it collectively decided what kind of country it wished to become in the full maturation of its adulthood.
General Scott’s entrance into Mexico in the Mexican-American War , 1851, hand-colored lithograph published after Carl Nebel ( public domain )
Nothing had yet been determined at midcentury, but the breeze of discontent that had whispered through the wilderness at the beginning of the century had become a tornado of unrest fifty years later. In moving towards adulthood in the second half of this turbulent century, it would take the Civil War for the United States to (attempt to) live up to the lines Thomas Jefferson wrote in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. ”
In this, progress—slow though it may have been—was being made.
The United States extended its territories, fought a civil war, and violently persecuted African and Native Americans.
Summer snow covering Fremont Peak, Wind River Range, Wyoming (photo: summitburger, CC BY-SA 2.0)
After ascending a peak on June 13, 1844, explorer John C. Fremont wrote: “With joy and exultation we saw ourselves once more on the top of the Rocky Mountains and beheld a little stream taking its course towards the rising sun.” Fremont led a federally-commissioned expedition surveying the western landscape to locate routes for emigrants traveling westward to the Pacific. The narrative of his travels, penned along with his wife, Jessie Benton Fremont, became a best-seller and his map guided the flood of wagons soon to hit the Oregon Trail.
John C. Fremont, Map of an Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842 and to Oregon and North California in the Years 1843-44
Fremont’s report offered both information and inspiration for a growing population. As the nation added land west of the Mississippi River, published maps, and built infrastructure, citizens flocked towards new possibilities. These settlers caused conflict as they did so. American Indians already living on the landscape fought back. Mexico sought to protect its borders from further encroachment by the United States. Meanwhile, Northern and Southern Americans debated the spread of enslaved labor into new territories.
While industrialization began earlier, the pace quickened during the middle decades. Steam power began to replace water power and factories streamlined labor through the use of interchangeable parts, making goods easier and less expensive to produce. Isaac Singer used this system (sometimes referred to as the “American System”) to mass produce sewing machines, which led to the increasing availability of store-bought clothing. Similarly, Samuel Colt employed an assembly line for the first time, training laborers in a single task in order to speed the manufacture of his pistols.
Elisha King Root for Samuel Colt, Experimental Pocket Pistol, Serial number 5, caliber .265 inches, barrel length 3 inches, overall length 7 inches, brass, steel, and iron, 1849–50 (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Bequest of Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt)
Immigrant labor fueled much of the industry driving the nation. In the 1850s, 2.6 million people came to the U.S. for opportunity or relief from revolution, inequality, and poverty. Along with the Irish and Chinese, Germans, Scandinavians, and Italians crossed oceans to find employment in agriculture or industry. Some Americans resented this influx of immigrants—the largest wave by population percentage—forming the Know-Nothing Party which sought to suppress immigrant votes, sometimes through violence.
David Gilmour Blythe, Justice (detail), c. 1860, oil on canvas, 51.1 x 61.3 cm (Fine Art Museums of San Francisco)
Industrialization and increasingly dense urban centers created labor strife, deteriorating relations between economic classes, health crises, and environmental degradation. Some began to question the very idea of progress, while others sought to alleviate the ills society now faced. Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau left the city to “live deliberately” at Walden Pond, about 20 miles from Boston, seeking a closer connection to self through nature. Frederick Law Olmsted designed New York City’s Central Park as a pastoral retreat for city dwellers. Reformers advocated for the improvement of many aspects of society. Women gathered at Seneca Falls, New York penned a Declaration of Sentiments restating the famous first words of the Declaration of Independence to be inclusive: “All men and women are created equal.” Abolitionists lectured and published on the horrors of slavery, including narratives by former slaves, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs. Others, like John Brown took a more radical approach, using violence in an effort to free the enslaved.
In 1850, nine thousand miles of railroad track lie scattered across the eastern states. Track tripled in a decade and the growth of western markets demonstrated the need for a Transcontinental Railroad linking the coasts. The laborers who built this track were primarily recent immigrants. In addition to Civil War veterans, Irish crews began in the East and worked westward; Chinese laborers moved in the opposite direction. Both were groups that experienced discrimination in the United States, and the Chinese in particular did not earn recognition for the arguably more grueling work of blasting through the Sierra Mountains (they were even excluded from photographs celebrating the rail’s completion in 1869). Nevertheless, the nation celebrated the railroad as the pinnacle of American achievement and a symbol of national unity.
Andrew J. Russell, Joining of the rails at Promontory Point, May 10, 1869
Westward Expansion
Before a railroad connected the coasts, Americans pushed the nation’s frontier further into lands inhabited by American Indians and claimed by other nations. Through both war and treaties, the U.S. claimed its current continental boundaries by mid-century. Multiple gold rushes and other mining opportunities, farmland, and enterprise enticed waves new immigrants and migrants creating a diverse mixture of peoples and cultures.
Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way (mural study for the United States Capitol), 1861, oil on canvas, 33-1/4 x 43-3/8 inches (Smithsonian American Art Museum)
Opportunity and ideology settled the West. In 1845, journalist John O’Sullivan coined the phrase “manifest destiny” to embody the spirit of the movement. The phrase implied an inevitable and even divinely-ordained process of Anglo-American culture replacing Native American culture, which was seen by many as less civilized. Yet the landscapes they viewed as wilderness had been the home of American Indian civilization for thousands of years. Tribal alliances became more complicated with American involvement. The Pawnee, for example, allied with the U.S. seeking protection from the neighboring Lakota, yet lost land and independence when removed to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma.
Bear Claw Necklace (Pawnee), before 1870, grizzly bear claws and hide, otter pelt, beads, cedar, tobacco and other materials (Denver Art Museum)
Many who saw the immense mountains and valleys of the West celebrated the landscape. In 1871 when geologist Ferdinand V. Hayden explored an area known as Yellowstone, he remarked that it should be preserved from settlement. In just a few decades, the impact of expansion was threatening nature’s nation. Following Fremont’s lead, government-sponsored scientific expeditions traversed the continent, making maps and identifying resources that could be exploited. But many also employed artists. The Hayden expedition took along both a photographer and an artist (William Henry Jackson and Thomas Moran respectively). The photographer Carlton Watkins, likely supported by the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, created images of the Columbia River that urged businessmen to invest and people to move and settle the region, while his photographs of the Yosemite Valley pushed Congress to preserve it as a national park.
Thomas Moran, The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, 1872, oil on canvas mounted on aluminum, 213 x 266.3 cm (Smithsonian American Art Museum, Lent by the Department of the Interior Museum)
Civil War & Civil Rights
As new territories applied for statehood, the issue of slavery took center stage. The federal government embroiled itself in a series of compromises and failed to resolve the issue of slavery’s spread. The Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) laid bare regional differences among political parties leading to their reorientation. The new anti-slavery Republican party successfully ran Abraham Lincoln for president in 1860.
Before President Lincoln even took office, southern states began to quit the Union and ultimately formed the Confederate States of America with its own constitution and president. Lincoln refused to recognize this claim of independence. When Confederates attacked an unarmed supply ship at Fort Sumter, war followed.
Bloody and deadly battles saw heart-wrenching casualties. A military draft was enacted on both sides. The South, who thought their cotton crops would earn them international support, found themselves unable to secure allies, especially after Lincoln explicitly made the war about slavery with the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862. Slavery was already illegal in most European countries. In addition, most railroad track and industry (as well as the ability to produce firearms and ammunition—not to mention food crops) were located in northern states. The Confederates found themselves without the resources needed to win the war. Cotton may have been king, but that raw material wasn’t enough to win the war.
John Quincy Adams Ward, The Freedman, 1863, bronze (Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas)
During the Civil War questions of how to integrate former slaves into American society remained. After the Civil War, Reconstruction placed federal troops throughout the South forcing state governments to assure black freedoms. The Freedmen’s Bureau helped African-Americans gain access to education and employment, though too often that meant sharecropping while the Civil Rights Act of 1875 and the 13th–15th amendments to the Constitution legally established rights.
Efforts at government control over race relations were undermined by deep-seated racism and were constantly challenged through intimidation and violence. The Ku Klux Klan was organized immediately after the war ended in order to ensure control over formerly enslaved people through violence and terror. When Reconstruction ended in 1877, southern states passed segregation laws establishing what is known as Jim Crow, a system that maintained the oppression of African-Americans for nearly one hundred years.
Conclusion
These middle decades of the nineteenth century saw drastic changes wrought by both compromise and conflict.
The Civil War ended the conversation and compromises of previous decades and, though it ultimately freed the enslaved, people’s minds and hearts did not change overnight. The process to true freedom was slow and incomplete.
The Civil War ended the conversations and compromises of previous decades and, though it ultimately freed the enslaved, people’s minds and hearts did not change overnight and prejudice, intimidation, and violence has continued ever since. African-American men earned the right to vote (at least in theory), but women had not. Industry had produced great wealth, but its impact on people’s lives and health was becoming a serious matter. Similarly, the effect of human activity upon the environment was increasingly visible as Americans simultaneously exploited and and preserved the land..
Albert Bierstadt, Hetch Hetchy Valley, California, c. 1874–80, oil on canvas, 94.8 x 148.2 cm (Bequest of Laura M. Lyman, in memory of her husband Theodore Lyman, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art)
After John Fremont’s death, his wife Jessie wrote: “Railroads followed the lines of his journeyings—a nation followed his maps to their resting place—and cities have risen on the ashes of his lonely campfires.” Whether one saw this as a positive or negative was a matter of opinion that fueled national identity and one’s idea of progress through to the next century.
The United States had no way of knowing that part of the land about to be ceded by Mexico had just become far more valuable than anyone could have imagined. On January 24, 1848, James Marshall discovered gold in the millrace of the sawmill he had built with his partner John Sutter on the south fork of California’s American River. Word quickly spread, and within a few weeks all of Sutter’s employees had left to search for gold. When the news reached San Francisco, most of its inhabitants abandoned the town and headed for the American River. By the end of the year, thousands of California’s residents had gone north to the gold fields with visions of wealth dancing in their heads, and in 1849 thousands of people from around the world followed them. The Gold Rush had begun.
Word about the discovery of gold in California in 1848 quickly spread and thousands soon made their way to the West Coast in search of quick riches.
The fantasy of instant wealth induced a mass exodus to California. Settlers in Oregon and Utah rushed to the American River. Easterners sailed around the southern tip of South America or to Panama’s Atlantic coast, where they crossed the Isthmus of Panama to the Pacific and booked ship’s passage for San Francisco. As California-bound vessels stopped in South American ports to take on food and fresh water, hundreds of Peruvians and Chileans streamed aboard. Easterners who could not afford to sail to California crossed the continent on foot, on horseback, or in wagons. Others journeyed from as far away as Hawaii and Europe. Chinese people came as well, adding to the polyglot population in the California boomtowns.
This Currier & Ives lithograph from 1849 imagines the extreme lengths that people might go to in order to be part of the California Gold Rush. In addition to the men with picks and shovels trying to reach the ship from the dock, airships and rocket are shown flying overhead. (credit: Library of Congress)
Once in California, gathered in camps with names like Drunkard’s Bar, Angel’s Camp, Gouge Eye, and Whiskeytown, the “forty-niners” did not find wealth so easy to come by as they had first imagined. Although some were able to find gold by panning for it or shoveling soil from river bottoms into sieve-like contraptions called rockers, most did not. The placer gold, the gold that had been washed down the mountains into streams and rivers, was quickly exhausted, and what remained was deep below ground. Independent miners were supplanted by companies that could afford not only to purchase hydraulic mining technology but also to hire laborers to work the hills. The frustration of many a miner was expressed in the words of Sullivan Osborne. In 1857, Osborne wrote that he had arrived in California “full of high hopes and bright anticipations of the future” only to find his dreams “have long since perished.” Although $550 million worth of gold was found in California between 1849 and 1850, very little of it went to individuals.
Observers in the gold fields also reported abuse of Native Americans by miners. Some miners forced Native Americans to work their claims for them; others drove them off their lands, stole from them, and even murdered them as part of a systemic campaign of extermination. Some scholars view the resulting loss of Native American life as a clear example of genocide in the United States. Foreigners were generally disliked, especially those from South America. The most despised, however, were the thousands of Chinese migrants. Eager to earn money to send to their families in Hong Kong and southern China, they quickly earned a reputation as frugal men and hard workers who routinely took over diggings others had abandoned as worthless and worked them until every scrap of gold had been found. Many American miners, often spendthrifts, resented their presence and discriminated against them, believing the Chinese, who represented about 8 percent of the nearly 300,000 who arrived, were depriving them of the opportunity to make a living.
Source: P. Scott Corbett, et.al, U.S. History, OpenStax publishing, 2024
1877–1898 in the United States, an introduction
by Dr. Kelly Enright
Charles Graham, “The Electric Light in Madison Square, New York,” an illustration in Harper’s Weekly, January 14, 1882 (photo: public domain)
On the sidewalks of Pearl Street in late 1882, New Yorkers could peer into the windows of homes and businesses glowing with the light of four hundred electric lamps powered by the first commercial central power plant in the nation. While neither electricity nor electric lamps were entirely new, what Thomas Edison achieved was the integration of elements into a single working system. Although Edison had earned the nickname The Wizard of Menlo Park a few years earlier when his phonograph recorded the human voice, his laboratory at Menlo Park, NJ involved the work of many men experimenting endlessly to find the best materials and methods to make technologies commercially successful.
With more than half a million patents granted, the end of the nineteenth century was an era of invention and innovation. People saw skyscrapers begin to tower over city streets while suspension bridges, electric street cars, and elevators facilitated movement through them. Telephones allowed communication across miles. All of these new systems were driven by cooperation between investors, inventors, and city leaders. Part of Edison’s genius was navigating that system, but no less significant was his recognition of the emerging consumer culture that swept America from the nineteenth century into the twentieth.
Gilded Age
This time period earned the term the Gilded Age for seemingly beautiful and ambitious advances that masked corruption and exploitation beneath the surface. Even as technology promised to connect people, the nation remained socially, economically, and racially divided.
“Taylorism,” a specialized system of labor introduced by an engineer named Frederick W. Taylor, advocated the study of worker productivity and developed a more efficient system of specialized tasks meant to speed production and increase profits. Unregulated businesses thrived, giving rise to a wealthy elite, that resulted in monopolies like John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company which controlled 90% of the industry in 1885.
Jacob August Riis, “Knee-pants” at forty five cents a dozen—A Ludlow Street Sweater’s Shop, c. 1890, 5 x 4 in (The Museum of the City of New York)
Industrialization and urbanization brought wealth to some, but left many behind. Workers organized in order to protest their conditions, hours, and wages through strikes and boycotts. Progressive reformers studied social problems and sought resolutions to safety and health in homes and factories. As a reporter and reformer, Jacob Riis saw first-hand the destitute living conditions of the urban poor. He used photography to share what he observed in tenement sweatshops, using the power of images to communicate the inequities of the thriving garment industry and the lives of laborers. Riis himself was an immigrant who had come from Denmark seeking opportunities promised by America’s industry and urbanization.
Liberty and destiny
Between 1877 and 1890 more than six million immigrants arrived in the U.S. Many found roads not as open as they had hoped. Anglo-Americans increasingly sought to maintain the nation as both white and Protestant and sought to restrict the right to vote by establishing literacy and residency requirements, poll taxes, and immigration restrictions. The arrival of Catholic and Jewish immigrants was seen as conflicting with mainstream values and the economic successes of Chinese immigrants in the West challenged the idea of Manifest Destiny.
Many groups established towns or sections of cities where they could retain some of their native culture. Germans in the upper Midwest, for example, had strong communities and the language of instruction in schools was German.
In 1886, the dedication of the Statue of Liberty drew one million people. A powerful symbol of freedom and international cooperation, the statue was celebrated for its ideals. But the statue was almost a failure. While the French paid for the statue itself, the Americans were to provide its pedestal. Without the support of enough wealthy donors, funds ran dry. It was not until Pulitzer raised funds through his newspaper with ads calling upon individual citizens to donate small amounts that the statue found its footing. Its torch—illuminated by electric lamps—shone as a symbol of the power of the people.
Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi (sculptor), Gustave Eiffel (interior structure), Richard Morris Hunt (base), Statue of Liberty, begun 1875, dedicated 1886, copper exterior, 151 feet/ 46 m high (statue), New York Harbor (photo: William Warby, CC-BY-SA 2.0)
Reconstruction
In the South, industry and urbanization lagged in the decades after the Civil War (1861 – 65). Reconstruction policies attempted to foster equal opportunity but resentments boiled beneath the surface.
In the contested 1876 presidential election, Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican candidate, walked away the victor after an electoral committee decided the outcome. As a concession to the Democrats, Hayes ordered federal troops away from state houses throughout the South. When federal troops pulled out, bi-racial governments and the rights of former slaves deteriorated. Southern states enacted discrimination laws, collectively known as “Jim Crow”—a pejorative term derived from an early-nineteenth century song popularized by a blackface performer. Separation of blacks and whites pervaded spaces throughout the South from restaurants and parks to hospitals and prisons. Interracial marriage was outlawed. The end of Reconstruction marked the spread of legally-sanctioned segregation.
The Weekly Messenger, May 23, 1896 (Chronicling America, Library of Congress)
While these laws did not go unchallenged, the federal government’s laissez faire policies enabled these restrictions to freedom. In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that segregation was allowed, as long as some accommodations for both races existed. This “separate but equal” doctrine cemented segregation practices and laws. For freed blacks, these power structures limited opportunities. Those who sought to own and operate their own farms struggled with a system of tenant farming that trapped them in debt.
The end of the western frontier
As the nineteenth century drew to a close, so too did the western frontier. By 1893, the historian Frederick Jackson Turner’s analysis of census data led him to declare the era of expansion that had defined American individuality and ideas of progress, had ended. Turner announced his Frontier Thesis at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition where the nation was displaying the newest technologies alongside monumental buildings meant to demonstrate American greatness in an area known as the White City.
Advertisement for the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition, c.1893 (photo: public domain)
By contrast, progress as it related to “others” was trivialized. Native Americans were essentially put on display on the fair’s Midway wearing traditional dress and surrounded by tipis and totem poles, while model schools at the Exposition showcased government programs to teach trades and establish boarding schools for their children.
This ambiguity between education and entertainment was also on display in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show (staged outside the Exposition) which recounted the famous battles that had driven Native American culture to near extinction. Beyond the battlefield, the Dawes Act of 1887 which established a land allotment system and boarding schools meant to erase native culture, language, and traditions, and advance assimilation, had adversely impacted Native American society. Intended as a measure to “civilize,” this act took away traditions of communal land ownership and undermined tribal authority and identity.
Frederic Remington, The Fall of the Cowboy, 1895, oil on canvas, 24 x 35-1/8 in (Amon Carter Museum of American Art)
The western landscape, too, had changed dramatically. Cattle had replaced bison as the key bovine residents of the plains. The cattle boom reached a peak from 1880-1885, but by the middle of that decade, the ecosystem could not support increased grazing. Open range and cattle driving collapsed causing corporations to move in, build fences, and turn enterprising cowboys into hired hands. Railroads connected agricultural and ranching lands with major urban production centers, bringing technology to a place that had once symbolized its absence.
By the dawn of the twentieth century, technologies, such as electric lighting, first brought to the marketplace for practical uses, became increasingly common, illuminating not just offices and homes, but even trivial items such as Christmas trees. In the new social atmosphere of amusement parks like Coney Island, technology provided distraction and thrills rather than progress and industry. Such places also offered a space where Americans of different classes could mix outside the segregation of urban centers. Leisure, escape, and entertainment increasingly connected Americans with a sense of common identity in the absence of its earlier myth of manifest destiny, which had lost its unifying concept as the American population became more diverse and its social problems more complex.
John Brown’s “tragic prelude” to the U.S. Civil War
by Dr. Kimberly Kutz Elliott
Thomas Hovenden, The Last Moments of John Brown, c. 1884, oil on canvas, 117.2 x 96.8 cm (de Young Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; photo: Steven Zucker, CC NY-NC-SA 2.0)
“I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”—John Brown, shortly before his execution, 1859
Who was John Brown?
Martyr. Murderer. Prophet. Madman. All of these words have been used to describe John Brown, the fiery abolitionist who led violent attacks against supporters of slavery in the years before the U.S. Civil War. A white man born into a deeply religious family of Connecticut abolitionists in 1800, Brown dedicated his life to a holy war against slavery. He scorned the tactic of moral suasion then in vogue among northern abolitionists, believing that only armed uprising could counter the evil of slavery. In 1859, he and a group of followers attempted to seize the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) and distribute weapons to enslaved people so they could rise up against slaveholders. The plan failed and Brown was captured, tried, and executed amidst a media frenzy.
Daguerreotype depicting John Brown c. 1846. Brown was not, at this time, a well known figure, although he was active in abolitionist circles. Here, Brown poses with a determined look, holding up his left hand (photographic images such as this daguerreotype did not reverse images, so in order to appear that he was holding up his right hand in the finished image he had to hold up his left hand in reality) as though he is making an oath. In his right hand, he holds a flag believed to represent the “Subterranean Pass-Way,” a strategic initiative Brown envisioned that would transport enslaved people to freedom on a grand scale. The daguerreotypist, Augustus Washington, was an African American photographer with a studio in Hartford, Connecticut. Washington later emigrated to Liberia. Augustus Washington, John Brown, daguerreotype, 4 1/2 x 7 3/4 x 7/16 in. (11.4 x 19.7 x 1.1cm), Hartford, Connecticut (National Portrait Gallery)
From some perspectives, Brown could be considered a failure: his plan to bring about a massive uprising of enslaved people never came to fruition, and he was hanged for treason years before the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery. But from other perspectives, Brown succeeded beyond his wildest dreams: his execution elevated him to the level of an abolitionist martyr, garnering sympathy for the cause he was willing to die for. His actions contributed to such paranoia among slaveholders about the future of slavery in the United States that slave states seceded when anti-slavery candidate Abraham Lincoln was elected president, putting in motion the events that ultimately would lead to slavery’s downfall.
John Steuart Curry, Tragic Prelude (detail), 1937–42, oil and egg tempera 11′ 6″ x 31 feet (Kansas statehouse, Topeka) This mural, in the Kansas State Capitol building, depicts John Brown as a fanatic, Moses-like figure, striding forward as clouds part in the sky (not unlike the parting of the Red Sea), in a composition reminiscent of Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People. He holds a rifle (the so-called “Beecher’s Bible” rifle sent to abolitionists fighting in the Kansas Territory) and an actual Bible featuring the Greek letters alpha and omega (a reference to Christ in the Book of Revelation, describing the Apocalypse). In the distance, covered wagons move right to left (westward). Behind Brown are figures holding the flag of the United States and the battle flag of the Confederacy. In the foreground, men wearing the uniforms of soldiers on each side of the Civil War lay dead at Brown’s feet. Beside his left knee we can make out soldiers violently assaulting a Black family. Curry depicts John Brown’s role in Bleeding Kansas as a “tragic prelude” to the Civil War, with tornadoes and prairie fires in the background representing the coming destruction. Curry did not revere Brown, describing him as a “bloodthirsty, god-fearing maniac.” [1]
The growing sectional divide of the 1850s
In the first half of the 19th century, the U.S. government worked to maintain the balance of political power between free and slave states by ensuring that their numbers remained equal. But, as the country expanded west to territories across the Mississippi River, with American settlers displacing the Indigenous inhabitants and forming new states, that balance began to falter. Several events in the 1850s contributed to a growing belief among anti-slavery activists that the “Slave Power,” as they called it, had gained control of the U.S. government: the introduction of a brutal Fugitive Slave Law (1850) required northern citizens to assist in the capture of enslaved people who had escaped; the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) repealed an earlier ban on slavery in new territories north of the Missouri Compromise line; and the Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857) ruled that Black Americans were not U.S. citizens.
Detail, John Steuart Curry, Tragic Prelude , 1937–42, oil and egg tempera 11′ 6″ x 31 feet (Kansas statehouse, Topeka)
John Brown first became a nationally known figure in 1856 through his actions in the Kansas Territory, three years before the raid on Harpers Ferry. Kansas was then the site of a territorial civil war known as Bleeding Kansas, the result of the Kansas-Nebraska Act’s provision allowing the residents of the territory to vote on whether to allow slavery. Pro- and anti-slavery settlers attempting to sway the vote flooded the region, and quickly came to blows. Among the ranks of “Free-Staters” were John Brown and five of his sons, who had come to Kansas to take up arms in defense of abolition.
In May 1856, Brown led his sons and three other men in what came to be known as the Pottawatomie Massacre, a three-day rampage during which they murdered five members of the pro-slavery territorial district court in front of their families, hacking them to death with broadswords. Brown was enraged by two recent attacks on abolitionists by pro-slavery forces—the violent attack on the town of Lawrence, Kansas, then an abolitionist center, and the caning of abolitionist Charles Sumner on the Senate floor.The Pottawatomie Massacre escalated the violence in Kansas to a fever pitch, drawing federal troops to the territory. Brown and his allies engaged in battle with pro-slavery forces throughout the summer of 1856, becoming a ruthless leader whom southern slaveholders feared and northern abolitionists admired.
This political cartoon depicts the pro-slavery congressman Preston Brooks attacking the anti-slavery Senator Charles Sumner with a cane on the Senate floor. The title, “Southern Chivalry — argument versus club’s” ironically mocks this attack as “southern chivalry” since Sumner had criticized Brooks’s uncle as a lover of slavery in a recent speech (the “Crime Against Kansas” speech, which Sumner holds in his left hand). Here, Sumner is depicted bleeding, pen in hand, with a dignified expression while Brooks (whose face is blocked by his arm) raises a mangled cane to strike him again. John Brown was enraged by the attack on Sumner, which motivated his actions at Pottawatomie. John L. Magee, Southern chivalry – argument versus club’s, 1856, lithograph, 13.23 x 19 in. (The Library Company of Philadelphia)
The raid at Harpers Ferry
Although he was under indictment for the Pottawatomie murders, Brown managed to evade capture and make his way to the northeast, where he was received enthusiastically by abolitionists. Brown had long cherished the idea of leading a large-scale rebellion of enslaved people, like the Haitian Revolution or Nat Turner’s rebellion, and he spent several years traveling through New England and Canada, raising money, gathering weapons, and preparing for battle.
Brown eventually determined that he would lead a team of men to the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, distributing its weapons as he marched south to liberate enslaved Black people from plantations. Harpers Ferry was a strategic location not only because of its firearms cache but also for its position as a major rail and river junction (railroads and rivers were then the easiest ways to transport people and goods long distances). Brown believed that he would grow an ever larger army as the freed people joined him. He consulted with notable Black abolitionists about his plan, including Frederick Douglass—who counseled him against the action—and Harriet Tubman, who helped him recruit participants.
In October 1859, Brown and a group of twenty-one Black and white men captured the armory and took hostages, alerting the enslaved residents nearby of their plan. However, most of the enslaved people near Harpers Ferry were loath to trust an unknown white man, and to Brown’s surprise, the massive uprising that he had predicted failed to materialize. A train conductor raised the alarm, local militias pinned Brown and his men inside the armory, and by the following day U.S. Marines under the command of Robert E. Lee (the future Confederate general) arrived and demanded their surrender. Brown refused, and the Marines stormed the armory, wounded Brown, and took him and his seven remaining men (the others had died or escaped) prisoner.
The subsequent trial of Brown and his men for murder, inciting slave rebellion, and treason was widely reported in the national press. His speech upon conviction, in which he proclaimed that “if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit; so let it be done!” was printed in 50 newspapers, including on the front page of TheNew York Times.
John Brown was hanged on December 2, 1859. The story that he paused to kiss a Black infant on his way to the gallows was first circulated by Brown’s friend and supporter, journalist James Redpath, in a biography published just months after the execution to raise money for Brown’s widow and children.
Songsheet featuring the lyrics of the “John Brown Song,” later called “John Brown’s Body.” Julia Ward Howe wrote new lyrics for the melody, producing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which became the anthem of U.S. forces during the Civil War. James E. Greenleaf, et. al., “John Brown Song!”, 1861.
John Brown in American memory
Although abolitionists praised Brown, many Republican politicians—including Abraham Lincoln—sought to distance themselves from him. [2] But once the Civil War was underway, Brown’s courageous fight against slavery took on new resonance. The song “John Brown’s Body,” a Civil War marching song, provided the inspiration for “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
Brown’s complex legacy has been viewed in different lights in the century and a half since his death. Frederick Douglass, who had to flee to England to escape possible retribution for his knowledge of Brown’s plans, later gave a speech praising him, saying that “If John Brown did not end the war that ended slavery, he did at least begin the war that ended slavery.” [3] During the Jim Crow era, when mainstream American memory of the Civil War downplayed the importance of emancipation, many white historians portrayed Brown as a zealot and a madman, although Black intellectuals and artists, like W.E.B. DuBois and Jacob Lawrence, portrayed him sympathetically. Controversy over John Brown’s actions, and whether it’s acceptable to use violence to challenge social injustice, remains with us today.
[1] Quoted in R. Blakeslee Gilpin, John Brown Still Lives!: America’s Long Reckoning with Violence, Equality, & Change (UNC Press, 2011), 154.
[2] Lincoln denied that Republicans supported Brown in his speech at Cooper Union in New York City on February 27, 1860: “You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it; and what is your proof? Harpers Ferry! John Brown! John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his Harper’s Ferry enterprise.”
[3] Frederick Douglass, “John Brown: An Address,” Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, May 30, 1881.
“The Immediate Cause of the Civil War,” an introduction
by Dr. Kimberly Kutz Elliott
African slavery as it exists amongst us . . . [is] the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. . . . Our new government[’s] . . . corner-stone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America, March 21, 1861 [1]
Historians today widely agree that slavery was the single most important cause of the Civil War. There is an abundance of textual evidence to support this, perhaps most famously an address given by Alexander Stephens known as the “Cornerstone Speech.” Stephens, the Vice President of the newly formed Confederate States of America (also known as the Confederacy) delivered the address to a crowd in Savannah, Georgia, at a critical moment: March 1861, just weeks after the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States. Georgia was one of seven southern states that had recently seceded (separated) from the United States with the intent of forming a new nation. Called to remark on the Confederacy’s new constitution, Stephens bluntly outlined the reasons that southern states had seceded and what they hoped to achieve as an independent nation: the preservation of slavery and perpetuation of white supremacy.
A “positive good”
Stephens was far from the only person to voice this reasoning. “Secession commissioners” who urged southern states to secede by speaking at legislatures and state conventions repeatedly cited their desire to protect slavery. [2] In fact, white southerners were not ashamed that millions of Black people were enslaved in their states; they proudly proclaimed that slavery was a “positive good.” [3] Although Abraham Lincoln—an antislavery Republican—had disavowed any intent to interfere with slavery where it already existed, slaveholders seized the opportunity of his election to break with the U.S. government and create a new nation where slavery could be protected forever. [4]
Thanks to the new technologies of lithography and photography (lithography was invented in 1796, and the first photograph was taken in 1826), we have images of the inauguration of Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens (both slaveholders), as president and vice president respectively, of the rebel break-away states. These images remind us of the importance of new technologies in disseminating images in the second half of the 19th century, but they also remind us that all images (even photographs) adopt a point of view and therefore must be approached critically.
Left: A. C. McIntyre, First inauguration of Jefferson Davis as President of the Confederate States of America at Montgomery, Alabama, February 18, 1861, photographic print, 19.9 x 14.7 cm (Boston Athenaeum); right: The starting point of the great war between the states: the inauguration of Jefferson Davis, 1878, chromolithograph, 76.6 x 60.8 cm (Library of Congress)
If we consider these two images of the inauguration—one a photograph and the other a color lithograph—we see people of all ages including some Black figures gathered around the Capitol building in Montgomery, Alabama. Davis and Stephens stand in the center of the podium facing the crowd. The chromolithograph on the right, made more than a decade after the end of the war, was based on the earlier photograph (left), but collapses the middle ground and narrows the composition to consolidate the crowd and focus on the grand portico, its balconies and the clock tower. We also see more clearly the faces of the figures and their interactions than we do in the early photograph. For these reasons, the lithograph condenses and heightens the importance of this moment. Which image is true? The answer is both and neither.
Alabama State Capitol Building photographed December 2021; statue at left noted in red: Frederick Cleveland Hibbard, Jefferson Davis, dedicated 1940; inset photo of star embedded in paving at the top of the steps where Davis stood during his inauguration as the President of the Confederacy (photos: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
The power of these images and the moment they depict has echoed to the present day. A star embedded in the paving at the top of the steps of the Alabama State Capitol marks the location where Jefferson Davis stood during his inauguration as the President of the Confederacy, and a statue of him still stands nearby.
The war begins at Fort Sumter
A month or so after the inauguration, and just three weeks after Stephens delivered his Cornerstone Speech, the U.S. Civil War began at Fort Sumter in South Carolina (the first state to secede from the Union).
The Evacuation of Fort Sumter, April 1861, albumen silver print from glass negative, 12.6 x 9.4 x 2.5 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Gutzon Borglum, Alexander Hamilton Stephens, given 1927, National Statuary Hall, U.S. Capitol (photo: Architect of the Capitol, U.S. government work)
When it became clear that the United States intended to hold the fort despite the secession of South Carolina, Confederate forces attacked it. This was the first military action of the Civil War. Confederate forces reduced the fort to a ruin, and U.S. soldiers evacuated. The photographs of the aftermath of the battle at Fort Sumter stressed the destruction of the site and helped to strengthen the resolve of the Confederacy. This image, and others like it became powerful symbols—here was photographic evidence of the Confederacy’s strength.
By end of the war, the United States had defeated the Confederacy, more than 750,000 Americans had died, and slavery had been banned everywhere in the United States through a Constitutional amendment. [5]
Denial and the Lost Cause
After the war, white southerners fashioned a narrative (often referred to as the Lost Cause) that denied that slavery had any role in bringing about the Civil War, despite the evidence to the contrary. In the decades that followed Reconstruction and into the 20th century, memorials were erected to Confederate leaders, many of which still stand despite recent calls for their removal.
Memorials to Stephens, who had said the Confederacy’s “corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man” still stand in public and civic spaces, including one in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., erected in 1927 during the Jim Crow era. The impressive space of National Statuary Hall in the Capitol, under a dome and surrounded by marble columns, was set aside in 1864 to serve as a hall to honor those who were “illustrious for their historic renown or for distinguished civic or military services such as each State may deem to be worthy of this national commemoration.” [6]
The artist who created the sculpture of Stephens, Gutzon Borglum, also worked on the enormous memorial celebrating the Confederacy carved on the side of Stone Mountain and the carving at Mount Rushmore. But the sculpture of Stephens may not remain in the U.S. Capitol for much longer. In an open letter to the Governor of Georgia in 2017, Stephens’s descendants wrote: “Confederate monuments need to come down. Put them in museums where people will learn about the context of their creation, but remove them from public spaces so that the descendants of enslaved people no longer walk beneath them at work and on campus.” [7] In June 2021, the House of Representatives voted to remove statues that honor Confederate leaders.
The causes of the Civil War in art
What do works of art reveal about the deep divisions that led to the Civil War? The collections of museums and archives, as well as public monuments, show us how artists captured the many issues that divided the nation in the years leading up to the Civil War, from the abolitionist movement to westward expansion, in photography, painting, sculpture, and popular prints. Visual arguments for and against slavery proliferated in 19th-century America, as defenders and opponents of human bondage sought to sway the opinions of the broader public. The new medium of photography, capable of capturing the visible world as never before, proved a valuable tool in this.
Frederic Edwin Church, The Meteor of 1860, 1860, oil on canvas, 10 x 17.5 inches (private collection)
Paintings, too, often addressed the issues of both prewar and wartime emotion using landscape as a metaphor—as the art historian Eleanor Harvey put it, “American audiences seemed eager to ascribe patriotic sentiments to the landscape as a means of channeling wartime emotions.” [8] For example, Frederic Church’s 1860 painting, TheMeteor of 1860, depicts a meteor streaking through the night sky and its reflection in water below. Critics at the time saw the double fireball of the meteor as akin to shots being fired from artillery, and saw it and other atmospheric phenomena that appeared in the sky that year, through the lens of a war that was seeming more and more unavoidable.
When we examine the visual record of the Civil War, it is best to immediately ask who an image was made for, who made it, what it aimed to achieve, how it was understood at the time it was made, and how its meaning has changed. We must also consider what the visual record does not contain. For example, enslaved people rarely had an opportunity to create images; what they did create (such as textiles, baskets, carvings, dolls, and pottery) was less likely to be preserved than the works of free artists.
Elizabeth Keckley, Mary Lincoln dress, 1861, velvet, satin, and mother-of-pearl, 152.4 cm x 121.92 cm (National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution)
Extraordinary exceptions however do exist. Elizabeth Keckley overcame her brutal enslavement in Virginia, North Carolina, and Missouri, and became the dressmaker to First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. She was able to purchase her own freedom and that of her son in 1852 using $1,200 she earned from her sewing and that she was able to borrow from her wealthy clientele. [9] Her 1861 purple velvet dress with satin piping and mother-of-pearl buttons was made for Mrs. Lincoln to convey that she was both “dignified and competent,” characteristics that had important political and diplomatic functions in the early months of the Civil War (the gown was worn in late 1861–early 1862).
Although the path from the founding of the United States in 1776 to its war of disunion 85 years later was tortuous, slavery—its past, present, and particularly its future—was at the heart of the conflict at every turn.
Opinion on the war was with Mexico was divided and Woodville therefore depicted a range of responses among the figures reading the latest news in a Western outpost. Detail, Richard Caton Woodville, War News from Mexico, 1848, oil on canvas, 68.6 × 63.5 cm (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art). Watch the video.
A forgotten war with unforgettable consequences
A tourist visiting the National Mall in Washington, D.C. today is likely to see monuments commemorating American involvement in several foreign wars, including the striking Vietnam Memorial, with its reflective surface naming the war dead, or the squadron of stainless steel soldiers honoring veterans of the Korean War. That same tourist might be surprised to learn that the United States had fought another foreign war whose toll on the American population was greater than either of those conflicts: the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). [1]
Maya Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 1982, granite, National Mall, Washington, D.C. (photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
There is no memorial to the Mexican-American War in Washington, D.C., and only about 30 monuments across the whole of the United States pay tribute to a war in which more than 15,000 American soldiers lost their lives. By comparison, there are at least 13,000 historical markers commemorating the U.S. Civil War. [2] In fact, the Mexican-American War has been overlooked in both U.S. and Mexican popular culture. The war is rarely depicted in film, and no images of the War of Northern Invasion (as the war is named in Mexico) were made by Mexican artists. A war of conquest conducted by a land-hungry U.S. government against ill-supplied Mexican soldiers did not generate much pride for either nation.
Timeline of significant events
Nevertheless, the Mexican-American War had far-reaching consequences for both the United States, Mexico, and the Indigenous peoples whose land both nations claimed. First among these was the cession of about one third of Mexico’s territory to the United States, a landmass of over 338,000,000 acres. Redrawing the border added to American economic prosperity at Mexico’s expense. The war also contributed to the outbreak of later civil wars in both countries: the Civil War in the United States (1861–1865) and the War of Reform in Mexico (1857–1860).
Lastly, the war’s outcome left many residents of the ceded territory worse off than they had been under Mexican rule, which had guaranteed people of African and Indigenous descent some rights and protections. Not only did the U.S. government permit slavery (which had been outlawed in Mexico for years) but the annexation of these lands sent large numbers of white American settlers west, where they displaced and often killed Indigenous people.
Comparing Mexican and American societies before the war
Both the United States and Mexico were young republics that had recently gained independence after centuries of European colonization. The process had been considerably easier for the United States, which had had French aid in defeating Great Britain, as well as bountiful natural resources to fuel its economy. In the early nineteenth century, the people of the United States were awash in patriotism, Protestant religious fervor, and enthusiasm for rapid expansion. Jacksonian Democracy, ushered in by the presidency of Andrew Jackson, extolled the virtues of the “common man,” extending the franchise to all white men regardless of their social standing.
George Caleb Bingham portrayed the Missouri election in which he was running as a candidate for state legislature (he depicts himself at center, seated on the wooden steps). Bingham seems both to celebrate and critique the enthusiastic exercise of mid-nineteenth century U.S. democracy, depicting the white male voters with equal dignity, although he shows some men who are clearly inebriated. George Caleb Bingham, The County Election, 1852, oil on canvas, 38 x 52 in. (96.5 x 132.1 cm) (Saint Louis Art Museum).
But citizenship in the United States became more entwined with constructions around racial difference at the same time it became less tied to class. The “white man’s republic” championed by Jacksonian Democrats categorically excluded women and people of color from the body politic. This was particularly evident in Jackson’s policy of “Indian Removal”: where once white Americans had committed to christianize and assimilate Indigenous people for their own good, many now declared Indigenous people savages who must either be expelled to distant western lands or face extinction.
By contrast, Mexico had won independence after 300 years of Spanish colonization without outside help, but the conflict had left the nation in a difficult economic state, with its mining, industrial, and agricultural capacity significantly reduced. The Mexican government was unstable, with 50 different governments in the 30 years after independence, most installed by military coup. Conservatives wanted to maintain a version of the colonial system that privileged social elites, the army, and the Catholic Church, while Liberals wanted to implement republican reforms.
Although Mexican society did make sharp distinctions of race and class in the years leading up to the war, nonwhites had more political power and social mobility than in the United States. Centuries of racial and cultural mixing between the descendants of Spanish settlers, enslaved Africans, Indigenous inhabitants, and Asian immigrants of the region had created a diverse populace. After independence from Spain, the Mexican government removed racial identifiers from official documents to promote equality in the new republic, and in 1829 abolished slavery altogether.
Cotton, Texas, and Manifest Destiny
Many Americans believed that the key to their prosperity was relentless expansion. The U.S. government had purchased the Louisiana Territory in 1803, and newspaper editors spread the idea that it was the “Manifest Destiny” of the United States to possess North America from the Atlantic to Pacific Ocean. The ideology of Manifest Destiny justified U.S. imperialism by claiming that the nation had a divine mission to spread democracy and Protestant Christianity across the continent.
Expansion was particularly crucial for the cotton planters who dominated the southern United States. Cultivating cotton quickly depleted soil, and plantation owners were eager to obtain more fertile land. They relied on the forced labor of enslaved people of African descent, and sought to expand slavery along with the borders of the American south. Many cotton planters crossed the border into the Mexican territory of Coahuila y Tejas, where they were initially welcomed as a stabilizing force that would help to repel raids from the powerful Comanche (Nʉmʉnʉʉ) nation. But the Mexican government soon grew frustrated with the American settlers, who disregarded the ban on slavery and showed no intention of assimilating into Mexican society.
The war begins
In 1836, American and Mexican residents who wanted to introduce enslaved laborers to the area to farm cotton took advantage of the Mexican government’s tenuous hold on the country’s periphery by declaring Texas an independent republic. The Texians triumphed, despite their storied defeat at The Alamo, a Spanish mission (San Antonio de Valero) that had been converted into a fortress. But the Mexican government did not accept the treaty granting Texas independence since it had been signed under duress. For nearly ten years, the Mexican government considered Texas a rebel territory, while the United States recognized it as a sovereign nation.
In fact, Texians wanted to join the United States and applied for annexation shortly after the rebellion. But the U.S. Congress, unwilling to upset the delicate balance between states that permitted slavery (“slave states”) and states that did not (“free states”), declined to consider the matter. All of that changed when James K. Polk was elected president in 1844. Polk was a Democrat, closely tied to Andrew Jackson, and he favored territorial expansion. Consequently, the United States annexed Texas in 1845 (leading Mexico to sever diplomatic relations), and Polk negotiated with Britain for a portion of the Oregon Territory in 1846.
Polk also sent an envoy to Mexico to offer to purchase California, then coveted for its Pacific ports and fertile farmland, but the Mexican government refused. Finally, in April 1846, Polk sent U.S. soldiers under the command of General Zachary Taylor to disputed territory south of the Nueces River, hoping to provoke conflict.
Text of Polk’s war proclamation in the New-York Daily Tribune (Library of Congress).
The progress of the war
Polk’s gamble paid off; after a U.S. patrol marched into the disputed territory, a Mexican cavalry unit attacked, killing 11 American soldiers. When news reached Washington, D.C. two weeks later, Polk went to Congress to ask for a declaration of war, claiming that Mexico had shed “American blood on the American soil.” Many U.S. lawmakers, especially those of the opposition Whig party, were suspicious of Polk’s claims—Abraham Lincoln, then a young Congressman, would later ask the president for evidence of the exact “spot” where the hostilities had begun—but conscious that fighting was already underway, the Whigs ultimately voted to support the war.
Detail of map below, showing land and naval campaigns during the Mexican-American War, including Monterrey and Buena Vista.
General Taylor commanded just one of many American military forces in what would become a two-year-long, multi-front war. In northern Mexico, Taylor fought inland to Monterrey and secured the region for the United States in the Battle of Buena Vista.
Farther north (see map below), the U.S. army captured Santa Fe, in what is now New Mexico, without firing a shot (although Mexican and Indigenous Puebloan residents later rebelled against U.S. occupation in the Taos Revolt). Naval campaigns targeted the west coast of Mexico from Mazatlán to Yerba Buena (present-day San Francisco), and wrested control of the ports and pueblos of California along with several ground units.
Map of land and naval campaigns during the Mexican-American War. The inset depicts General Winfield Scott’s route from Veracruz to Mexico City (map: Kaidor, CC-BY-SA 3.0).
The most devastating campaign, however, was in southeastern Mexico (see inset in map above). In 1847, U.S. General Winfield Scott conveyed a force of more than 13,000 men by sea to Veracruz. He deliberately followed the same path of conquest to Mexico City that Hernán Cortés had taken more than 300 years earlier to the Mexica capital of Tenochtitlan (which became Mexico City). In September 1847, the U.S. army invaded the nation’s capital, Mexico City. Despite months of guerrilla warfare, Mexicans could not expel the occupying army.
In February 1848, the two nations negotiated the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo to end the war. The treaty’s terms gave the United States most of what is now the southwestern United States, including the modern-day states of Texas, California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and portions of Colorado and Wyoming, in exchange for $15 million and the forgiveness of Mexican debts to American citizens. Mexicans who chose to remain in the territory would receive American citizenship.
“I do not think there was ever a more wicked war than that waged by the United States on Mexico.”—Ulysses S. Grant, 1879
Ulysses S. Grant, who would go on to command the victorious forces in the Civil War nearly twenty years later, not to mention serve as president of the United States, was a 24-year-old lieutenant during the Mexican-American War. Grant believed that in the Mexican-American War, a stronger nation had unjustly made war on a weaker one. [3] Indeed, the United States government had expected a quick win against an inferior opponent, and the extent of Mexican resistance came as a surprise. Racial and religious prejudice influenced American attitudes toward Mexicans. Officers wrote about the depredations committed by volunteers, who frequently stole from and sometimes killed Mexican civilians.
Most American soldiers and volunteers were Protestants, rife with anti-Catholic prejudice, and they disdained Mexican religiosity as superstition and ignorance. In some cases, American soldiers deliberately defiled churches or religious objects. Their behavior so disgusted German and Irish Catholic volunteers that several hundred switched sides and fought for the Mexicans as the St. Patrick’s Battalion, or San Patricios.
The San Patricios were U.S. soldiers who switched sides to fight with the Mexican army. Many were captured and executed in the battles leading up to the occupation of Mexico City. Samuel Chamberlain, who was a private in the U.S. army during the 1847 mass execution, illustrated the event in his memoirs twenty years later. Chamberlain likely made sketches on site (suggested by the recognizable volcanoes in the Valley of Mexico and Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City at right) and worked them into finished watercolors at a later time. The hanging scene’s distance from the viewer, and the lack of visible emotion with which Chamberlain portrays it, suggests that he saw the San Patricios as traitors. Samuel Chamberlain, Hanging of the San Patricios following the Battle of Chapultepec, c. 1867, watercolor (Smithsonian Magazine).
Unknown photographer, General Wool and staff in the Calle Real, Saltillo, Mexico, c. 1847 (Amon Carter Museum of American Art)
New technologies of communication and representation brought news of the war home to civilians faster and more vividly than ever before. The first photographs of war anywhere in the world emerged from this conflict: a series of 50 daguerreotypes, now housed at the Amon Carter Museum, which were created in 1847 by an unknown photographer in Saltillo, Mexico. Daguerreotypists followed the U.S. troops, taking portraits of officers, landmarks, and grave sites as souvenirs. [4] The Mexican-American War was also the first war in which U.S. journalists accompanied the army as foreign correspondents, and the updates they sent home to newspapers by telegraph generated great interest and patriotism among the public.
Richard Caton Woodville, War News from Mexico, 1848, oil on canvas, 68.6 × 63.5 cm (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas)
But the war and its expansionist aims did not enjoy universal support in the United States. Just three months into the conflict anti-slavery politicians introduced a bill into Congress, the Wilmot Proviso, that would outlaw slavery in any territory that might be gained from Mexico.
In addition, the first anti-war movement in the United States arose in response to the conflict; many northeastern intellectuals protested what they saw as an unprincipled land-grab aimed at increasing the power of slaveholders. Henry David Thoreau, a leading Transcendentalist writer, was jailed for refusing to pay taxes to support the war. His essay on the duty of citizens to refuse to cooperate with immoral government actions, “Civil Disobedience,” inspired the nonviolent resistance tactics of later civil rights leaders, including Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Consequences of the Mexican-American War
The war’s human cost is difficult to quantify. Historians estimate that 25,000 Mexican soldiers died, as well as 15,000 American soldiers. The vast majority of American men died from disease, not battlefield injuries, as the volunteer soldiers failed to implement necessary measures for sanitation. As many had feared, the addition of land suitable for cotton farming meant the extension of slavery, along with the human misery of the enslaved men and women who cleared and farmed the land. White settlers who moved to the west did not respect the rights of the Indigenous people or Mexican-Americans (those who had received U.S. citizenship at the war’s end) living there, often forcibly removing them from their land.
The political and social consequences of the war are easier to see. For Mexico, the defeat demonstrated the weakness of the country. Debates over the proper role of the army and the Catholic Church in politics led to the Reform War, and later the installation of a French emperor in Mexico. For the United States, the acquisition of western lands proved both a blessing and a curse. Their rich resources, including the gold discovered in California just weeks before the end of the war, contributed to growing American economic power. But the addition of new territory upset the fragile balance of power that had kept free and slave states bound together in an uneasy union. In 1861, the tensions over the expansion of slavery into the west led to the U.S. Civil War.
Footnotes:
[1] War dead as a percentage of total U.S. population. .057% of the U.S. population died as a result of the Mexican-American War.
[3] For Grant’s quote concerning the “wicked war,” see John Russell Young, Around the World with General Grant (New York: American News, 1879), pp. 447–48.
[4] James Oles, Art and Architecture in Mexico (London: Thames and Hudson, 2013), p. 155.
The Missouri Compromise and the dangerous precedent of appeasement
by Dr. Kimberly Kutz Elliott
George Caleb Bingham, Country Politician (detail), 1849, oil on canvas, 51.8 x 61cm (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco).
“This momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union.”—Thomas Jefferson on the westward expansion of slavery, 1820
Compromise or appeasement?
Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States and aged leader of his party, wrote during the Missouri Controversy of 1820 that the westward expansion of slavery would lead to the “[death] knell of the Union.”[1] Jefferson was right, if a little premature; Congress held the union together for another forty years through compromises before slave states finally seceded and brought on the Civil War in 1861. The Missouri Compromise was one of many such attempts to prevent the union from fracturing over slavery, and it established the model for maintaining a balance of power between free and slave states that lasted until the 1850s.
For many years, historians celebrated these compromises as valiant efforts to save the union, but more recently, historians have begun to question whether they should instead be characterized as appeasements of slaveholders, who often got the better end of the bargain.[2]
People and terms
Democratic-Republicans
Democratic-Republicans were members of an early American political party that championed state and local government, westward expansion, and the interests of farmers.
Northwest Ordinance
The Northwest Ordinance (1787) organized the region surrounding the Great Lakes into a territory where slavery was prohibited.
James Monroe
James Monroe served as president from 1817–1825. He was a member of the Democratic-Republican party and today is most famous for the “Monroe Doctrine,” which opposed further European colonization of Latin America.
Three-Fifths Clause
The Three-Fifths Clause is part of Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which determines how seats in the House of Representatives are apportioned according to state population. The Framers of the Constitution agreed to count three-fifths (60%) of the enslaved people living in a state as part of its population (even though enslaved people had no citizenship rights and could not vote). This gave southern states more power than they would have wielded otherwise.
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase was a land deal between France and the United States, which purchased the right to acquire territory belonging to Indigenous peoples between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains.
Gradual emancipation
Gradual emancipation was a method of phasing out the institution of slavery over time favored by many northern state legislatures in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Henry Clay
Henry Clay was a Kentucky statesman who served as Speaker of the House and Secretary of State. He was called the “Great Compromiser” for his role in brokering compromises between northerners and southerners.
Privileges and immunities clause
The privileges and immunities clause in the Constitution prevents states from treating citizens of other states in a discriminatory manner.
Bad feelings in the Era of Good Feelings
The U.S. political sphere after the conclusion of the War of 1812 has often been called the “Era of Good Feelings,” a rare period when there was only one active political party in the United States (the Democratic-Republicans) and President James Monroe promoted national pride and unity. But the lack of party divisions soon revealed deeper fissures in American politics: between northerners, who opposed the expansion of slavery, and southerners, who balked at any attempt to restrict human bondage. These divisions—and their potential to break apart the United States—came into sharp focus during the controversy over the admission of the state of Missouri.
This enormous history painting by John Trumbull, who briefly served in the Continental Army, depicts the “Committee of Five” (including John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Ben Franklin, standing in the center) presenting the draft of the Declaration of Independence to the Continental Congress. Trumbull worked on this painting for nearly thirty years, beginning with a sketch of the event made by Thomas Jefferson himself, and traveling to visit many of the participants so he could paint them from life. In 1817, in a period of increased national pride, Congress voted to commission Trumbull to paint a large-scale version to hang in the U.S. Capitol building rotunda. John Trumbull, The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776, 1818 (placed 1826), oil on canvas, 12 x 18 feet (Rotunda, U.S. Capitol).
In 1819, more than forty years after the Founders signed the Declaration of Independence, a new generation of statesmen emerged onto the American political stage. Some, like John Quincy Adams, were the actual children of the Founders; others, like Monroe, were merely their spiritual heirs. In either case, they were beginning to chafe at some of their forebears’ choices. Northerners resented the amount of influence that southerners exercised in the government: the “Three-Fifths Clause” in the Constitution gave slave states undeserved power in the House of Representatives, and Virginians had controlled the presidency for twenty-six out of the thirty years the office had existed.
For their part, southerners regretted the precedent set by the Northwest Ordinance and the ban on the international slave trade, which suggested that the federal government had the power to regulate slavery outside of southern states. When Congress passed those acts in the late eighteenth century, slavery seemed like a dying institution, but the introduction of the cotton gin revived its profitability. By 1820, white southerners were more committed to enslaving and selling Black men, women, and children than ever before.
The balance of power, the Missouri controversy, and “gradual emancipation”
Both sides knew that their fortunes ultimately depended on the west, where new states would determine the balance of congressional power. The U.S. government had gained over 800,000 acres of land through the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, and white settlers had begun carving future states out of these Indigenous lands. The state of Louisiana was the first to enter the union from the territory; Missouri was not far behind.
An 1820 scene of everyday life in Brooklyn, New York, includes several Black figures, who may have been enslaved, in the right foreground, showing the social hierarchy of early nineteenth-century New York. James Tallmadge Jr., whose proposal for gradual emancipation in Missouri ignited a firestorm in Congress, had recently championed a similar plan for the enslaved people of New York. Francis Guy, Winter Scene in Brooklyn, 1820, oil on canvas, 147.3 x 260.2 cm (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art).
In February 1819, the House of Representatives began to consider the Missouri Territory’s request to organize a state government. That Missouri would soon enter the union as a slave state seemed likely, until New York Representative James Tallmadge Jr. proposed an amendment to the bill. The Tallmadge amendment provided for the gradual emancipation of enslaved people in Missouri: although no enslaved person currently residing in Missouri would be freed, no more enslaved people could be brought into the state and any children born to enslaved people there would be free at the age of 25. This plan was quite similar to one recently adopted by the state of New York, which had the largest enslaved population among northern states.
The amendment stirred up such a controversy in Congress that its members threatened civil war. Tallmadge himself professed that “If a dissolution of the Union must take place, let it be so! If civil war, which gentlemen so much threaten, must come, I can only say, let it come!”[3] Supporters of the amendment argued that the Northwest Ordinance showed that the Founders had intended to prevent slavery’s expansion into new territories. Thomas Jefferson, who had been one of those Founders, now promoted the disingenuous “diffusion” argument that expanding slavery into new territories would actually help to bring about its eventual demise.[4] Opponents of the amendment countered that slavery had continued unabated in Louisiana following its organization as a territory and state. Why should Missouri be any different?
The vote on the amendment’s provisions brought sectional divisions into sharp relief: in the House, where northerners had the population advantage, the bill passed; in the Senate, where states had equal representation, it failed. Congress could not resolve the issue in its February session, and the question of Missouri’s statehood had to wait until December.
Maine, Missouri, and another compromise
While Congress was adjourned, the Massachusetts legislature voted to permit what was then the District of Maine to organize as a separate state. When Congress reconvened in December, pro-slavery Senate leaders put the Maine and Missouri questions into a single bill, in an attempt to make approving slavery in Missouri a condition of admitting Maine as a state. This measure passed the Senate but not the House, whose majority still hoped to keep slavery out of Missouri.
Finally, the Speaker of the House, Henry Clay, engineered the “Missouri Compromise”: Missouri would get its enabling act (which would allow it to become a state), without conditions restricting slavery; Maine would enter the union as a free state, while slavery would be banned in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase territory above the southern border of Missouri (at latitude 36°30’N). In March 1820, Congress consented to these terms, and Maine entered the union as a free state shortly thereafter.
But the controversy was not yet at an end. When Missouri submitted its new state constitution for Congressional approval later that year, northern restrictionists balked when they saw that—in addition to legalizing slavery “in perpetuity”—it included a statute banning any free people of color from entering or settling in the state. As free people of color had citizenship in several northern states, this statute violated the privileges and immunities clause of the Constitution. Henry Clay once again brokered a compromise, extracting an empty promise from the Missouri state legislature not to pass any laws that violated the privileges and immunities clause in exchange for ratification of its constitution. Missouri officially entered the union as a slave state in 1821.
The consequences of compromise
The Missouri Compromise avoided a national crisis, but it did nothing to resolve the problems that had caused it in the first place, which would resurface with a vengeance in the years leading up to the Civil War. The question of whether Congress should permit slavery not only to exist but to expand westward, further entrenching an institution bringing misery to millions of enslaved people, would continue to create sectional strife for another forty years.
George Caleb Bingham was a painter and a politician who served in the Missouri House of Representatives. Here, Bingham depicts a politician (right) speaking directly to the voters of Missouri in what appears to be an inn or tavern. In 1849, when this painting was completed, the issue of slavery once again convulsed the nation when the Wilmot Proviso, like the Tallmadge amendment, proposed a ban on slavery in future states formed out of any western lands the United States acquired. In 1847, Missouri had barred all free people of color from entering the state despite its 1821 promise to Congress, and so only white men are present to debate politics in this scene. Bingham himself endorsed overturning the Missouri Compromise and permitting residents of states to vote on whether to permit slavery. George Caleb Bingham, Country Politician, 1849, oil on canvas, 51.8 x 61cm (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco).
Despite its name, the Missouri Compromise (which ensured that Missouri could become a slave state—while slavery would be banned in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase territory above the southern border of Missouri) was a victory for slaveholders. For them, it confirmed the principle that slavery could expand into new states.
The Missouri Compromise was overturned (by the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act) before any free states could be formed out of the Louisiana Purchase territory earmarked for them. Then, in an effort to prevent any future efforts to limit slavery’s expansion, the slaveholder-dominated Supreme Court ruled the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional in 1857.
Appeasing slaveholders was a doomed enterprise, however. Slaveholding states seceded from the union in 1861, starting the Civil War, and ultimately brought about the end to slavery they had feared for so long.
by Brandy Culp, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art and Dr. Steven Zucker
The gun that “won the West” also transformed American manufacturing and marketing.
Elisha King Root for Samuel Colt, Experimental Pocket Pistol, Serial number 5, caliber .265 inches, barrel length 3 inches, overall length 7 inches, brass, steel, and iron, 1849–50 (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Bequest of Elizabeth Hart Jarvis Colt)
Source: Brandy Culp, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art and Dr. Steven Zucker, “Inventing America, Colt’s Experimental Pocket Pistol,” in Smarthistory, December 23, 2018, accessed July 17, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/colts-pistol/.
Nativism, immigration, and the Know-Nothing party
by Dr. Kimberly Kutz Elliott
David Gilmour Blythe, Justice (detail), c. 1860, oil on canvas, 51.1 x 61.3 cm (Fine Art Museums of San Francisco)
From the birth of the United States through the mid-nineteenth century, a small but steady stream of European immigrants flowed into the young nation. Most newcomers to the country in these early years—apart from the kidnapped Africans forced to immigrate before the international slave trade was banned in 1808—were comfortable both financially and culturally. They spoke English, hailed from Protestant nations, and were quickly welcomed into the American body politic. The Naturalization Act of 1790 permitted any “free white person” to become a U.S. citizen after two years of residency, and in some states male European immigrants had the right to vote as soon as they arrived. [1]
1850s political cartoon, likely penned by political cartoonist John H. Goater, showing caricatures representing Irish and German voters “stealing an election.” The man at center left is carrying a club and wearing a barrel labeled “Irish Whiskey,” with a wild expression on his face. Next to him stands a man wearing a barrel labeled Lager Bier (intended to parody German beer) and carrying a pipe. Between them, they carry away a ballot box while a mob scene ensues at the building labeled “Election Day Polls” behind them. The cartoonist expresses a fear that immigrant voters have too much political power (New York Public Library Research Collections).
By the 1850s, however, that small stream of immigrants had grown into a mighty river: famine and revolution in Europe drove unprecedented numbers of immigrants to American shores. More than five times as many people immigrated to the United States in 1854 than in 1844, and most of the new immigrants were poor, Catholic laborers from Ireland or Germany. By 1860, more than 13% of U.S. inhabitants had been born elsewhere. Because the new immigrants were disproportionately young adults, their impact on the ballot box was even more pronounced. [2] Some native-born Americans began to fear that the existing laws governing naturalization and voting rights were too generous toward newcomers. A political cartoon from the 1850s expressed the sentiment that these new immigrants—considered too drunken and violent to wield political power wisely—were poised to “steal” American elections, depicting caricatures of Irish and German men carrying away the ballot box.
In northern cities, which had the largest immigrant populations, nativism—a set of beliefs favoring the interests of established inhabitants against those of immigrants—emerged in the 1830s but grew to a fever pitch by the late 1840s. White, native-born Americans felt threatened by immigrants on nearly every front. Economically, immigrants desperate for work might undercut wages for native-born laborers and artisans; politically, immigrants were a tempting bloc of voters whose fast-growing influence might eclipse that of native-born men. But the most insidious aspect of the new immigrants, in the eyes of nativists, was their Catholic faith.
Frontispiece of Samuel F. B. Morse’s nativist tract “Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties of the United States” (Leavitt, Lord & Co., 1835). Morse, who is most famous for inventing the telegraph and Morse code, was also a well-known painter. He was strongly anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant, and ran for mayor of New York City in 1836 as a member of the Nativist Party, the forerunner of the Know-Nothing Party.
Although the United States had no established church, it maintained a strong Protestant tradition. Despite a few pockets of Catholic toleration (notably Maryland), most states extended religious tolerance only to a few Protestant denominations. Many Protestant Americans saw the United States as carrying on the mission of its Puritan founders, and they tended to view Catholicism with suspicion. Because the Pope claimed authority from God, and answered to no earthly power, Americans saw him as the archenemy of democracy.
Nativists feared that Catholic immigrants would serve the interests of the Pope rather than those of the United States. Samuel F.B. Morse, most famous today as the inventor of the telegraph and Morse Code, was also a strident nativist who wrote pamphlets warning of the dangers of immigrants. In his 1835 polemic “Foreign conspiracy against the liberties of the United States,” Morse alleged that immigrants “are not fitted to act with judgment in the political affairs of their new country, like native citizens educated from their infancy in the principles and habits of our institutions. Most of them are too ignorant to act at all for themselves, and expect to be guided wholly by others. . . . [T]hey are but obedient instruments in the hands of their more knowing leaders to accomplish the designs of their foreign masters.” [3] Such conspiracy theories, which held that Catholics were scheming to place the United States under the thrall of the Vatican, abounded in nineteenth-century American print culture.
In northern cities, nativists began to form secret societies, like the “Order of United Americans” and the “Order of the Star-Spangled Banner,” whose members vowed to vote only for native-born candidates for elected office and to oppose Catholic “aggressions” such as efforts to secure public funding for parochial schools. By 1854, hundreds of lodges for these societies dotted the country, drawing their membership primarily from young clerks, artisans, and laborers. When outsiders asked them about these societies, they were instructed to answer “I know nothing.” [4]
The Know-Nothing Party
Although their secretive nature precludes an accurate count of their numbers, historians estimate that about a million people belonged to these nativist societies in the 1850s. They emerged as a political force in the form of the Know-Nothing Party (officially, the American Party, but the secret society catchphrase stuck). From relative obscurity, the Know-Nothing Party became a powerful movement practically overnight.
In 1854, Know-Nothings swept the Massachusetts state legislature (all but three of its new members belonged to the party) and also captured the mayor’s office in cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco. In Baltimore, nativist gangs like the Blood Tubs and Plug Uglies made sure that voters cast their ballots for the Know-Nothings—or else. The party quickly came to dominate state legislatures in New England and won seats in Maryland, Tennessee, and Kentucky.
David Gilmour Blythe, Justice, c. 1860, oil on canvas, 51.1 x 61.3 cm (Fine Art Museums of San Francisco). A poster referencing the Blood Tubs, a Baltimore gang supporting the Know-Nothings, is fixed to the bench below the judge at bottom left. In the center, a police constable leads a disheveled man into the courtroom, gesturing with a nightstick. The central figure has a bleary expression and rosy cheeks, suggesting he may be drunk, and the figures behind him seem to be poor working people, likely recent immigrants. At the top left sits a stern judge, and below him a member of the press whose face is hidden from view. Sitting on a bench in the dim right side of the composition is a Black man holding a banjo, beneath a classical bust on a plinth. The dark colors and slanting light of the painting give it an uneasy feeling, as if all involved know that justice is not going to be done in this courtroom. Blythe was known to harbor nativist sentiments, and his unsympathetic rendering of this painting’s subjects suggests he viewed immigrants as criminal.
The major issue of the Know-Nothing platform was limiting the political power of foreign-born men. Because Know-Nothings operated at the state and local level, their precise policy initiatives differed from region to region, but they did share some common elements. Know-Nothings championed voter suppression laws, such as increasing the naturalization waiting period to 21 years, imposing a further waiting period after naturalization before new citizens could vote, and restricting officeholding to native-born citizens. They opposed public funding for religious schools. Some Know-Nothings also favored temperance measures, which would outlaw the sale of alcohol (including, not coincidentally, the sacramental wine important to Catholic worship).
How did the Know-Nothing Party gain such influence in such a short time? In large part, they owed their success to the collapse of the Second Party System, a twenty-six year era during which the two major U.S. political parties were the Democrats and the Whigs. But when the Whig party—hopelessly split over slavery—disintegrated in the early 1850s, a period of political realignment ensued. Two new parties emerged to vie for the votes of former Whigs: the anti-slavery Republican Party, and the anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party. In the mid-1850s, which of these would ultimately become the major-party opponent to the Democrats was anybody’s guess.
Each new party had something to tempt former Whigs. The Know-Nothings’ nativist stance promised them a way to limit the political power of their old foes, the Democrats, who attracted the votes of new immigrants. Therefore, nativist policies that disenfranchised immigrants would help to keep the Democratic Party in check. In addition, the Know-Nothings adopted some of the Protestant moral reforms, such as temperance, that Whigs had long seen as beneficial to the advancement of society. On the slavery issue, the national Know-Nothings were neutral, which offered a haven in the south for Whigs—and moderate Democrats—turned off by the southern Democrats’ increasingly strident pro-slavery rhetoric.
The Republicans, by contrast, promised a firm commitment to anti-slavery policies, having come together in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The Republicans also incorporated Whig economic ideas, favoring the expansion of banking, railroads, and access to western land for white farmers.
The only question was whether nativism and anti-slavery were compatible ideas; that is, could you be against immigrant rights and in favor of containing slavery at the same time? On this, opinion among both Know-Nothings and Republicans was divided. Some northern Know-Nothings saw slavery and Catholicism as twin evils, two powerful institutions bent on oppressing liberty. For them, there was no contradiction between opposing the institution of slavery and opposing the political power of Catholic immigrants. Likewise, some Republicans courted nativists, hoping to take advantage of their votes to further anti-slavery aims once elected. But other Republicans were dismayed by the surge in nativist sentiment, which they considered a distraction from the all-important issue of slavery. Furthermore, they viewed attempts to degrade immigrants as fundamentally at odds with efforts to improve the status of Black people.
In spite of these inconsistencies, the Know-Nothings were quite successful for a new party. At the height of their influence between 1854 and 1856, the Know-Nothings controlled 52 seats in the House of Representatives, including the Speakership, 6 seats in the Senate, and fielded a presidential candidate (Millard Fillmore) who won 21% of the popular vote.
Know-Nothing Party flag, c. 1860. In this context, “Native Americans” refers to native-born citizens of the United States (white non-immigrants), not Indigenous peoples of North America. An earlier incarnation of the Know-Nothing Party was called the Native American Party. The members of nativist secret societies sometimes wore faux “Indian” dress and referred to their leaders as chiefs or sachems. Some nativists did support the rights of Indigenous peoples, arguing that they had a greater claim to American citizenship than immigrants. [5] (image in the public domain)
But the Know-Nothings’ star fell nearly as fast as it rose. At their first national convention in 1855, northern anti-slavery delegates bolted after southerners and conservatives approved the Kansas-Nebraska Act, signaling their support for the westward expansion of slavery. Anti-slavery Know-Nothings then joined the Republican Party. The Know-Nothing Speaker of the House, Nathaniel Banks, soon aligned with the Republicans too. By the late 1850s it was clear that voters saw slavery, not immigration, as the most critical issue facing the nation, and that the Republican Party would replace the Whigs as the main opponent to the Democrats.
By 1860, the Know-Nothing Party was no longer a major contender for national office.
Nativism as a lasting political force
The end of the Know-Nothings did not spell the end of nativism or anti-Catholicism as a rallying cry in American politics. After the Civil War, Republicans in the north continued to attack the Irish and the Catholic Church, which were—as they saw it—inextricably linked with the corrupt Democratic party.
Thomas Nast, “The American River Ganges, The Priests and the Children,” Harper’s Weekly, 1871. In this political cartoon, the children on American shores are beset by “crocodiles,” or bishops whose miters resemble crocodiles, protected by a lone Protestant man with a bible tucked into his shirt. In the background, Tammany Hall (the Democratic political machine in New York City) stands triumphant; its leader, Boss Tweed, stands at the top of the bluff (immediately above the man protecting the children) while his associates drop children into danger. A U.S. public school is crumbling, with the American flag turned upside down in distress. At the top right corner, Columbia—a female allegorical figure representing the United States—is being led to the gallows. (Library of Congress)
Political cartoonist Thomas Nast expressed his support for the rights of formerly-enslaved Black people at the same time as he skewered Catholics. His 1871 political cartoon “The American River Ganges” depicted Catholic bishops as crocodiles who were intent on gobbling up American children. The leaders of Tammany Hall—New York City’s Democratic political machine, rendered as a twin of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome in the cartoon—were throwing children down to them. Nast alternated cartoons like these with others, like 1874’s “The Union As It Was” that sought the viewer’s sympathy for the persecution of newly-free African Americans in the south.
In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, nativism reared its head once again as immigration to the United States reached new heights. Italians and Eastern Europeans fleeing poverty and religious persecution became the “new” immigrants as Irish and Germans became “white.” Congress enacted laws banning Chinese and Japanese immigrants altogether during this period, and eventually passed sweeping measures limiting the stream of immigrants to a trickle. Fear of the “other” has remained a potent force in American society ever since.
[1] On voting for non-citizens see Alexander Keyssar, “The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States,” (Basic Books, 2009), pp. 27–28. Note that although the international slave trade was outlawed in 1808, some smugglers did continue to import human captives from outside the United States, and the internal slave trade continued to force people of African descent to migrate and labor against their will.
[2] See Historical Statistics of the United States, 1789–1945, Chapter B—Population Characteristics and Migration (Supplement to the Statistical Abstract of the United States, U.S. Census Bureau, 1949). Because immigrants were more likely to be adults, they constituted a greater percentage of the pool of eligible voters than of the population as a whole.
Source: Jenny Keller and Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank, “Codex Canadensis,” in Smarthistory, July 25, 2022, accessed July 16, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/codex-canadensis/.
Standing Bear (Mató Nájin), Battle of Little Bighorn
by The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Mató Nájin/Standing Bear (Minneconjou Lakota/Teton Sioux), Battle of Little Bighorn, c. 1920, pencil, ink, and watercolor on muslin, 91.4 × 268 cm, made in Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota, United States (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Quilled war shirt (front), c. 1800–1820. Native tanned hide, porcupine and possibly bird quills, plant material, red trade cloth, dyes, and sinew. 34 x 43 inches (Denver Art Museum)
Studying art during a pandemic
As many of us find ourselves working and studying from home while social distancing during the world-wide spread of COVID-19, let us think about the impact other pandemics and epidemics have had on world populations and their arts. Visual records open a window into such events, as we see in depictions of leprosy in European medieval illuminated manuscripts or in pictographic accounts of smallpox epidemics that spread across the Great Plains of North America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.[1] Northern plains groups experienced 36 epidemics between 1714 and 1919, which were documented in chronological order in winter counts.[2] A winter count depicted the most important events that occurred in any given year. Community elders would meet each year to discuss what had occurred since winter started (denoted by the first snowfall), and would select the most important event to name the year, after which a symbol (or pictograph) would be created and added to a hide painting.
One example is the 1837–38 smallpox epidemic which was catastrophic for the Mandan Nation.[3] According to historian Clay Jenkinson “In two waves of smallpox on the Upper Missouri, separated by 56 years, the Mandan had been reduced from a proud nation of more than 15,000 individuals to a pathetic remnant of 145.”[4] With so much loss we must consider the dramatic impact such events had on the transmission of Indigenous knowledge, but also celebrate these communities’ perseverance, and ability to adapt. Today the population of the Three Affiliated Tribes (Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara) have again risen to around 15,000 citizens who live on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota.[5]
Understanding this history of pandemic and loss provides us with a lens through which to see artworks from the upper Missouri River region. The scarcity of existing objects, and as a result, limited visual references create significant challenges in making specific attributions and comparisons from this region and period of time.
Still, some of the defining features of northern plains groups (at the time of contact) formed as a response to disease and the resulting loss of life. One scholar notes that “The social fluidity whereby tribes or divisions of tribes split apart and regrouped may have developed as a means of coping with catastrophic population loss.”[6] Epidemics affected all aspects of life for plains groups. For example, warriors could not train and military technology could not be developed if the group was sick and dying.[7]
Assiniboine artist, Shirt, c. 1830. Leather, beads, quills, paint, human hair, and horse hair, 60 x 75 in. (Denver Art Museum)
Museum collections and the paintings of Catlin and Bodmer
We see evidence of the enormous population loss in men’s shirts from this time period. In this context, men’s shirts refer to a shirt worn by a warrior into battle or during festivals (so not daily use), and which are decorated with hair fringes (human and horse), ermine tails, quillwork, and beadwork. While we may know they were made by artists from this region, assigning an attribution to a particular community is difficult for several reasons. Few pre-1850 arts by Indigenous artists from any region exist in U.S. museums, although some can be found in international museums (including in the Paul Kane collection in the Manitoba Museum in Winnipeg and the collections of Prince Maximiliam of Wied in museums located in Berne, Berlin, and Stuttgart). Some collections exist from Lewis and Clark’s expedition from 1804–1806, but William Clark’s personal collection, once housed in his home in St. Louis until his death in 1838, went missing around this time and its whereabouts remains unknown to this day.[8] The total number of works of American Indian arts from the Plains before 1850 remains quite small.
When you narrow down these early nineteenth-century arts to shirts, and those exclusively from the upper Missouri River region, there are few examples with which to compare, and even fewer with documentation. Of the 40 shirts in the collection of the Denver Art Museum from the Plains and Plateau regions, only two date to around 1830 or before. One is attributed to an Assiniboine artist and the other is dated to 1800–1820, and is the focus of this discussion.
Left: George Catlin, Stu-mick-o-súcks, Buffalo Bull’s Back Fat, the Head Chief of the Blood Tribe (Blackfoot), 1832, oil on canvas, 73.7 x 60.9 cm (Smithsonian American Art Museum); right: George Catlin, Peh-tó-pe-kiss, Eagle’s Ribs (Blackfoot), 1832, oil on canvas, 73.7 x 60.9 cm (Smithsonian American Art Museum)
With limited examples, great losses in the continuity of Indigenous knowledge, and works that predate photography by decades, the main way to identify these shirts is through the written reports of fur traders and explorers, as well as the paintings of George Catlin and Karl Bodmer who traveled in the region in the 1830s.
Two Assiniboine men. Left: Karl Bodmer, partially completed portrait of Noapeh (Troop of Soldiers), 1833, watercolor; right: Karl Bodmer, an unidentified Assiniboine man, 1833, watercolor
Interpreting what the shirt says about the man who wore it
In December of 2019 the Denver Art Museum received two shirts from the Upper Missouri region of the Plains as gifts from a private collector: one dating to around 1800–1820 and the other to around 1855. The earlier of these two shirts is without question the single most significant work to come into DAM’s Native arts collection in decades.
Quilled war shirt (front), c. 1800-1820. Native tanned hide, porcupine and possibly bird quills, plant material, red trade cloth, dyes, and sinew. 34 x 43 inches (Denver Art Museum)
It is exceedingly rare and among the earliest shirts from the Upper Missouri River region in existence. The shirt’s lack of beadwork, minimal use of Bayetta trade wool, and quilled design elements point to its early creation date and connection to this region.
Detail of the front and back rosettes, quilled war shirt (front), c. 1800-1820. Native tanned hide, porcupine and possibly bird quills, plant material, red trade cloth, dyes, and sinew. 34 x 43 inches (Denver Art Museum)
This fringed “poncho” style shirt with red trade wool rectangular “bibs” was made using Native tanned mountain sheep hides and sewn using sinew (animal tendons or ligaments used as thread). On both the front and back of the shirt are saw-tooth edged medallions (rosettes) and over each shoulder and along each sleeve are three quilled lanes with geometric patterning.
Detail of a sleeve, quilled war shirt, c. 1800–1820. Native tanned hide, porcupine and possibly bird quills, plant material, red trade cloth, dyes, and sinew. 34 x 43 inches (Denver Art Museum)
While little was recorded about the meanings of such elements, the medallions are commonly considered representations of forces of nature, such as the sun or powerful winds. It has also been suggested that the designs on medallions, such as those seen on this shirt and many others from this region, may represent the wings of a Thunderbird, a sacred being for many Plains tribes.
The central medallions are made from porcupine quills, likely plant material, and possibly also bird quills. Porcupine quillwork is a technique Indigenous to North America and was prevalent prior to the trade of European manufactured glass trade beads. Today this technique is experiencing a resurgence among many Native artists. The materials used on this shirt (as well as materials not used, such as glass beads) suggest it was made just as trade between fur trappers and Native people began in the central part of North America.
Detail of faces, coup sticks, and bear claws, quilled war shirt (back), c. 1800–1820. Native tanned hide, porcupine and possibly bird quills, plant material, red trade cloth, dyes, and sinew. 34 x 43 inches (Denver Art Museum)
What is among the most exciting elements of this shirt are a series of pictographic and geometric drawings found on either side. If you look closely you will see faint indigo drawings of six heads, above which are floating lines. Below the heads is a row of four bear paws, and to the right are three pipes. The exact meaning of these elements was not recorded; however, based on Indigenous knowledge and with the help of Dr. Timothy McCleary, a colleague from Little Bighorn Tribal College at Crow Agency in Montana, we believe we know what they mean.
The heads with floating lines likely refer to counting coup, or striking an enemy with a stick. When a warrior touched his enemy with his coup stick, it was regarded as an act of extreme bravery because he had to get close to his opponent. The pipes may suggest how many times the shirt’s owner led successful war parties. The bear paws show how many Plains grizzlies the owner of the shirt had killed. Drawings and explanations in American ethnologist Garrick Mallery’s 1889 publication Picture Writing of the American Indians demonstrates how widespread such imagery was among Plains artists in the late nineteenth century. Mallery’s text reproduces a drawing and accompanying explanation by an Oglala Lakota man that explains the meaning of pipes depicted similarly to what we see in the shirt, as well as other design elements recorded on it.
Detail of quilled war shirt (front), c. 1800–1820. Native tanned hide, porcupine and possibly bird quills, plant material, red trade cloth, dyes, and sinew. 34 x 43 inches (Denver Art Museum)
The designs on the front of the shirt tell even more specific stories about the owner. Here, we find drawings of five X-like forms arranged below the medallion. These are war honor marks. From left to right, we can read these to recount the original owner’s achievements in war. The first shows that the warrior was the third person to touch a live enemy in battle (counting coup). The next shows that after he had dismounted an enemy, the owner of the shirt captured the enemy’s horse. The next two Xs show he was the fourth person to count coup on an enemy during battle. Then the last shows that he was again the third to count coup on an enemy. Mallery recorded variations of these designs and meanings as told to him by Hidatsa, Mandan, and Arikara consultants.
These marks were common ways to record war deeds among the Native people of the Upper Missouri River region and are found on clothing, tipis, and in rock art. The Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, and Crow people are well known for their use of this X to represent an enemy. While a few other tribes also used this imagery, this form with the associated hash marks (denoting the number of coups) and horse hoof prints are all from one of the Upper Missouri River tribes.
Ongoing challenges
Indigenous people have faced countless challenges to their ways of life since the arrival of settler-colonial people. Sickness and disease took its toll, but so did forced relocation, land allotment that broke up clan and society structures, prohibitions against ceremonies and religions, traumatic boarding school experiences, broken treaties, and institutional and structural racism, to name a few. Each of these created seemingly insurmountable hurdles for Indigenous people to overcome.
Many of these challenges still exist. The Navajo Nation has been hit hard by COVID-19. Two Lakota reservations are under attack from the governor of South Dakota for the medical checkpoints they put up on their own roads to protect their citizens from the spread of this disease. Generational trauma from past experiences warns them to protect themselves. Elders are the keepers of knowledge and they are most at risk. The transmission of intergenerational knowledge of all forms, visual arts included, is difficult during such times. But this knowledge still exists in communities. These art forms are still being created by brilliant and innovative Indigenous youth. And this should give us hope for the future.
Eastern Shoshone: Hide Painting of the Sun Dance, attributed to Cotsiogo (Cadzi Cody)
by Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank
Attributed to Cotsiogo, Hide Painting of the Sun Dance, c. 1890–1900 (Eastern Shoshone, Wind River Reservation, WY), painted elk hide (Indian Arts Research Center, School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe)
Animal hide painting
Painting on animal hides is a longstanding tradition of the Great Basin and Great Plains people of the United States, including the Kiowa, Lakota, Shoshone, Blackfeet, Crow, Dakota, and Osage. While the earliest surviving hide paintings date to around 1800, this tradition was undoubtedly practiced much earlier along with other forms of painting like petroglyphs (rock engravings).
Attributed to Cotsiogo, Hide painting of the Sun Dance, c. 1890–1900 (Eastern Shoshone), elk hide and pigment, 205.7 x 198.1 cm (Brooklyn Museum, New York)
Painting, in tandem with oral traditions, functioned to record history. Often artists like Cotsiogo (Eastern Shoshone; pronounced “co SEE ko”), who is also known by his Euro-American name, Cadzi Cody, painted on elk, deer, or buffalo hides using natural pigments like red ochre and chalk, and eventually paints and dyes obtained through trade. Usually, artists decorated the hides with geometric or figural motifs. By the later 19th century certain hide artists like Cotsiogo began depicting subject matter that “affirmed Native identity” and appealed to tourists. The imagery placed on the hide was likely done with a combination of free-hand painting and stenciling.
Men and women both painted on hides, but men usually produced the scenes on tipis (tepees), clothing, and shields. Many of these scenes celebrated battles and other biographical details. The Brooklyn Museum’s hide painting by Cotsiogo may have functioned as a wall hanging and has also been classified as a robe.
Cotsiogo (also Codsiogo, Katsikodi, or Cadzi Cody), a member of the Eastern Shoshone tribe, painted many hides in addition to the two shown above. They represent his experiences during a period of immense change for the Shoshone people. During his lifetime, Cotsiogo was placed on the Wind River Reservation in central western Wyoming.
Wind River Canyon, Wind River Indian Reservation, Wyoming (photo: J. Stephen Conn, CC BY-NC 2.0)
Charles S. Baker and Eli Johnston, Portrait of Codsiogo, before 1898, photograph (American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Laramie)
The Wind River Reservation is the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined and had been established by the Fort Bridger Treaty of 1868. Prior to their placement on the Wind River Reservation, the Shoshone moved with the seasons and the availability of natural resources. Many Shoshone traversed the geographic regions we now call the Great Plains and Plateau regions.
Cotsiogo likely created the Brooklyn Museum hide painting for Euro-American tourists who visited the reservation. It might explain why there is a scene of buffalo hunting, a scene which was thought to be desirable to tourists. Its production helped to support him after the Shoshone were moved to the reservation. With newly established trade markets and the influx of new materials, artists like Cotsiogo sometimes produced work that helped support themselves and their families.
A Shoshone encampment in the Wind River Mountains, Wyoming, between 1880 and 1910, 12 x 17 cm (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)
Subject matter
Cotsiogo’s Brooklyn Museum hide painting combines history with the contemporary moment. It displays elements of several different dances, including the important and sacred Sun Dance and non-religious Wolf Dance (tdsayuge or tásayùge). The Sun Dance surrounds a not-yet-raised buffalo head between two poles (or a split tree), with an eagle above it. Men dressed in feather bustles and headdresses—not to be confused with feathered war bonnets—dance around the poles, which represents the Grass Dance. With their arms akimbo and their bodies bent, Cotsiogo shows these men in motion. Men participating in this sacred, social ceremony refrained from eating or drinking.
Sun and Wolf Dances (detail), Attributed to Cotsiogo, Hide painting of the Sun Dance, c. 1890–1900 (Eastern Shoshone), elk hide and pigment, 205.7 x 198.1 cm (Brooklyn Museum, New York)
The Sun Dance was intended to honor the Creator Deity for the earth’s bounty and to ensure this bounty continued. It was a sacred ceremony that tourists and anthropologists often witnessed. However, the United States government deemed it unacceptable and forbid it. The U.S. government outlawed the Sun Dance until 1935, in an effort to compel Native Americans to abandon their traditional ways. Cotsiogo likely included references to the Sun Dance because he knew tourist consumers would find the scene attractive, but he modified the scene combining it with the acceptable Wolf Dance, perhaps to avoid potential ramifications. The Wolf Dance eventually transformed into the Grass Dance which is performed today during powwows.
A woman rest near a fire and a man on horses hunt buffaloes (detail), Attributed to Cotsiogo, Hide painting of the Sun Dance, c. 1890–1900 (Eastern Shoshone), elk hide and pigment, 205.7 x 198.1 cm (Brooklyn Museum, New York)
The hide painting also shows activities of daily life. Surrounding the Sun Dance, women rest near a fire and more men on horses hunt buffaloes. Warriors on horses are also shown returning to camp, which was celebrated with the Wolf Dance. Two tipis represent the camp, with the warriors appearing between them. Some of the warriors wear feathered war bonnets made of eagle feathers. These headdresses communicated a warrior acted bravely in battle, and so they functioned as symbols of honor and power. Not just anyone could wear a feathered war bonnet!
Warriors returning to camp (detail), Attributed to Cotsiogo, Hide painting of the Sun Dance, c. 1890–1900 (Eastern Shoshone), elk hide and pigment, 205.7 x 198.1 cm (Brooklyn Museum, New York)
Cotsiogo shows the warriors hunting with bows and arrows while riding, but in reality Shoshone men had used rifles for some time. Horses were introduced to the Southwest by Spaniards. Horses made their way to some Plains nations through trade with others like the Ute, Navajo, and Apache. By the mid-18th century, horses had become an important part of Plains culture.
Preparing a buffalo (detail), Attributed to Cotsiogo, Hide painting of the Sun Dance, c. 1890–1900 (Eastern Shoshone), elk hide and pigment, 205.7 x 198.1 cm (Brooklyn Museum, New York)
Buffaloes were sacred to the Plains people because the animals were essential to their livelihood. Some scenes display individuals skinning buffaloes and separating the animals’ body parts into piles. All parts of the buffalo were used, as it was considered a way of honoring this sacred animal. At the time Cotsiogo painted this hide, most buffalo had either been killed or displaced. Buffaloes had largely disappeared from this area by the 1880s. Cotsiogo’s hide thus marks past events and deeds rather than events occurring at the time it was created.
Editor’s note on the contemporary situation on the Wind River Reservation:
According to The New York Times, the 14,000 current residents of the Wind River Reservation suffer a crime rate more than five times the national average, a life expectancy of only 49 years, and an unemployment rate that may be above 80 percent.
by Dr. Jill Ahlberg Yohe, Minneapolis Institute of Art and Dr. Steven Zucker
Henry Oscar One Bull/Tȟatȟáŋka Waŋžíla (Hunkpapa Lakota), Custer’s War, c. 1900, 39 x 69 inches (irregular), pigments, ink on muslin (Minneapolis Institute of Art)
Source: Dr. Jill Ahlberg Yohe, Minneapolis Institute of Art and Dr. Steven Zucker, “Henry Oscar One Bull, Custer’s War,” in Smarthistory, December 16, 2018, accessed July 16, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/one-bull-custers-war/.
Myths of the Cherokee
Cherokee (Native America)
Compiled by James Mooney (1861-1921 C.E.)
Published in 1900 C.E.
The Cherokee are a group of North American Indians of Iroquoian lineage and were one of the largest tribes when Europeans colonized the Americas. It is estimated that in 1650 about 22,500 Cherokee Indians controlled approximately 40,000 square miles of the Appalachian Mountains, the areas that are now northern Georgia, east- ern Tennessee, and the western Carolinas. A typical Cherokee town had between 30 and 60 log-cabin houses and a council house; they used deer, bear, and elk for meat and clothing, made baskets and pottery, and grew corn, beans, and squash. The Spanish, French, and English all attempted to colonize parts of the Southeast of North America, including Cherokee territory. After 1800, the Cherokee quickly assimilated aspects of American settler culture in such areas as farming, weaving, and home building; they also developed their own government, modeling it after the United States, and invented a writing system for the Cherokee language. Despite their adaptive efforts, however, the Indian Removal Act of 1830 under President Andrew Jackson forcibly moved Cherokee Indians to Oklahoma; about 4,000 Cherokee died on the Tail of Tears, during the fall and winter of 1838–39. As of the twenty-first century, there are more than 730,000 individuals of Cherokee descent living in the United States. Myths of the Cherokee was compiled by James Moony, an early twentieth-century ethnographer who lived with the Cherokee for several years, but these stories can be traced back to the time of or even before the arrival of the Europeans.
Written by Kyounghye Kwon
Selections from Myths of the Cherokee
Compiled by James Mooney
License: Public Domain
Cherokee Cosmogonic Myths
1. How the World Was Made
The earth is a great island floating in a sea of water, and suspended at each of the four cardinal points by a cord hang- ing down from the sky vault, which is of solid rock. When the world grows old and worn out, the people will die and the cords will break and let the earth sink down into the ocean, and all will be water again. The Indians are afraid of this.
When all was water, the animals were above in Gälûñ’lätï, beyond the arch; but it was very much crowded, and they were wanting more room. They wondered what was below the water, and at last Dâyuni’sï, “Beaver’s Grandchild,” the little Water-beetle, offered to go and see if it could learn. It darted in every direction over the surface of the water, but could find no firm place to rest. Then it dived to the bottom and came up with some soft mud, which began to grow and spread on every side until it became the island which we call the earth. It was afterward fastened to the sky with four cords, but no one remembers who did this.
At first the earth was flat and very soft and wet. The an- imals were anxious to get down, and sent out different birds to see if it was yet dry, but they found no place to alight and came back again to Gälûñ’lätï. At last it seemed to be time, and they sent out the Buzzard and told him to go and make ready for them. This was the Great Buzzard, the father of all the buzzards we see now. He flew all over the earth, low down near the ground, and it was still soft. When he reached the Cherokee country, he was very tired, and his wings began to flap and strike the ground, and wherever they struck the earth there was a valley, and where they turned up again there was a mountain. When the animals above saw this, they were afraid that the whole world would be mountains, so they called him back, but the Cherokee country remains full of mountains to this day.
When the earth was dry and the animals came down, it was still dark, so they got the sun and set it in a track to go every day across the island from east to west, just overhead. It was too hot this way, and Tsiska’gïlï’, the Red Crawfish, had his shell scorched a bright red, so that his meat was spoiled; and the Cherokee do not eat it. The conjurers put the sun another hand-breadth higher in the air, but it was still too hot. They raised it another time, and another, until it was seven handbreadths high and just under the sky arch. Then it was right, and they left it so. This is why the conjurers call the highest place Gûlkwâ’gine Di’gälûñ’lätiyûñ’, “the seventh height,” because it is seven hand-breadths above the earth. Every day the sun goes along under this arch, and returns at night on the upper side to the starting place.
There is another world under this, and it is like ours in everything—animals, plants, and people—save that the seasons are different. The streams that come down from the mountains are the trails by which we reach this under- world, and the springs at their heads are the doorways by which we enter it, but to do this, one must fast and go to water and have one of the underground people for a guide. We know that the seasons in the underworld are differ- ent from ours, because the water in the springs is always warmer in winter and cooler in summer than the outer air.
When the animals and plants were first made—we do not know by whom—they were told to watch and keep awake for seven nights, just as young men now fast and keep awake when they pray to their medicine. They tried to do this, and nearly all were awake through the first night, but the next night several dropped off to sleep, and the third night others were asleep, and then others, until, on the seventh night, of all the animals only the owl, the panther, and one or two more were still awake. To these were given the power to see and to go about in the dark, and to make prey of the birds and animals which must sleep at night. Of the trees only the cedar, the pine, the spruce, the holly, and the laurel were awake to the end, and to them it was given to be always green and to be greatest for medi- cine, but to the others it was said: “Because you have not endured to the end you shall lose your, hair every winter.”
Men came after the animals and plants. At first there were only a brother and sister until he struck her with a fish and told her to multiply, and so it was. In seven days a child was born to her, and thereafter every seven days another, and they increased very fast until there was danger that the world could not keep them. Then it was made that a woman should have only one child in a year, and it has been so ever since.
2. The First Fire
In the beginning there was no fire, and the world was cold, until the Thunders (Ani’-Hyûñ’tïkwälâ’skï), who lived up in Gälûñ’lätï, sent their lightning and put fire into the bottom of a hollow sycamore tree which grew on an island. The animals knew it was there, because they could see the smoke coming out at the top, but they could not get to it on account of the water, so they held a council to decide what to do. This was a long time ago.
Every animal that could fly or swim was anxious to go after the fire. The Raven offered, and because he was so large and strong they thought he could surely do the work, so he was sent first. He flew high and far across the water and alighted on the sycamore tree, but while he was wondering what to do next, the heat had scorched all his feathers black, and he was frightened and came back without the fire. The little Screech-owl (Wa’huhu’) volunteered to go, and reached the place safely, but while he was looking down into the hollow tree a blast of hot air came up and nearly burned out his eves. He managed to fly home as best he could, but it was a long time before he could see well, and his eyes are red to this day. Then the Hooting Owl (U’guku’) and the Horned Owl (Tskïlï’) went, but by the time they got to the hollow tree the fire was burning so fiercely that the smoke nearly blinded them, and the ashes carried up by the wind made white rings about their eyes. They had to come home again without the fire, but with all their rubbing they were never able to get rid of the white rings.
Now no more of the birds would venture, and so the little Uksu’hï snake, the black racer, said he would go through the water and bring back some fire. He swam across to the island and crawled through the grass to the tree, and went in by a small hole at the bottom. The heat and smoke were too much for him, too, and after dodging about blindly over the hot ashes until he was almost on fire himself he managed by good luck to get out again at the same hole, but his body had been scorched black, and he has ever since had the habit of darting and doubling on his track as if trying to escape from close quarters. He came back, and the great blacksnake, Gûle’gï, “The Climber,” offered to go for fire. He swam over to the island and climbed up the tree on the outside, as the blacksnake always does, but when he put his head down into the hole the smoke choked him so that he fell into the burning stump, and before he could climb out again he was as black as the Uksu’hï.
Now they held another council, for still there was no fire, and the world was cold, but birds, snakes, and four-footed animals, all had some excuse for not going, because they were all afraid to venture near the burning sycamore, until at last Känäne’skï Amai’yëhï (the Water Spider) said she would go. This is not the water spider that looks like a mosquito, but the other one, with black downy hair and red stripes on her body. She can run on top of the water or dive to the bottom, so there would be no trouble to get over to the island, but the question was, ‘How could she bring back the fire?’ “I’ll manage that,” said the Water Spider; so she spun a thread from her body and wove it into a tusti bowl, which she fastened on her back. Then she crossed over to the island and through the grass to where the fire was still burning. She put one little coal of fire into her bowl, and came back with it, and ever since we have had fire, and the Water Spider still keeps her tusti bowl.
3. Kana’tï and Selu: The Origin of Game and Corn
When I was a boy this is what the old men told me they had heard when they were boys.
Long years ago, soon after the world was made, a hunter and his wife lived at Pilot Knob with their only child, a little boy. The father’s name was Kana’tï (The Lucky Hunter), and his wife was called Selu (Corn). No matter when Kana’tï went into the wood, he never failed to bring back a load of game, which his wife would cut up and prepare, washing off the blood from the meat in the river near the house. The little boy used to play down by the river every day, and one morning the old people thought they heard laughing and talking in the bushes as though there were two children there. When the boy came home at night his parents asked him who had been playing with him all day. “He comes out of the water,” said the boy, “and he calls himself my elder brother. He says his mother was cruel to him and threw him into the river.” Then they knew that the strange boy had sprung from the blood of the game which Selu had washed off at the river’s edge.
Every day when the little boy went out to play the other would join him, but as he always went back again into the water the old people never had a chance to see him. At last one evening Kana’tï said to his son, “Tomorrow, when the other boy comes to play, get him to wrestle with you, and when you have your arms around him hold on to him and call for us.” The boy promised to do as he was told, so the next day as soon as his playmate appeared he challenged him to a wrestling match. The other agreed at once, but as soon as they had their arms around each oth- er, Kana’tï’s boy began to scream for his father. The old folks at once came running down, and as soon as the Wild Boy saw them he struggled to free himself and cried out, “Let me go; you threw me away!” but his brother held on until the parents reached the spot, when they seized the Wild Boy and took him home with them. They kept him in the house until they had tamed him, but he was always wild and artful in his disposition, and was the leader of his brother in every mischief. It was not long until the old people discovered that he had magic powers, and they called him I’näge-utäsûñ’hï (He-who-grew-up-wild).
Whenever Kana’tï went into the mountains he always brought back a fat buck or doe, or maybe a couple of tur- keys. One day the Wild Boy said to his brother, “I wonder where our father gets all that game; let’s follow him next time and find out.” A few days afterward Kana’tï took a bow and some feathers in his hand and started off toward the west. The boys waited a little while and then went after him, keeping out of sight until they saw him go into a swamp where there were a great many of the small reeds that hunters use to make arrow shafts. Then the Wild Boy changed himself into a puff of birds down, which the wind took up and carried until it alighted upon Kana’tï’s shoulder just as he entered the swamp, but Kana’tï’ knew nothing about it. The old man cut reeds, fitted the feath- ers to them and made some arrows, and the Wild Boy—in his other shape—thought, “I wonder what those things are for?” When Kana’tï had his arrows finished he came out of the swamp and went on again. The wind blew the down from his shoulder, and it fell in the woods, when the Wild Boy took his right shape again and went back and told his brother what he had seen. Keeping out of sight of their father, they followed him up the mountain until he stopped at a certain place and lifted a large rock. At once there ran out a buck, which Kana’tï shot, and then lifting it upon his back he started for home again. “Oho!” exclaimed the boys, “he keeps all the deer shut up in that hole, and whenever he wants meat he just lets one out and kills it with those things he made in the swamp.” They hurried and reached home before their father, who had the heavy deer to carry, and he never knew that they had followed.
A few days later the boys went back to the swamp, cut some reeds, and made seven arrows and then started up the mountain to where their father kept the game. When they got to the place, they raised the rock and a deer came running out. Just as they drew back to shoot it, another came out, and then another and another, until the boys got confused and forgot what they were about. In those days all the deer had their tails hanging down like other ani- mals, but as a buck was running past the Wild Boy struck its tail with his arrow so that it pointed upward. The boys thought this good sport, and when the next one ran past the Wild Boy struck its tail so that it stood straight up, and his brother struck the next one so hard with his arrow that the deer’s tail was almost curled over his back. The deer carries his tail this way ever since. The deer came running past until the last one had come out of the hole and es- caped into the forest. Then came droves of raccoons, rabbits, and all the other four-footed animals-all but the bear, because there was no bear then. Last came great flocks of turkeys, pigeons, and partridges that darkened the air like a cloud and made such a noise with their wings that Kana’tï, sitting at home, heard the sound like distant thunder on the mountains and said to himself, “My bad boys have got into trouble; I must go and see what they are doing.”
So he went up the mountain, and when he came to the place where he kept the game he found the two boys standing by the rock, and all the birds and animals were gone. Kana’tï was furious, but without saying a word he went down into the cave and kicked the covers off four jars in one corner, when out swarmed bedbugs, fleas, lice, and gnats, and got all over the boys. They screamed with pain and fright and tried to beat off the insects, but the thousands of vermin crawled over them and bit and stung them until both dropped down nearly dead. Kana’tï stood looking on until he thought they had been punished enough, when he knocked off the vermin and made the boys a talk. “Now, you rascals,” said he, “you have always had plenty to eat and never had to work for it. Whenever you were hungry all I had to do was to come up here and get a deer or a turkey and bring it home for your mother to cook; but now you have let out all the animals, and after this when you want a deer to eat you will have to hunt all over the woods for it, and then maybe not find one. Go home now to your mother, while I see if I can find some- thing to eat for supper.”
When the boys got home again they were very tired and hungry and asked their mother for something to eat. “There is no meat,” said Selu, “but wait a little while and I’ll get you something.” So she took a basket and started out to the storehouse. This storehouse was built upon poles high up from the ground, to keep it out of the reach of ani- mals, and there was a ladder to climb up by, and one door, but no other opening. Every day when Selu got ready to cook the dinner she would go out to the storehouse with a basket and bring it back full of corn and beans. The boys had never been inside the storehouse, so wondered where all the corn and beans could come from, as the house was not a very large one; so as soon as Selu went out of the door the Wild Boy said to his brother, “Let’s go and see what she does.” They ran around and climbed up at the back of the storehouse and pulled out a piece of clay from between the logs, so that they could look in. There they saw Selu standing in the middle of the room with the basket in front of her on the floor. Leaning over the basket, she rubbed her stomach—so—and the basket was half full of corn. Then she rubbed under her armpits—so—and the basket was full to the top with beans. The boys looked at each other and said, “This will never do; our mother is a witch. If we eat any of that it will poison us. We must kill her.”
When the boys came back into the house, she knew their thoughts before they spoke. “So you are going to kill me?” said Selu. “Yes,” said the boys, “you are a witch.” “Well,” said their mother, “when you have killed me, clear a large piece of ground in front of the house and drag my body seven times around the circle. Then drag me seven times over the ground inside the circle, and stay up all night and watch, and in the morning you will have plenty of corn.” The boys killed her with their clubs, and cut off her head and put it up on the roof of the house with her face turned to the west, and told her to look for her husband. Then they set to work to clear the ground in front of the house, but instead of clearing the whole piece they cleared only seven little spots. This is why corn now grows only in a few places instead of over the whole world. They dragged the body of Selu around the circle, and wherever her blood fell on the ground the corn sprang up. But instead of dragging her body seven times across the ground they dragged it over only twice, which is the reason the Indians still work their crop but twice. The two brothers sat up and watched their corn all night, and in the morning it was full grown and ripe.
When Kana’tï came home at last, he looked around, but could not see Selu anywhere, and asked the boys where was their mother. “She was a witch, and we killed her,” said the boys; “there is her head up there on top of the house.” When he saw his wife’s head on the roof, he was very angry, and said, “I won’t stay with you any longer; I am going to the Wolf people.” So he started off, but before he had gone far the Wild Boy changed himself again to a tuft of down, which fell on Kana’tï’s shoulder. When Kana’tï reached the settlement of the Wolf people, they were holding a council in the townhouse. He went in and sat down with the tuft of bird’s down on his shoulder, but he never noticed it. When the Wolf chief asked him his business, he said: “I have two bad boys at home, and I want you to go in seven days from now and play ball against them.” Although Kana’tï spoke as though he wanted them to play a game of ball, the Wolves knew that he meant for them to go and kill the two boys. They promised to go. Then the bird’s down blew off from Kana’tï’s shoulder, and the smoke carried it up through the hole in the roof of the town- house. When it came down on the ground outside, the Wild Boy took his right shape again and went home and told his brother all that he had heard in the townhouse. But when Kana’tï left the Wolf people, he did not return home, but went on farther.
The boys then began to get ready for the Wolves, and the Wild Boy—the magician—told his brother what to do. They ran around the house in a wide circle until they had made a trail all around it excepting on the side from which the Wolves would come, where they left a small open space. Then they made four large bundles of arrows and placed them at four different points on the outside of the circle, after which they hid themselves in the woods and waited for the Wolves. In a day or two a whole party of Wolves came and surrounded the house to kill the boys. The Wolves did not notice the trail around the house, because they came in where the boys had left the opening, but the moment they went inside the circle the trail changed to a high brush fence and shut them in. Then the boys on the outside took their arrows and began shooting them down, and as the Wolves could not jump over the fence they were all killed, excepting a few that escaped through the opening into a great swamp close by. The boys ran around the swamp, and a circle of fire sprang up in their tracks and set fire to the grass and bushes and burned up nearly all the other wolves. Only two or three got away, and from these have come all the wolves that are now in the world.
Soon afterward some strangers from a distance, who had heard that the brothers had a wonderful grain from which they made bread, came to ask for some, for none but Selu and her family had ever known corn before. The boys gave them seven grains of corn, which they told them to plant the next night on their way home, sitting up all night to watch the corn, which would have seven ripe ears in the morning. These they were to plant the next night and watch in the same way, and so on every night until they reached home, when they would have corn enough to supply the whole people. The strangers lived seven days’ journey away. They took the seven grains and watched all through the darkness until morning, when they saw seven tall stalks, each stalk bearing a ripened ear. They gathered the ears and went on their way. The next night they planted all their corn, and guarded it as before until daybreak, when they found an abundant increase. But the way was long and the sun was hot, and the people grew tired. On the last night before reaching home they fell asleep, and in the morning the corn they had planted had not even sprouted. They brought with them to their settlement what corn they had left and planted it, and with care and attention were able to raise a crop. But ever since the corn must be watched and tended through half the year, which before would grow and ripen in a night. As Kana’tï did not return, the boys at last concluded to go and find him. The Wild Boy took a gaming wheel and rolled it toward the Darkening land. In a little while the wheel came rolling back, and the boys knew their father was not there. He rolled it to the south and, to the north, and each time the wheel came back to him, and they knew their father was not there. Then he rolled it toward the Sunland, and it did not return. “Our father is there,” said the Wild Boy, “let us go and find him.” So the two brothers set off toward the east, and after traveling a long time they came upon Kana’tï walking along with a little dog by his side. “You bad boys,” said their father, “have you come here?” “Yes,” they answered, “We always accomplish what we start out to do—we are men.” “This dog overtook me four days ago,” then said Kana’tï, but the boys knew that the dog was the wheel which they had sent after him to find him. “Well,” said Kana’tï, “as you have found me, we may as well travel together, but I shall take the lead.”
Soon they came to a swamp, and Kana’tï told them there was something dangerous there and they must keep away from it. He went on ahead, but as soon as he was out of sight the Wild Boy said to his brother, “Come and let us see what is in the swamp.” They went in together, and in the middle of the swamp they found a large panther asleep. The Wild Boy got out an arrow and shot the panther in the side of the head. The panther turned his head and the other boy shot him on that side. He turned his head away again and the two brothers shot together—tust, tust, tust! But the panther was not hurt by the arrows and paid no more attention to the boys. They came out of the swamp and soon overtook Kana’tï, who was waiting for them. “Did you find it?” asked Kana’tï. “Yes,” said the boys, “We found it, but it never hurt us. We are men.” Kana’tï was surprised, but said nothing, and they went on again.
After a while he turned to them and said, “Now you must be careful. We are coming to a tribe called the Anäda’dûñtäskï. (“Roasters,” i.e., cannibals), and if they get you they will put you into a pot and feast on you.” Then he went on ahead. Soon the boys came to a tree which had been struck by lightning, and the Wild Boy directed his brother to gather some of the splinters from the tree and told him what to do with them. In a little while they came to the settlement of the cannibals, who, as soon as they saw the boys, came running out crying, “Good, here are two nice fat strangers. Now we’ll have a grand feast!” They caught the boys and dragged them into the townhouse, and sent word to all the people of the settlement to come to the feast. They made up a great fire, put water into a large pot and set it to boiling, and then seized the Wild Boy and put him down into it. His brother was not in the least frightened and made no attempt to escape, but quietly knelt down and began putting the splinters into the fire, as if to make it burn better. When the cannibals thought the meat was about ready they lifted the pot from the fire, and that instant a blinding light filled the townhouse, and the lightning began to dart from one side to the other, striking down the cannibals until not one of them was left alive. Then the lightning went up through the smokehole, and the next moment there were the two boys standing outside the townhouse as though nothing had happened. They went on and soon met Kana’tï, who seemed much surprised to see them, and said, “What! Are you here again?” “O, yes, we never give up. We are great men!” “What did the cannibals do to you?” “We met them and they brought us to their townhouse, but they never hurt us.” Kana’tï said nothing more, and they went on.
* * * * * * *
He soon got out of sight of the boys, but they kept on until they came to the end of the world, where the sun comes out. The sky was just coming down when they got there, but they waited until it went up again, and then they went through and climbed up on the other side. There they found Kana’tï and Selu sitting together. The old folk received them kindly and were glad to see them, telling them they might stay there a while, but then they must go to live where the sun goes down. The boys stayed with their parents seven days and then went on toward the Dark- ening land, where they are now. We call them Anisga’ya Tsunsdi’ (The Little Men), and when they talk to each other we hear low rolling thunder in the west.
After Kana’tï’s boys had let the deer out from the cave where their father used to keep them, the hunters tramped about in the woods for a long time without finding any game, so that the people were very hungry. At last they heard that the Thunder Boys were now living in the far west, beyond the sun door, and that if they were sent for they could bring back the game. So they sent messengers for them, and the boys came and sat down in the mid- dle of the townhouse and began to sing.
At the first song there was a roaring sound like a strong wind in the northwest, and it grew louder and nearer as the boys sang on, until at the seventh song a whole herd of deer, led by a large buck, came out from the woods.
The boys had told the people to be ready with their bows and arrows, and when the song was ended and all the deer were close around the townhouse, the hunters shot into them and killed as many as they needed before the herd could get back into the timber.
Then the Thunder Boys went back to the Darkening land, but before they left they taught the people the seven songs with which to call up the deer. It all happened so long ago that the songs are now forgotten—all but two, which the hunters still sing whenever they go after deer.
Wahnenauhi Version
After the world had been brought up from under the water, “They then made a man and a woman and led them around the edge of the island. On arriving at the starting place they planted some corn, and then told the man and woman to go around the way they had been led. This they did, and on returning they found the corn up and grow- ing nicely. They were then told to continue the circuit. Each trip consumed more time. At last the corn was ripe and ready for use.”
* * * * * * *
Another story is told of how sin came into the world. A man and a woman reared a large family of children in comfort and plenty, with very little trouble about providing food for them. Every morning the father went forth and very soon returned bringing with him a deer, or a turkey, or some other animal or fowl. At the same time the mother went out and soon returned with a large basket filled with ears of corn which she shelled and pounded in a mortar, thus making meal for bread.
When the children grew up, seeing with what apparent ease food was provided for them, they talked to each other about it, wondering that they never saw such things as their parents brought in. At last, one proposed to watch when their parents went out and to follow them.
Accordingly, the next morning the plan was carried out. Those who followed the father saw him stop at a short distance from the cabin and turn over a large stone that appeared to be carelessly leaned against another. On looking closely they saw an entrance to a large cave, and in it were many different kinds of animals and birds, such as their father had sometimes brought in for food. The man standing at the entrance called a deer, which was lying at some distance and back of some other animals. It rose immediately as it heard the call and came close up to him. He picked it up, closed the mouth of the cave, and returned, not once seeming to suspect what his sons had done.
When the old man was fairly out of sight, his sons, rejoicing how they had outwitted him, left their hiding place and went to the cave, saying they would show the old folks that they, too, could bring in something. They moved the stone away, though it was very heavy and they were obliged to use all their united strength. When the cave was opened, the animals, instead of waiting to be picked up, all made a rush for the entrance, and leaping past the frightened and bewildered boys, scattered in all directions and disappeared in the wilderness, while the guilty offenders could do nothing but gaze in stupefied amazement as they saw them escape. There were animals of all kinds, large and small—buffalo, deer, elk, antelope, raccoons, and squirrels; even catamounts and panthers, wolves and foxes, and many others, all fleeing together. At the same time birds of every kind were seen emerging from the opening, all in the same wild confusion as the quadrupeds—turkeys, geese, swans, ducks, quails, eagles, hawks, and owls.
Those who followed the mother saw her enter a small cabin, which they had never seen before, and close the door. The culprits found a small crack through which they could peer. They saw the woman place a basket on the ground and standing over it shake herself vigorously, jumping up and down—when lo and behold!—large ears of corn began to fall into the basket. When it was well filled she took it up and, placing it on her head, came out, fastened the door, and prepared their breakfast as usual. When the meal had been finished in silence the man spoke to his children, telling them that he was aware of what they had done; that now he must die and they would be obliged to provide for themselves. He made bows and arrows for them, then sent them to hunt for the animals which they had turned loose.
Then the mother told them that as they had found out her secret she could do nothing more for them; that she would die, and they must drag her body around over the ground; that wherever her body was dragged corn would come up. Of this they were to make their bread. She told them that they must always save some for seed and plant every year.
4. Origin of Disease and Medicine
In the old days the beasts, birds, fishes, insects, and plants could all talk, and they and the people lived togeth- er in peace and friendship. But as time went on the people increased so rapidly that their settlements spread over the whole earth, and the poor animals found themselves beginning to be cramped for room. This was bad enough, but to make it worse Man invented bows, knives, blowguns, spears, and hooks, and began to slaughter the larger animals, birds, and fishes for their flesh or their skins, while the smaller creatures, such as the frogs and worms, were crushed and trodden upon without thought, out of pure carelessness or contempt. So the animals resolved to consult upon measures for their common safety.
The Bears were the first to meet in council in their townhouse under Kuwâ’hï mountain, the “Mulberry place,” and the old White Bear chief presided. After each in turn had complained of the way in which Man killed their friends, ate their flesh, and used their skins for his own purposes, it was decided to begin war at once against him. Someone asked what weapons Man used to destroy them. “Bows and arrows, of course,” cried all the Bears in cho- rus. “And what are they made of?” was the next question. “The bow of wood, and the string of our entrails,” replied one of the Bears. It was then proposed that they make a bow and some arrows and see if they, could not use the same weapons against Man himself. So one Bear got a nice piece of locust wood and another sacrificed himself for the good of the rest in order to furnish a piece of his entrails for the string. But when everything was ready and the first Bear stepped up to make the trial, it was found that in letting the arrow fly after drawing back the bow, his long claws caught the string and spoiled the shot. This was annoying, but someone suggested that they might trim his claws, which was accordingly done, and on a second trial it was found that the arrow went straight to the mark. But here the chief, the old White Bear, objected, saying it was necessary that they should have long claws in order to be able to climb trees. “One of us has already died to furnish the bowstring, and if we now cut off our claws we must all starve together. It is better to trust to the teeth and claws that nature gave us, for it is plain that man’s weapons were not intended for us.”
No one could think of any better plan, so the old chief dismissed the council and the Bears dispersed to the woods and thickets without having concerted any way to prevent the increase of the human race. Had the result of the council been otherwise, we should now be at war with the Bears, but as it is, the hunter does not even ask the Bear’s pardon when he kills one.
The Deer next held a council under their chief, the Little Deer, and after some talk decided to send rheumatism to every hunter who should kill one of them unless he took care to ask their pardon for the offense. They sent notice of their decision to the nearest settlement of Indians and told them at the same time what to do when necessity forced them to kill one of the Deer tribe. Now, whenever the hunter shoots a Deer, the Little Deer, who is swift as the wind and can not be wounded, runs quickly up to the spot and, bending over the blood-stains, asks the spirit of the Deer if it has heard the prayer of the hunter for pardon. If the reply be “Yes,” all is well, and the Little Deer goes on his way; but if the reply be “No,” he follows on the trail of the hunter, guided by the drops of blood on the ground, until he arrives at his cabin in the settlement, when the Little Deer enters invisibly and strikes the hunter with rheumatism, so that he becomes at once a helpless cripple. No hunter who has regard for his health ever fails to ask pardon of the Deer for killing it, although some hunters who have not learned the prayer may try to turn aside the Little Deer from his pursuit by building a fire behind them in the trail.
Next came the Fishes and Reptiles, who had their own complaints against Man. They held their council to- gether and determined to make their victims dream of snakes twining about them in slimy folds and blowing foul breath in their faces, or to make them dream of eating raw or decaying fish, so that they would lose appetite, sicken, and die. This is why people dream about snakes and fish.
Finally the Birds, Insects, and smaller animals came together for the same purpose, and the Grubworm was chief of the council. It was decided that each in turn should give an opinion, and then they would vote on the ques- tion as to whether or not Man was guilty. Seven votes should be enough to condemn him. One after another de- nounced Man’s cruelty and injustice toward the other animals and voted in favor of his death. The Frog spoke first, saying: “We must do something to check the increase of the race, or people will become so numerous that we shall be crowded from off the earth. See how they have kicked me about because I’m ugly, as they say, until my back is covered with sores;” and here he showed the spots on his skin. Next came the Bird—no one remembers now which one it was—who condemned Man “because he burns my feet off,” meaning the way in which the hunter barbe- cues birds by impaling them on a stick set over the fire, so that their feathers and tender feet are singed off. Others followed in the same strain. The Ground-squirrel alone ventured to say a good word for Man, who seldom hurt him because he was so small, but this made the others so angry that they fell upon the Ground-squirrel and tore him with their claws, and the stripes are on his back to this day.
They began then to devise and name so many new diseases, one after another, that had not their invention at last failed them, no one of the human race would have been able to survive. The Grubworm grew constant- ly more pleased as the name of each disease was called off, until at last they reached the end of the list, when someone proposed to make menstruation sometimes fatal to women. On this he rose-up in his place and cried: “Wadâñ’! [Thanks!] I’m glad some more of them will die, for they are getting so thick that they tread on me.” The thought fairly made him shake with joy, so that he fell over backward and could not get on his feet again, but had to wriggle off on his back, as the Grubworm has done ever since.
When the Plants, who were friendly to Man, heard what had been done by the animals, they determined to defeat the latter’s evil designs. Each Tree, Shrub, and Herb, down even to the Grasses and Mosses, agreed to furnish a cure for some one of the diseases named, and each said: “I shall appear to help Man when he calls upon me in his need.” Thus came medicine; and the plants, every one of which has its use if we only knew it, furnish the remedy to counteract the evil wrought by the revengeful animals. Even weeds were made for some good purpose, which we must find out for ourselves. When the doctor does not know what medicine to use for a sick man the spirit of the plant tells him.
5. The Daughter of the Sun
The Sun lived on the other side of the sky vault, but her daughter lived in the middle of the sky, directly above the earth, and every day as the Sun was climbing along the sky arch to the west she used to stop at her daughter’s house for dinner.
Now, the Sun hated the people on the earth, because they could never look straight at her without screwing up their faces. She said to her brother, the Moon, “My grandchildren are ugly; they grin all over their faces when they look at me.” But the Moon said, “I like my younger brothers; I think they are very handsome” —because they always smiled pleasantly when they saw him in the sky at night, for his rays were milder.
The Sun was jealous and planned to kill all the people, so every day when she got near her daughter’s house she sent down such sultry rays that there was a great fever and the people died by hundreds, until everyone had lost some friend and there was fear that no one would be left. They went for help to the Little Men, who said the only way to save themselves was to kill the Sun.
The Little Men made medicine and changed two men to snakes, the Spreading-adder and the Copperhead, and sent them to watch near the door of the daughter of the Sun to bite the old Sun when she came next day. They went together and bid near the house until the Sun came, but when the Spreading-adder was about to spring, the bright light blinded him and he could only spit out yellow slime, as he does to this day when he tries to bite. She called him a nasty thing and went by into the house, and the Copperhead crawled off without trying to do anything.
So the people still died from the heat, and they went to the Little Men a second time for help. The Little Men made medicine again and changed one man into the great Uktena and another into the Rattlesnake and sent them to watch near the house and kill the old Sun when she came for dinner. They made the Uktena very large, with horns on his head, and everyone thought he would be sure to do the work, but the Rattle- snake was so quick and eager that he got ahead and coiled up just outside the house, and when the Sun’s daughter opened the door to look out for her mother, he sprang up and bit her and she fell dead in the doorway. He forgot to wait for the old Sun, but went back to the people, and the Uktena was so very angry that he went back, too. Since then we pray to the rattlesnake and do not kill him, because he is kind and never tries to bite if we do not disturb him. The Uktena grew angrier all the time and very dangerous, so that if he even looked at a man, that man’s family would die. After a long time the people held a council and decided that he was too dangerous to be with them, so they sent him up to Gälûñ’lätï, and he is there now. The Spreading-adder, the Copperhead, the Rattlesnake, and the Uktena were all men.
When the Sun found her daughter dead, she went into the house and grieved, and the people did not die any more, but now the world was dark all the time, because the Sun would not come out. They went again to the Little Men, and these told them that if they wanted the Sun to come out again they must bring back her daughter from Tsûsginâ’ï, the Ghost country, in Us’ûñhi’yï, the Darkening land in the west. They chose seven men to go, and gave each a sourwood rod a hand-breadth long. The Little Men told them they must take a box with them, and when they got to Tsûsginâ’ï they would find all the ghosts at a dance. They must stand outside the circle, and when the young woman passed in the dance they must strike her with the rods and she would fall to the ground. Then they must put her into the box and bring her back to her mother, but they must be very sure not to open the box, even a little way, until they were home again.
They took the rods and a box and traveled seven days to the west until they came to the Darkening land. There were a great many people there, and they were having a dance just as if they were at home in the settlements. The young woman was in the outside circle, and as she swung around to where the seven men were standing, one struck her with his rod and she turned her head and saw him. As she came around the second time another touched her with his rod, and then another and another, until at the seventh round she fell out of the ring, and they put her into the box and closed the lid fast. The other ghosts seemed never to notice what had happened.
They took up the box and started home toward the east. In a little while the girl came to life again and begged to be let out of the box, but they made no answer and went on. Soon she called again and said she was hungry, but still they made no answer and went on. After another while she spoke again and called for a drink and pleaded so that it was very hard to listen to her, but the men who carried the box said nothing and still went on. When at last they were very near home, she called again and begged them to raise the lid just a little, because she was smothering. They were afraid she was really dying now, so they lifted the lid a little to give her air, but as they did so there was a fluttering sound inside and something flew past them into the thicket and they heard a redbird cry, “kwish! kwish! Kwish!” in the bushes. They shut down the lid and went on again to the settlements, but when they got there and opened the box it was empty.
So we know the Redbird is the daughter of the Sun, and if the men had kept the box closed, as the Little Men told them to do, they would have brought her home safely, and we could bring back our other friends also from the Ghost country, but now when they die we can never bring them back.
The Sun had been glad when they started to the Ghost country, but when they came back without her daughter she grieved and cried, “My daughter, my daughter,” and wept until her tears made a flood upon the earth, and the people were afraid the world would be drowned. They held another council, and sent their handsomest young men and women to amuse her so that she would stop crying. They danced before the Sun and sang their best songs, but for a long time she kept her face covered and paid no attention, until at last the drummer suddenly changed the song, when she lifted up her face, and was so pleased at the sight that she forgot her grief and smiled.
6. How They Brought Back the Tobacco
In the beginning of the world, when people and animals were all the same, there was only one tobacco plant, to which they all came for their tobacco until the Dagûl`kû geese stole it and carried it far away to the south. The people were suffering without it, and there was one old woman who grew so thin and weak that everybody said she would soon die unless she could get tobacco to keep her alive.
Different animals offered to go for it, one after another, the larger ones first and then the smaller ones, but the Dagûl`kû saw and killed every one before he could get to the plant. After the others the little Mole tried to reach it by going under the ground, but the Dagûl`kû saw his track and killed him as he came out.
At last the Hummingbird offered, but the others said he was entirely too small and might as well stay at home. He begged them to let him try, so they showed him a plant in a field and told him to let them see how he would go about it. The next moment he was gone and they saw him sitting on the plant, and then in a moment he was back again, but no one had seen him going or coming, because he was so swift. “This is the way I’ll do,” said the Hum- mingbird, so they let him try.
He flew off to the east, and when he came in sight of the tobacco the Dagûl`kû were watching all about it, but they could not see him because he was so small and flew so swiftly. He darted down on the plant—tsa!—and snatched off the top with the leaves and seeds, and was off again before the Dagûl`kû knew what had happened. Before he got home with the tobacco the old woman had fainted and they thought she was dead, but he blew the smoke into her nostrils, and with a cry of “Tsâ’lû! [Tobacco!]” she opened her eyes and was alive again.
Second Version
The people had tobacco in the beginning, but they had used it all, and there was great suffering for want of it. There was one old man so old that he had to be kept alive by smoking, and as his son did not want to see him die he decided to go himself to try and get some more. The tobacco country was far in the south, with high mountains all around it, and the passes were guarded, so that it was very hard to get into it, but the young man was a conjurer and was not afraid. He traveled southward until he came to the mountains on the border of the tobacco country. Then he opened his medicine bag and took out a hummingbird skin and put it over himself like a dress. Now he was a hummingbird and flew over the mountains to the tobacco field and pulled some of the leaves and seed and put them into his medicine bag. He was so small and swift that the guards, whoever they were, did not see him, and when he had taken as much as he could carry he flew back over the mountains in the same way. Then he took off the hummingbird skin and put it into his medicine bag, and was a man again. He started home, and on his way came to a tree that had a hole in the trunk, like a door, near the first branches, and a very pretty woman was looking out from it. He stopped and tried to climb the tree, but although he was a good climber he found that he always slipped back. He put on a pair of medicine moccasins from his pouch, and then he could climb the tree, but when he reached the first branches he looked up and the hole was still as far away as before. He climbed higher and high- er, but every time he looked up the hole seemed to be farther than before, until at last he was tired and came down again. When he reached home he found his father very weak. but still alive, and one draw at the pipe made him strong again. The people planted the seed and have had tobacco ever since.
7. The Journey to the Sunrise
A long time ago several young men made up their minds to find the place where the Sun lives and see what the Sun is like. They got ready their bows and arrows, their parched corn and extra moccasins, and started out toward the east. At first they met tribes they knew, then they came to tribes they had only heard about, and at last to others of which they had never heard.
There was a tribe of root eaters and another of acorn eaters, with great piles of acorn shells near their houses. In one tribe they found a sick man dying, and were told it was the custom there when a man died to bury his wife in the same grave with him. They waited until he was dead, when they saw his friends lower the body into a great pit, so deep and dark that from the top they could not see the bottom. Then a rope was tied around the woman’s body, together with a bundle of pine knots, a lighted pine knot was put into her hand, and she was lowered into the pit to die there in the darkness after the last pine knot was burned.
The young men traveled on until they came at last to the sunrise place where the sky reaches down to the ground. They found that the sky was an arch or vault of solid rock hung above the earth and was always swinging up and down, so that when it went up there was an open place like a door between the sky and ground, and when it swung back the door was shut. The Sun came out of this door from the east and climbed along on the inside of the arch. It had a human figure, but was too bright for them to see clearly and too hot to come very near. They waited until the Sun had come out and then tried to get through while the door was still open, but just as the first one was in the doorway the rock came down and crushed him. The other six were afraid to try it, and as they were now at the end of the world they turned around and started back again, but they had traveled so far that they were old men when they reached home.
8. The Moon and the Thunders.
The Sun was a young woman and lived in the East, while her brother, the Moon. lived in the West. The girl had a lover who used to come every month in the dark of the moon to court her. He would come at night, and leave before daylight, and although she talked with him she could not see his face in the dark, and he would not tell her his name, until she was wondering all the time who it could be. At last she hit upon a plan to find out, so the next time he came, as they were sitting together in the dark of the âsi, she slyly dipped her hand into the cinders and ashes of the fireplace and rubbed it over his face, saying, “Your face is cold; you must have suffered from the wind,” and pretending to be very sorry for him, but he did not know that she had ashes on her hand. After a while he left her and went away again.
The next night when the Moon came up in the sky his face was covered with spots, and then his sister knew he was the one who had been coming to see her. He was so much ashamed to have her know it that he kept as far away as he could at the other end of the sky all the night. Ever since he tries to keep a long way behind the Sun, and when he does sometimes have to come near her in the west he makes himself as thin as a ribbon so that he can hardly be seen.
Some old people say that the moon is a ball which was thrown up against the sky in a game a long time ago. They say that two towns were playing against each other, but one of them had the best runners and had almost won the game, when the leader of the other side picked up the ball with his hand—a thing that is not allowed in the game—and tried to throw it to the goal, but it struck against the solid sky vault and was fastened there, to remind players never to cheat. When the moon looks small and pale it is because someone has handled the ball unfairly, and for this reason they formerly played only at the time of a full moon.
When the sun or moon is eclipsed it is because a great frog up in the sky is trying to swallow it. Everybody knows this, even the Creeks and the other tribes, and in the olden times, eighty or a hundred years ago, before the great med- icine men were all dead, whenever they saw the sun grow dark the people would come together and fire guns and beat the drum, and in a little while this would frighten off the great frog and the sun would be all right again.
The common people call both Sun and Moon Nûñdä, one being ‘Nûñdä that dwells in the day” and the other “Nûñdä that dwells in the night,” but the priests call the Sun Su’tälidihï’, “Six-killer,” and the Moon Ge’`yägu’ga, though nobody knows now what this word means, or why they use these names. Sometimes people ask the Moon not to let it rain or snow.
The great Thunder and his sons, the two Thunder boys, live far in the west above the sky vault. The lightning and the rainbow are their beautiful dress. The priests pray to the Thunder and call him the Red Man, because that is the brightest color of his dress. There are other Thunders that live lower down, in the cliffs and mountains, and under waterfalls, and travel on invisible bridges from one high peak to another where they have their town houses. The great Thunders above the sky are kind and helpful when we pray to them, but these others are always plotting mischief. One must not point at the rainbow, or one’s finger will swell at the lower joint.
9. What the Stars Are Like
There are different opinions about the stars. Some say they are balls of light, others say they are human, but most people say they are living creatures covered with luminous fur or feathers.
One night a hunting party camping in the mountains noticed two lights like large stars moving along the top of a distant ridge. They wondered and watched until the light disappeared on the other side. The next night, and the next, they saw the lights again moving along the ridge, and after talking over the matter decided to go on the morrow and try to learn the cause. In the morning they started out and went until they came to the ridge, where, after searching some time, they found two strange creatures about so large (making a circle with outstretched arms), with round bodies covered with fine fur or downy feathers, from which small heads stuck out like the heads of terrapins. As the breeze played upon these feathers showers of sparks flew out.
The hunters carried the strange creatures back to the camp, intending to take them home to the settlements on their return. They kept them several days and noticed that every night they would grow bright and shine like great stars, although by day they were only balls of gray fur, except when the wind stirred and made the sparks fly out. They kept very quiet, and no one thought of their trying to escape, when, on the seventh night, they suddenly rose from the ground like balls of fire and were soon above the tops of the trees. Higher and higher they went, while the wondering hunters watched, until at last they were only two bright points of light in the dark sky, and then the hunters knew that they were stars.
10. Origin of the Pleiades and the Pine
Long ago, when the world was new, there were seven boys who used to spend all their time down by the town- house playing the gatayû’stï game, rolling a stone wheel along the ground and sliding a curved stick after it to strike it. Their mothers scolded, but it did no good, so one day they collected some gatayû’stï stones and boiled them in the pot with the corn for dinner. When the boys came home hungry their mothers dipped out the stones and said, “Since you like the gatayû’stï better than the cornfield, take the stones now for your dinner.”
The boys were very angry, and went down to the townhouse, saying, “As our mothers treat us this way, let us go where we shall never trouble them anymore.” They began a dance—some say it was the Feather dance—and went round and round the townhouse, praying to the spirits to help them. At last their mothers were afraid something was wrong and went out to look for them. They saw the boys still dancing around the townhouse, and as they watched they noticed that their feet were off the earth, and that with every round they rose higher and higher in the air. They ran to get their children, but it was too late, for then, were already above the roof of the townhouse—all but one, whose mother managed to pull him down with the gatayû’stï pole, but he struck the ground with such force that he sank into it and the earth closed over him.
The other six circled higher and higher until they went up to the sky, where we see them now as the Pleiades, which the Cherokee still call Ani’tsutsä (The Boys). The people grieved long after them, but the mother whose boy had gone into the ground came every morning and every evening to cry over the spot until the earth was damp with her tears. At last a little green shoot sprouted up and grew day by day until it became the tall tree that we call now the pine, and the pine is of the same nature as the stars and holds in itself the same bright light.
11. The Milky Way
Some people in the south had a corn mill, in which they pounded the corn into meal, and several mornings when they came to fill it they noticed that some of the meal had been stolen during the night. They examined the ground and found the tracks of a dog, so the next night they watched, and when the dog came from the north and began to eat the meal out of the bowl they sprang out and whipped him. He ran off howl- ing to his home in the north, with the meal dropping from his mouth as he ran, and leaving behind a white trail where now we see the Milky Way, which the Cherokee call to this day Gi`lï’-utsûñ’stänûñ’yï, “Where the dog ran.”
12. Origin Of Strawberries
When the first man was created and a mate was given to him, they lived together very happily for a time, but then began to quarrel, until at last the woman left her husband and started off toward Nûñâgûñ’yï, the Sun land, in the east. The man followed alone and grieving, but the woman kept on steadily ahead and never looked behind, until Une’`länûñ’hï, the great Apportioner (the Sun), took pity on him and asked him if he was still angry with his wife. He said he was not, and Une’`länûñ’hï then asked him if he would like to have her back again, to which he eagerly answered yes.
So Une’`länûñ’hï caused a patch of the finest ripe huckleberries to spring up along the path in front of the wom- an, but she passed by without paying any attention to them. Farther on he put a clump of blackberries, but these also she refused to notice. Other fruits, one, two, and three, and then some trees covered with beautiful red service berries, were placed beside the path to tempt her, but she still went on until suddenly she saw in front a patch of large ripe strawberries, the first ever known. She stooped to gather a few to eat, and as she picked them she chanced to turn her face to the west, and at once the memory of her husband came back to her and she found herself unable to go on. She sat down, but the longer she waited the stronger became her desire, for her husband, and at last she gathered a bunch of the finest berries and started back along the path to give them to him. He met her kindly and they went home together.
13. The Great Yellow-jacket: Origin of Fish and Frogs
A long time ago the people of the old town of Kanu’ga`lâ’yï (“Brier place,” or Briertown), on Nantahala river, in the present Macon County, North Carolina, were much annoyed by a great insect called U’la`gû’, as large as a house, which used to come from some secret hiding place, and darting swiftly through the air, would snap up children from their play and carry them away. It was unlike any other insect ever known, and the people tried many times to track it to its home, but it was too swift to be followed.
They killed a squirrel and tied a white string to it, so that its course could be followed with the eye, as bee hunt- ers follow the flight of a bee to its tree. The U’la`gû’ came and carried off the squirrel with the string hanging to it, but darted away so swiftly through the air that it was out of sight in a moment. They killed a turkey and put a longer white string to it, and the U’la`gû’ came and took the turkey, but was gone again before they could see in what direction it flew. They took a deer ham and tied a white string to it, and again the U’la`gû’ swooped down and bore it off so swiftly that it could not be followed. At last they killed a yearling deer and tied a very long white string to it. The U’la`gû’ came again and seized the deer, but this time the load was so heavy that it had to fly slowly and so low down that the string could be plainly seen.
The hunters got together for the pursuit. They followed it along a ridge to the east until they came near where Franklin now is, when, on looking across the valley to the other side, they saw the nest of the U’la`gû’ in a large cave in the rocks. On this they raised a great shout and made their way rapidly down the mountain and across to the cave. The nest had the entrance below with tiers of cells built up one above another to the roof of the cave. The great U’la`gû’ was there, with thousands of smaller ones, that we now call yellow-jackets. The hunters built fires around the hole, so that the smoke filled the cave and smothered the great insect and multitudes of the smaller ones, but others which were outside the cave were not killed, and these escaped and increased until now the yel- low-jackets, which before were unknown, are all over the world. The people called the cave Tsgâgûñ’yï, “Where the yellow-jacket was,” and the place from which they first saw the nest they called A`tahi’ta, “Where they shouted,” and these are their names today.
They say also that all the fish and frogs came from a great monster fish and frog which did much damage until at last they were killed by the people, who cut them up into little pieces which were thrown into the water and after- ward took shape as the smaller fishes and frogs.
14. The Deluge
A long time ago a man had a dog, which began to go down to the river every day and look at the water and howl. At last the man was angry and scolded the dog, which then spoke to him and said: “Very soon there is going to be a great freshet and the water will come so high that everybody will be drowned; but if you will make a raft to get upon when the rain comes you can be saved, but you must first throw me into the water.” The man did not be- lieve it, and the dog said, “If you want a sign that I speak the truth, look at the back of my neck.” He looked and saw that the dog’s neck had the skin worn off so that the bones stuck out.
Then he believed the dog, and began to build a raft. Soon the rain came and he took his family, with plenty of provisions and they all got upon it. It rained for a long time, and the water rose until the mountains were covered and all the people in the world were drowned. Then the rain stopped and the waters went down again, until at last it was safe to come off the raft. Now there was no one alive but the man and his family, but one day they heard a sound of dancing and shouting on the other side of the ridge. The man climbed to the top and looked over; every- thing was still, but all along the valley he saw great piles of bones of the people who had been drowned, and then he knew that the ghosts had been dancing.
Aw-Aw-Tam Indian Nights: The Myths and Legends of the Pimas
Compiled by J. William Lloyd (1857-1940 C.E.)
Published in 1911 C.E.
Pima (Native America)
The Pima are North American Indians who traditionally lived along the Gila and Salt rivers in Arizona, U.S., which was the location of the Hohokam culture (200 to 1400 C.E.). Pima Indians call themselves the “River People,” speak a Uto-Aztecan language, and are usually considered to be the descendants of the Hohokam whose settle- ments were abandoned probably because of the Great Drought (1276-99) and the subsequent sparse and unpredict- able rainfall that lasted until 1450. The Pima were traditionally sedentary farmers utilizing the rivers for irrigation and supplementing their diet with some hunting and gathering. The active farming led the Pima to develop larger communities than their neighboring tribes, along with complex political organizations. From the time of their early encounter with European and American colonizers, Pima Indians have been seen as a friendly people. As of the early 21st century, there are about 11,000 Pima descendants. J. William Lloyd, an amateur ethnographer who lived with the Pima people for two months in 1903, collected and transcribed Comalk-hawk-kih (Thin Buckskin)’s tradi- tional Pima stories via the interpretation of Edward Hubert Wood, but these stories can be traced back to the time of or even before the arrival of the Europeans. The stories are organized as Stories of the First Night, the Second Night, the Third Night, and the Fourth Night.
Written by Kyounghye Kwon
Selections from Aw-aw-tam Indian nights: Being the Myths and Legends of the Pimas of Arizona
J. William Lloyd
License: Public Domain
The Story of These Stories
WHEN I was at the Pan-American Fair, at Buffalo, in July, 1901, I one day strolled into the Bazaar and drifted naturally to the section where Indian curios were displayed for sale by J. W. Benham. Behind the counter, as salesman, stood a young Indi- an, whose frank, intelligent, good-natured face at once attracted me. Finding me interested in Indian art, he courteously invited me behind the counter and spent an hour or more in explain- ing the mysteries of baskets and blankets.
How small seeds are! From that interview came everything that is in this book.
Several times I repeated my visits to my Indian friend, and when I had left Buffalo I had earned that his name was Edward Hubert Wood, and that he was a full-blooded Pima, educated at Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Afterward we came into a pleasant correspondence, and so I came to know that one of my Indian friend’s dreams was that he should be the means of the preservation of the ancient tales of his people. He had a grand-uncle, Comalk-Hawk-Kih, or Thin Buckskin, who was a see-nee-yaw-kum, or professional traditionalist, who knew all the ancient stories, but who had no successor, and with whose death the stories would disappear. He did not feel himself equal to putting these traditions into good English, and so did not quite know what to do.
We discussed this matter in letters; and finally it was de- cided that I should visit the Gila River Reservation, in Arizona, where the Pimas were, and get the myths from the old seeneeyawkum in person, and that Mr. Wood should return home from Pyramid Lake, Nevada, where he was teaching carpentry to the Pai-utes, and be my host and interpreter.
So, on the morning of July 31st, 1903, I stepped from a train at Casa Grande, Arizona, and found myself in the desert land of which I had so long dreamed. I had expected Mr. Wood to meet me there, but he was not at the station and therefore I took passage with the Irish mail-carrier whose stage was in daily transit between Casa Grande and Sacaton, the Agency village of the Pima Reservation.
We had driven perhaps half the distance, and my Irish friend was beguiling the tedium by an interminable series of highly spiced yarns, calculated to flabbergast the tenderfoot, when my anxious eyes discerned in the dis- tance the oncoming of a neat little open buggy, drawn by two pretty ponies, one of which was a pinto, and in which sat Mr. Wood. Just imagine: It was the last day of July, a blazing morning in the open desert, with the temperature soaring somewhere between 100 and 120 degrees, yet here was my Indian friend, doubtless to do me honor, arrayed in a “pepper-and-salt” suit, complete with underclothes; vest buttoned up; collar and necktie, goggles and buckskin driving gloves. And this in an open buggy, while the Irishman and I, under our tilt, were stripped to our shirts, with sleeves rolled above elbows, and swigging water, ever and anon, from an enormous canteen swathed in wet flannel to keep it cool. Truly Mr. Wood had not intended that I should take him for an uncivilized Indian, if clothes could give the lie; but the face was the same kindly one of my “Brother Ed,” and it did not take me long to greet him and transfer myself to his care.
We came to Sacaton (which Ed said was a Mexican name meaning “much tall grass”—reminding me that Em- ory, of the “Army of the West,” who found the Pimas in 1846, reported finding fine meadows there—but which the Pimas call Tawt-sit-ka, “the Place of Fear and Flight,” because of some Apache-caused panic) but we did not stop there, but passed around it, to the Northwest, and on and over the Gila, Akee-mull, The River, as the Pimas affectionately call it, for to them it is as the Nile to Egypt. The famous Gila is not a very imposing stream at any time, and now was no stream at all, but a shallow dry channel, choked with desert dust, or paved with curling flakes of baked mud which cracked like bits of broken pottery under our ponies’ feet. But I afterwards many times saw it a turbid torrent of yellow mud, rushing and foaming from the mountain rains; perilous with quicksand and snag, the roaring of its voice heard over the chapparal for miles to windward.
The Pimas live in villages, each with its sub-chief, and we were bound for the village of Lower San-tan. But in these villages the houses are now seldom aggregated, as in old days of Apache and Yuma war, but scatter out for miles in farm homesteads.
Brother Ed had lately sold his neat farmstead, near Sacaton, and when I came to his home I found he was temporarily living under a vachtoe (pronounce first syllable as if German), or arbor-shed, made of mezquite forks, supporting a flat roof of weeds and brush for shade. Near by he was laying the foundations of a neat little adobe cottage, which was finally completed during my stay.
Ed introduced me to his mother, a matronly Indian woman of perhaps fifty-five, who must have been quite a belle in her day, and whose features were still regular and strong, and his step-father, “Mr. Wells,” who deserves more than a passing word from me, for his kindness was unremitting (bless his good-natured, smiling face!) and his solicitude for my comfort constant. These were all the family, for Ed himself was a widower. Fifty yards or so to the northwest were the huts of two old and wretchedly poor Pimas (the man was blind) who had been allowed to settle there temporarily by Mr. Wood, owing to some difficulty about their own location on their adjoining land. One or two hundred yards in the other direction were two old caw-seens, or storehouses, square structures of a sort of wattlework of poles, weeds and brush, plastered over with adobe and roofed with earth. In one of these I placed my trunk, and on its flat roof I slept, rolled in my blankets, most of the nights of the two months of my stay. I came to know it as “my Arizona Bedstead,” and I shall never forget it and its quaint, crooked ladder.
My Indian brother was not slow in shedding his dress-parade garments, and in getting down to the comfort of outing shirt and overalls, neck handkerchief and sombrero. Then I had my first meal with Indians in Arizona. Mrs. Wells, or as I prefer to call her, Sparkling-Soft-Feather (her Indian name) was a good cook of her kind, and gave us a meal of tortillas, frijole beans, peppers (kaw-awl-kull), coffee, and choo-oo-kook or jerked beef. Ed and I were given the dignity of chairs and a table, but the elder Indians squatted on the ground in the good old Pima way, with their dishes on a mat. There were knives and spoons, but no forks, and the usefulness of fingers was not obsolete. A waggish, pale-eyed pup, flabbily deprecative and good-natured, and a big-footed Mexican choo-chool, or chick- en, were obtrusively familiar. Neither of the older Indians could speak a word of English, but chatted and laughed away together in Pima. The hot, soft wind of the desert kissed our faces as we ate, and off in the back ground rose the stately volcanic pile of Cheoff-skaw-mack, the nearest mountain, and all around the horizon other bare volcanic peaks burned into the blue. Sometimes a whirlwind of dust travelled rapidly over the plain, making one ponder what would happen should it gyrate into the vachtoe.
The old woman from the near-by kee slunk by as we ate, going to the well. She wore gah-kai-gey-aht-kum-soosk (literally string-shoes), or sandals, of rawhide, on her feet, and was quite the most wretched-looking hag I ever saw among the Pimas. Her withered body was hung with indescribable rags and her gray hair was a tangled mat. Yet I came to know that that wretched creature had a heart and a good one. She was kind and cheerful, industrious and uncomplaining, and devotion itself to her old blind husband; who did nothing all day long but move out of the travelling sun into the shade, rolling nearly naked in the dust.
After dinner we got our guns and started out to go to the farm of old Thin Buckskin (“William Higgins,” if you please!) the seeneeyawkum I had come so far to see. Incidentally we were to shoot some kah-kai-cheu, or plumed quails, and taw-up-pee, or rabbits, for supper.
We found the old man plowing for corn in his field. The strong, friendly grasp he gave my hand was all that could be desired. Tall, lean, dignified, with a harsh. yet musical voice; keen, intelligent black eyes, and an impressive manner, he was plainly a gentleman and a scholar, even if he could neither read nor write, nor speak a sentence of English.
The next afternoon he came, and under Ed’s vachtoe gave me the first installment of the coveted tales. It was slow work. First he would tell Ed a paragraph of tradition, and Ed would translate it to me. Then I would write it down, and then read it aloud to Ed again, getting his corrections. When all was straight, to his satisfaction, we would go on to another paragraph, and so on, till the old man said enough. As these Indians are all Christianized now, and mostly zealous in the faith, I could get no traditions on Sunday. And indeed, when part way thru, this zeal came near balking me altogether. A movement started to stop the recovery of these old heathen tales; the sub-chief had a word with Comalk, who became suddenly too busy to go on with his narrations, and it took increased shekels and the interposition of the Agent, Mr. J. B. Alexander, who was very kind to me, before I could get the wheels started again.
Sometimes the old man came at night, instead of afternoon, and I find this entry in my journal: “Sept. 6.—We sat up till midnight in the old cawseen getting the traditions. It was a wild, strange scene-the old cawseen interior, the mesquite forks that supported the roof, the poles overhead, and weeds above that, the mud-plastered walls with loop-hole windows; bags, boxes, trunks, ollas, and vahs-hrom granary baskets about. Ed sitting on the ground, against the wall, nodding when I wrote and waking up to interpret; the old man bent forward, both hands out, palms upward, or waving in strange eloquent gestures; his lean, wrinkled features drawn and black eyes gleaming; telling the strange tales in a strange tongue. On an old olla another Indian, Miguel, who came in to listen, and in his hand a gorgeously decorated quee-a-kote, or flute, with which, while I wrote, he would sometimes give us a few wild, plaintive, thrilling bars, weird as an incantation. And finally myself, sitting on a mattress on my trunk, writing, fast as pencil could travel, by the dim light of a lantern hung against a great post at my right. Outside a cold, strong wind, for the first time since I came to Arizona, bright moonlight, and some drifting white clouds telling the last of the storm.”
Again, on Sept. 12th: “Traditions, afternoon and until midnight. I shall never forget how the half-moon looked, rising over Vah-kee-woldt-kee, or the Notched Cliffs, toward midnight, while the coyotes laughed a chorus some- where off toward the Gila, and we sat around, outdoors, in the wind, and heard the old seeneeyawkum tell his weird, incoherent tales of the long ago.”
My interpreter was eager and willing, and well-posted in the meaning of English, and was a man of unusual intelligence and poetry of feeling, but was not well up in grammar, and in the main I had to edit and recast his sentences; yet just as far as possible I have kept his words and the Indian idiom and simplicity of style. Sometimes he would give me a sentence so forceful and poetic, and otherwise faultless, that I have joyfully written it down exactly as received. I admit that in a very few places, where the Indian simplicity and innocence of thought caused an almost Biblical plainness of speech on family matters, I have expurgated and smoothed a little for prudish Cau- casian ears, but these changes are few, and mostly unimportant, leaving the meaning unimpaired. And never once was there anything in the spirit of what was told me that revealed foulness of thought. All was grave and serious, as befitted the scriptures of an ancient people.
Occasionally I have added a word or sentence to make the meaning stand out clearer, but otherwise I have taken no liberties with the original.
As a rule the seeneeyawkum told these tales in his own words, but the parts called speeches were learned by heart and repeated literally. These parts gave us much trouble. They were highly poetic, and manifestly mystic, and therefore very difficult to translate with truthfulness to the involved meanings and startling and obscure metaphors. Besides they contained many archaic words, the meaning of which neither seeneeyawkum nor interpreter now knew, and which they could only translate by guess, or leave out altogether. But we did the best we could.
The stories were also embellished with songs, some of which I had translated. They were chants of from one to four lines each, seldom more than two, many times repeated in varying cadence; weird, somber, thrillingly passion- ate in places, and by no means unmusical, but, of course, monotonous. I obtained phonograph records of a number, and the translations given are as literal as possible.
As to the meaning of the tales I got small satisfaction. The Indians seemed to have no explanations to offer. They seemed to regard them as fairy tales, but admitted they had once been believed as scriptures.
My own theory came to be that they had been invented, from time to time, by various and successive mah- kais to answer the questions concerning history, phenomena, and the origin of things, which they, as the reputed wisest of the tribe, were continually asked. My chief reason for supposing this is because in almost every tale the hero is a mahkai of some sort. The word mah-kai (now translated doctor, or medicine-man) seems to have been applied in old time to every being capable of exerting magical or supernatural and mysterious power, from the Creator down; and it is easy to see how such use of the word would apparently establish the divine relationship and bolster the authority of the medicine men, while the charm of the tale would focus attention upon them. The temp- tation was great and, I think, yielded to.
I doubt if much real history is worked in, or that it is at all reliable.
All over the desert, where irrigation was at all practicable, in the Gila and Salt River valleys, and up to the edge of the mountains, among the beautiful giant cactus and flatbean trees, you will ride your bronco over evidences of a prehistoric race:—old irrigating ditches, lines of stone wall; or low mounds of adobe rising above the grease, wood and cacti, and littered over profusely with bits of broken and painted pottery, broken cornmills and grinders, per- haps showing here and there a stone ax, arrowhead, or other old stone implement. These mounds (vah-ahk-kee is the Pima word for such a ruin) are the heaps caused by the fallen walls of what were once pueblos of stone and clay. In some places there must have been populous cities, and at the famous site of Casa Grande one finds one of the buildings still standing—a really imposing citadel, with walls four or five feet thick, several stories high, and habit- able since the historic period.
Now according to these traditions it was the tribes now known as Pimas, Papagoes, Yumas and Maricopas, that invaded the land, from some mythic underworld, and overthrew the vahahkkees & killed all their inhabitants, and this is the most interesting part of the tales from a historic point of view. Fewkes, and other ethnologists, think the ancestors of the Pimas built the Casa Grande & other vahahkkees, but I doubt this. Is it reasonable to suppose that if a people as intelligent & settled as the Pimas had once evoluted far enough in architecture & fortification to erect such noble citadels and extensive cities as those of Casa Grande & Casa Blanca, that they, while still surrounded by the harassing Apaches, would have descended to contentment with such miserable & indefensible hovels as their present kees and cawseens? To me it is not. They are as industrious as any of the pueblo-building Indians, not otherwise degenerate, and had they once ever builded pueblos I do not think would have abandoned the art. But it is easy to understand that a horde of desert campers, overthrowing a more civilized nation, might never rebuild or copy after its edifices. So far, then, I am inclined to agree with the traditions and disagree with the ethnologists.
But these traditions are evidently very ancient. They appear to me to have originated from the aborigines of this country; people who knew no other. land. Every story is saturated with local color. From the top of Cheoffskaw- mack, I believe I could have seen almost every place mentioned in the traditions, except the Rio Colorado & the ocean, and the ocean was to them, I believe, little more than a name. They never speak of it with their usual sketchy & graphic detail, and the fact that in the ceremony of purification it is spoken of as a source of drinking water shows they really knew nothing of it. The Indian is too exact in his natural science to speak of salt water as potable. And these stories certainly say that the dwellers in the vahahkkees were the children of Ee-ee-toy, created right here. And that the army that carried out Ee-ee-toy’s revenge upon his rebellious people were the children of Juhwerta Mahkai, who had been somewhere else since the flood, but who were also originally created here.
Now, for what it is worth, I will give a theory to reconcile these differences. I assume that their flood was a real event, but a local one, and the greater part of the people destroyed by it. A minority escaped by flight into the desert, and neither they nor their descendants, for many generations, returned to the place where the catastrophe occurred. Another remnant escaped by floating on various objects & climbing mountains. The first were those of whom it is fabled that Juhwerta Mahkai let them escape thru a hole in the earth. These became nomadic, desert dwellers. The second remained in the Gila country, became agricultural & settled in habit, irrigating their land & building pueblos, growing rich, effeminate & inapt at war. At length the desert fugitives, also grown numerous, and warlike & fierce with the wild, wolf-like existence they had led, and moved by we know not what motives of revenge or greed, returned & swept over the land, in a sudden invasion, like a swarm of locusts; ruthlessly destroying the vahahkees and all who dwelt therein; breaking even the ma-ta-tes & every utensil in their vandal fury; dividing the region thus taken among themselves. According to these traditions the Apaches were already dwellers in the outly- ing deserts & mountains, and were not affected especially by this invasion.
Is it now unreasonable to suppose that some of the invaders kept up, to a great extent, their old habits of desert wandering (Papagoes for instance), and that others adopted to some extent the agricultural habits of those they had conquered, and yet retained, with slight change, the little brush & mud houses & arbors they had grown accus- tomed to in their wanderings? These last would be our present Pimas.
If it is considered strange that these adopted the habits, to any extent, of those they supplanted it may be urged that they almost certainly, in conquering the vahahkkee people, spared and married many of the women, and adopted many of the children; this being in accordance with their custom in historic times. And this infusion of the gentler blood may have been very large. And these women would naturally go on, and would be required by their new husbands to go on, with the agricultural methods to which they were accustomed & would teach them to their new masters. And their children, being wholly or partly of the old stock, would have a natural tendency to the same work, to some extent.
This theory not only explains & agrees with the main parts of the old traditions, but seems confirmed by other things. Thus the Pimas, Papagoes, Quojatas, and the “Rabbit-Eaters” of Mexico, speak about the same language, which would seem to prove them originally the same people. But some have kept the old ways, some have become agricul- tural, and some are in manners between, and thus have become classed as different tribes. And, judging from the remains, the life of the old vahahkkee dwellers was in many ways like that of the modern Pima, only less primitive.
But the real value of these stories is as folklore, and in their literary merit. They throw a wonderful side-light on the old customs, beliefs and feelings. I consider them ancient, in the main, but do not doubt that in coming down thru many seeneeyawkums they have been much modified by the addition of embellishment, the subtraction of forgetfulness. As proof I adduce the accounting for the origin of the white people, who use pens & ink, in the story of Van-daih. The ancient Pimas knew neither white men, nor pens, nor ink, therefore this passage is clearly an interpolation by some later narrator, if the story is really ancient, as I suppose it is. In the story of Noo-ee’s meeting the sun, the word used by old Comalk, for the sun’s weapon, was vai-no-ma-gaht (literally iron-bow) which is the modern Pima’s name for the white man’s gun, and it was translated as gun by my interpreter. But iron and guns were both unknown to ancient Pimas, therefore this term must have been first used by some seeneeyawkum after the white man came, who thought a gun more appropriate than a bow for the sun’s shooting.
How much has been lost by forgetfulness we can never know; but at least I found that the meaning of many ancient words had disappeared, that the mystic meaning of the highly symbolic speeches seemed all gone, and I felt certain that the last part of the Story of the Gambler’s War had been lost by forgetting; for it stops short with the pre- liminary speeches, instead of going on with a detailed account of the battles as does the Story of Paht-ahn-kum’s war.
Another proof that these tales were changed by different narrators is afforded by the variants of some of them published by Emory, Grossman, Cook, and other writers about the Pimas.
As to the mystic meaning I can only guess. The mystic number four, so constantly used, probably refers to the four cardinal points, but my Indians seemed not aware of this. In the stories, West is black, East is white or light, South is blue, North is yellow, and Above is green. Of course the west is black because there night swallows up the sun, and the east is light because it gives the sun, but why south is blue and north is yellow I do not know. But south is the nearest way to the ocean, and as in one story the word ocean seems used in place of south, I infer the blue color was derived from that. And the desert lying north of the ocean may suggest the desert tint, yellow, as the color of the north. As to the sky being green, I find this in my journal: “August 29-Last evening, after sunset, there were the most wonderful sky effects-there was a line of light clouds across the sky, in the west, about half way up to the zenith, and suddenly the white part of these was washed over, as tho by a paint brush, with a strong but delicate pea-green, while under this spread a mist or haze of dainty pink, changing to a rich, delicate mauve. Lasted quar- ter of an hour or more. Never saw anything like it in nature before.” Again, on September 6, I saw nearly the same phenomenon. The green was very strong and vivid, and could not fail to attract an Indian’s eye, and something of the sort, I fancy, made him make the strange choice of green for the sky color.
Those who like to compare myths and folktales and ancient scriptures will find a rich field here. And the in- teresting thing is that these tales come straight from a line of Indians who could neither read nor write nor speak English, therefore adulteration by white man’s literature seems improbable.
As to the literary merit of these tales, after all that is lost by a double interpretation, I consider it still very high. You must come to them as a little child, for they are intensely child-like, and to expect them to be like a white man’s narrative is absurd. But they are sketched in such clear, bold lines, with such a sure touch and delicate expressive- ness of salient points; there are such close-fitting, shrewd bits of human nature; such real yet startling touches of poetry in metaphor; such fertile and altogether Indian imagination in plot and incident, that the interest never fails. No two stories are alike, and if surprise is a literary charm of high value, and I think it is, then these tales are certainly charming, for they constantly bring surprise.
And the, poetry, in Eeeetoy’s speech for example, is so rich and strong; and in such parts as the story of the Nah-vah-choo the mysticism seems to challenge one like a riddle.
When these old tales were told with all proper ceremony and respect, they were told on four successive nights. This could not be in the giving of them to me, for many practical reasons, but I have endeavored to give them that form for my reader and hence the title of my book. But I did not discover how many or what ones were told on any one night, so my division is arbitrary, and only aims at reasonable equality. The naming, too, of the different stories is try own, for the old man did not appear to have any set names for them. I fancy the old man was rusty and out of practice, and forgot some of the tales in their proper sequence, and brought them in afterward as they recurred to him.. For instance, the story of Tcheu-nas-set Seeven’s singing away another chief ’s wives evidently belongs among the early stories of the vahahkkee people, and before the account of his death, when the vahahkkees were destroyed. But I have given the stories in the order in which they were told to me, leaving all responsibility on the old see- neeyawkum’s shoulders.
I lived a little more than two months with these Indians, collecting these stories, enjoying their kindly hospitality, living as they lived, eating their food, riding their ponies, sleeping on their roofs under the splendid Arizona stars.
I shall never forget that day, before I left, when Ed and I saddled our ponies in the early morning and rode twenty milts to the Casa Grande ruins. On the way we crossed the dry bed of the Gila; and passed thru the Agen- cy village of Sacaton and the village of Blackwater; skirting the Maricopa Slaughter mountains, where once some unfortunate Maricopias were waylaid and massacred by a band of Apaches, almost in sight of Sacaton. The Casa Grande ruins are imposing enough, but sadly belittled in effect by the well-meant roof which the government has erected over them to preserve them. This kills all the poetry and gives them the ludicrous aspect of a museum spec- imen. Had the old walls been skillfully capped with a waterproof cement and the walls coated with some weath- erproof and transparent wash, all necessary security could have been effected with perhaps less expense than this absurd roof, and all the romance of impression preserved. Let us hope the genial and manly young custodian, Mr. Frank Pinckly, to whose warm-hearted hospitality and that of his parents I owe grateful thanks, will consider this suggestion favorably and earn the blessing of future travellers. A storm broke on us while we were at the ruins, and riding home that evening we found the Gila flooded. I shall always remember how its muddy torrent looked to me, plunging along at my feet, where that morning I had crossed dry shod; its yellow waves shot with blood-red reflec- tions from the last colors of sunset.
“You better see that Pinto’s cinch is tight, or she may try to get you off in the river,” warned Ed, in my ear, as he jumped off to cinch. up “Georgie.”
It was always exciting to me to ford the treacherous Gila, the tawny waters were so sweeping, and the ponies plunged so when their feet felt the quicksands, but we got across all right, and galloped home on the slippery, mud- dy roads.
When I left these people it was with a genuine regard for their virtues. I found them in the main kind, honest, simple-minded, industrious, surprisingly clean, considering their obstacles of scant water and ever-present dust., and the calmest tempered people I have ever known.
I remember the second day of my stay we were going to ride to the Casa Blanca ruins. In watering the ponies at the well, “Georgie’s” loosened saddle turned and swung under his belly. Such bucking and frantic kicking as that half-broken colt indulged in for a few moments would have made a congress of cow-boys applaud, and when it was over the beautiful colt stood exhausted on the far side of a twenty acre field, with the saddle fragments somewhere between. Now to poor Indians the loss of a saddle is not small, and I fancy most frontiersmen, under the provo- cation, would have made the air blue with oaths, but Ed only sadly said: “I’m afraid that spoils Georgie,” and the stepfather laughed and started patiently out on the trail of the colt “to save the pieces,” while the mother took one of her bowl-shaped Pima baskets, with beans in it, and coaxed the colt till she caught him. Then he was patted and soothed and fed with sugar, the saddle patched up and replaced, and we rode eighteen miles that day and never another mishap. And from first to last never a harsh or complaining word.
I at no time encountered a beggar among the Pimas, and tho they were mostly very poor I had not a pin’s worth stolen. I never heard an oath, or saw a brutal or violent act, or a child slapped or scolded, or a woman treated with disrespect or tyranny, nor any drunkenness or cruelty to animals. Perhaps I was especially fortunate, but I can only speak of what I saw. Their self-respect and serenity continually aroused my admiration.
I must say that they appeared to me to excel any average white neighborhood in good behavior.
It is a strange land, that in which the Pimas dwell; a desert overgrown with strange soft-tinted weeds, “salt weeds,” pink, red, green, gray, blue, purple; the rich-green yellow-flowering greasewood; odd cacti, and all manner of thornbearing bushes. The soil is inexhaustibly rich, were there water enough, but the white people, settling above the Indians, on the Gila, have so withdrawn the water that crop failures from lack of sufficient irrigation are the rule, now, instead of the exception, and the once ever-flowing Gila is more often a dry channel, as sun-baked as the desert around it.
All around their valley, and rising here and there from the plain, are low volcanic peaks, mere dead masses of rock except where in places a giant cactus stands candelabra-like among the slopes of stone. About the feet of these mountains, and along the channels where the torrents rush down in times of rain, are weird forests of desert growths, mesquite, cat-claw, flat-beans, screw-beans, greasewood, giant-cactus, cane-cactus, white-cactus, chol- la-cactus, and a host of others, almost everything bristling with innumerable thorns.
On this strange pasture of weed and thorn the Indian’s ponies & his few cattle graze.
Here in summer the sun beats down till the mercury registers 118 to 120 degrees in the shade, and dust storms & dust whirlwinds travel over the burning plain.
Stories of the First night
The Traditions of the Pimas
The old man, Comalk Hawk-Kih, (Thin Buckskin) began by saying that these were stories which he used to hear his father tell, they being handed down from father to son, and that when he was little he did not pay much attention, but when he grew older he determined to learn them, and asked his father to teach him, which his father did, and now he knew them all.
The Story of Creation
In the beginning there was no earth, no water—nothing. There was only a Person, Juh-wert-a-Mah-kai (The Doctor of the Earth).
He just floated, for there was no place for him to stand upon. There was no sun, no light, and he just floated about in the darkness, which was Darkness itself.
He wandered around in the nowhere till he thought he had wandered enough. Then he rubbed on his breast and rubbed out moah-haht-tack, that is perspiration, or greasy earth. This he rubbed out on the palm of his hand and held out. It tipped over three times, but the fourth, time it staid straight in the middle of the air and there it remains now as the world.
The first bush he created was the greasewood bush.
And he made ants, little tiny ants, to live on that bush, on its gum which comes out of its stem.
But these little ants did not do any good, so be created white ants, and these worked and enlarged the earth; and they kept on increasing it, larger and larger, until at last it was big enough for himself to rest on.
Then he created a Person. He made him out of his eye, out of the shadow of his eyes, to assist him, to be like him, and to help him in creating trees and human beings and everything that was to be on the earth.
The name of this being was Noo-ee (the Buzzard).
Nooee was given all power, but he did not do the work he was created for. He did not care to help Juhwerta- mahkai, but let him go by himself.
And so the Doctor of the Earth himself created the mountains and everything that has seed and is good to eat. For if he had created human beings first they would have had nothing to live on.
But after making Nooee and before making the mountains and seed for food, Juhwertamahkai made the sun. In order to make the sun he first made water, and this he placed in a hollow vessel, like an earthen dish (hwas-hah-ah) to harden into something like ice. And this hardened ball he placed in the sky. First he placed it in the North, but it did not work; then he placed it in the West, but it did not work; then he placed it in the South, but it did not work; then he placed it in the East and there it worked as he wanted it to.
And the moon he made in the same way and tried in the same places, with the same results.
But when he made the stars he took the water in his mouth and spurted it up into the sky. But the first night his stars did not give light enough. So he took the Doctor-stone (diamond), the tone-dum-haw-teh, and smashed it up, and took the pieces and threw them into the sky to mix with the water in the stars, and then there was light enough.
And now Juhwertamahkai, rubbed again on his breast, and from the substance he obtained there made two little dolls, and these he laid on the earth. And they were human beings, man and woman.
And now for a time the people increased till they filled the earth. For the first parents were perfect, and there was no sickness and no death. But when the earth was full, then there was nothing to eat, so they killed and ate each other.
But Juhwertamahkai did not like the way his people acted, to kill and eat each other, and so he let the sky fail to kill them. But when the sky dropped he, himself, took a staff and broke a hole thru, thru which he and Nooee emerged and escaped, leaving behind them all the people dead.
And Juhwertamahkai, being now on the top of this fallen sky, again made a man and a woman, in the same way as before. But this man and woman became grey when old, and their children became grey still younger, and their children became grey younger still, and so on till the babies were gray in their cradles.
And Juhwertamahkai, who had made a new earth and sky, just as there had been before, did not like his people becoming grey in their cradles, so he let the sky fall on them again, and again made a hole and escaped, with Nooee, as before.
And Juhwertamahkai, on top of this second sky, again made a new heaven and a new earth, just as he had done before, and new people.
But these new people made a vice of smoking. Before human beings had never smoked till they were old, but now they smoked younger, and each generation still younger, till the infants wanted to smoke in their cradles.
And Juhwertamahkai did not like this, and let the sky fall again, and created everything new again in the same way, and this time he created the earth as it is now.
But at first the whole slope of the world was westward, and tho there were peaks rising from this slope there were no true valleys, and all the water that fell ran away and there was no water for the people to drink. So Juhwer- tamahkai sent Nooee to fly around among the mountains, and over the earth, to cut valleys with his wings, so that the water could be caught and distributed and there might be enough for the people to drink.
Now the sun was male and the moon was female and they met once a month. And the moon became a mother and went to a mountain called Tahs-my-et-tahn Toe-ahk (sun striking mountain) and there was born her baby. But she had duties to attend to, to turn around and give light, so she made a place for the child by tramping down the weedy bushes and there left it. And the child, having no milk, was nourished on the earth.
And this child was the coyote, and as he grew he went out to walk and in his walk came to the house of Juhwer- tamahkai and Nooee, where they lived.
And when he came there Juhwertamahkai knew him and called him Toe-hahvs, because he was laid on the weedy bushes of that name.
But now out of the North came another powerful personage, who has two names, See-ur-huh and Ee-ee-toy.
Now Seeurhuh means older brother, and when this personage came to Juhwertamahkai, Nooee and Toehahvs he called them his younger brothers. But they claimed to have been here first, and to be older than he, and there was a dispute between them. But finally, because he insisted so strongly, and just to please him, they let him be called older brother.
Juhwerta Mahkai’s Song Of Creation
Juhwerta mahkai made the world—
Come and see it and make it useful!
He made it round—
Come and see it and make it useful!
Notes on “The Story of Creation”
The idea of creating the earth from the perspiration and waste cuticle of the Creator is, I believe, original. The local touch in making the greasewood bush the first vegetation is very strong.
In the tipping over of the earth three times, and its standing right the fourth time, we are introduced to the first of the mystic fours in which the whole scheme of the stories is cast. Almost everything is done four times before finished.
The peculiar Indian idea of type-animals, the immortal and supernatural representatives of their respective an- imal tribes, appears in Nooee and Toehahvs, and here again the local color is rich and strong in making the buzzard and the coyote, the most common and striking animals of the desert, the particular aides on the staff of the Creator.
Might not the creation of Nooee out of the shadow of the eyes of the Doctor of the Earth be a poetical allusion to the flying shadow of the buzzard on the sun-bright desert?
In the creation of sun and moon we find the mystic four referred to the four corners of the universe, North, South, East and West, and this, I am persuaded, is really the origin of its sacred significance, for most religions find root and source in astronomy.
In the dropping of the sky appears the old idea of its solid character.
In the “slope of the world to the Westward” there is something curiously significant when we remember that both the Gila and Salt Rivers flow generally westward.
Nooee cuts the valleys with his wings. It would almost appear that Nooee was Juhwertamahkai’s agent in the air and sky, Toehahvs on earth.
The night-prowling coyote is appropriately and poetically mothered by the moon.
And here appears Eeeetoy, the most active and mysterious personality in Piman mythology. Out of the North, apparently self-existent, but little inferior in power to Juhwertamahkai, and claiming greater age, he appears, by pure “bluff ” and persistent push and wheedling, to have induced the really more powerful, but good-natured and rather lazy Juhwertamahkai to give over most of the real work and government of the world to him. In convers- ing with Harry Azul, the head chief ’s son, at Sacaton, I found he regarded Eeeetoy and Juhwertamahki as but two names for the same. And indeed it is hard to fix Eeeetoy’s place or power.
The Story of the Flood
Now Seeurhuh was very powerful, like Juhwerta Mahkai, and as he took up his residence with them, as one of them, he did many wonderful things which pleased Juhwerta Mahkai, who liked to watch him.
And after doing many marvelous things he, too, made a man.
And to this man whom he had made, Seeurhuh (whose other name was Ee-ee-toy) gave a bow & arrows, and guarded his arm against the bow string by a piece of wild-cat skin, and pierced his ears & made ear-rings for him, like turquoises to look at, from the leaves of the weed called quah-wool. And this man was the most beautiful man yet made.
And Ee-ee-toy told this young man, who was just of marriageable age, to look around and see if he could find any young girl in the villages that would suit him and, if he found her, to see her relatives and see if they were will- ing he should marry her.
And the beautiful young man did this, and found a girl that pleased him, and told her family of his wish, and they accepted him, and he married her.
And the names of both these are now forgotten and unknown.
And when they were married Ee-ee-toy, foreseeing what would happen, went & gathered the gum of the grease- wood tree.
Here the narrative states, with far too much plainness of circumstantial detail for popular reading, that this young man married a great many wives in rapid succession, abandoning the last one with each new one wedded, and had children with abnormal, even uncanny swiftness, for which the wives were blamed and for which suspicion they were thus heartlessly divorced. Because of this, Juhwerta Mahkai and Ee-ee-toy foresaw that nature would be convulsed and a great flood would come to cover the world. And then the narrative goes on to say:
Now there was a doctor who lived down toward the sunset whose name was Vahk-lohv Mahkai, or South Doctor, who had a beautiful daughter. And when his daughter heard of this young man and what had happened to his wives she was afraid and cried every day. And when her fattier saw her crying he asked her what was the matter? was she sick? And when she had told him what she was afraid of, for every one knew and was talking of this thing, he said yes, he knew it was true, but she ought not to be afraid, for there was happiness for a woman in marriage and the mothering of children.
And it took many years for the young man to marry all these wives, and have all these children, and all this time Ee-ee-toy was busy making a great vessel of the gum he had gathered from the grease bushes, a sort of olla which could be closed up, which would keep back water. And while he was making this he talked over the reasons for it with Juhwerta Mahkai, Nooee, and Toehahvs, that it was because there was a great flood coming.
And several birds heard them talking thus—the woodpecker, Hick-o-vick; the humming-bird, Vee-pis-mahl; a little bird named Gee-ee-sop, and another called Quota-veech.
Eeeetoy said he would escape the flood by getting into the vessel he was making from the gum of the grease bushes or ser-quoy.
And Juhwerta Mahkai said he would get into his staff, or walking stick, and float about. And Toehahvs said he would get into a cane-tube.
And the little birds said the water would not reach the sky, so they would fly up there and hang on by their bills till it was over.
And Nooee, the buzzard, the powerful, said he did not care if the flood did reach the sky, for he could find a way to break thru.
Now Ee-ee-toy was envious, and anxious to get ahead of Juhwerta Mahkai and get more fame for his wonderful deeds, but Juhwerta Mahkai, though really the strongest, was generous and from kindness and for relationship sake let Ee-ee-toy have the best of it.
And the young girl, the doctor’s daughter, kept on crying, fearing the young man, feeling him ever coming nearer, and her father kept on reassuring her, telling her it would be all right, but at last, out of pity for her fears & tears, he told her to go and get him the little tuft of the finest thorns on the top of the white cactus, the haht-sahn- kahm, and bring to him.
And her father took the cactus-tuft which she had brought him, and took hair from her head and wound about one end of it, and told her if she would wear this it would protect her. And she consented and wore the cactus-tuft. And he told her to treat the young man right, when he came, & make him broth of corn. And if the young man should eat all the broth, then their plan would fail, but if he left any broth she was to eat that up and then their plan would succeed.
And he told her to be sure and have a bow and arrows above the door of the kee, so that he could take care of the young man.
And after her father had told her this, on that very evening the young man came, and the girl received him kindly, and took his bows & arrows, and put them over the door of the kee, as her father had told her, and made the young man broth of corn and gave it to him to eat.
And he ate only part of it and what was left she ate herself.
And before this her father had told her: “if the young man is wounded by the thorns you wear, in that moment he will become a woman and a mother and you will become a young man.”
And in the night all this came to be, even so, and by day-break the child was crying.
And the old woman ran in and said: “Mossay!” which means an old woman’s grandchild from a daughter.
And the daughter, that had been, said: “It is not your moss, it is your cah-um-maht,” that is an old woman’s grandchild from a son.
And then the old man ran in and said: “Bah-ahm-ah-dah!” that is an old man’s grandchild from a daughter, but his daughter said: “It is not your bah-ahm-maht, but it is your voss-ahm-maht,” which is an old man’s grandchild from a son.
And early in the morning this young man (that had been, but who was now a woman & a mother) made a wawl-kote, a carrier, or cradle, for the baby and took the trail back home.
And Juhwerta Mahkai told his neighbors of what was coming, this young man who had changed into a woman and a mother and was bringing a baby born from himself, and that when he arrived wonderful things would hap- pen & springs would gush forth from under every tree and on every mountain.
And the young man-woman came back and by the time of his return Ee-ee-toy had finished his vessel and had placed therein seeds & everything that is in the world.
And the young man-woman, when he came to his old home, placed his baby in the bushes and left it, going in without it, but Ee-ee-toy turned around and looked at him and knew him, for he did not wear a woman’s dress, and said to him: “Where is my Bahahmmaht? Bring it to me. I want to see it. It is a joy for an old man to see his grandchild.
I have sat here in my house and watched your going, and all that has happened you, and foreseen some one would send you back in shame, although I did not like to think there was anyone more powerful than I. But never mind, he who has beaten us will see what will happen.”
And when the young man-woman went to get his baby, Ee-ee-toy got into his vessel, and built a fire on the hearth he had placed therein, and sealed it up.
And the young man-woman found his baby crying, and the tears from it were all over the ground, around. And when he stooped over to pick up his child he turned into a sand-snipe, and the baby turned into a little teeter-snipe. And then that came true which Juhwerta Mahkai had said, that water would gush out from under every tree & on every mountain; and the people when they saw it, and knew that a flood was coming, ram to Juhwerta Mahkai; and he took his staff and made a hole in the earth and let all those thru who had come to him, but the rest were drowned.
Then Juhwerta Mahkai got into his walking stick & floated, and Toehahvs got into his tube of cane and floated, but Ee-ee-toy’s vessel was heavy & big and remained until the flood was much deeper before it could float.
And the people who were left out fled to the mountains; to the mountains called Gah-kote-kih (Superstition Mts.) for they were living in the plains between Gahkotekih and Cheoffskawmack (Tall Gray Mountain.)
And there was a powerful man among these people, a doctor (mahkai), who set a mark on the mountain side and said the water would not rise above it.
And the people believed him and camped just beyond the mark; but the water came on and they had to go higher. And this happened four times.
And the mahkai did this to help his people, and also used power to raise the mountain, but at last he saw all was to be a failure. And he called the people and asked them all to come close together, and he took his doctor-stone (mahkai-haw-teh) which is called Tonedumhawteh or Stone-of-Light, and held it in the palm of his hand and struck it hard with his other hand, and it thundered so loud that all the people were frightened and they were all turned into stone.
And the little birds, the woodpecker, Hickovick; the humming-bird, Veepismahl; the little bird named Ge-ee- sop, and the other called Quotaveech, all flew up to the sky and hung on by their bills, but Nooee still floated in the air and intended to keep on the wing unless the floods reached the heavens.
But Juhwerta Mahkai, Ee-ee-toy and Toehahvs floated around on the water and drifted to the west and did not know where they were.
And the flood rose higher until it reached the woodpecker’s tail, and you can see the marks to this day.
And Quotaveech was cold and cried so loud that the other birds pulled off their feathers and built him a nest up there so he could keep warm. And when Quotaveech was warm he quit crying.
And then the little birds sang, for they had power to make the water go down by singing, and as they sang the waters gradually receded.
But the others still floated around.
When the land began to appear Juhwerta Mahkai and Toehahvs got out, but Ee-ee-toy had to wait for his house to warm up, for he had built a fire to warm his vessel enough for him to unseal it.
When it was warm enough he unsealed it, but when he looked out he saw the water still running & he got back and sealed himself in again.
And after waiting a while he unsealed his vessel again, and seeing dry land enough he got out.
And Juhwerta Mahkai went south and Toehahvs went west, and Ee-ee-toy went northward. And as they did not know where they were they missed each other, and passed each other unseen, but afterward saw each other’s tracks, and then turned back and shouted, but wandered from the track, and again passed unseen. And this happened four times.
And the fourth time Juhwerta Mahkai and Ee-ee-toy met, but Toehahvs had passed already.
And when they met, Ee-ee-toy said to Juhwerta Mahkai “My younger brother!” but Juhwerta Mahkai greeted him as younger brother & claimed to have come out first. Then Ee-ee-toy said again: “I came out first and you can see the water marks on my body.” But Juhwerta Mahkai replied: “I came out first and also have the water marks on my person to prove it.”
But Ee-ee-toy so insisted that he was the eldest that Juhwerta Mahkai, just to please him, gave him his way and let him be considered the elder.
And then they turned westward and yelled to find Toehahvs, for they remembered to have seen his tracks, and they kept on yelling till he heard them. And when Toehahvs saw them he called them his younger brothers, and they called him younger brother. And this dispute continued till Ee-ee-toy again got the best of it, and although really the younger brother was admitted by the others to be Seeurhuh, or the elder.
And the birds came down from the sky and again there was a dispute about the relationship, but Ee-ee-toy again got the best of them all.
But Quotaveech staid up in the sky because he had a comfortable nest there, and they called him Vee-ick-koss- kum Mahkai, the Feather-Nest Doctor.
And they wanted to find the middle, the navel of the earth, and they sent Veeppismahl, the humming bird, to the west, and Hickovick, the woodpecker, to the east, and all the others stood and waited for them at the starting place. And Veepismahl & Hickovick were to go as far as they could, to the edge of the world, and then return to find the middle of the earth by their meeting. But Hickovick flew a little faster and got there first, and so when they met they found it was not the middle, and they parted & started again, but this time they changed places and Hickovick went westward and Veepismahl went east.
And this time Veepismahl was the faster, and Hickovick was late, and the judges thought their place of meeting was a little east of the center so they all went a little way west. Ee-ee-toy, Juhwerta Mahkai and Toehahvs stood there and sent the birds out once more, and this time Hickovick went eastward again, and Veepismahl went west. And Hickovick flew faster and arrived there first. And they said : “This is not the middle. It is a little way west yet.”
And so they moved a little way, and again the birds were sent forth, and this time Hickovick went west and Veepismahl went east. And when the birds returned they met where the others stood and all cried “This is the Hick, the Navel of the World!”
And they stood there because there was no dry place yet for them to sit down upon; and Ee-eetoy rubbed upon his breast and took from his bosom the smallest ants, the O-auf-taw-ton, and threw them upon the ground, and they worked there and threw up little hills; and this earth was dry. And so they sat down.
But the: water was still running in the valleys, and Ee-ee-toy took a hair from his head & made it into a snake— Vuck-vahmuht. And with this snake he pushed the waters south, but the head of the snake was left lying to the west and his tail to the east.
But there was more water, and Ee-ee-toy took another hair from his head and made another snake, and with this snake pushed the rest of the water north. And the head of this snake was left to the east and his tail to the west. So the head of each snake was left lying with the tail of the other.
And the snake that has his tail to the east, in the morning will shake up his tail to start the morning wind to wake the people and tell them to think of their dreams.
And the snake that has his tail to the west, in the evening will shake up his tail to start the cool wind to tell the people it is time to go in and make the fires & be comfortable.
And they said: “We will make dolls, but we will not let each other see them until they are finished.”
And Ee-ee-toy sat facing the west, and Toehahvs facing the south, and Juhwerta Mahkai facing the east.
And the earth was still damp and they took clay and began to make dolls. And Ee-ee-toy made the best. But Juhwerta Mahkai did not make good ones, because he remembered some of his people had escaped the flood thru a hole in the earth, and he intended to visit them and he did not want to make anything better than they were to take the place of them. And Toehahvs made the poorest of all.
Then Ee-ee-toy asked them if they were ready, and they all said yes, and then they turned about and showed each other the dolls they had made.
And Ee-ee-toy asked Juhwerta Mahkai why he had made such queer dolls. “This one,” he said, “is not right, for you have made him without any sitting-down parts, and how can he get rid of the waste of what he eats?”
But Juhwerta Mahkai said: “He will not need to eat, he can just smell the smell of what is cooked.”
Then Ee-ee-toy asked again: “Why did you make this doll with only one leg—how can he run?” But Juh- werta Mahkai replied: “He will not need to run; he can just hop around.”
Then Ee-ee-toy asked Toehahvs why he had made a doll with webs between his fingers and toes—”How can he point directions?” But Toehahvs said he had made these dolls so for good purpose, for if anybody gave them small seeds they would not slip between their fingers, and they could use the webs for dippers to drink with.
And Ee-ee-toy held up his dolls and said: “These are the best of all, and I want you to make more like them.” And he took Toehahv’s dolls and threw them into the water and they became ducks & beavers. And he took Juhwer- ta Mahkai’s dolls and threw them away and they all broke to pieces and were nothing.
And Juhwerta Mahkai was angry at this and began to sink into the ground; and took his stick and hooked it into the sky and pulled the sky down while he was sinking. But Ee-ee-toy spread his hand over his dolls, and held up the sky, and seeing that Juhwerta Mahkai was sinking into the earth he sprang and tried to hold him & cried, “Man, what are you doing? Are you going to leave me and my people here alone?”
But Juhwerta Mahkai slipped through his hands, leaving in them only the waste & excretion of his skin. And that is how there is sickness & death among us.
And Ee-ee-toy, when Juhwerta Mahkai escaped him, went around swinging his hands & saying: “I never thought all this impurity would come upon my people!” and the swinging of his hands scattered disease over all the earth. And he washed himself in a pool or pond and the impurities remaining in the water are the source of the malarias and all the diseases of dampness.
And Ee-ee-toy and Toehahvs built a house for their dolls a little way off, and Ee-ee-toy sent Toehahvs to listen if they were yet talking. And the Aw-up, (the Apaches) were the first ones that talked. And Ee-ee-toy said: “I never meant to have those Apaches talk first, I would rather have had the Aw-aw-tam, the Good People, speak first. “
But he said: “It is all right. I will give them strength, that they stand the cold & all hardships.” And all the differ- ent people that they had made talked, one after the other, but the Awawtam talked last.
And they all took to playing together, and in their play they kicked each other as the Maricopas do in sport to this day; but the Apaches got angry and said: “We will leave you and go into the mountains and eat what we can get, but we will dream good dreams and be just as happy as you with all your good things to eat.”
And some of the people took up their residence on the Gila, and some went west to the Rio Colorado. And those who builded vahahkkees, or houses out of adobe and stones, lived in the valley of the Gila, between the mountains which are there now.
Juhwerta Mahkai’s Song Before The Flood
My poor people,
Who will see,
Who will see
This water which will moisten the earth!
The Song Of Superstition Mountains
We are destroyed!
By my stone we are destroyed!
We are rightly turned into stone.
Ee-Ee-Toy’s Song When He Made The World Serpents
I know what to do;
I am going to move the water both ways.
Notes on “The Story of the Flood”
In the Story of the Flood we are introduced to Indian marriage. Among the Pimas it was a very simple affair. There was no ceremony whatever. The lover usually selected a relative, who went with him to the parents of the girl and asked the father to permit the lover to marry her. Presents were seldom given unless a very old man desired a young bride. The girl was consulted and her consent was essential, her refusal final. If, however, all parties were satisfied, she went at once with her husband as his wife. If either party became dissatisfied, separation at once constituted divorce and either could leave the other. A widow or divorced woman, if courted by another suitor, was approached directly, with no intervention of relatives. Of course, on these terms there were many separations, yet all accounts agree that there was a good deal of fidelity and many life-long unions and cases of strong affection.
Polygamy was not unknown.
Grossman says that the wife was the slave of the husband, but it is difficult to see how a woman, free at any moment to divorce herself without disgrace or coercion, could be properly regarded as a slave. Certainly the men appear always to have done a large part of the hard work, and as far as I could see the women were remarkably equal and independent and respectfully treated, as such a system would naturally bring about. A man would be a fool to ill-treat a woman, whose love or services were valuable to him, if at any moment of discontent she could leave him, perhaps for a rival. The chances are that he would constantly endeavor to hold her allegiance by special kindness and favors.
But today legal marriage is replacing the old system.
So far as I saw the Pimas were very harmonious and kindly in family life.
The birds, gee-ee-sop and quotaveech, were pointed out to me by the Pimas, and as near as I could tell quotaveech was Bendire’s thrasher, or perhaps the curve-bill thrasher. It has a very sweet but timid song. I did not succeed in identifying gee-ee-sop, but find these entries about him in my journal: “Aug. 5—I saw a little bird which I suppose to be a gee-ee-sop in a mezquite today, smaller and more slender than a vireo, but like one in action, but the tail longer and carried more like a brown thrasher, nearly white below, dark, leaden gray above, top of head and tail black.” Again on Sept. 1: “What a dear little bird the gee-ee-sop is! Two of them in the oas-juh-wert-pot tree were looking at me a few minutes back. Dark slate-blue above and nearly white below, with beady black eyes and black, lively tails, tipped with white, they are very pretty, tame and confiding.”
The faith of the Aw-aw-tam in witchcraft appears first in this story and afterwards is conspicuous in nearly all. Almost all diseases they supposed were caused by bewitching, and it was the chief business of the medicine-men to find out who or what had caused the bewitching. Sometimes people were accused and murders followed. This was the darkest spot in Piman life. Generally, however, some animal or inanimate object was identified. Grossman’s account in the Smithsonian Report for 1871 is interesting. In the stories, however, witchcraft appears usually as the ability of the mahkai to work transformations in himself or others, in true old fairy-tale style.
Superstition Mountain derives its name from this story, It is a very beautiful and impressive mountain, with terraces of cliffs, marking perhaps the successive pausing places of the fugitives, and the huddled rocks on the top represent their petrified forms. Some of the older Indians still fear to go up into this mountain, lest a like fate befall them.
What beautiful poetic touches are the wetting of the woodpecker’s tail, and the singing of the little birds to subdue the angry waters.
The resemblances to Genesis will of course be noted by all in these two first stories. Yet after all they are few and slight in any matter of detail.
In Ee-ee-toy’s serpents, that pushed back the waters, there is a strong reminder of the Norse Midgard Serpent.
The making of the dolls in this story is one of the prettiest and most amusing spots in the traditions.
The waste and perspiration of Juhwerta Mahkai’s skin again comes into play, but this time as a malign force instead of a beneficent one. It would also appear from this that the more intelligent Pimas had a glimmering of the fact that there were other causes than witchcraft for disease.
I have generally used the word Aw-aw-tam (Good People, or People of Peace) as synonymous with Pima, but it is sometimes used to embrace all Indians of the Piman stock and may be so understood in this story.
And perhaps this is as good a place as any to say a few descriptive words about these Pimas of Arizona, and their allies, who have from prehistoric times inhabited what the old Spanish historian, Clavigero, called “Pimeria,” that is, the valleys of the Gila and Salt Rivers.
Their faces seemed to me to be of almost Caucasian regularity and rather of an English or Dutch cast, that is rather heavily moulded. The forehead is vertical and inclined to be square; and the chin, broad, heavy and full, comes out well to its line. The nose is straight, or a little irregular, or rounded, at the end, but not often very aq- uiline, never flat or wide-nostriled. The mouth is large but well shaped, with short, white, remarkably even teeth, seldom showing any canine projection. The whole face is a little heavy and square, but the cheek bones are not especially prominent. The eyes are level, frank and direct in glance, with long lashes and strong black brows. In the babies a slight uptilt to the eye is sometimes’ seen, like a Japanese, which indeed the babies suggest. The head of almost all adults is well-balanced and finely poised on a good neck.
Another type possesses more of what we call the Indian feature. The forehead retreats somewhat, so does the chin, while the upper lip is larger, longer, more convex and the nose, above is more aquiline, with wider nostrils. Consequently this face in profile is more convex thru out. The cheek-bones are much more prominent, too, and the head not generally so well-balanced and proportional.
While I have seen no striking beauty I believe the average good looks is greater than among white men, taken as they come.
The women as a rule, however, do not carry themselves gracefully, are apt to be too broad, fat and dumpy in figure, with too large waists, and often loose, ungracefully-moving hips. This deformity of the hips, for it almost amounts to that, I observe among Italian peasant women, too, and some negresses, and, I take it, is caused by car- rying too heavy loads on the head at too early an age. There seems to be a settling down of the body into the pelvis, with a loose alternate motion of the hips. There are exceptions, of course, and I have seen those of stately figure and fine carriage Sometimes the loose-hip motion appears in a man.
A slight tattooing appears on almost all Pima faces not of the last generation. In the women this consists of two blue lines running down from each corner of the mouth, under the chin, crossing, at the start, the lower lip, and a single blue line running back from the outer angle of each eye to the hair.
In the men it is usually a single zigzag blue line across the forehead.
The pigment used is charcoal.
The men are generally erect and of good figure, with good chests and rather heavy shoulders, the legs often a little bowed. Strange to say I never saw one who walked “Pigeon-toed.” All turned the toes out like white men. The hands are often small and almost always well-shaped; and the feet of good shape, too, not over large, with a well- arched instep.
Emory and his comrades found the Pimas wearing a kind of breech-cloth and a cotton serape only for gar- ments; the women wearing only a serape tied around the waist and falling to the knee, being otherwise nude. Today the average male Pima dresses like a white workman, in hat, shirt, trousers and perhaps shoes, and his wife or daughter wears a single print gown, rather loose at the waist and ruffled at the bottom, which reaches only to the ankles. Both sexes are commonly barefooted, but the old sandals, once universal, are still often seen. These gah-kai- gey-aht-kum-soosk, or string-shoes, as the word means, were made in several different ways, and often projected somewhat around the foot as a protection against the frequent and formidable thorns of the country.
Sometimes a wilder or older Indian will be seen, even now, with only a breech-cloth on, and some apology for a garment on his shoulders.
The skin is often of a very beautiful rich red-bronze tint, or perhaps more like old mahogany.
Except the tattooing both sexes are remarkable for their almost entire absence of any marked adornment or ornament of person. Even a finger-ring, or a ribbon on the hair, is not common, and the profuse bead-work and embroidery of the other tribes is never seen.
The exceedingly thick and intensely black hair was formerly worn very long, even to the waist, being banged off just over the eyes of the women and over the eyes and ears of the men and allowed to hang perfectly loose. But the women seldom wore: as long hair as the men. This long hair is still sometimes seen and is exceedingly pictur- esque, especially on horseback, and it is a great pity so sightly a fashion should ever die out. I have seen Maricopas roll theirs in ringlets. Sometimes the men braided the hair into a cue, or looped up the ends with a fillet. But the Government discourages long and loose hair, and now most men cut it short, and women part theirs and braid it. Like all Indians, the men have scant beards, and the few whiskers that grow are shaved clean or resolutely pinched off with an old knife or pulled out by tweezers.
Their hair appears to turn gray as early as ours, tho I saw no baldness except on one individual. In old times (and even now to some extent) the hair was dressed with a mixture of mud and mezquite gum, at times, which was left on long enough for the desired effect and then thoroly washed off. This cleansed it and made it glossy and the gum dyed the gray hair quite a lasting, jet black, tho several applications might be needed.
Women still carry their ollas and other burdens on their heads and are exceedingly strong and expert in the art, balancing great and awkward weights with admirable dexterity.
The convenient and even beautiful gyih-haw (a word very difficult to pronounce correctly), or burden basket, of the old time Pima woman, seems to have entirely disappeared. It was not only picturesque, but an exceedingly useful utensil.
The wawl-kote, or carrying-cradle for the baby, is obsolete, too, now. Strange to say, tho in shape like most pap- poose-cradles, it was carried poised on the head, instead of slung on the back in the usual way.
The Pimas are fond of conversation and often come together in the evening and have long talks. Their voices are low, rapid, soft and very pleasant and they laugh, smile and joke a great deal. They are remarkable for calmness and evenness of temper and the expression of the face is nearly always intelligent, frank, and good-natured.
They are noticeably devoid of hurry, worry, irritability or nervousness.
Unlike most Indians these have not been removed from the soil of their fathers and, indeed, such an act would have been cruelly unjust, for, true to their name, the Pimas have maintained an unbroken peace with the whites.
Lieutenant Colonel W. H. Emory, of “The Army of the West,” who visited them in 1846, was perhaps the first American to observe and describe these people. He says: “Both nations (Pimas and Maricopas) cherished an aver- sion to war and a profound attachment to all the peaceful pursuits of life. This predilection arose from no incapacity for war, for they were at all times able and willing to keep the Apaches, whose hands are raised against all other people, at a respectful distance, and prevent depredations by those mountain robbers who held Chihuahua, Sonora and a part of Durango in a condition approaching almost to tributary provinces.”
As observed by Emory and the other officers of the “Army of the West” they were an agricultural people rais- ing at that time “cotton, wheat, maize, beans, pumpkins and water melons.” I found them raising all these in 1903, except cotton, and I think he might have added to his list, peppers, gourds, tobacco and the pea called cah-lay-vahs.
Emory says: “We were at once impressed with the beauty, order, and disposition of the arrangements made for irrigating the land . . . the fields are subdivided by ridges of earth into rectangles of about 200×100 feet, for the con- venience of irrigating. The fences are of sticks, matted with willow and mezquite.” I found this still comparatively correct. The fields are still irrigated by acequias or ditches from the Gila, and still fenced by forks of trees set closely in the ground and reinforced with branches of thorn or barbed wire. Some of these fences with their antler-like effect of tops are very picturesque.
From the description given by Emory, and Captain A. R. Johnson of the same army, of their kees or winter lodges, they were essentially the same as I found some of them still inhabiting. There is the following entry in my journal: “I have been examining the old kee next door, since the old couple left it. It is quite neatly and systematical- ly made. Four large forks are set in the ground, and these support a square of large poles, covered with other poles, arrow-weeds, chaff and earth, for the roof. The walls are a neat arrangement of small saplings, about 10 inches apart curving up from the ground on a bending slant to the roof, so that the whole structure comes to resemble a turtle-shell or rather an inverted bowl. These side sticks arc connected by three lines of smaller sticks tied across them with withes, all the way around the kee. Against these arrow-weeds are stood, closely and neatly, tops down (perhaps thatched on) and kept in place by three more lines of small sticks, bound on and corresponding to those within. Then the whole structure is plastered over with adobe mud till rain-proof. No window, and only one small door, about 2½ feet square, closed by a slat-work.”
This kee of the Pima was not to his credit. The most friendly must admit it dirty, uncomfortable and unpictur- esque. It was too low to stand erect in, the little fire was made in the center, the smoke escaping at last from the low doorway after trying everywhere else and festooning the ceiling with soot.
The establishment of the Pima was most simple. He sat, ate and slept on the earth, consequently a few mats and blankets, baskets, bowls and pots included his furniture. A large earthen olla, called by the Pimas hah-ah, stood in a triple fork under the shade of the vachtoe and being porous enough to permit a slight evaporation kept the drinking water cool.
The arbor-shed or vachtoe pertains to almost every Piman home and consists of a flat roof of poles and ar- row-weeds supported by stout forks. Sometimes earth is added to the roof to keep off rain. Sometimes the sides are enclosed with a rude wattle work of weeds and bushes, making a grateful shade, admitting air freely; screening those within from view, while permitting vision from within outward in any direction. Sometimes this screen of weeds and bushes, in a circular form, was made without any roof and was then called an o-num. Sometimes after the vachtoe had been inclosed with wattle work the whole structure was plastered over with adobe mud and then became a caws-seen, or storehouse. All these structures were used at times as habitations, but now the Pima is com- ing more and more to the white man’s adobe cottage as a house and home. But the vachtoe, attached or detached, is still a feature of almost every homestead.
Under the vachtoe usually stood the matate, or mill (called by the Pimas mah-choot) which was a large flat or concave stone, below, across which was rubbed an oblong, narrow stone (vee-it-kote), above, to grind the corn or wheat. Other important utensils were a vatcheeho, or wooden trough, for mixing, and a chee-o-pah, or mortar, of wood or stone, for crushing things with a pestle. The nah-dah-kote, or fire-place, was an affair of stones and adobe mud to support the earthern pots for cooking or to support the earthern plates on which the thin cakes of corn or wheat meal were baked. These were what the Mexicans call tortillas. Perhaps the staple food of the Pima even more than corn (hohn) or wheat (payl-koon) is frijole beans—these of two kinds, the white (bah-fih) the brown (mohn). A sort of meal made of parched corn or wheat; ground on the mahchoot and eaten, or perhaps one might say drank, with water and brown sugar (panoche) was the famous pinole, the food carried on war trips when nutrition, light- ness of weight and smallness of bulk were all desired. It has a remarkable power to cool and quench thirst. Taw- mahls, or corn-cakes of ground green corn, wrapped in husks and roasted in the ashes, or boiled, were also favor- ites. Peppers (kaw-aw-kull) were a good deal used for seasoning and relishes.
Today the country of the Pima is very destitute of large game but he adds to the above bill of fare all the small game, especially rabbits, quail and doves, that he can kill. In the old days when the Gila always had water it held fine fish and the Indians caught them with their hands or swept them up on the banks by long chains of willow hurdles or faggots, carried around the fish by waders. I could not learn that they ever had any true fish-nets or fish-hooks; nor any rafts, canoes or other boats. But owing to the frequent necessity of crossing the treacherous Gila the men, and many of the women, were good swimmers.
The Toe-hawn-awh Aw-aw-tam, or Papagoes, whose reservation is in Pima County, near Tucson (and called St. Xavier) are counted “blood brothers” of the Pimas, speak essentially the same language, are on the most cordial terms with them, and are under the same agency.
The Maricopas are a refugee tribe, related to the Yumas, who once threatened them with extermination because of an inter-tribal feud. They were adopted by the Pimas and protected by them, and have ever since lived with them as one people, having however a different language, identical with that of the Yumas.
The Quojatas are a small tribe, of the Piman stock, living south of the Casa Grande.
The total number of Pimas, Papagoes and Maricopas in the U. S. is now estimated at about 8000, the Pimas alone as 4000.
I am not a linguist, or a philologist, and my time was short with these people, and I did not go to any extent into their language, or study its grammar. Their voices were soft and pleasant, and I was continually surprised at the low tones in which they generally conversed and the quickness with which they heard. But their words were most awk- ward to my tongue. There were German sounds, and French sounds, too, I would say, in their language, and there were letters that seemed to disappear as they uttered them, or never to come really forth, and syllables that were swallowed like spoonfuls of hot soup. But I trust that I am substantially correct in the words that I have retained in the stories and that I have written them so that the English reader can pronounce them in a way to be understood.
The accent is generally on the first syllable.
The Story of Ah-Ahn-He-Eat-Toe-Pahk Mah-Mahkai
And there was an orphan named Ah-ahn-he-eat-toe-pahk Mahkai (which means Braided-Feather Doctor) who lived at a place called Two Reservoirs (Go-awk-Vahp-itchee-kee) north of Cheoff-Skawmack, or Tall Gray Mountain.
And his only relative was an old grandmother. And she used to go and get water in earthern vessels, a number of them in her carrying basket. And when she neared home she would call to her grandson, saying: “Come, help me wrestle with it!” meaning to help her down with her load. And he would jump and run, and wrestle so roughly he would break all the vessels in her basket.
And thus was he mean and mischievous, a bad boy in many ways. And one day his grandmother sent him to get some of the vegetable called “owl’s-feathers,” which the Awawtam cook by making it into a sort of tortilla, baked on the hot ground where a fire has just been. And he went and found an owl and pulled its feathers out & brought them to the old woman, and she said: “This is not what I want! It is a vegetable that I mean!”
And so he went off again and got the vegetable owl’s-feathers for her.
After that she sent him for the vegetables named “crow’s-feet” and “black bird’s-eyes,” saying to him that they were very good cooked together. And the mischievous orphan went & got the feet of some real crows and the eyes of real blackbirds and brought them to her. And she said: “This is not what I mean! I want the vegetables named after these things!”
And the boy, who was then about twelve years old, went and got what she wanted and she cooked them.
And this orphan boy had a dream which he liked and wished to have come true, and went to a dance that was being danced in the neighborhood, a ceremonial dance such as is celebrated when a young girl arrives at woman- hood, and he went to see it, hoping it would in some way be like his dream, but when he saw it he was disgusted.
And he went to hear the song of a singing doctor, a mahkai or medicine-man, but when he heard his singing he was disgusted with that too.
And he left his home and on his way found a little house, or kee, made of rough bushes. And the one who lived therein invited him to stay awhile and see all the different people who would arrive there.
And he did so, and in the early evening they came—all the fiercest animals, cougars, bears, eagles, and they were bewitching each other, but nobody bewitched him, and in the morning he went on.
And he went along until he came to another kee, and the owner invited him to stay over night and see all the people who came there. And he did so, and in the early evening came the same creatures and did the same as before, but he was not bewitched.
And he went on again till he came to a desert place, utterly barren, without trees or bushes and there a wind came to meet him, a whirlwind, Seev-a-lick, and it caught him up and carried him to the East & then back again, and to the North and back again; and to the West & back again; and then South & back again. And so it got posses- sion of his soul and carried it off to its own place.
And Seevalick, the whirlwind, said to him: “You shall be like me.”
And there his dream. came true and he said: “This is what I was looking for; this it is for which I was travelling.”
And he wished to go back, and the wind took his soul back again into his body, and so he returned to his home.
And after his return he was the best young man in the country, kind to everybody, and everybody liked him.
But he did not care to be with boys of his own age, but liked better to be with the wise old men, and went where they came together at nights. And he would sit and listen to them, but did not attempt to make any speeches him- self. His reasons were that the young were often vicious, thieves, beggars, murderers, and he would rather be with the old who followed what was better.
And in the evening he would often hear the old people say: “We will go rabbit-hunting in such a place,” but he stayed at home and did not go with them.
But one night, after a while, when they said: “Tomorrow we will go jack-rabbit hunting,” he went home as they did, but the next morning, when they went hunting, he went and made himself a bow & arrows, as Seevalick had told him and placed them where he could find them.
And the next evening they were talking again of hunting, and appointed a place to meet, and the following morning, when they were getting ready, he got his bows & arrows, but he did not come quite up to the meeting place, but sat a little way off.
And as he sat there the people came up to him and made fun of him and asked him if he expected to kill any- thing with his weapons, for he had made a big bow & arrows as the Whirlwind had done. And the people handed these about among themselves, laughing, and when they were thru ridiculing them they brought back the bow and arrows and laid them down before him. But he said nothing, and when the people were thru he left the bow & arrows there, and went home and went again to look for a suitable stick to make a bow from.
And he made a new bow & arrows and left them where he could find them, and went home.
And again he went in the evening to the old people’s gathering and heard them appoint a place for the hunting, and went home when they did. And in the morning, when he heard the signal cry for hunting, he went and got his bow & arrows and followed after them again, but again stayed some distance off. And again the people came about him and handled his bow & arrows and laughed at them. And again he left them lying there on the ground and went home to make a new bow & arrows.
And the fourth time this happened he was late at the place of meeting, and before he came the one at whose house the meeting was said to the others: “There is a young man who has been several times with us to the place where we come together for the hunting, and I suppose he has made a new bow & arrows today, for he has to do that whenever you handle his weapons. Now I want you not to handle his weapons any more, but to let him be till we see what he will do, for it appears to me that he is some kind of a powerful personage (mahkai).
And Toehahvs, who was listening, said: “You yourself, were the very first to handle his weapons.”
And the next morning when Ahahnheeattoepahk Mahkai heard the signal yells for the hunting, he went to the meeting place, with his bow and arrows, and sat away off, as before, but this time nobody came to him.
And then the hunting began, and in it some one called to him: “There is a jack-rabbit (choo-uff) coming your way!” and he shot the rabbit with his arrow; but when he came to it he did not pick it up, but grasped the ar- row and with a swinging motion threw the rabbit from it to the man nearest him.
And thus he went on all day, killing rabbits and giving them to others, keeping none for himself.
And again he was late at the place of meeting, and the man who had spoken the night before said: “Now you see what he has done! This is the fourth bow that he has made. If you people had left him alone before, he would, before. this, have been killing game for you. And now if you do not disturb him I am sure he will go on, and you will have jack-rabbits to eat all the time.”
And so he killed rabbits at every hunt, and gave them away, especially to the old. Whenever he killed one he would pick it up and give it to an old man, and keep on that way.
And one night at the place of meeting the spokesman said: “Tomorrow we will surround the mountain and hunt deer, and we will put him at the place where the deer will run, and we will see how many he will kill!”
And in the morning, at the mountain, they placed him at the deer-run, and told him to “shut the valley,” mean- ing for him to head-off and kill any deer which might run toward him. But the young man began to get big rocks and try to make a wall to close the valley up, and paid no attention to the deer running past him, and when the people came, and asked him about his shooting he said: “You did not tell me to kill the deer, you told me to ‘shut the valley.’”
(Not but what he understood them, but he was acting again as he had once done with his grandmother.)
And the next day they tried another mountain and said: “We will see if the young man will kill us any deer there.” So when they came to this mountain they told him to go to a certain valley, on the other side, and hang himself there. This is a form of speech which means to hang around or remain at a place; but the young hunter went there and left his bow & arrows on the ground, and hung himself up by his two hands clasped around the limb of a tree.
And after they had chased many deer in his direction they said: “Let us go now & butcher-up the deer the young man has killed, for he must have killed a good many by this time.”
But when they came to where the young man was, there he hung by his hands, and when they asked him how many he had killed, he said: “I have not killed any. You did not tell me to kill any, only to hang myself here, which I did, and I have hung here and watched the deer running past.
And they tried him again, on another morning, at another valley, and this time they told him if he saw a doe big with fawn, “snon-ham,” which is also the word used for a woman soon to become a mother, he should kill her. And he went to his place, and there came by such a woman and he shot her down and killed her.
And the next day they took him to another mountain and told him to kill the “kurly,” which means the old, but they meant him to understand old deer. And when they came to him later to butcher-up the deer he had killed, and asked him where they were, he replied: “I have not killed any deer, you did not tell me to kill deer, but to kill the kurly, and there is the kurly I have killed!”
And it was the old man who goes ahead whom he had shot with his arrow.
And after they had buried the old man they returned to the village, and that night the man who owned the meeting place said: “Tomorrow we must give him another trial, and this time I want you to tell him straight just what you want. Tell him to kill the deer, either young or old, and he will do it. If you had done this before he would have killed us many deer. You should have understood him better by this time, but you did not tell him straight, and now he has killed two of us.”
And the next morning they took him to another mountain, and placed him in a low place, and told him to kill all the deer which came his way. And, when they went after a while, after chasing many deer toward him, they asked him where the deer were which he had killed, and he replied: “Down in the low place you will find plenty deer.” And they went there and found many dead deer of all kinds, and butchered them up.
Notes on “The Story of Ah-Ahn-He-Eat-Toe-Pahk Mah-Mahkai”
In the story of Ah-ahn-he-eat-toe-pahk Mahkai we are introduced to the Indian faith in dreams and to more witchcraft. We come, too, to the national sport of rabbit-hunting, with its picturesqueness and excitement.
In the transaction between Seevalick and the boy we have a reappearance of the world-wide belief that there is a connection between the wind and the human soul.
The strange quality of savage humor, labored, sometimes gruesome, and often tragic, appears in the latter part of the tale.
It is noticeable that they buried the old man, but no mention is made of burying the woman who was shot. The Pimas of old time buried their dead in a sitting posture, neck and knees tied together with ropes, four to six feet under ground, and covered the grave with logs and thorn-brush to keep away wolves. The interment was usually at night, with chants, but without other ceremony. Then, immediately after, the house of the deceased was burned, and all personal effects destroyed, even food; the horses and cattle being killed and eaten by the mourners, excepting such as the deceased might have given to his heirs. After the prescribed time of mourning (one month for a child or distant relative, six months or a year for husband or wife) the name of the dead was never more mentioned and everything about him treated as forgotten.
The Maricopas burn their dead.
It is noticeable, too, that no one appears to have punished the slayer for his murderous practical jokes. Indeed, while the Awawtam appear to have been people of exceptionally good character, it also appears that they seldom punished any crimes except by a sort of boycott or pressure of public disapproval.
The Story of Vandaih, the Man-Eagle
And thus Ahahnheteatoepahk Mahkai became famous for the killing of game; and there was another young man, named Van-daih, who wanted to be his friend, So one day Vandaih made him four tube-pipes of cane, such as the Indians use for ceremonious smoking, and went to see the young hunter. But when he entered the young man was lying down, and he just looked at Vandaih and then turned his face away, saying nothing,
And Vandaih sat there and when the young man became tired of lying one way and turned over he lit up one of his pipes. But the young man took no notice of him. And this went on all night. Every time there was a chance Van- daih tried his pipe, but Ahahnheeattoepahk Mahkai never spoke, and in the morning Vandaih went away without the friend he desired having responded to him.
The next evening Vandaih came again and sat there all night, but the friend he courted never said a word, and in the morning he went away again.
And he slept in the daytime, and when evening came he went again, and sat all night long, but the young man spoke to him not at all.
And the third morning that this happened the wife of Ahahnheeattoepahk Mahkai said to him: “Why are you so mean to Vandaih as never to speak to him? Perhaps he has something important to say. He comes here every night, and sits the whole night thru before you, and you do not speak to him. And maybe he will come tonight again, and I feel very sorry for him that you never say a word to him when he comes.”
And the young man said: “I know it is true, what you have said, but I know, too, very well, that Vandaih is not a good man. He gambles with the gains-skoot, he is a liar, thief, licentious, and is everything that is bad. I wish some other boys would come to see me instead of him, and better than he, for I know very well that he will repeat things that I say in a way that I did not mean and raise a scandal about it.”
And the next night Vandaih came again and sat in the same place; and when Ahahnheeattoepahk Mahkai saw him he just looked at him and then turned over and went to sleep. But along in the night he awoke, and when Vandaih saw he was awake he lit one of his pipes. Then Ahahnheeattoepahk Mahkai got up. And when he got up Vandaih buried his pipe, but the other said: “What do you bury your pipe for? I want to smoke.”
Vandaih said: “I have another pipe,” and he lit one and gave it to Ahahnheeattoepahk Mahkai, and then he dug up own pipe, and relighted it, and they both began to smoke.
And Ahahnheeattoepahk Mahkai said: “When did you come?” And Vandaih replied: “O just a little while ago.”
And Ahahnheeattoepahk Mahkai said: “I have seen you here for four nights, now, but I know you too well not to know you have a way to follow,” (“a way to follow” means to have some purpose behind) “but if you will quit all the bad habits you have I will be glad to have you come; but there are many others, better than you, whom I would rather have come to see me.
And now I am going to tell you something, but I am afraid that when you go away from here you will tell what I have said and make more of it, and then people will talk, and I shall be sorry.
I will tell you the habits you have—you are a liar, a gambler with the dice-game and the wah-pah-tee, a beggar, you follow after women and are a thief.
Now I want you to stop these bad habits. You may not know all that the people say about you: They say that when any hunter brings in game you are always the first to be there, and you will be very apt to swallow charcoal if you are so greedy.
Wherever you go, when the people see you coming, they say: ‘There comes a man who is a thief,’ and they hide their precious things. When you arrive they are kind to you, of course, but they do not care much about you.
I don’t know whether you know that people talk thus about you, but it is a great shame to me to know, when I have done some bad thing, that people talk about it.
Now if you quit these things you will be happy, and I want you to stop them. I am not angry with you, but I want you to know how the people are talking about you.
Now I want you to go home, but not say anything about what I have told you. Just take a rest, and tomorrow night come again.”
And the next night Vandaih came again, and Ahahnheeattoepahk Mahkai was in bed when he came, but he got right up and received him, and said: “Now after this I mean to tell you what is for your good, but I want you to keep quiet about it. There are many people that gamble with you. If they ask you again to gamble with them, do not do it. Tell them you do not gamble any more. And if they do not stop when you tell them this, but keep on asking you, come to me, and tell me, first, that you are going to play. And if I tell you, then, that I do not want you to gamble, I want you not to do it, but if I tell you you may gamble & you win once, then you may bet again, but I do not want you to keep on after winning twice. Twice is enough. But if the other man beats you at first, then I do not want you to play any more, but to quit gambling forever.”
And after this a man did want to gamble with Vandaih, but Vandaih said: “I have nothing to wager, and so can- not play with you.”
And still another man wanted to gamble with him, and he made him the same answer, but this man kept on asking, and at last Vandaih said: “Perhaps I will play with you, I will see about it. But I must have a little time first.” And he came to Ahahnheeattoepahk Mahkai and said: “There is a man who keeps on asking me to gamble with him, and I have come to tell you about it as you told me to do.”
And Ahahnheeattoepahk Mahkai told him to gamble, and gave him things to wager on the game, but said: “If he beats you I do not want you to gamble any more.”
And Vandaih took the things which had been given him, and went & played a game with this man who was so persistent, and won a game. And he played another game and won that, and then he said, “That is enough, I do not want to play any more;” but the other man kept on asking him to play.
But Vandaih refused & took the things which he had won to Ahahnheeattoepahk Mahkai and gave them all to him.
And the next morning he gambled again, and won twice, and he stopped after the second winning, as before.
And thus the young man kept on winning and Ahahnheeattoepahk Mahkai made gainskoot (dice-sticks) for him, and this was one reason why he won, for Ahahnheeattoepahk Mahkai was a powerful doctor & the dice were charmed.
And he beat every one who played against him till he had beat all the gamblers of his neighborhood, and then distant gamblers came & he beat them also. And so he won all the precious things that were in the country and gave all to Ahahnheeattoepahk Mahkai & kept nothing back. But one man went to Ee-ee-toy, who was living at the Salt River Mountain (Mo-hah-dheck) and asked him to let him have some things to wager against Vandaih. And Ee-ee- toy said: “You can have whatever you want, and I will go along to see the game.”
But when Ee-ee-toy got there he found the dice were not like common dice, and it would be difficult for any one to win against them, they were made by so powerful a man.
And Ee-eetoy went westward and found a powerful doctor who had a daughter, and said to the father: “I want your daughter to go around to all the big trees and find me all the feathers she can of large birds, not of small birds, and bring them here. And I will come again & see what she may have found.”
And her father told her, and the very next morning she began to hunt the feathers, and when Ee-eetoy came again she had a bundle, and Eeeetoy took them and took the pith out of their shafts and cleansed every feather which she had brought him.
And Ee-ee-toy threw away the pith and cut the shafts into small pieces and told the girl to roast them in a broken pot over a fire; and she got the broken pot & roasted them, and they curled up as they roasted till they
looked like grains of corn. And then he told her to roast some real corn & mix both together and grind them all up very fine, And Ee-ee-toy told her to take some ollas of this pinole in her syih-haw to the reservoirs.
And she did so, and passed by where Vandaih was going to play, and Vandaih said: “Before I can play I must drink.” But the man who was playing with him said: “Get some water of some one near,” but Vandaih said, “I would rather go to the reservoir.”
And Ee-ee-toy had prepared the girl before this, telling her that when she passed the players Vandaih would follow her to the reservoir and want too marry her. “Be polite to him,” he said “and ask him to drink some of the pinole, and to see your parents first.”
And the man who was going to gamble with Vandaih asked him not to go so far, for he wanted to gamble right away, but Vandaih replied: “I would rather go there. I will come right back. You be making holes till I get back.”
So the girl went to the reservoir, and Vandaih followed her and asked her to be his wife, and she said: “I want you to drink some of this pinole, and in the evening you may go and see my folks and ask them about it.”
So Vandaih mixed some pinole and drank it, and it made him feet feverish, like one with a cold; and the second time he drank the gooseflesh came out on his skin; and the third time he drank feathers came out all over him; and the fourth time long feathers grew out on his arms, and the fifth time he became an eagle and went and perched on the high place, or bank of the reservoir.
Then the girl went to the place where the other man was waiting to play the game and told all the people to come and see the terrible thing which had happened to Vandaih.
And the people, when they saw him, got their bows and arrows and surrounded him and were going to shoot him.
And they fired arrows at him, and some of them struck him, but could not pierce him, and then all were afraid of him. And first he began to hop around, and then to fly a little higher, until he perched on a tree, but he broke the tree down; and he tried another tree and broke that down; and then he flew to a mountain and tumbled its rocks down its side, and finally he settled on a strong cliff. And even the cliff swayed at first as if it would fall;—but finally it settled and stood still.
And this was foretold when the earth was being made, that one of the race of men should be turned into an eagle. Vandaih was a handsome man, but he had a bad character, and ever since the beginning parents had warned their children to practice virtue lest they be turned into eagles; because it had been foretold that some good-looking bad person should be thus transformed, and it was to be seen that good-looking people were often bad and homely ones good characters.
And Vandaih took that cliff for his residence and hunted over all the country round about, killing jack-rabbits, deer and all kinds of game for his food. And when the game became scarce he turned to men and one day he killed a man and took the body to his cliff to eat. And after this manner he went on. Early in the morning he would bring home a human being, and sometimes he would bring home two.
Then the people sent a messenger to Ee-eetoy, to his home on Mohahdheck, asking him to kill for them this man-eagle. And Ee-ee-toy said to the man: “You can go back, and in about four days I will be there.” But when the fourth day came Ee-eetoy had not arrived, as he had promised, but Vandaih was among the people, killing them, carrying them away to -the cliff.
And the people again sent the messenger, saying to him: “You must tell Ee-ee-toy he must come and help his people or we shall all be lost.”
And the man delivered his message and Ee-ee-toy said, as before, that he would be there in four days.
And this went on, the people sending to Ee-ee-toy, and Ee-ee-toy promising to come in four days, until a whole year had passed. And not only for one year, but for four years, for the people had misunderstood him, and when he said four days he meant four years, and so for four years it went on as we have said.
(Now Ee-ee-toy and Vandaih were relatives, and that was one reason why Ee-ee-toy kept the people waiting so long for his help and worked to gain time. He did not want to hurt Vandaih.)
But when the fourth year came Ee-ee-toy did go, and told the people to get him the “seed-roaster.”
And the people ran around, guessing what he meant, and they brought him the charcoal, but Ee-ee-toy said: “I did not mean this, I meant the ‘seed-roaster’!”
So they ran around again, and they brought him the long open earthen vessel with handles at each end, used for roasting, and with it they brought the charcoal which is made from ironwood. But he said: “I did not mean these. I mean the ‘seed-roaster.’”
And they kept on guessing, and nobody could guess it right. They brought him the black stones of the nah- dahcote, or fire place, and he said: “I do not want these. I want the ‘seed-roaster.’”
And the people kept on guessing, and could not guess it right, and so, at last, he told them that what he wanted was obsidian, that black volcanic stone, like glass, from which arrow heads are made. And this was what he called the “seed-roaster.”
So the people got it for him.
Then he told them to bring him four springy sticks. And they ran and brought all the kinds of springy sticks they could find, but he told them he did not mean any of these.
And for many days they kept on trying to get him the sticks which he wanted. And after they had completely failed Ee-ee-toy told them what he wanted. It was a kind of stick called vahs-iff, which did not grow there, therefore they had not been able to find it. And beside vahsiff sticks were not springy sticks at all, but the strongest kind of sticks, very stiff.
So they sent a person to get these, who brought them, and Ee-ee-toy whittled them so that they had sharp points. And there were four of them.
And Ee-ee-toy said: “Now I am going, and I want you to watch the top of the highest mountain, and if you see a big cloud over it, you will know I have done something wonderful. But if there is a fog over the world for four days you will know I am killed.”
When he started he allowed one of the dust storms of the desert to arise, and went in that, so that the man-ea- gle should not see him.
For many days he journeyed toward the cliff, and when sunset of the last day came he was still a good way off; but he went on and arrived at the foot of the cliff after it was dark, and hid himself there under a rock.
About daybreak the man-eagle got up and flew around the cliff four times and then flew off. And after he was gone Ee-ee-toy took one of his sticks and stuck it into a crack in the cliff, and climbed on it, and stuck another above it and so he went on to the top, pulling out the sticks behind him and putting them in above.
And when he got to the home of the man-eagle, Vandaih, on the top of the cliff, he found a woman there. And she was the same woman who had given Vandaih the pinole with eagles’ feathers in it. He had found her, and car- ried her up there, and made her his wife.
When Ee-ee-toy came to the woman he found she had a little boy, and he asked her if the child could speak yet, and she replied that he was just beginning to talk; and he enquired further when the man-eagle would return, and she said that formerly when game was plenty he had not stayed away long, but now that game was scarce it usually took him about half a day, so he likely would not be there till noon.
And Ee-ee-toy enquired: “What does he do when he comes back? Does he sleep or not? Does he lie right down, or does he go looking around first?”
And the wife said: “He looks all around first, everywhere. And even the little flies he will kill, he is so afraid that some one will come to kill him. And after he has looked around, and finished eating, he comes to lay his head in my lap and have me look for the lice in his head. And it is then that he goes to sleep.”
So Ee-ee-toy turned into a big fly and hid in a crack in the rock, and asked the woman if she could see him, and she said: “Yes, I can see you very plainly.”
And he hid himself three times, and each time she could see him, but the fourth time he got into one of the dead bodies, into its lungs, and had her pile the other dead bodies over him, and then when he asked her she said: “No, I cannot see you now.”
And Ee-ee-toy told her: “As soon as he goes to sleep, whistle, so that I may know that he is surely asleep.”
At noon Ee-ee-toy heard the man-eagle coming. He-was bringing two bodies, still living & moaning, and dropped them over the place where Ee-ee-toy lay. And the first thing the man-eagle did was to look all around, and he said to his wife: “What smell is this that I smell?” And she said: “What kind of a smell?” And he replied: “Why, it smells like an uncooked person!” “These you have just brought in are uncooked persons, perhaps it is these you smell.”
Then Vandaih went to the pile of dead bodies and turned them over & over, but the oldest body at the bottom he did not examine, for he did not think there could be anyone there.
So his wife cooked his dinner, and he ate it and then asked her to look for the lice in his head. And as he lay down he saw a fly pass before his face, and he jumped up to catch it, but the fly got into a crack in the rock where he could not get it.
And when he lay down again the child said: “Father! come!” And Vandaih said: “Why does he say that? He never said that before. He must be trying to tell me that some one is coming to .injure me!” But the wife said: “You know he is only learning to talk, and what he means is that he is glad that his father has come. That is very plain.” But Vandaih said: “No, I think he is trying to tell me some one has come.”
But at last Vandaih lay down and the woman searched his head and sang to put him to sleep. And when he seemed sound asleep she whistled. And her whistle waked him up and he said: “Why did you whistle! you never did that before?” And she said: “I whistled because I am so glad about the game you have brought. I used to feel bad about the people you killed, but now I know I must be contented & rejoice when you have a good hunt. And after this I will whistle every time when you bring game home.”
And she sang him to sleep again, and whistled when he slept; and waked him up again, and said the same thing again in reply to his question.
And the third time, while she was singing, she turned Vandaih’s head from side to side. And when he seemed fast asleep she whistled. And after she had whistled she turned the head again, but Vandaih did not get up, and so she knew that this time he was fast asleep.
So Ee-ee-toy came out of the dead body he had hidden in, and came to where Vandaih was, and the woman laid his head down & left him. And Ee-ee-toy took the knife which he had made from the volcanic glass, obsidian, and cut Vandaih’s throat, and beheaded him, and threw his head eastward & his body westward. And he beheaded the child, too, and threw its head westward and its body eastward.
And because of the killing of so powerful a personage the cliff swayed as if it would fall down, but Ee-ee-toy took one of his sharpened stakes and drove it into the cliff and told the woman to hold onto that; and he took an- other and drove that in and took hold of that himself.
And after the cliff had steadied enuf, Ee-ee-toy told the woman to heat some water, and when she had done so he sprinkled the dead bodies.
The first ones he sprinkled came to life and he asked them where there home was & when they told him he sent them there by his power.
And he had more water heated and sprinkled more bodies, and when he learned where their home was he sent them home, also, by his power.
And this was done a third time, with a third set of bodies.
And the forth time the hot water was sprinkled on the oldest bodies of all, the mere skeletons, and it took them a long time to come to life, and when they were revived they could not remember where their homes were or where they had come from.. So Ee-ee-toy cutoff eagles’ feathers slanting-wise (pens) and gave them, and gave them dried blood mixed with water (ink) and told them their home should be in the East, and by the sign of the slanting-cut feather they should know each other. And they are the white people of this day. And he sent them eastward by his power.
And in the evening he & the woman went down the cliff by the aid of the sharpened stakes, even as he had come up, and when they reached the foot of the mountain they stayed there over night. They took some of the long eagle feathers and made a kee from them, & some of the soft eagle feathers and made a bed with them. And they stayed there four nights, at the foot of the cliff.
And after a day’s journey they made another kee of shorter eagle feathers, and a bed of tail feathers. And they staid at this second camp four nights.
And then they journeyed on again another day and build another kee, like the first one, & stayed there also four nights.
And they journeyed on yet another day and built again a kee, like the second one, and stayed there four nights.
And on the morning of each fourth day Ee-ee-toy took the bath of purification, as the Pimas have since done when they have slain Apaches, and when he arrived home he did not go right among the people but stayed out in the bushes for a while.
And the people knew he had killed Vandaih, the man-eagle, for they had watched and had seen the cloud over the high mountain.
And after the killing of Vandaih, for a long time, the people had nothing to be afraid of, and they were all happy.
Notes on “The Story of Vandaih”
In the story of Vandaih we are given a curious glimpse into Indian friendship. The reference to smoking, too, is interesting. The Pimas had no true pipes. They used only cigarettes of tobacco and corn-husk, or else short tubes of cane stuffed with tobacco. These I have called tube-pipes. They smoked on all ceremonial occasions, but appear to have had no distinctive pipe of peace. The ceremonial pipes of cane had bunches of little birds’ feathers tied to them, and in my photo of the old seeneeyawkum he holds such a ceremonial pipe in his hand.
“He gambles with the gain-skoot:” The gain-skoot were the Pima dice—two sticks so marked and painted as to represent the numerals kee-ick (four) and choat-puh (six), and two called respectively see-ick-ko, the value of
which was fourteen, and gains, the value of which was fifteen. These were to be held in the hand and knocked in the air with a flat round stone. At the same time there was to be on the ground a parallelogram of holes with a sort of goal, or “home,” at two corners. If the sticks all fell with face sides up they counted five, If all fell with blank sides up it was ten. If only one face side turned up it counted its full value, but if two or three turned up then they counted only as one each. If a gain was scored the count was kept by placing little sticks or stones (soy-yee-kuh) in the holes as counters. If the second player overtook the first in a hole the first man was “killed” and had to begin over. Among all Indians gambling was a besetting vice, and there was nothing they would not wager.
Sometimes instead of the gain-skoot they used waw-pah-tee, which was simply a guessing game. They guessed in which hand a certain painted stick was held, or in which of four decorated cane-tubes, filled with sand, a certain little ball was hidden and wagered on their guess. These tubes were differently marked, and one was named “Old Man,” one “Old Woman,” one “Black Head,” and one “Black in the Middle.” Sticks were given to keep count of winnings.
The moral advice which Ahahnheeattoepahk Mahkai gives Vandaih, is very quaint, and the shrewd cunning with which he loads the dice, pockets the proceeds, and yet finally unloads all the blame on poor Vandaih, is quite of a piece with the confused morals of most folk-lore in all lands. On these points it is really very hard to understand the workings of the primitive mind. Here is certain proof that the modern conscience has evoluted from something very chaotic.
It will be noticed that Vandaih drinks the pinole, which bewitches him, five times instead of the usual four. Whether this is a mistake of the seeneeyawkum, or significant I do not know. Perhaps four is a lucky and five an unlucky number. Another variation in the numerical order is in the woman whistling only three times, in putting Vandaih to sleep.
As I have before pointed out the reference to white men, and pens and ink, is evidently a modern interpolation, not altogether lacking in flavor of sarcasm.
There are suggestions in this story of Jack the Giant Killer, of the Roc of the Arabian Nights, of the harpies, and of the frightful creatures, part human, part animal, so familiar in all ancient folk-lore.
The latter part of this tale is particularly interesting, as perhaps throwing light on the origin of that mysterious process of purification for slaying enemies, so peculiar to the Pimas.
It seems to have been held by the Awawtam that to kill an Apache rendered the slayer unclean, even tho the act itself was most valiant and praiseworthy, and must be expiated by an elaborate process of purification. From old Comalk Hawk Kih I got a careful description of the process.
According to his account, as soon as an Apache had been killed, if possible, the fact was at once telegraphed to the watchers at home by the smoke signal from some mountain. This custom is evidently referred to in E-ee-toy’s cloud over a high mountain as a signal of success. The Indians apparently regarded smoke and clouds as closely related, if not the same, as is shown in their faith in the power of tobacco to make rain.
As soon as the Apache has been killed the slayer begins to fast and to look for a “father.” His “father” is one who is to perform all his usual duties for him, for be is now unclean and cannot do these himself. The “father,” too, must know how to perform all the ceremonial duties necessary to his office, as will be explained. If a “father” can be found among the war-party the slayer need only fast two days, but if not he must wait till he gets home again, even if it takes four or more days. It appears that this friend, who has charge of the slayer, is humorously called a “father” because his “child” is usually so restless under his long fast, and keeps asking him to do things for him and divert him.
It there is no “father” for him in the war-party, as soon as possible a messenger is sent on ahead to get some one at home to take the office for him, and to make the fires in the kee, that being a man’s special duty. And the wife of the slayer is also now unclean by his act, and must purify herself as long as he, tho she must keep apart from him. And she also must have a substitute to do her usual work. She must keep close at home, and her husband, the slayer, remain out in the bushes till the purification is accomplished.
For two days the fast is complete, but on the morning of the third day the slayer is allowed one drink of pinole, very thin, and no more than he can drink at one breath. The moment he pauses he can have no more at that time.
When presenting this pinole. the “father” makes this speech:
“Your fame has come, and I was overjoyed, and have run all the way to the ocean, and back again, bringing you this water.
On my return I strengthened myself four times, and in the dish in which I carried the, water stood See-vick-a Way-hohm, The Red Thunder Person, the Lightning, and because of his force I fell down.
And when I got up I smelled the water in the dish, and it smelled as if something had been burned in it.
And when I got up I strengthened myself four times, and there came from the sky, and stood in the dish, Tone- dum Bah-ahk The Eagle of Light. And he turned the water in the dish in a circle, and because of his force I fell down, and when I rose up again and smelled the water in the dish it was stinking.
And when I had started again I strengthened myself four times, and Vee-sick the Chicken Hawk, came down from the sky and stood in the dish. And by his force I was thrown down. And when I stood again and smelled the water in the dish, it smelled like fresh blood.
And I started again, strengthening myself four times, and there came from the East our gray cousin, Skaw-mack Tee-worm-gall, The Coyote, who threw me down again, and stood in the dish, and turned the water around, and left it smelling as the coyote smells.
And when I rose up I started again, and in coming to you I have rested four times; and now I have brought you the water, and so many powerful beings have done wonderful things to it that I want you to drink it all at one time.”
After the third day the “father” brings his charge a little to eat every morning and evening, but a very little.
On the morning of the fourth day, at daybreak the slayer takes a bath of purification, even if it is winter and he has to break the ice and dive under to do it. And this is repeated on the morning of each fourth day, till four baths have been taken in sixteen days.
The slayer finds an owl and without killing him pulls long feathers out of his wings and takes them home. The slayer had cut a little lock of hair from the head of the Apache he had killed. (for in old times, at least, the Pimas often took no scalps) and now a little bag of buck-skin is made, and a ball of grease-wood gum is stuck on the end of this lock of hair which is placed in the bag, and on the bag are tied a feather of the owl and one from a chicken hawk, and some of the soft feathers of an eagle, and around the neck of the bag a string of blue beads.
(And during this time the women are carrying wood in their giyh-haws to the dancing place.)
Now the Apaches are contemptuously called children, and this bag represents a child, being supposed to con- tain the ghost of the dead Apache, and the slayer sits on the ground with it, and takes it in his hands as if it were a baby, and inhales from it four times as if he were kissing it. And when it is time for the dance the slayers who are a good ways off from the dancing place start before sunset, but those who are close wait till the sun is down. And the “father” goes with the slayer, through woods and bushes, avoiding roads. And before this the “Father” has dug a hole at the dancing place about ten inches deep and two feet wide, just big enough for a man to squat in with legs folded, and behind the hole planted a mezquite fork, about five feet high, on which are hung the weapons of the slayer, his shield, club, bow, quiver of arrows, perhaps his gun or lance.
(The shield was made of raw hide, very thick, able to turn an arrow and was painted jet black by a mixture of mezquite gum and charcoal, with water, which made it glossy and shiny. The design on it was in white, or red and white. The handle was of wood, curved, placed in the centre of the inside, bound down at the ends by raw. hide, and the hand fended from the rough shield by a piece of sheepskin.)
In this hole the slayer sits down and behind him and the fork lies down his dancer, for the slayer himself does not dance but some stranger who represents him perhaps a Papago or a Maricopa, drawn from a distance by the fame of the exploit. Nor do the slayers sing, but old men who in their day have slain Apaches. These singers are each allowed to sing two songs of their own choice, the rest of the veterans joining in. And as soon as the first old man begins to sing, the dancers get up, take the weapons of the men they represent, and dance around the fire, which the “fathers” keep burning, keeping time with the song.
And the women cook all kinds of good things, and set them before the singers, but the bystanders jump in and snatch them away. But sometimes the wife of an old singer will get something and save it for him.
And the relatives of the slayers will bring presents for the dancers, buckskin, baskets, and anything that an Indi- an values. And as soon as presented some relative of the dancer runs in and takes the present and keeps it for him.
And while this big war-dance is going on the rest of the people are having dances in little separate groups, all around. And as soon as the dance is over the weapons are returned to the forks they were taken from.
By this time it is nearly morning, and the slayers get up and take their bath in the river, and return and dry themselves by the expiring fire. Then returning to the bushes they remain there again four days, and that is the last of their purification.
As this dance is on the eve of the sixteenth day, there were twenty days in all.
Grossmans account differs considerably from this, and is worth reading.
During the time of purifying, the slayers wear their hair in a strange way, like the top-knot of a white woman, somewhat, and in it stick a stick, called a kuess—kote to scratch themselves with, as they are not allowed to use the fingers. This is alluded to in the Story of Paht-ahn-kum’s War. A picture of a Maricopa interpreter, with his hair thus arranged, is in the report of Col. W. H. Emory, before alluded to. This picture is interesting, because it shows that the Maricopas, when with the Pimas, adopted the same custom. When I showed this picture to the old see-nee- yaw-kum he was much interested, saying he himself had known this man, who was a relative of his, there being a dash of Maricopa blood in his family, and that he had been born in Mexico and had there learned Spanish enough to be an interpreter. His Mexican name, he said, was Francisco Lucas, but the Pimas called him How-app-ahl Tone- um-kum, or Thirsty Hawk, a name which has an amusing significance when we recall what Emory says about his taste for aguardiente, and that Captain Johnston says of the same man, “the dog had a liquorish tooth.”
Nast and Reconstruction: understanding a political cartoon
American Art in Context
by Dr. Kimberly Kutz Elliott and Dr. Beth Harris
Thomas Nast, “The Union As It Was—Worse Than Slavery,” 1874, wood engraving, illustration in Harper’s Weekly (October 24, 1874, Library of Congress) A conversation between Dr. Kimberly Kutz Elliott and Dr. Beth Harris Warning: this video includes violent and racist imagery
Walt Whitman was born on Long Island, New York. His family moved to Brooklyn in 1823, when young Whitman was four. He attended public school, but left when he was 12 to learn the printing trade. At this time, he also worked as a reporter for the Long Island Patriot. Due to a fire in the printing district of New York, Whitman was forced to seek employment as a rural school teacher. While he was like by students, he often clashed with those in charge of educational system. He returned to New York in 1841. By 1846, he became the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, an important newspaper. However, Brooklyn Daily Eagle fired Whitman two years later, due to his growing political activism and support of abolishing slavery. Afterwards, he worked in New Orleans as the editor the Crescent City newspaper for a brief period of time. His trip there cemented his support for abolishing slavery. Upon his return to New York, Whitman attended lectures by prominent thinkers, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson’s work was particularly inspirational for Whitman, who embraced Emerson’s idea of Transcendentalism in his work “Song of Myself” from Leaves of Grass (1855-1892). During the Civil War started, Whitman served as a nurse. After the war, Whitman enjoyed some success for his work on Abraham Lincoln and from his published poetry. However, his writing was experimental in nature, and often contained erotic elements that garnered him harsh criticism. His most influential collection is Leaves of Grass, which he continued to revise and republish until his death. From that work, “Song of Myself” is seen as the hallmark piece. In this poem, Whitman introduced his free verse style that would transform American poetry. He experiments with repetition and catalogues to communicate his ideas. “Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking” appeared in the 1860 collection of Leaves of Grass. The poem uses nature imagery to document the speaker’s transformation into a poet. Whitman focuses on nature and brotherhood in “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” which appeared in the 1856 edition of Leaves of Grass. The poem expresses Whitman’s concept of his feeling of oneness with the world that transcends time. One of his more traditional works in terms of meter and form is “O Captain, My Captain,” which first appeared in the 1865 edition of Leaves of Grass. Easily Whitman’s most popular poem in his lifetime, this elegy conceptualizes President Abraham Lincoln as the captain of ship. Whitman’s continued process of refining and reinventing his poems cemented his reputation as an influential literary and cultural figure in America.
Considered by many scholars to be the most distinguished writer of the 20th century, Faulkner was born in Oxford, Mississippi in 1897. He is mostly known for his novels and short stories, set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County in Mississippi. Both his novels and short stories confront the complexities of Southern culture, shaped by its heritage of slavery, the loss of the American Civil War, and continued struggles with racism through Jim Crow laws and the atrocities committed by the Ku Klux Klan. He is also keenly aware of the close ties of Southerners to the land and the ways that the old agrarian values continued to shape ideas about class in the South well into the 20th century. Faulkner draws on family histories as well as aspects of Southern gothic ghost stories in his novels, and most of his works explore the complex and troubled mix of race and sexuality in the South. Most of his works were published in the 1920s and 30s, among which “A Rose for Emily” (1930) and “Barn Burning” (1939) are included here, but he was primarily known in America as a Southern writer until he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1942. His Nobel Prize acceptance speech is often reprinted for his optimistic declaration of the importance of art. After decrying the anxiety and pessimism that he felt characterized the literature of the period, Faulkner declared that humanity would prevail because of the strength of the human spirit: “The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by . . . reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.” Consider while reading:
In “A Rose for Emily,” the story of Emily’s life and death is told through the voice of the townspeople. How does this technique affect the story and what we know and don’t know about Emily? How does it affect the timeline of the story, which is not told in chronological order?
What elements in the story can be considered “gothic”?
What is the significance of the “rose” in the title of the story? What connotations of the word are meaningful in the context of Emily’s life?
A Rose for Emily License: Copyright William Faulkner Visit here to read or download this work.
A leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance in the United States, Langston Hughes developed an international reputation for his poetry. Hughes spent his childhood in the Midwest; he was born in Joplin, Missouri, but he also lived in Lincoln, Illinois and Cleveland, Ohio. As a young man, he began a college education at Columbia University, but withdrew to travel as a merchant seaman. He eventually completed his education at Lincoln University.
Hughes is particularly known for his perceptive portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties. He wrote prolifically and in a variety of genres–poems, plays, short stories, and novels. A significant feature of his work is the influence of jazz on his poetry, particularly in Montage of a Dream Deferred (Holt, 1951). Hughes also mentored other young poets and writers like Ralph Ellison. In 1926, he articulated the purpose of young black writers and poets in “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”: “The younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful . . . If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn’t matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain free within ourselves.”
Donald B. Gibson noted in the introduction to Modern Black Poets: A Collection of Critical Essays (Prentice Hall, 1973) that Hughes “differed from most of his predecessors among black poets … in that he addressed his poetry to the people, specifically to black people.” Hughes considered himself to be, indeed, a “people’s poet” who elevated the black aesthetic while confronting racism and stereotypes in his work.
Consider while reading:
In the poem “The Weary Blues,” what connection does Hughes suggest about the relationship between blues music and the experience of African Americans?
Joy Harjo (born in Tulsa, Oklahoma) is a critically acclaimed poet and musician, drawing on American Indian history and storytelling tradition. She is a member of the Mvskoke (aka. Muscogee, or Creek) nation; her father was a member of the Mvskoke tribe, and her mother was Cherokee, French, and Irish. In her work, she incorporates the history, myths, and beliefs of Native America (Creek in particular) as well as ideas that concern feminism, imperialism and colonization, contemporary America, and the contemporary world. Related to Native American storytelling is a sense of all things being connected, which often shapes her work. Inspired by the evolving nature of oral storytelling and ceremonial tradition, she integrates various forms of music, performance, and dance into her poetry, and has released award-winning CDs of original music. Her first volume of poetry was The Last Song (1975), and her other books of poetry include How We Became Human—New and Selected Poems (2004), The Woman Who Fell From the Sky (1994), and She Had Some Horses (1983). Her CD releases include Red Dreams, A Trail Beyond Tears (2010) and Winding Through the Milky Way (2008).
Source: In Mad Love and War (Wesleyan University Press, 1990)
An American Sunrise
We were running out of breath, as we ran out to meet ourselves. We
were surfacing the edge of our ancestors’ fights, and ready to strike.
It was difficult to lose days in the Indian bar if you were straight.
Easy if you played pool and drank to remember to forget. We
made plans to be professional — and did. And some of us could sing
so we drummed a fire-lit pathway up to those starry stars. Sin
was invented by the Christians, as was the Devil, we sang. We
were the heathens, but needed to be saved from them — thin
chance. We knew we were all related in this story, a little gin
will clarify the dark and make us all feel like dancing. We
had something to do with the origins of blues and jazz
I argued with a Pueblo as I filled the jukebox with dimes in June,
forty years later and we still want justice. We are still America. We
know the rumors of our demise. We spit them out. They die
soon.
Leslie Marmon Silko (1948- )
Leslie Marmon Silko was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but was raised in Laguna Pueblo. She is a talented poet and prose writer, whose work incorporates elements of Native American storytelling traditions. She studied English at the University of New Mexico, and graduated with honors. After her graduation, she published her first story, “Tony’s Song.” She briefly studied law, but left the program to pursue a graduate degree in English. In 1974, she published several stories in Kenneth Rosen’s anthology, The Man to Send Rain Clouds: Contemporary Stories by American Indians. Her first novel, Ceremony, a World War II veteran’s attempts to find peace after the war, was published in 1977, to critical acclaim. The novel led to Silko being awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1981. In her writing, Silko commonly addresses ideas of healing and reconciling conflicts (cultural, spiritual, internal). “Yellow Woman” was first published in The Man to Send Rain Clouds: Contemporary Stories by American Indians. It is one of her most commonly anthologized pieces. In the story, Silko explores the Laguna tradition of Yellow Woman, who is often abducted, taken to the spirit world, and later returns with a great power that helps her people. Whether or not the characters from the story are Yellow Woman and other spirits is something that Silko does not clarify. The uncertainty is a compelling aspect of the story.
Western culture has tended to divide musical practices into two very broad fields, the vernacular and the cultivated. Vernacular refers to everyday, informal musical practices located outside the official arena of high culture—the conservatory, the concert hall, and the high church. The field of vernacular music is often further subdivided into the domains of folk music (orally transmitted and community based) and popular music (mediated for a mass audience). Cultivated music, often referred to as classical or art music, is associated with formal training and written composition. The boundaries between so-called folk, popular, and classical music are becoming increasingly blurred as we enter into the 21st century, due to the pervasive effects of mass media that have made music of all American ethnic/racial groups, classes, and regions available to everyone.
Historians and musicologists now agree that America’s most distinctive musical expressions are found, or have roots in, its vernacular music. Early immigrants from Western Europe and the slaves stolen from Africa brought with them rich traditions of oral folk music that mixed and mingled throughout the 18th and 19th centuries to develop uniquely American ballads, instrumental dance music, and spirituals. By the early 20th century, the folk blues emerged and would go on to form the foundation of much of our popular music. Beginning with 19th century minstrel and parlor song collections, and threading through the 20th century recordings of Tin Pan Alley song, gospel, rhythm and blues, country, rock, soul, and rap, the print and electronic media fueled the growth of American popular musical styles that today have proliferated across the globe. Jazz, sometimes considered America’s “classical” music, certainly had roots in early 20th century folk and popular styles (see Chapter 7: Jazz). And many of America’s best-known classical composers including George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, and Duke Ellington based their extended compositions on vernacular folk and popular themes (see Chapter 5: European and American Art Music since 1900).
American Folk Music
Folk music was once thought of as being simple, old, anonymously composed music played by poor, rural, nonliterate people representing the lower strata of our society (mountain hillbillies, southern black sharecroppers, cowboys, etc.). Today scholars have expanded the field by defining folk music as orally transmitted songs and instrumental expressions that are passed on in community settings and generally show a degree of stability over time. Rather than viewing folk expressions as vanishing antiquities, this perspective suggests folk music can be a dynamic process that continues to flourish within many communities of our modern society. Using this model popular music may be defined as mass-mediated expression that changes rapidly over time, and classical/art music as musical practices centered in formal training and written composition.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, American folk music collectors wrote down the words and melodies to a variety of traditional expressions including Native American
ritual songs, African American spirituals and work songs, Anglo American ballads and fiddle tunes, and western cowboy songs. Later they broadened their interest to include the traditional expressions of ethnic and immigrant communities such as the practices of Hispanic, Irish, Jewish, Caribbean, and Chinese Americans, most of whom lived in urban areas. With the advent of portable recording technology in the 1930s, folklorists like Alan Lomax began the task of documenting America’s folk music and compiling the Archive of American Folk Song, which today, along with the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, offers students the chance to hear and study authentic regional folk styles.
Most Anglo and African American folk genres are built around relatively simple (often pentatonic) melodies, duple or triple meter time signatures, and a series of harmonic structures built around the tonic, subdominant, and dominant chords. But much of the emotional appeal of folk music comes from the grain or tension of the voice. Vocal textures vary greatly, ranging from the high, tense, nasal delivery associated with white mountain singers, to the more relaxed, throaty, rough timbre of southern African American blues and spiritual singers.
In addition to studying song texts and melodies, folk music scholars have paid a great deal of attention to the social function of folk music. They seek to understand how a particular song or instrumental piece works within a specific social situation for a particular group of people. For example, how do Native American chants and African American spirituals operate within the context of a religious or worship ceremony; how are Anglo and Celtic American fiddle tunes central to Appalachian and community gatherings; how did traditional blues and ballads reflect contrasting world views of southern blacks and whites; and how do West Indian steel bands and Jewish klezmer ensembles serve as markers of cultural pride?
The self-conscious revival of folk music by middle-class urban Americans has been going on since the 1930s. During the Depression and WWII years, folk artists like Louisiana-born Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter and Oklahoma-born Woody Guthrie introduced city audiences to rural folk music, and along with left-leaning topical folk singers like Pete Seeger, they helped spawn the great folk revival of the post–World War II years. Folk music spilled into the popular arena with artists like the Kingston Trio; Burl Ives; Peter, Paul & Mary; and Bob Dylan writing and recording hit folk songs.
Anglo American Ballads
Ballads are basically folk songs that tell stories through the introduction of characters in a specific situation, the building up of dramatic tension, and the resolution of that tension. Ballads were originally brought to America by British, Scottish, and Scotch-Irish immigrants, many of whom eventually settled in the mountainous regions of the American south.
The melodies of Anglo American ballads are simple, often built around archaic sounding pentatonic (five note) and hexatonic (six-tone) scales that may feature large jumps or gaps between notes. Songs are traditionally sung a cappella in a free meter style, or with simple guitar or banjo accompaniment. The voice is delivered in a high, tense, nasal style.
Ballads are most often set in four line stanzas, with the second and fourth line rhyming:
I was born in West Virginia,
among the beautiful hills.
And the memory of my childhood,
lies deep within me still.
While older British and Scottish ballads found in the American South dealt with themes of ancient kings, queens, and magical happenings in faraway places, the 18th- and 19th -century
ballads that developed in America tell stories of everyday folk involved in everyday life events, usually set in the present or recent past. Sentimental and tragic love stories, often involving
violence and death, were common. Many American ballads express strong moral sentiments, warning listeners about the consequences of irresponsible behavior:
I courted a fair maiden,
her name I will not tell
For I have now disgraced her,
and I am doomed to hell.
It was on one beautiful evening,
the stars were shining bright
And with that faithful dagger,
I did her spirit flight.
So justice overtook me,
you all can plainly see.
My soul is doomed forever,
throughout eternity.
The sentimental and tragic themes of Anglo American ballads, along with the high-pitched, “whiny” vocal style, have survived and flourished in 20th-century popular country music.
African American Spirituals and Gospel Music
The African American Spiritual has its origins in the religious practices of 18th- and 19th -century American slaves who converted to Christianity during the great awakening revivals. The earliest spirituals were African-style ring shouts, based on simple call and response lyrics chanted against a driving rhythm produced by clapping and foot stomping. Participants would shuffle around in a ring-formation and “shout” when they felt the spirit. More complex melodies and verse/chorus structures began to evolve, reflecting the influence of European American hymn singing, and accompaniment by guitar, piano, and percussion became common. Vocal ornamentations (slides, glides, extended use of falsetto), call and response singing, and blues tonality characterized these folk spirituals. In the reconstruction period black college choirs such as the Fisk Jubilee Singers arranged folk spirituals into four-part harmony, a form that became known as the concert spiritual. A blend of African and European musical practices, the spiritual epitomizes the sycretic (blended) nature of much American folk music resulting from the mixing of Africans and Europeans in the Americas.
The texts of many spirituals are taken from Old Testament themes and stories. The slaves were particularly moved by Old Testament figures like Daniel (who was saved from the lion’s den), Jonah (who was delivered from the belly of the whale), Noah (who survived the flood), and David (who defeated the giant Goliath) who struggled and triumphed over adverse conditions. The plight of the Israelites and their escape from bondage to the promised land was an especially powerful story retold by the spirituals:
When Israel was in Egypt’s land,
O let my people go!
Oppressed so hard they could not stand,
O let my people go!
Go Down, Moses,
Away down to Egypt’s land.
And tell old Pharaoh,
To let my people go!
The spiritual’s emphasis on redemption and deliverance in this world have led historians to suggest the songs had double meaning for the slaves—they affirmed their belief in the Bible as well as their trust that a just God would deliver them from the evils of slavery. The spirituals are thus seen as expressions of religious faith and resistance to slavery.
In the 20th-century spirituals evolved into the more urban, New Testament–centered gospel songs. Following the first “great migration” of southern African Americans to urban
centers like Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia in the post–Word War I years, a new genre of black American sacred songs known as gospel began to appear. Unlike the anonymous folk spirituals, gospel songs were composed and copyrighted by songwriters like Thomas Dorsey and Reverend William Herbert Brewster, and by the 1930s were being recorded by urban church singers. Some, like Mahalia Jackson, the Dixie Hummingbirds, and the Ward Singers, turned professional and reached national and international audiences through their tours and recordings. But most gospel singing remained rooted in African American church ritual, and to this day can be heard in black communities throughout the north and south.
Musically, gospel is a blending of spirituals, blues, and the song sermons of the black preacher. Gospel songs are usually organized in a 16- or 32-bar verse/chorus form, often
featuring call-and-response singing between a leader and a chorus. Blues tonalities are common, and singers are known for their intensive vocal ornamentations, which include
bending and slurring notes, falsetto swoops, and melismas (groups of notes or tones sung across one syllable of a word). Gospel singers often end a song with a prolonged section of improvisation that combines singing, chanting, and shouting in hopes of “bringing down the spirit.” Lyrics are most often New Testament–centered, focusing on the redeeming power of Jesus and the singer’s personal relationship with the Savior.
Although gospel lyrics are strictly religious in nature, gospel music derives much of its sound from blues and jazz. Likewise, gospel music has been a source for various secular styles, including early rock and roll, soul music, and most recently gospel rap. During the Civil Rights era the melodies of old spirituals and gospel songs were used with new lyrics expressing the need to overcome Jim Crow segregation.
The Blues
Blues music was the first significant form of secular music created by African American ex-slaves in the deep South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Growing out of earlier black spirituals, work songs, field hollers, and dance music, the blues addressed the social experiences of the ex-slaves as they struggled to establish themselves in post–Reconstruction southern culture.
Common themes addressed in early country blues songs were conflicts in love relations, loneliness, hardship, poverty, and travel. But it would be a mistake to assume that the blues were exclusively about sorrow—blues celebrated life’s ups and downs, and often reflected a keen sense of ironic wit and a resolve to struggle on against difficult circumstances.
Most of the early recordings of country blues from the 1920s feature a solo male singer like Charlie Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Blake, and Son House, accompanying himself with an acoustic guitar. But blues singers also used banjos, mandolins, fiddles, and harmonicas, and often played in small ensembles that provided dance music at country juke joints. Although blues has been interpreted as a highly individualistic expression because of the solo voice and first person text, the music was often played in social settings where African Americans danced, communed, and solidified their group identity.
Early blues lyrics were built around rhymed couplets that eventually became standardized in a 12-bar (measure) format that featured an AAB structure, with a couplet being repeated twice, and answered by a second couplet:
I woke up this morning,
I was feeling sad and blue. [A]
I woke up the morning,
I was feeling sad and blue. [A]
My sweet gal she left me,
got no one to sing my troubles to. [B]
The tonality is major, most often built around a 12-bar (measure) progression of the I (tonic), IV (subdominant), and V (dominant) chords. The melodic line often features bent and slurred notes, with generous use of the flatted third and seventh tones (known as “blue” notes) of the diatonic scale. The meter is usually duple (4/4), and tempos may vary from a slow drag to a fast boogie.
While the first blues were undoubtedly rural in origin, by the 1920s blues music had made its way to the city. Urban singers like Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith recorded and popularized sophisticated, jazz-tinged arrangements of blues in the 1920s, and composers like W. C. Handy incorporated blues forms into popular orchestral pieces like “St. Louis Blues” and “Memphis Blues.” In the post–World War II years the country blues was electrified and transformed into rhythm and blues (R&B) by Chicago-based artists Muddy Waters (McKinley Morganfield), Howlin’ Wolf (Chester Burnett), and Elmore James, and Memphis bluesman B. B. King. By the mid-1950s southern white singers like Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Buddy Holly were blending rhythm and blues with elements of country music to create the new pop genre of rock and roll.
Rock and Roll
Perhaps America’s most influential contribution to the world of popular music has been the development of rock and roll in the 1950s. Many streams of folk and vernacular music styles, including blues, spirituals, gospel, ballads, hillbilly music, and early jazz, contributed to the evolution of rock and roll (R&R). But it was the convergence of African American rhythm and blues and Anglo American honky-tonk (country) music that led to the emergence of a distinctive new style that would dominate the field of popular music in post–World War II America.
Honky-tonk, often referred to as the voice of the downcast, working-class southern whites, was the dominant form of country music during the 1940s and early 1950s, with Hank Williams being its most famous practitioner. The music featured the tense, nasal vocal style associated with the earlier ballad tradition, accompanied by twangy guitars and fiddles, and lyrics centered on stories of loneliness and broken love relationships. Rhythm and blues was an urbanized version of older country blues that developed in cities like Memphis and Chicago during and immediately after the Second World War. Singers like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and B. B. King shouted and pleaded to their audiences, backed by screaming electric guitars, amplified harmonicas, and a rhythm sections of drums, bass, and piano. The music was loud, aggressive, and sensual, with lyrics boasting of sexual conquest or lamenting failed love.
The earliest rock-and–roll recordings were made by both white and black singers in the mid-1950s. The southern white artists like Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Bill Haley were dubbed rockabillies because their sounds were rooted in hillbilly and honky-tonk country styles. Their covers of black rhythm and blues songs like “Rock Around the Clock” (Haley) and “Good Rockin’ Tonight” (Presley) provided some of the first and most powerful examples of how white country and black R&B could blend to form the new style of R&R. From the other side of the racial divide came black R&B singers like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Fats Domino, who cut their R&B sound with smoother vocals (and in Berry’s case country-influenced guitar licks) to forge a black style of R&R that was close (and at times indistinguishable) from that of their white counterparts.
Thus, R&R was the inevitable result of an interracial musical stew that had been simmering in the southern United States for several centuries. Its appearance in the mid- 1950s was no accident, because this was precisely when independent record companies like Sun (Memphis) and Chess (Chicago) and innovative radio stations like WDIA (Memphis) were beginning to bring black vernacular music to a burgeoning baby boomer audience and the nascent civil rights movements was increasing public awareness of black culture. R&R was a popular style created in the studio and marketed directly for legions of young, predominantly white consumers who, thanks to the relative affluence of the post–World War II years, were in search of new leisure activities.
Musically the earliest R&R recordings were 12-bar blues played in an up-tempo 4/4 meter. Singers, black and white, would sometimes shout and snarl, but were careful to articulate their words in a style smooth enough for their predominantly white audiences to comprehend. The music was backed by a strong, insistent rhythm that accented the second and fourth beat of each measure, creating a sound that was easy to dance to. Rock’s gyrating singers and sensual dancing led many middle-class Americans, black and white, to condemn it as an immoral and corrupting force. When Elvis Presley first appeared on the nationally broadcast TV variety show hosted by Ed Sullivan in 1956, the cameras would only show him from the waist up in order to avoid his sexy moves that had earned him the title “Elvis the Pelvis.”
The lyrics to the most successful early R&R songs centered on teenage romance and adventure, recounting high times cruising in automobiles, dancing at the hop, and falling in and out of love. The lyrics to sexually suggestive R&B songs covered by R&R singers were consciously cleaned up so the music would be less offensive to middle-class (black and white) teens and their parents. Eventually the 12-bar blues form was eclipsed by the verse/chorus structure organized in 8- or 16-bar stanzas. As in earlier American popular songs, the repeated chorus was usually based on a simple but engaging melody (often referred to as the “hook”) that was easy to sing along to.
In the 1960s groups like the Beatles and folk rock singer Bob Dylan transformed R&R by writing more sophisticated lyrics addressing the complexities of love and sexual relations, alienation in Western society, and the utopian search for a new world through drugs and counterculture activities. Both American and British rock groups of the 1960s demonstrated that popular music could provide serious social commentary that had previously been associated with the arenas of modern art and literature and the urban folksong movement. Over the past four decades R&R (often referred to as “rock” to differentiate it from the R&R of the 1950s) has evolved in many directions (art rock, heavy metal, punk, indie), often cross-pollinating with related styles like soul, funk, disco, country, reggae, and most recently hip-hop. At times rock has served as the political voice of angry and alienated youth, and at other times simply as good-time party and dance music.
Rap
Rap is poetry recited rhythmically over musical accompaniment. Rap is part of hip-hop culture, which emerged in the mid-1970s in the Bronx. Graffiti art and break-dance are the other major elements of hip-hop culture. Rap lyrics display clever use of words and rhymes, verbal dexterity, and intricate rhythmic patterning. Rap artists take on different roles and speak from perspectives ranging from comedic to political to dramatic, often narrating stories that reflect or comment on contemporary urban life. Rap artists may be soloists, or members of a rap group (or crew), and may recite in call-and-response format. Rap songs are generally in duple
meter at a medium tempo (about 80 to 90 bpm). The musical accompaniment of rap is made up of one or several continuously repeated short phrases, each phrase combining relatively simple rhythmic patterns produced by acoustic and/or synthetic percussion instruments. Other sounds are often added for timbral variety, textural complexity, and melodic/harmonic interest. A bass line provided by electric bass guitar or synthesizer reinforces the
meter and defines the tonal center.
Old School Rap (1974-1986)
Old school rap was created by DJs (disc jockeys) and one or more MCs (originally Master of Ceremonies, later Microphone Controller). DJ Kool Herc began this period, providing a portable sound system and spinning records for dances at outdoor parties and small social clubs. He noticed that b-boys and b-girls favored dancing to the “break” in a record, the short section of a song when the band drops out and the percussion continues. Using two copies of the same record on two turntables, Herc was able to make the break repeat continuously, creating the “breakbeat” that became the basic musical structure over which the MC spoke or rapped. DJs Grandmaster Flash, Jazzy Jeff, and Grand Wizard Theodore invented additional turntable techniques: “blending” different records together, scratching (manually moving the record back and forth on the turntable to create rhythmic patterns with scratchy timbres), and mixing in synthetic drum sounds and other effects. An excellent example of turntable techniques is Flash’s The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel (1981). DJs, most importantly Afrika Bambaataa, also promoted hip-hop culture through parties and other events spread by word of mouth and at venues throughout New York City.
At first MCs spoke over records in the Jamaican DJ traditions of toasting (calling out friends’ names) and boasting (touting the superiority of their own sound system and DJ skills). Both traditions became central elements of the assertive and competitive spirit of rap andhip-ho p. Rap drew on other African-American sources for some of its important features: the improvisational verbal skills and call-and-response format of the dozens (an African-American verbal competition trading witty insults), the rhyming aphorisms of heavyweight champion Mohammed Ali (“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee / Your hands can’t hit what your eyes can’t see”), the songs and vocal stylings of the great soul-funk artist James Brown, and The Last Poets, whose members spoke or chanted politically charged poems over drumming.
The first MCs to develop extended lyrical forms by rhyming over break beats were Grandmaster Caz and DJ Hollywood. The interplay of vocal and accompaniment rhythms,
rhyme schemes, and phrasing are the main elements of what is known as flow. Old school flow is more regular and less syncopated than later styles. Two-line units (couplets) rhyming at the end of the lines are common during this period, such as, “Pump it up homeboy, just don’t stop / Chef Boy-ar-dee coolin’ on the pot” (The Beastie Boys). Before rap entered into the mainstream entertainment industry, portable cassette players provided a cheap and robust route of dissemination for the music throughout the city. It was the success of Sugar Hill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight, issued on a small independent label in 1979, that brought rap to national attention and gave the genre its name. MC Kurtis Blow’s The Breaks (1980), and Rapture by the pop group Blondie (1981) are also milestones in the early history of rap.
During the first part of the 1980’s the entertainment industry was slow to realize rap’s potential and it was left to entrepreneurs like Russell Simmons to popularize rap and
to demonstrate its long-term commercial viability by organizing national hip-hop concert tours and producing hits by many of the most important artists of the period including L.L. Cool J, Slick Rick, and Foxy Brown. Independent films like Wild Style, Beat Street, and Style Wars, introduced hip-hop to a global audience. Rap music videos began to be produced and all-rap radio stations began broadcasting. Independent labels gained ground and rap was incorporated into the established recording and distribution industry. By 1986 hip-hop culture was the most successful popular music in the nation, and rap had developed in three general directions. Pop rap (or party rap) is light, danceable, and often humorous; it quickly became a crossover genre, generating national hits by Salt-N-Pepa (the first successful female rap group), MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, and many others. Rock rap combines the vocalizations of rap with the sounds and rhythms of rock bands. The hip-hop trio Run-D.M.C. brought rap rock to national prominence with King of Rock (the first hip-hop platinum album, 1985). The Beastie Boys, the first white rap group, appealed to a youth market by smartly combining humor and rebellion in songs from their 1986 debut album Licensed to Ill. Rock rap set the stage for other hybrids that flourished in the 1990’s such as Rage Against the Machine and Linkin
Park. Socially conscious rap portrays and comments on the urban ills of poverty, crime, drugs, and racism. The first example is Melle Mel’s The Message (1982), a series of bleak pictures of life and death in the ghetto.
New School Rap
New school rap dates from 1986 when Rakim and DJ Eric B introduced a vocal style that was faster and rhythmically more complex than the simple sing-song couplets of much old school rap. Writers (rap poets/performers) in the new “effusive” style, notably Nas, employed irregular poetic meters, asymmetric phrasing, and intricate rhyme schemes, all of which added depth and complexity to the flow. Much of the new music (and new styles of graffiti and dance) came from the West Coast, and increasingly from the South and Midwest. Hip-hop culture was spreading to Europe and Asia as well.
The accompaniment for rap also became more complex and varied. CD’s largely replaced vinyl records and samplers became commercially available. Producers working
with samplers, programmable drum machines, and synthesizers could, with the push of a button, mix and modify sounds imported from a virtually unlimited selection, and so largely replaced DJs as the creators of rap’s musical accompaniment. The New York production team Bomb Squad and producers RZA and DJ Premier layered multiple samples to create dense, harmonically rich textures and grating “out of tune” combinations of sounds, while West Coast producers developed G-funk by using live instrumentation and conventional harmonies associated with funk music.
The year 1988 was an important turning point for rap. The Source, the first magazine devoted to rap and hip-hop, appeared that year, and was soon followed by Vibe, XXL and
many others. The first nationally televised rap music videos on Fab Five Freddy’s weekly show “Yo, MTV Raps!” brought hip-hop images and dances to national attention. That same year four new rap genres emerged, partly in response to worsened social conditions in black urban communities: unemployment, drastic cutbacks in education, the crack cocaine epidemic, proliferation of deadly weapons, gang violence, militaristic police tactics, and Draconian drug laws all leading to an explosion in the prison population. Political rap was led by writer KRS-One, with Boogie Down Productions whose album By All Means Necessary explored police corruption, violence in the hip-hop community, and other controversial topics. On the West Coast, N.W.A. were cultivating harsh timbres and a raw angry sound in their nihilistic tales of Los Angeles police violence and gang life in Straight Outta Compton, the first gangsta rap album. Jazz rap, characterized by use of samples from jazz classics and positive, uplifting lyrics was introduced by Gang Starr (DJ Premier and MC Guru) and hip-hop group Stetsasonic. Another answer to West Coast gangsta rap was New York hardcore rap, led by producer Marley Marl whose hip-hop collective The Juicy Crew achieved their breakthrough with the posse track The Symphony. Each genre had important followers. Black nationalism informed the political lyrics
of Public Enemy (led by Chuck D) whose critical and commercial success in 1988-90 proved the crossover appeal of the new wave of socially conscious rap. Houston-based gangsta rap group The Geto Boys combined ultra-violent fantasies with cutting social commentary in a blues-inflected style that came to characterize the “Dirty South” sound in their 1990 debut album. Jazz rap’s Afrocentric lyrics, fashion, and imagery were shared by important new rap artists Queen Latifah and Busta Rhymes. Latifah provided a feminist response to the often misogynist lyrics of male rappers. Wu-Tang Clan’s Enter the Wu-Tang (1993) reclaimed New York’s reputation for cutting-edge hardcore rap. The minimalist production style on the album by this Staten Island group was much imitated through the next decade.
In the 1990’s a style called new jack swing originating with producers Teddy Riley and Puff Daddy integrated R&B into rap and softened rap’s hardcore content while retaining the edge of black street culture. Notorious B.I.G.’s Juicy from Ready to Die (1994) exemplifies the laid-back vocal delivery and slower tempo that characterize new jack. Lil’ Kim’s rap on Gettin’ Money captures the “ghettofabulous” image of the new jack rapper in lyrics that mix gats and six-shooters with Armani and Chanel. The song draws on the iconic American figure of the Mafia don to create metaphors that celebrate materialism and luxury. Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. were the most critically acclaimed and best-selling rappers during the middle of the 1990’s. Shakur was murdered in 1996 and Notorious B.I.G. in 1997. In the eyes of many fans, hip-hop had lost its two greatest artists. Three important figures—Eminem, Jay-Z, and Missy Elliott—led rap into the new millennium.
Jazz
Although most people have heard of jazz, and many recognize it when they hear it, the music is notoriously hard to categorize. There is simply no single description that can account for the vast number of styles and genres that have been placed under the jazz “umbrella.” In fact, some musicians (Duke Ellington, Randy Weston, and others) have avoided using the term altogether, finding the concept too confining. The term itself (and its variant “jass”) did not appear until the 1910s, after jazz was already a well-established idiom, and has been applied to many types of music that most purists would not consider “true” jazz at all, from the novelty piano rags of Zez Confrey in the 1920s to the instrumental pop music of Kenny G in the 1980s and 1990s.
A few general comments can be made about the music, however. We know, first of all, that jazz was a music created primarily by African Americans, and it has deep roots in traditions that go back as far as the African traditions brought by slaves to America during the Middle Passage. Related to this are two dualities that virtually all types of jazz share. These dualities create a vibrant tension in the music that gives jazz much of its power.
Contrary to some popular beliefs, playing jazz is not simply a matter of musicians playing whatever they feel like. Improvisation — creating new music on the spot — is a vital part of almost all jazz traditions (see below), but it nearly always takes place in the context of some larger structure that is planned in advance. This planning can be as simple as deciding who plays what when (the order of the solos, for example) and as complicated as a completely written-out arrangement in which most of the musicians are guided by notes printed on the page. At the very least, musicians will usually decide in advance the tune that will serve as the basis for their improvisations. Perhaps another way to put this is to think of jazz as a very “free” music, one that allows players to explore a variety of means of self-expression, but that at the same time, with freedom comes responsibility. Some type of underlying organization must be in place or the result is chaos.
From the very beginning of jazz’s history, a premium has always been placed on musicians who create their own sound — one that is highly personal and instantly recognizable. Whereas classical musicians will learn the “correct” and “incorrect” ways to play their instruments, for the jazz musician, there is no “proper” way to make a sound. Though some jazz musicians study their instruments in conservatories, many also learn simply by picking up an instrument and figuring out how to make a sound they like, whether or not it has anything to do with “acceptable” technique. The great New Orleans clarinetist and soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet, for example, developed a totally idiosyncratic technique on his instrument — one that would make a classical musician cringe — simply by experimentation, but he had an enormous, rich, and passionate sound that was impossible to duplicate.
Many jazz musicians start their careers by copying another jazz musician outright (legions of saxophonists, for example, have learned Charlie Parker solos by heart) but at some point they must learn to develop their own voice or the music becomes stale. In fact, one of the most damning criticisms a jazz musician can levy at another is to say “he or she is just a Charlie Parker imitator.” At the same time, all great jazz musicians are also good listeners, who take pleasure in what the fellow members of their group are trying to “say” with their instruments, and will often directly respond to ideas that are tossed out as part of an improvisation. In addition, all members of a jazz group pay close attention to how they sound as a group; brilliant solos are only as good as the context in which they are heard. Therefore, in any jazz performance there is always an interesting tension between attempts to sound like a true individual, as well to be a member of the “collective.”
A few more specific features of the jazz tradition can be outlined, and many are related to the dualities discussed above.
Improvisation. Improvisation of some type is nearly always part of a jazz performance. Even if musicians are reading notes on a page, they can “improvise” through the way they attack or color a note, or the rhythmic impulse they bring to the music. In early jazz musicians often improvised by creating variations on a given melody. As the tradition developed, it became more common to use a chord progression as the basis for entirely new melodies. In more recent jazz traditions, even chords are abandoned and musicians will simply improvise on a scale, a motive, or even just a tonal center. No matter how they improvise, however, most musicians have a set of phrases (called “licks”) that lie easily under their fingers and can be used and reused in a variety of contexts. Charlie Parker, for example, had many signature “licks” that make his style instantly recognizable. In other words, jazz musicians do often play musical lines they have played before, but where they place these lines, and how they play them, is part of the art of improvisation.
Instrumentation. Certain instruments have become strongly associated with the jazz tradition, mainly because of their tone color and ability to fit into an ensemble or carry a chord structure. And, from its earliest history, there has been a common division of some of the instruments into a subsection known as the “rhythm section” that maintains the rhythmic drive and reiterates the chord progression for other improvising musicians. Ensembles have continued to evolve, however, due to improvements in microphones and recording technology.
The blues. Nearly all jazz has some connection, even if subtle, with the African American blues tradition, in performance technique, common forms used, and overall musical “feel.” In fact, there are those who would claim that when the music loses its connection to the blues, it ceases to be jazz. (This is the claim often used to prove that Kenny G. is not a jazz musician, even though he plays an instrument associated with jazz — the soprano saxophone — and improvises. His references to blues traditions, when they exist at all, are so stylized that they lack any strong connections to the genuine article.)
Performance technique. Largely out of the blues tradition comes the jazz player’s proclivity for creating “new” sounds on his or her instrument, and using that instrument in an idiosyncratic way. Often these techniques mirror the use of the voice in various African American traditions; we know, for example, that the bending of pitches and growling or rasping sound often used by jazz musicians mirror black vocal traditions such as the blues, as well as both speech and singing in black church music. Listen to Louis Armstrong as both a vocalist and a trumpeter, and you will note there is little difference between the two. In addition, many people have likened the high pitches (usually out of the normal sound range of an instrument) associated with certain players such as saxophonist John Coltrane to “screams,” even though they may reflect excitement or intensity on the part of the performer, rather than anguish. Such “screams” or “squeaks” are something to be carefully avoided in Western classical music, but many jazz musicians incorporate them into their improvisations intentionally.
Rhythm. Most jazz performances employ a subtle rhythmic sense that is often called “swing” or “swing feeling” (note this is a different meaning of the term than that used below to describe a style and era of jazz). This “swing feeling” is virtually impossible to define in words (one musician once noted:“if you gotta ask what swing is, you’ll never know”) but it is very different than the subtle pulse of most Western art music, the driving beat of popular music, or the dense polyrhythmic effect of many African traditions. Think of “swing” as a special kind of groove that is unique to jazz; it creates the subtle forward thrust of the music and often is what makes you tap your foot. Especially in the 1930s and 1940s, it was the “swing feeling” mastered by groups such as those led by Count Basie and Benny Goodman that made audiences leave their seats for the dance floor.
The great sweep of jazz’s first century is usually loosely divided into five general periods:
The music’s origins and the emergence of its early masters.
The so-called “Swing Era” when the music was the popular music of the United States (and much of the world as well).
The emergence of bebop in the early 1940s.
The avant-garde movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The “fusion” movement of the 1970s and beyond, in which jazz absorbed influences from a variety of other musical traditions, including rock.
Yet, though some categorization is necessary to make sense of this music’s unique and fascinating path through history, such classifications must be used with care, for a newer style does not necessarily replace an older one. It is possible, in fact, to hear virtually any style of jazz being played in the 21st century; some musicians look back to the work of earlier performers, while others continue to push the music into new realms, often absorbing elements of other genres (including world music and hip-hop) along the way.
Early Jazz
Although New Orleans is often touted as “The Birthplace of Jazz,” it is actually impossible to limit the music’s emergence to a single geographic location. It is clear that vernacular music traditions that would feed into emerging jazz were developing throughout the country at the turn of the 19thcentury. Yet, New Orleans did supply a distinctive style of jazz, and most of the greatest early practitioners of the music (Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton, and others) came from this vibrant cultural melting pot, where blues, classical music, ragtime, church music, and other traditions combined to help create the irresistible, largely improvised music that took the country by storm in the 1920s. The first recordings of jazz were actually made in in New York in 1917 by a white group, The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, an ensemble made up of Italian Americans from New Orleans, but the true birth of jazz recording is usually traced to the magnificent recordings made in 1923 by King Oliver and His Creole Jazz Band, in which Armstrong played second cornet to Oliver’s lead. Joining the migration of many African Americans to northern cities during the so-called “Great Migration” from the South in the late teens and early 1920s, Oliver, Armstrong, Morton, and many other musicians built careers in Chicago, where the music flourished and some of the early masterpieces by Armstrong and Morton were recorded. Many of these performances include what has become known as “collective improvisation”— everyone appearing to improvise simultaneously in a densely polyphonic texture — though we now know that a considerable amount of planning went into these “improvisations.” Armstrong, however, partly with the encouragement of his wife Lillian Hardin Armstrong, soon emerged as one of the greatest musicians in the country, and since his ground-breaking recordings of the mid and late 1920s, jazz has been largely considered (rightly or wrongly) an art that celebrates the virtuoso soloist.
The Swing Era
In the 1930s, New York City became the center of jazz activity, as it has remained to the present day. In addition, partly because of the huge demand for dance music (the country was in the midst of the Depression and dance — along with movies — provided escape from the dismal realities of daily life) and the sizeable venues into which jazz musicians were booked, jazz bands became larger, often with entire sections of reed and brass instruments. In addition, the saxophone — considered largely a joke instrument in the 1920s — emerged as the jazz instrument par excellence (perhaps because of its versatility and similarity to the human voice). This was the era of the jazz big band, and of groups such as those led by Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Count Basie. It was also the heyday of the jazz arranger, who took on the responsibility of laying out specific parts for members of the band (often in notation) as well as incorporating improvisation, for collective music-making was no longer feasible in a group of 15 or more musicians. Many of the era’s greatest soloists — saxophonists Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Johnny Hodges and Ben Webster, clarinetists Goodman and Artie Shaw, trumpeters Roy Eldridge, Red Allen and Cootie Williams (as well as Armstrong, of course) — played with these big bands. Big band jazz swept the nation, becoming the most popular type of dance music on the scene, and resulting in the creation of thousands of records. In addition, radio, which had begun to have an impact on American culture in the 1920s, exploded into one of the country’s most important media.
Bebop
Largely because of financial hardships brought on by World War II, the popularity and economic feasibility of big band jazz began to wane in the 1940s. But a host of young musicians had already begun experimenting with new approaches to the music, whether out of boredom, a sense that African American musicians were being exploited in big bands, or simply the natural tendency of creative minds to evolve. These developments went largely undocumented, as they often took place in late-night, informal jam sessions. In addition, in the early 1940s the Musician’s Union called for a ban on all recordings (in protest over the fact that musicians were not being recompensed for the airplay of their records), so the brewing sea change in jazz went largely unrecorded. Yet, by 1945 trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and alto saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker, along with pianists Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell and drummers Max Roach and Kenny Clarke, had essentially redefined jazz. Though their music, which became known as “bebop,” remained firmly rooted in past jazz traditions, they promoted a return to small-ensemble music, and greatly expanded jazz ’s harmonic, rhythmic and melodic possibilities. They also seemed to suggest that jazz be taken more seriously as an art form, rather than dance music (though Gillespie once commented, when a listener complained that he couldn’t dance to bebop, “YOU can’t dance to it!”). This music of 1940s created the foundation for nearly all modern jazz, and saw an important separation between the music and social dancing. In addition, the popularity of jazz began to be supplanted by the emerging idioms of R&B and R&R.
The Avant-Garde
Jazz musicians continued to explore the terrain opened up by Parker and Gillespie and others during the 1950s. Some created music even farther distant from the popular and accessible music of the 1930s, while others tried to counteract what they saw as the more “cerebral” aspects of bebop by playing music more deeply rooted in the blues and gospel. In 1959, a group led by saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman (which had been playing to small and largely hostile audiences on the West Coast) took their inventive styles to New York. Coleman’s music often did away entirely with usual ideas of improvising on a melody or chord progression. The work of Coleman and his compatriots is often referred to as “Free Jazz” (the name of an album Coleman recorded in 1960) but the idiom was not quite as loose as the name suggests, with often a tonal center or motive providing an important organizing principle, and close dialogue between the various musicians a crucial feature of the music’s overall effect. Nevertheless, Coleman’s music, which also revolutionized the roles of the various instruments in the ensemble, was highly controversial, as was his own edgy, often harsh instrumental tone and idiosyncratic technique, which some saw as evidence of poor musical training. Some musicians rejected the new styles entirely, while others — most notably, perhaps, saxophonist John Coltrane — were strongly influenced by them. Even trumpeter Miles Davis, though reportedly not a fan of avant-garde jazz, seems to have incorporated some of its traits in the work of his famous 1960s quintet, which featured saxophonist Wayne Shorter, bassist Ron Carter, drummer Tony Williams, and pianist Herbie Hancock.
Fusion and Jazz-Rock
In 1969 Miles Davis made the highly controversial move of including electric instruments on his In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew albums, adding as well rhythmic structures aligned with rock and soul. Many accused Davis of “selling out”— of trying to pander to popular music tastes of the time — but though Davis was certainly interested in expanding his dwindling audience, he also heard fascinating possibilities in the work of Sly and the Family Stone, James Brown, and Jimi Hendrix. Many alumni from Miles’s “electric” groups went on to form fusion bands of their own — keyboardist Chick Corea with Return to Forever, Wayne Shorter and keyboardist Joe Zawinul with Weather Report, guitarist John McLaughlin with The Mahavishnu Orchestra, and Herbie Hancock with a group that produced the hugely popular Headhunters album in 1973. Though many critics complained that their music “wasn’t jazz,” it did maintain improvisation and connections with the blues that had always been a part of the jazz tradition.
The 1980s and Beyond
The last three decades have seen the extension of many of jazz history’s streams, as well as the promotion of jazz as an art worthy of academic discourse. In the 1980s, New Orleans-born Wynton Marsalis, himself an alumnus of drummer Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, emerged as one of the most important spokespersons for the music. Though widely criticized by many as musically conservative, he has done much for the promotion of jazz worldwide, especially in his role as director of Lincoln Center’s jazz program. As it always has, the art of jazz continues to evolve and reflect changing political and economic climates, as well as absorbing other music that emerges in the now-digital age.
Scholars generally acknowledge that enslaved Africans brought their musical traditions to the United States. Historical records mention that some slave Page 70 →traders required Africans to bring their musical instruments with them. On slave ships traders used whips to force captives to sing and dance—a form of shipboard exercise that entertained the traders and “aired” the captives to prevent disease.3 Once in the United States, enslaved Africans continued to make music on African and European musical instruments. Many firsthand accounts from colonial America describe group dancing and singing on Sundays, as well as songs to accompany manual labor.4
After the Louisiana Purchase, in 1803, some slaveholders moved west and south, taking enslaved people with them to cotton plantations in Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana, and eventually Texas. Some of the musical instruments we associate with those parts of the rural southern United States closely resemble African traditional instruments. The banjo appears to be a version of the long-necked lutes played by itinerant minstrels in the West Sudanic Belt, the transitional savannah area between the Sahara Desert and Equatorial Africa that runs from Senegal and The Gambia through Mali, northern Ghana, Burkina Faso, and northern Nigeria. By contrast, one-stringed instruments, played with a slider against the string, are traditional in the music of central Africa: they are an antecedent of the slide guitar tradition in the southern United States. Another kind of one-stringed instrument is the “mouth bow,” which is plucked or strummed while held against the mouth. This instrument, played in the Appalachian and Ozark regions of the United States, is part of the musical traditions of Angola, Namibia, and southern East Africa.5 The presence of these instruments offers tangible evidence that Africans brought their own ways of music-making to the Americas.
Because slave owners bought and transported slaves at will, though, Africans typically could not stay together in family and community groups that maintained these traditions. The extent to which African ethnic groups were able to maintain contact among themselves in the Americas is debated by historians: there is some evidence that ethnic clusters persisted in some places, but most scholars describe the African experience in the Americas as one of profound dislocation for families and communities.6 Considering this disruption, some scholars have wondered about the possibility of survivals or retentions from African music—that is, whether some traits persisted from the traditional musics that Africans brought with them.7 In contrast, the music scholar Kofi Agawu argues that these terms imply too much passivity; rather, Africans and people of African descent actively guarded and preserved their musical heritage.8
What is certain is that Africans continued to develop and adapt their traditions in the Americas; they also initiated new musical traditions. The blues are an exemplary case. The blues are a tradition of solo singing, developed by African Americans in the United States in the mid- to late 1800s, that gives the effect of highly personal expression. Early blues often described hard work and sorrow, but they also treated broken relationships, money problems, and other topics—sometimes seriously and sometimes with a wry sense of humor. The lyrics are cast in the first person: “I’m leaving this morning with my clothes in my hand . . .”; “I didn’t think my baby would treat me this way. . . .” The first-person lyric does not mean the blues are autobiographical; rather, the singer creates a speaking persona and a vivid situation with which the listener can identify.9 Most melodic phrases start at a relatively high pitch and descend. In addition, the singer might use wavy or inexact intonation, producing an expressive and highly variable sound that may resemble a complaint, a wail, even a provocation. In early blues there might be just one accompanying instrument, often played by the singer: guitar, banjo, fiddle, mandolin, harmonica, or piano. As blues gained in popularity and record companies began issuing recordings, that simple accompaniment was often replaced with a small band.
The poetic form of the blues is a three-line verse: the first two lines have the same words, and then the third line is a conclusion with new words:
Lord, I’m a hard workin’ woman, and I work hard all the time
Lord, I’m a hard workin’ woman, and I work hard all the time
But it seem like my baby, Lord, he is dissatisfied.10
This verse form maps onto a musical structure, the “12-bar blues”: each line consists of four bars (units), each of which comprises four beats (time-units felt as pulses). This form can be repeated, bent, broken, or ignored as the musician wishes. The tempo is slow, and the rhythm has a characteristic “swing,” giving the listener the sense that there is an underlying pattern of long and short notes on each beat. The overall texture is not complicated. Often the instrument drops out, or simply keeps the beat while the singer sings one phrase, and then comes in with more interesting material after that phrase. This kind of musical back-and-forth is known as a pattern of call and response.11 Mississippi Matilda Powell’s “Hard Workin’ Woman” (example 3.1) is a blues composition that exemplifies all these features.
Gerhard Kubik is an ethnographer—that is, he seeks to record and analyze the practices of particular groups of people. For many years he has tried to understand the connection between African music and the African American blues tradition in the southern United States. Kubik traveled through Africa and made numerous field recordings; he then compared specific elements of those field recordings to the earliest existing recordings of the blues. Kubik was careful to note that there are limitations in this method: by comparing recordings made decades apart and continents away, one cannot determine a “family tree” for the blues. Music was not routinely recorded until the 20th century, so there is no way for us to hear precisely how the blues tradition developed during its early years. And certainly the recordings Kubik made in the 1960s cannot be “ancestors” of blues recordings from the 1920s! Rather, Kubik tried to identify characteristic elements of musical traditions—traits that might be preserved over time—that would suggest a kinship between those traditions. Like a family resemblance to a distant cousin, these traits hint at a relationship; but as we will see, there is also much in the blues that reflects their distinctly American origins.
Kubik’s research suggests that musical traits from two different parts of Africa contributed to the blues. One is an ancient lamenting song style from West Africa that was associated with work rhythms, which Kubik calls the “ancient Nigritic” style. These songs would be accompanied by the repetitive motions and sounds of manual labor, like the sound of the stones used for grinding grain. Kubik recorded example 3.2, sung by a person he identified only as “a Tikar woman,” in 1964 in central Cameroon.
The grinding tool that accompanies the song produces a “swinging” rhythm. The singer’s melody begins high and descends with each phrase, and the phrases are of roughly equal length. The words of this song, like those of typical early blues, are a lament and a work song: “If you don’t work you cannot Page 73 →eat. I am crying about my fate and my life.”12 Kubik identifies these features as survivals within the blues style. He compares the example from the Tikar woman in Cameroon with the blues singing of Mississippi Matilda Powell (example 3.1). Powell’s thin, breathy vocal quality also resembles that of the Tikar woman.
The other style Kubik identifies as a possible cousin of the blues is an Arabic-Islamic song style that developed among the people of the West Sudanic Belt, particularly the Hausa people of Nigeria and Niger. Unlike the ancient Nigritic style, the Arabic-Islamic song style was urban and cosmopolitan: it flourished around major cities and courts. This kind of music was made by a single person, accompanying himself on an instrument. As the singer was an entertainer who would move from place to place, this tradition consisted of solo songs that were not connected to community music-making. An example offered by Kubik is the song “Gogé,” performed by Adamou Meigogué Garoua, recorded in northern Cameroon in 1964 (example 3.3).
The distinctively raspy vocal style of this example sounds vehement and sometimes exclamatory, the words declaimed theatrically. Most of the phrases descend in pitch, and the singer’s voice often slides between pitches or moves quickly among ornamental notes. The combination of voice with instrument is also distinctive: during the sung phrase the fiddle is silent, but between phrases the fiddle comments with melodies of its own in a call-and-response pattern. We also hear in this song the characteristic “blue” notes (bent or pitch-altered notes) associated with blues.
Kubik compares Garoua’s song with a blues by Big Joe Williams, “Stack O’Dollars” (example 3.4), recorded in 1935 in Chicago.
As in the Garoua example, Williams uses his voice to make many different qualities of sound. Sometimes he speaks in a raspy voice; sometimes his melodyPage 74 → reaches up to become a wail. Throughout, he bends notes, glides between notes, and adds ornaments. The call and response between the singer and instruments is present here, too. For these reasons Kubik identifies a link between these elements of the Arabic-Islamic song style and the African American blues.
In short, Kubik finds it likely that musical traits from different groups of people, and different parts of Africa, contributed to the blues tradition in the United States. But the Arabic-Islamic and ancient Nigritic song styles were not like stable “ingredients” that simply mixed together to form the blues, nor were they handed down only among people who belonged to the ethnic groups from which these styles came. That is, blues were not a “heritage” music in this genealogical sense. During the slave trade, family and ethnic groups suffered disruption and dislocation. The migration of slave owners and the sale of enslaved people to distant regions meant that members of different African ethnic groups were mixed together and dispersed widely among European American communities. The blues were not cultivated only among West Sudanic or West African ethnic groups in the United States. So how did these elements of song traditions take root, or become localized, in their new environment?
In Kubik’s view the prominence of certain traits in blues is not explained by who brought these traits to the United States (heritage). Rather, these traits became widespread because they were useful and attractive to black people in the particular environment of the South in the 1800s; that is, this music spread as a tradition, passed from person to person.13 Musicians can learn both songs and techniques fairly quickly: when they hear something they like, they may imitate it and adopt it as their own. Kubik thinks there was a kind of selection process; for example, musical traditions involving drums were frequently suppressed by slave owners, so traditions without drums flourished. That blues could be performed by one person with any instrument that came to hand made it an inexpensive and mobile musical form that was hard to take away. Unlike louder forms of group singing and dancing, the blues were less likely to attract unwanted attention in an oppressive and controlled environment. Blues singers could use the themes of suffering, overwork, and loneliness derived from the ancient Nigritic style to describe their experiences and to speak for their communities. Furthermore, the 1890s saw the rise of Jim Crow laws, which limited economic and social opportunities for African Americans; but because slaveholders had exploited black people for entertainment as well as work, white Americans remained willing to accept African Americans as entertainers.14 In all these ways the blues had expressive and practical advantages.
Appropriation, Authenticity, and the Blues
The blues are much more than the sum of these African traits. Many aspects of the American context, including various audiences and commercial markets for the blues, were vital in shaping the history and content of this music. When black blues musicians traveled to perform in tent shows and vaudeville theaters (1890s–1920s), they found an audience of mixed ethnicities with an appetite for popular song. Soon white singers picked up this style of singing and the three-line form of the blues song. Composers of popular songs, many of them Jewish American, wrote blues and published them as sheet music (1910s). Many of these popular songs—some labeled as “blues,” some just incorporating aspects of the blues—were issued on commercial recordings (1920s).
In the 1930s and 1940s, folklorists—some sponsored by the US government—went looking for southern folklore and “rediscovered” the rural blues, which by then seemed utterly different from the widely known commercial forms of blues. Elvis Presley (1950s) and the popular singers of the British Invasion (1960s) not only took African American blues singers as their models but also recorded their songs, often without attributing them to the original songwriters.15 By the late 1960s the blues were recognized around the world as distinctively belonging to the United States. They were used in US public relations abroad and widely imitated.16 We have already seen in chapter 2 an instance in which the musical practice of a minority group becomes a symbol and a point of pride for the nation at large. (Recall that the “Hungarian” music for which Hungary is most famous is Romani music.) To extend Kubik’s line of thinking: the blues spread among people of many ethnicities because the style and themes of this music appealed to many musicians and audiences.
Yet, in the face of persistent social and economic inequality, one might wonder whether this kind of appropriation can happen on fair terms. Appropriation means taking something as one’s own. Musical “taking” is, of course, a special case: if someone adopts a musical style or idea, the person from whom it was adopted can still play the music that has been taken. For this reason musical appropriation is sometimes called borrowing, which has a less negative connotation. A more neutral-sounding term for the spreading of music is diffusion—an intermingling of substances resulting from the random motion and circulation of molecules, as in chemistry. As the metaphor of diffusion involves no human actors at all, just the movement of music from one group to another, this idea seems to attribute the movement of music to a Page 76 →natural process—like talking about globalization as a “flow” without saying who caused that flow. But appropriation is a purposeful choice, and a personal one: as we saw in the case of Liszt (chapter 2), the act of taking music as one’s own reflects the taker’s values and biases.
If we want to think about it in neutrally descriptive terms, we might say that the circulation of ideas is merely what has happened, and still happens, in the ebb and flow of music-making. Musicians have long taken sounds and ideas from others, repurposing or altering music to suit their own purposes. But appropriation can also mean theft. Cultural appropriation occurs when a member of a group that holds power takes intellectual property, artifacts, knowledge, or forms of expression from a group of people who have less power.17 Most definitions of cultural appropriation assume that “cultural” groups and their musical practices have clear and firm boundaries. They do not: music may be made differently even by members of the same group, and group allegiances are often hard to define. But people use the idea of cultural appropriation to address a real problem: if the powerful take music from the less powerful, what are the consequences? To put it bluntly: is this appropriation more like a complimentary form of imitation or more like a colonial extraction of resources?
One form of harm that can come about through cultural appropriation is that powerful people profit more from the music than do the less powerful people who made the music first. In the early days of the blues African American performers did earn money through in-person performance and recordings. Still, their earnings were modest. Recording and publishing companies often cheated musicians who lacked access to expert advice about contract and copyright law. Many media outlets preferred to play recordings by white musicians, further limiting black musicians’ opportunities to profit.18 During and after the 1960s, rock bands such as the Rolling Stones, Cream, and the Allman Brothers certainly reaped far greater monetary rewards from the blues than did the African American blues musicians whose songs they played. At the same time, the blues revival that spread the blues among Americans of other ethnicities increased professional opportunities for African Americans. Some musicians of this generation, such as B. B. King and Buddy Guy, attained considerable wealth and prestige, as well as a place in the spotlight. As the black blues musician Muddy Waters reportedly said of the Rolling Stones, “They stole my music but they gave me my name.”19
Cultural appropriation can also make practitioners of the appropriated music feel that they have been misrepresented. The revivalists’ attraction to the Page 77 →blues was based in part on insulting exoticist stereotypes about African Americans and their lives.20 In a 1998 history Leon Litwack wrote that “the men and women who played and sang the blues were mostly poor, propertyless, disreputable itinerants, many of them illiterate, many of them loners, many of them living on the edge.”21 This account describes African Americans as hapless, mysterious, and utterly different from other Americans who might encounter their music. These stereotypes emerge from long-standing categories of racist thinking that have been difficult to unseat. Historically, the advocates of segregation had justified their position by claiming that African Americans were weak, dependent, and incapable of progress, effectively relegating them to the enforced boundaries that slavery had created. These habits of thought persisted even as many white Americans embraced the blues, and they remain a key part of the image of the blues.
Instead of seeing the blues as an art form requiring expertise, some observers have viewed the blues as the natural product of African Americans’ mysterious lifestyle. Eric Clapton, the lead guitarist of Cream, noted that it had taken him “a great deal of studying and discipline” to learn the blues, whereas “for a black guy from Mississippi, it seems to be what they do when they open their mouth—without even thinking.”22 The stereotype operating here makes a hard distinction between folkloric music (handed down by tradition, eternally the same) and commercial music (sold in a marketplace, constantly changing). As we saw in chapter 1, the idea of the “modern” had been used to draw distinctions between non-Europeans and Europeans, and between the savage and the civilized.23 Clapton’s statement set his own creativity apart from that of African Americans, failing to acknowledge the individual creative effort of black blues artists.
Some people have argued that cultural appropriation is harmful because they want to preserve the authentic musical practice—for instance, recovering the blues as they were long ago rather than allowing for changes in the tradition. Authenticity is perceived closeness to an original source; judgments of authenticity are made with the aim of recovering that real or imaginary original. People who seek authentic blues take pleasure in a folk experience they have imagined for themselves as rural, untouched by commerce, and laden with suffering: they hope to find a true point of origin where the music first sprang into existence. Yet this argument is based less on historical facts than on present-day values, which emphasize distinctions between folk and commercial music and between origins and current uses. Authenticity is not a property of the blues; rather, it is a story that people tell about the music and Page 78 →its makers, a story that emphasizes heritage and the difference between “them” and “us.”24
In seeking authenticity, people often treat “cultures” as clearly delimited from each other, and they look for a source that is identifiably from only one group, not mixed or “hybrid.” The problem with this kind of thinking is that reality is more complicated. As best we can know it from the limited documentation that survives, the history of the blues does not support a clear distinction between folk and commercial music. Far from untouched by commerce, African American artists took advantage of opportunities to make money through music. Oral histories of the rural blues suggest that some blues musicians traveled from place to place to earn a living as entertainers, acquiring new material and making innovations in their performances along the way.25 The blues became known to the wider public in the 1900s and 1910s, as African American musicians performed the blues and other music professionally in theaters and circus sideshows. Blues musicians heard, and sometimes imitated, the vaudeville performances.26 When the blues were “discovered” by record companies—and of course one can hardly call it a discovery, as the music was already flourishing—African American performers willingly recorded their music for commercial markets.27 These recordings, in turn, fostered a new generation of blues musicians in the South, who learned to play from the recordings instead of from local musicians.28 In one way or another most musicians tailor their music to the demands of audiences, and African American musicians are no exception.29 Here we see a limitation of Kubik’s theory or of any theory that tries to define a thing by going back to its origins. Some elements of African music came together in the blues, but the context of traveling shows and commercialism in the United States was also an essential factor in the music’s development.
The mistaken focus on authenticity at the expense of other musical values reifies music—that is, makes it into an object rather than an activity. When blues became not just a manner of performance, but also a folk artifact to be recorded for posterity or a musical form to be copied, it became more like an object to its borrowers, losing the flexibility of live performance and changeable tradition.30 Once that happens, there is a risk that all performances will be measured against that “original” version. Holding the original as the highest standard disincentivizes creative development of the tradition.
Focusing on authenticity can also assign to music-makers a rigid set of group characteristics that differentiate them from other groups. The belief that all members of a certain group have particular inherent attributes is called Page 79 →essentialism: it is a way of making stereotypes seem truthful by saying they are a permanent part of the people they represent. The blues were especially attractive to white musicians in the 1960s who wanted to seem oppositional to the social status quo. But by emphasizing the authenticity of the tradition, they relegated African Americans to being part of history rather than part of the present day, as Clapton did. They essentialized African Americans as the unchanging folk source of the music and named themselves as the innovators.
Claims about authenticity are not only produced by white people who want to reify the blues. They have also been used by people who want to protect African American ownership of the blues tradition. This line of thinking has sometimes been called strategic essentialism: a disempowered people’s temporary use of stereotypes about themselves to promote their own interests—in this case, to guard a valued heritage against a specific act of appropriation.31 In the early 1960s, a volatile period in the civil rights movement, the critic Amiri Baraka wrote a searing critique titled “The Great Music Robbery” in which he addressed white appropriations of African American music. He objected because white musicians were earning so much profit and praise for playing black music but also because the blues represented specific African American experiences. Baraka went so far as to call the idea of a white blues singer a “violent contradiction of terms”: not because the blues were a genetic inheritance of black people but because the common experience of discrimination, reflected in the blues, bound black people together as a group.32 The absorption of black music into American music, explained Baraka, changed the meaning of black music and even felt like erasure of black people and their experiences. “There can be no inclusion as ‘Americans’ without full equality, and no legitimate disappearance of black music into the covering sobriquet ‘American,’ without consistent recognition of the history, tradition, and current needs of the black majority, its culture, and its creations.”33
At the same time, though, saying that black people are fundamentally different from other Americans reinforces that social separateness and the stereotypes that support it. The music scholar Ronald Radano has argued that Baraka’s criticism essentializes African Americans by assuming they all share similar origins and experiences. Telling the story of black music as if it were entirely separate from white music not only misrepresents history but also reinforces a false belief in fundamental racial differences—and this belief can then be used to justify continuing discrimination.34 Baraka did recognize the danger of essentialism: in a different essay he emphasized that committed musicians of any color could learn the “attitudes that produced the music as a Page 80 →profound expression of human feelings.”35 This statement means that African American music is an open tradition in which people of various ethnic origins might learn to participate, if they are willing to try to understand black musicians’ perspectives and experiences.
Thus, the objections to cultural appropriation boil down to economic exploitation and disrespectful representation.36 One could try to respond by discouraging appropriation. Yet people who use the charge of cultural appropriation as an effort to prevent traditions from mixing can also cause harm, perpetuating essentialist stereotypes. Thinking of the blues as an unchanging essence encourages white audiences to ignore African Americans’ further development of that tradition—or of other traditions. Worse, thinking of African Americans as people who only produce blues or spirituals unjustly limits their artistic freedom. In the words of the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, “talk of authenticity now just amounts to telling other people what they ought to value in their own traditions.”37 Musical appropriation across lines of social power seems generally to have this ambivalent quality: it can cause real harm to real people, yet trying to prevent appropriation can also cause trouble by encouraging inflexible and stereotypical thinking about groups and differences. This dilemma is built into life in the United States because of the violent and unequal circumstances by which the nation developed. The particulars of any musical borrowing among peoples in the United States may reinforce that violence, or work against it, or try to find a way past it; but it is always there to be grappled with.38
The Spiritual: Mutual Influence and Assimilation
Both European Americans and African Americans have nurtured traditions of religious singing, or “spiritual song.” Whereas some of the African American music used for entertainment developed separately from European American traditions, religion offered a point of contact between black people and white. During the 1600s and 1700s some groups made efforts to convert enslaved people to Christianity. In the North enslaved people were often considered part of the household, and they were encouraged to sing psalms and hymns as part of prayer services. Missionaries visiting the South pressed for conversion, but slaveholders decided whether and what to teach the enslaved people under their control. Generally, African Americans in the South received less religious Page 81 →instruction than their northern counterparts, in part because of a fear that literacy would empower them. The 1700s saw the rise of African American churches in both South and North. In the North these churches grew and developed their own collections of hymns, but southern whites feared that black churches were aiding in the organization of slave rebellion, so they disbanded them.39 Some scholars have speculated that pervasive segregation by race in the southern United States helped to preserve African American musical practices.
From the 1720s through the 1800s people in the United States participated in several waves of religious fervor, commonly known as the Great Awakening. During the Second Great Awakening (1800–1840s) itinerant evangelical preachers defied conservative Protestant slaveholders by hosting camp meetings, lively outdoor worship experiences that might last a week, attended by thousands of people. These evangelical meetings encouraged excited and emotional expressions of faith instead of rehearsing old-fashioned, carefully written sermons; this value harmonized with already existing African American musical practices. Camp meetings were interracial events, typically attended by black and white alike, even by enslaved people, and they were sometimes led by African American preachers. The degree of social mixing across racial lines would vary from place to place, and sometimes African Americans had to stand or sit separately from white participants. Nonetheless, the religious practice of the camp meeting offered an opportunity for European Americans and African Americans to find common ground in the language and practice of Christianity and taught some European Americans to regard African Americans as real people with souls and spiritual lives.40
Singing of religious songs played a prominent role in these Christian camp meetings. Observers recorded that African American attendees contributed “boisterous” singing at the meetings and often stayed up all night singing hymns after other attendees had gone to bed.41 A Methodist preacher, John F. Watson, was concerned because the style of this worship differed substantially from white Protestants’ musical renditions and did not meet their standards of respectfulness: “In the blacks’ quarter, the coloured people get together, and sing for hours together, short scraps of disjointed affirmations, pledges, or prayers, lengthened out with long repetition choruses. These are all sung in the merry chorus-manner of the southern harvest field, or husking-frolic method, of the slave blacks. . . . With every word so sung, they have a sinking of one or other leg of the body alternately; producing an audible sound of the feet at Page 82 →every step. . . . What in the name of religion, can countenance or tolerate such gross perversions of true religion!”42 Watson complained that African Americans were using words and music that were not officially sanctioned by any religious denomination. Another frequent complaint was that African Americans performed worship music with energetic dancing. African Americans differentiated the kind of body movement they would perform at a “shout” (worship) from the kind of movement they would consider dancing, but to white outsiders their bodily engagement in worship seemed disrespectful. Even as white listeners marveled at a kind of singing that was strange to their ears, coming together to sing helped African Americans identify themselves as a community, both within and out of earshot of European Americans.
Watson’s description of “short scraps” helps us understand how African Americans’ Christian camp meeting music worked. Though many had become familiar with the words and music of European American Christian hymnbooks, this music was used from memory and only in part. The worship leader would often sing a line, either from a hymn or improvised on the spot, and have the congregation repeat it, alternating the call of the leader with the response of the congregation. A similar practice, called lining-out, had been used in the British Isles before it was exported to the colonies. At the same time, this practice of alternating lines was also consistent with the call-and-response form that African Americans used in work songs. In the British practice lining-out tended to stick closely to the words in a hymnbook: it was a way of teaching illiterate congregants biblical stories by rote. In contrast, African Americans freely combined lines of Christian hymns with improvised words of praise. The leader could move from one idea to another, and the congregation would follow.43 An observer in the 1880s wrote: “When the minister gave out his own version of the Psalm, the choir commenced singing so rapidly that the original tune absolutely ceased to exist—in fact, the fine old psalm tune became thoroughly transformed into a kind of negro melody; and so sudden was the transformation, by accelerating the time, for a moment, I fancied that not only the choir but the little congregation intended to get up a dance as part of the service.”44 Frequently, African Americans added memorized choruses from other hymns that were well known among the congregation as the spirit moved the leader, even if this resulted in mixing of the original hymn texts or entirely new statements of faith.
Scholars typically refer to this genre of African American singing as the folk spiritual. The audio recordings we have of folk spirituals were made long after the 19th-century camp meetings. Researchers have read eyewitness Page 83 →accounts, listened to the later recordings, and made their best guesses about how African American spirituals might have sounded in that time. The written historical sources can be compared to living people’s knowledge of the spiritual. As the singer and scholar Bernice Johnson Reagon has said of her childhood during and after the Second World War, “As I grew up in a rural African American community in Southwest Georgia, the songs were everywhere.”45
African American folk spirituals were sung in groups, generally with no instrumental accompaniment. The words of these songs focus on themes from the Bible, with particular attention to stories of liberation. These included Daniel’s deliverance from the lion’s den; the journey of the Hebrew people from their captivity in Egypt to freedom; and the figure of Jesus as a liberator from sin. Frequent allusions to being a people chosen by God assert a sense of self-worth and confidence in a better future.46 Though the spirituals have sometimes been called “sorrow songs,” they express a variety of emotions, from longing to rejoicing.
In example 3.5 the Blue Spring Missionary Baptist Association of southwest Georgia blends improvised preaching and improvised singing.47
The congregation in this recording sings ecstatically in answer to the preacher’s message. The leader speaks or sings a phrase, and the congregation speaks or sings in return. Not all of the singers in this congregation are “in sync.” Some start just a little before others as they decide in the moment what to sing together by listening carefully to each other. The ethnomusicologist Charles Keil has argued that this slightly “out of time” feeling gives this music its dynamic and engaging qualities.48 Each singer has a great deal of freedom to sing the music in her or his own way: some offer embellishments around the main pitch or create harmonies.
The United Southern Prayer Band of Baltimore’s rendition of “Give Me Jesus” (example 3.6) is congregational spiritual singing in the African American tradition. Like the preceding example, this music was recorded in the Page 84 →1980s, but it includes many of the features scholars believe were part of the tradition from long ago.
It is a joyful and participatory style of singing. One has the sense that the congregation is spontaneously moved to involvement by lifting their voices, stomping their feet, and clapping their hands. That the song is repetitive means that everyone can participate, whether or not they knew the song beforehand; this kind of repetition was characteristic of camp-meeting songs.49
We might compare this rendition of “Give Me Jesus” to a recording of a white congregation in Kentucky singing the hymn “Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah” (example 3.7). This recording illustrates the practice of lining out a hymn: the leader sings each line of the hymn, and the congregation answers in a call-and-response pattern. In this and other ways this singing is very like the above examples from African American congregations.
We hear a deep engagement in worship and repetition that allows for broad participation, as well as a heterophonic singing style in which participants are free to add ornaments or harmonize. Note, though, that we hear no foot-stomping or hand-clapping; this performance is more restrained physically.
Scholars have historically had difficulty sorting out how the mutual resemblance between white and black spiritual song styles developed. Beginning in the 1930s, some suggested that African Americans took British American tunes for lining-out and “Africanized” them—much in the same way that Romungro musicians took Hungarian folk melodies and approached them in their own special style.50 This theory pained African Americans: in Reagon’s words, “Leading scholars claiming an objective, scientific method of research and Page 85 →analysis studied our work and ways of living and declared us incapable of original creativity.”51 But there is growing agreement among scholars today that most of the tunes did not come from British traditions: African Americans used ideas from Christianity but made their own songs about those ideas and performed them in their own ways.
It is reasonable to believe that the spiritual is a truly American creation and that contact between black Americans and white Americans shaped the music of both populations.52 The melodies and the freely improvised and recombined words we hear in this kind of spiritual singing are consistent with what we know about older African American practices. African Americans incorporated Christian religious ideas and found lining-out compatible with their own call-and-response singing. As testified to by Watson’s complaints, this practice seems to have had a meaningful influence on white singing, especially in the southern United States, through camp meetings.
The Spiritual and Assimilation
The folk spiritual is still a living tradition. Yet, like most living traditions, it has engendered offshoots and been borrowed and transformed in a variety of ways: these transformations are also part of the continuing story of how music moves. In the Civil War era spirituals were used by abolitionists as propaganda for their cause: these songs showcased the suffering of African Americans under slavery. On one hand, musically minded white listeners could find common ground with black singers in appreciation of the spiritual. On the other hand, the danger of essentialism arises here again: images of suffering African Americans were sometimes used to affirm white superiority and racism.53 This misperception was also a highly conspicuous element of the popular entertainment called minstrelsy. Featuring skits and musical numbers, minstrel shows depicted black people as comical, pathetic, the butt of every joke. African American intellectuals objected to this kind of portrayal and looked for ways to counteract it. They aimed to present African Americans in a manner that would gain respect among European Americans, especially among the educated Protestants of the North who might be sympathetic to the cause of free African Americans.
As the ethnomusicologist Sandra Graham has described it in her book, Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry, the African AmericanPage 86 → colleges founded after the Civil War (now usually known as “historically black colleges and universities,” or HBCUs) worked hard to change public perceptions of black people. Music was one tool for change. H. H. Wright, dean of the Fisk Freed Colored School (now Fisk University) in Nashville, Tennessee, recalled that “there was a strong sentiment among the colored people to get as far away as possible from all those customs which reminded them of slavery.” Wright reported that the students “would sing only ‘white’ songs.”54 Ella Sheppard (1851–1914), assistant director and founding member of the choir at Fisk, explained that “the slave songs were never used by us then in public. They were associated with slavery and the dark past, and represented the things to be forgotten. Then, too, they were sacred to our parents, who used them in their religious worship.”55 But with the encouragement of their music teacher, the white missionary George White, the Fisk choir began to sing a few spirituals on campus alongside their repertoire of hymns, popular parlor songs such as “Home Sweet Home,” and a few selections of European classical music.
That the Fisk choir sang primarily “white songs” is an example of assimilation: people within a minority or less powerful group changing their behavior to be more like a dominant group. We might think of assimilation as a companion concept to appropriation: it emerges from contact between groups who have unequal authority. By singing music associated with white people, the Fisk students sought to distance themselves from perceptions about black people as slaves. Many white people associated cultivated choral music with social privilege and respect: the Fisk students surely hoped that this kind of singing would mark them as educated people who belonged in polite society.
The Fisk Jubilee Singers made their first concert tour under the direction of George White in 1871 to raise funds for a building project at Fisk. They sang in churches and theaters alike, and their program consisted of the “white songs” they had customarily performed. In 1872 they added a few spirituals to their repertoire, and these quickly became so popular that they came to dominate the Jubilee Singers’ concert programs. Yet the spirituals were not sung as they had been in worship. The melodies were made regular in a way that conformed to the musical tastes of middle- and upper-class white people. Some songs were sung as solos or in unison, but some were set in four-part harmony, a technique borrowed from European music. In this style individual singers had fewer opportunities to improvise: one description of the Jubilee Singers praised their “precise unison.” Yet they did preserve some of the rhythmic features of the spiritual, such as accented notes placed off the beat, that white Page 87 →listeners found surprising.56 These assimilated versions of folk spirituals are called concert spirituals.
The Fisk Jubilee Singers were recorded early in the twentieth century; they probably sounded different then than in the 1870s, but this recording of “Deep River” still offers us some insight (example 3.8).
In this example we hear four-part harmony and a very smooth style of vocal delivery. There is no spontaneity or call and response in this music, as one might hear in the folk spiritual. Instead, “Deep River” is presented in a choral style that reflects the European ideals of precision and harmony.
Over the course of six and a half years the Jubilee Singers raised $150,000 for Fisk, a staggering sum. (The map in fig. 3.2 shows many of their tour stops.) On the heels of this success the Hampton Agricultural and Industrial School (now Hampton University) and the Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers (now Tuskegee University) soon founded their own groups of Jubilee Singers, aided by published sheet music of the Fisk group’s songs. The printed versions further altered the songs: they were written down according to norms of Western classical notation, in major and minor keys, even though in performance these melodies did not entirely conform to those keys.57
Graham has called the concert spiritual an act of “translation”: an intentional transformation that made the spiritual understandable and valuable to white audiences.58 White audiences could imagine that they were hearing the reality of the plantation, and the spirituals excited a sense of exoticism. One observer cited the choir’s “wild, delicious” sound; another delighted in the “strange and weird” music that recalled the harsh conditions under which African Americans survived.59 At the same time, the sound and the social aspiration of the concert spiritual were shaped by the institutions of higher education that sponsored them. The idea that African Americans needed to accommodate themselves to white norms in order to win respect reflected a sad reality of the day; this, more than anything else, shaped the sound of the concert spiritual. These performances succeeded in winning a great deal of praise and money from white listeners, though this affirmation was accompanied by a sense of exotic difference.60
In the early 1900s the spiritual became an increasingly popular source for Page 88 →choral pieces and songs to be presented in the format associated with a classical music concert. Harry T. Burleigh was part of the generation of African Americans born after Emancipation. A composer and singer, he studied at the National Conservatory of Music in New York. He composed many of his own songs in the art music tradition, but his arrangements of spirituals circulated more widely, and he was a key figure in developing interest in the concert spiritual among classically trained musicians. During the Harlem Renaissance (ca. 1917–35) artists such as Langston Hughes, Jessie Fauset, Duke Ellington, Roland Hayes, Paul Robeson, William Grant Still, Augusta Savage, and Hall Johnson focused on the creation of a positive African American identity through the arts.61 Part of their purpose was to find a less folksy, more modern expression of identity that they hoped would engender respect for black people among their white peers. Literacy had long been withheld from black people, so they wrote. Acknowledgment of their music as art had been withheld, so they composed.62
The Harlem Renaissance brought the concert spiritual, sometimes also called the “neospiritual,” into the spotlight again. Musicians began performing Page 89 →concert spirituals as solo songs with piano accompaniment. The tradition of performing spirituals in this way comes from the classical music genre of the art song—a formal and prestigious kind of classical performance. Songs of this type were popular in the United States in the 1800s because they could easily be performed in middle-class homes.
A strong proponent of the concert spiritual was Paul Robeson. He performed spirituals in concert alongside other music representing the peoples of the world, with the purpose of claiming equal respect for all. The arrangement of “Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child” for voice and piano we hear in example 3.9 was made by Lawrence Brown. Brown regularized the melody into orderly phrases with an unobtrusive accompaniment of simple chords. Robeson adopted some elements of dialect—singing, for example, “chile” for “child”—which was a characteristic marker of the concert spiritual at this time. Still, he projected his voice in the manner expected in classical music performance. This kind of performance contradicted the ideas about African Americans that were expressed in minstrel shows: the concert spiritual presented African American music as equal to, and similar to, European classical music.
The concert spiritual was controversial, even among African Americans who were committed to improving their social status through the arts. Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960), an anthropologist, folklorist, and writer who took part in the Harlem Renaissance, believed that only the spontaneous folk spirituals were authentic. She saw the concert spiritual as artificial, restrictive, and not really African American any more: “These neo-spirituals are the outgrowth of glee clubs. Fisk University boasts perhaps the oldest and certainly the most famous of these. They have spread their interpretation over America and Europe. . . . There has not been one genuine spiritual presented. To begin with, Negro spirituals are not solo or quartette material. The jagged harmony is what makes it, and it ceases to be what it was when this is absent. Neither can any group be trained to reproduce it. Its truth dies under training like flowers under hot water.”63 Intellectuals like Hurston questioned the practice of assimilation. They valued new economic and educational opportunities, but they were also looking for the best ways to preserve their traditions. Hurston felt strongly that Page 90 →the concert spiritual was a kind of domestication, making the spiritual easier for white people to understand while removing some of its essential features. This kind of adaptation changes the appropriated music into something new; and if the original music is beloved, this transformation can cause distress for those who love it. The problem of authenticity arises here again: some African Americans wondered if keeping a strict separation from European traditions was the best way to keep valued parts of their tradition alive.
The concert spiritual has crossed racial and national lines. Today, many church, community, and college choirs of varying ethnicities sing concert spirituals all over the world. Sometimes they imitate African American vernacular English, but often the language has been transformed into a more standard version of American English. Most characteristic of today’s concert spiritual, regardless of the racial identity of the singers, is a crisp precision of delivery.64 In this recording of “Wade in the Water,” sung by the Howard University Choir (example 3.10), you hear a meticulous choral sound: as in European classical choral music, a conductor coordinates the performance.
This music also lacks the spontaneity of the folk spiritual tradition. Any bodily motion (swaying, clapping) is either organized (everyone doing it together) or suppressed altogether. In these ways the concert spiritual has been distanced from African American folk approaches to performance. Even so, this concert spiritual retains from the African American tradition imagery of enslavement, escape through the water, and difficult journeying.
As a living musical tradition the spiritual has proved to be a music of extraordinary versatility, inspiring musicians of many traditions. It has also continued to be a valuable tool for those who choose to assimilate. The first female African American composer to win recognition in the classical music world, Florence Price (1887–1953), was conservatory-trained and framed her work within the Euro-American concert music (“classical”) tradition. She composed symphonies and other works for large ensemble, some piano music, and many songs. Her Black Fantasy (Fantasie nègre, example 3.11), composed for solo piano in 1929, is an arrangement of the spiritual “Sinner, Please Don’t Let This Harvest Pass.”
But at first it is not recognizable as such. We hear a stormy and passionate introduction that uses techniques borrowed from the European classical composers Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt. (Recalling that Liszt appropriated others’ music, we might notice that all music is subject to reuse and further appropriation.) Only after that introduction is the spiritual melody heard (timepoint 0:58), but it is still decorated by the techniques Chopin used to ornament a songlike melody. This music is difficult to play: it reflects the virtuosic tradition of 19th-century piano music.
Through Black Fantasy and other works, Price sought to bridge the gap between African American traditions and the European American classical tradition. The difficulty of the work and its resemblance to classical piano works made a bid for respect and inclusion in that tradition, even as the spiritual melody offered content new to that tradition. In Price’s day most white Americans still had not thought of African American music as an art form but only as a kind of folk practice that did not require training, effort, or creativity. Price’s music demolishes that distinction, bringing ideas from African American music into the classical music tradition and insisting that this, too, is art.65
Troubled Water (1967), a piano piece composed by Margaret Bonds (1913–1972), continued the tradition of using spirituals to bridge traditions. Bonds’s music blurs the lines among different genres of music more completely, accompanying the spiritual melody with elements from classical music and jazz. Troubled Water (example 3.12) is a concert piece for piano, based on the spiritual “Wade in the Water.”
The piece has three main sections and a coda (a brief ending section). It begins with an ostinato (a repeated pattern) in the bass, a feature that frequently appeared in jazz piano performances of that era. The ostinato continues throughout the first and third sections of the piece, underneath a statement of the “Wade in the Water” melody that is harmonized in jazz style. When we hear the melody again in the contrasting middle section of the piece (from timepointPage 92 → 1:37 to 2:49), the accompaniment makes reference to classical piano works that represent water through rippling cascades of notes—especially Claude Debussy’s “Reflections in the Water” from Images. The third section of Bonds’s piece returns to the ostinato, and it is like the first section, though it also reintroduces some of the rippling water ideas near the end of the section. Troubled Water closes with a forceful statement of the spiritual melody.
In our day the blending of traditions is commonplace and usually intentional: the composer makes choices about how to express herself not only on the basis of tradition (what has been handed down to her by teachers or kin) but also by how she wants to be perceived and what she wants to represent. As Margaret Bonds and Florence Price sought entry into the classical music world, they could have chosen to assimilate completely, abandoning the musical markers associated with African American music. Instead, African American music became a resource for them and a point of pride that distinguished their music from others’. This piano music reflects the paradoxical views of the Harlem Renaissance: though black artists might choose to assimilate to improve their standing in a white-dominated country, they also continued to respect and cultivate the traditions associated with black Americans.
The relationships created by the scattering of people through diaspora are multifaceted and durable, involving many kinds of interaction and mutual influence. As individual American musicians make their particular musical choices, they act within or against racial identities defined by America’s colonial and diasporic history. Although the concept of race has no basis in science, race has often been treated as a social fact that defines or limits artistic heritage and community membership. Nevertheless, it is easy to see that in the United States musical traditions have become intertwined, with borrowings in many directions. In the experiences of the African American and Romani diasporas we can see many instances of the troubled and violent relations between diasporic minorities and their majority neighbors. At the same time, we can recognize the musical relationships created by diaspora as complex and significant forces that have shaped the development of music in countless ways. Once we have observed how these relationships work, we might use words like heritage and tradition with caution, for music is not only “handed down” within a family or other group, but also “handed around” through appropriation, assimilation, and other borrowing practices. These practices are not an exception: they are a typical part of how music moves.
Jibaro, Bomba, and Plena Music of Puerto Rico
There are three primary folk music genres indigenous to the Island of Puerto Rico. These are the Spanish-derived jibaro music associated with the small farms and interior mountain communities, and the bomba and plena styles identified with the coastal towns with larger African populations.
Because Puerto Rico’s agricultural economy was centered in coffee and tobacco and not the labor-intensive sugar industry that dominated most of the Caribbean, fewer African slaves were imported and the influence of Spanish culture remained strong. The jibaros, the Spanish descendents who worked the interior farms, developed their own song and dance forms based heavily on Spanish traditions. Elite dance music and poetry, imported from Europe by the wealthy landowners, or hacendados, along with Spanish folk traditions, found their way into the jibaros repertoires. The seis is song set in 10-line verse form with lyrics dealing with idealized love, motherhood, the suffering of the jibaro farmer, and the beauty of the Puerto Rican countryside. Another song form, the aguinaldo, is associated specifically with the Christmas season. The seis and aguiandlo may be sung in a slow, ballad style, or played in a livelier
tempo when used to accompany dancing at jibaro fiestas. A typical jibaro ensemble consists of guitar, cuatro (a guitar with five doubled strings), maracas, and guiro scraper, backing a trovador (singer/poet) who sings stock verses and improvises decimas (10-line text stanzas) on the spot. Jibaro singing is characterized by a high, tense, dramatic vocal delivery.
In coastal towns like Ponce, where African slaves were brought to work the sugar plantations, bomba and plena music developed. Bomba, the most African-influenced Puerto Rican folk style, features exuberant call-and-response singing between a leader and a chorus, interlocking drum patterns, and intense drummer/dance interaction (the latter responds to the lead drummer’s improvised rhythms). A typical bomba ensemble consists of a pair of sticks known as fúa or cua that provide a steady ground beat when struck on a hard surface; a maraca; and two or more barrel-shaped drums. The lyrics to bomba songs usually refer to everyday work and social events.
Plena is a creolized folk song that combines African-derived call (leader) and response (chorus) singing, drumming, and dance with European-derived melodies and harmonies. A traditional plena ensemble includes several handheld frame drums called panderetas (similar to a tambourine but without the metal jingles), the güiro (scraped gourd), and one or more melodic instruments such as the accordion, harmonica, or cuatro. Often referred to as “el periodico cantado” (the sung newspaper), plena songs relate current and historical events of community life. In recent years the plena ensembles have incorporated horns, keyboards, electric bass, and extended percussion to produce a more modern dance sound.
Trinidad, the small Caribbean island nation located just off the coast of Venezuela, is home to one of the world’s largest carnivals. New World urban carnivals have their immediate roots in the pre-Lenten celebrations of medieval and Renaissance Europe. On such occasions large numbers of the people took to the streets to frolic and engage in satirical performances that often challenged social hierarchy and everyday order. When Euro-Catholic carnival practices were transplanted to the New World by French, Spanish, and Portuguese settlers, they mixed and mingled with the traditions of the African slaves and their descendants, resulting in the emergence of spectacular creolized celebrations in cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Port of Spain, Trinidad; and New Orleans. Increasingly these festivities took on an African flavor, as African masking traditions and neo-African music styles featuring call-and-response singing, improvisation, and syncopated dance rhythms became hallmarks of urban carnival.
The development of carnival in Port of Spain, Trinidad, demonstrates this process. The original 18th-century pre-Lenten street processions of the French planters were eventually taken over by the island’s African population who blended their own emancipation celebrations into the European festivities. By the mid-19th century they had established a large-scale annual celebration in the days leading up to Ash Wednesday. Street rituals evolved around groups of masqueraders who paraded and danced to percussion ensembles and a chantwell who led the revelers in rowdy call-and-response singing that became an important source of modern-day calypso song. By the early post–World War II years ensembles of steel pan players (steelbands) became the main source of music for the street processions of carnival masqueraders (mas bands).
By the turn of the 20th century the noisy call-and-response street carnival singing developed into calypso songs characterized by lyrical melodies, bouncy syncopated rhythms, and a solo verse/chorus refrain structure. Drums and bamboo percussion instruments were replaced by string (usually guitar) and horn accompaniments. Calypso songs offered witty and satirical commentary on a wide range of social issues, current events, and lewd scandals, often mocking the pretensions of the upper classes. In the 1930s a number of calysponians boasting titles like Lord Invader, the Duke of Iron, Houdini, and Roaring Lion traveled to New York to record and perform. Eventually they would foment a calypso craze in the United States that culminated with Harry Belafonte’s 1957 hit, “Day-O.” By the late 1970s Trinidadian calypso singers were incorporating elements of American disco and soul music into their sound to forge the new style of soca (soul/calypso), which featured a pounding bass line, heavy drums, and riffing synthesizers. Soca lyrics, often based around simple choruses exhorting listeners to party and dance, generally lacked the sophisticated wit and sardonic commentary associated with earlier calypso songs.
The second important Trinidadian carnival tradition, steel pan music, grew out of 19thand early 20thcentury drum and bamboo percussion ensembles that accompanied singers and costumed revelers in carnival street processions. Sometime in the mid-1930s tamboo bamboo percussion ensembles began experimenting with paint and trash cans, automobile brake drums, and other metal objects. Players eventually discovered that different pitches could be achieved by pounding the bottoms of metal containers into different shapes and striking them with sticks. Following WW II, the first true steel drums were forged by pan tuners (builders) who cut oil drums into different sizes to produce a wider tonal range. More sophisticated techniques were developed for grooving notes, leading to pans capable of producing fully chromatic scales and conventional Western harmonies. By the 1950s steel pan orchestras were playing complex arrangements of calypsos as well as Latin dance music, American pop songs, and European classical pieces.
Steel orchestras grew in size, and today may number as many as 100 performers playing a range of pans divided into six or seven sections. The high-range tenor pans usually play the primary melodic line while the double tenors and double seconds double the melody or contribute second melodies. The mid-range cello and guitar pans provide chordal accompaniment. Full-sized, fifty-five gallon drums, arranged in six, nine, or twelve drum configurations, maintain a moving bass line. A trap drum set, one or more conga drums, an iron (automobile brake drum struck with a metallic stick), and additional hand percussion provide a dense rhythmic accompaniment for dancing.
Brooklyn’s West Indian Carnival, based on the Trinidad model, is the most recent urban carnival to rise to prominence. Originally staged in Harlem on Labor Day (in deference to NYC’s climate that would not allow for a large-scale outdoor festivities during the traditional mid-winter, pre-Lenten carnival season), West Indian Carnival moved to central Brooklyn’s Eastern Parkway in the late 1960s where large numbers of West Indians were settling following the 1965 immigration reforms. Mas bands of fancy costumed carnival-goers dance to steel bands and sound trucks pumping out contemporary calypso and soca hits as well Jamaican reggae, Haitian konpa, and the latest pop music offerings from Grenada, Barbados, and Panama. By the 1990s Brooklyn Carnival had evolved into the largest ethnic festival in the United States, drawing an estimated two million people. The festivities stretch over the entire Labor Day weekend with a series of nightly concerts headlined by international calypso and reggae stars, fancy costume competitions, and a panorama contest featuring the borough’s top steel bands.
Copland represents a first in our studies: an American-born composer. Born in Brooklyn, NY, Aaron Copland studied in Paris then returned to the United States where he was influenced by the composer Aaron Stieglitz. Stieglitz felt that American artists should create work that gave expression to American democracy. Copland certainly did this in several popular ballets that made use of American folk tunes, particularly cowboy songs. The ballet Rodeo and the movement from that work featured on our playlist, “Hoedown,” is unmistakeable in its reference to the American West. This American nationalism stands in stark contrast to the modernist music of Copland’s contemporaries.
Introduction
Figure 1. Aaron Copland as subject of a Young People’s Concert, 1970
Aaron Copland (November 14, 1900–December 2, 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. Instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, in his later years he was often referred to as “the Dean of American Composers” and is best known to the public for the works he wrote in the 1930s and 1940s in a deliberately accessible style often referred to as “populist” and which the composer labeled his “vernacular” style. Works in this vein include the ballets Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid and Rodeo, his Fanfare for the Common Man and Third Symphony. The open, slowly changing harmonies of many of his works are archetypical of what many people consider to be the sound of American music, evoking the vast American landscape and pioneer spirit. In addition to his ballets and orchestral works, he produced music in many other genres including chamber music, vocal works, opera and film scores.
After some initial studies with composer Rubin Goldmark, Copland traveled to Paris, where he studied at first with Isidor Philipp and Paul Vidal, then with noted pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. He studied three years with Boulanger, whose eclectic approach to music inspired his own broad taste in that area. Determined upon his return to the U.S. to make his way as a full-time composer, Copland gave lecture-recitals, wrote works on commission and did some teaching and writing. He found composing orchestral music in the “modernist” style he had adapted abroad a financially contradictory approach, particularly in light of the Great Depression. He shifted in the mid-1930s to a more accessible musical style which mirrored the German idea of Gebrauchsmusik (“music for use”), music that could serve utilitarian and artistic purposes. During the Depression years, he traveled extensively to Europe, Africa, and Mexico, formed an important friendship with Mexican composer Carlos Chávez and began composing his signature works.
During the late 1940s Copland felt a need to compose works of greater emotional substance than his utilitarian scores of the late 1930s and early 1940s. He was aware that Stravinsky, as well as many fellow composers, had begun to study Arnold Schoenberg’s use of twelve-tone (serial) techniques. In his personal style, Copland began to make use of twelve-tone rows in several compositions. He incorporated serial techniques in some of his later works, including his Piano Quartet (1951), Piano Fantasy (1957), Connotations for orchestra (1961) and Inscape for orchestra (1967). From the 1960s onward, Copland’s activities turned more from composing to conducting. He became a frequent guest conductor of orchestras in the U.S. and the UK and made a series of recordings of his music, primarily for Columbia Records.
Popular Works
Impressed with the success of Virgil Thomson’s Four Saints in Three Acts, Copland wrote El Salón México between 1932 and 1936, which met with a popular acclaim that contrasted the relative obscurity of most of his previous works. It appears he intended it to be a popular favorite, as he wrote in 1955: “It seems a long long time since anyone has written an España or Bolero—the kind of brilliant orchestral piece that everyone loves.” Inspiration for this work came from Copland’s vivid recollection of visiting the “Salon Mexico” dancehall where he witnessed a more intimate view of Mexico’s nightlife. For Copland, the biggest impact came, not from the music of the people dancing, but from the spirit of the environment. Copland said that he could literally feel the essence of the Mexican people in the dance hall. This prompted him to write a piece celebrating the spirit of Mexico using Mexican Themes. Copland derived freely from two collections of Mexican folk tunes, changing pitches and varying rhythms. The use of a folk tune with variations set in a symphonic context started a pattern he repeated in many of his most successful works right on through the 1940s. This work also marked the return of jazz patterns to Copland’s compositional style, though they appeared in a more subdued form than before and were no longer the centerpiece. Chávez conducted the premiere, and El Salón México became an international hit, gaining Copland wide recognition.
Copland achieved his first major success in ballet music with his groundbreaking score Billy the Kid, based on a Walter Noble Burns novel, with choreography by Eugene Loring. The ballet was among the first to display an American music and dance vocabulary, adapting the “strong technique and intense charm of Astaire” and other American dancers. It was distinctive in its use of polyrhythm and polyharmony, particularly in the cowboy songs. The ballet premiered in New York in 1939, with Copland recalling “I cannot remember another work of mine that was so unanimously received.” John Martin wrote, “Aaron Copland has furnished an admirable score, warm and human, and with not a wasted note about it anywhere.” It became a staple work of the American Ballet Theatre, and Copland’s twenty-minute suite from the ballet became part of the standard orchestral repertoire. When asked how a Jewish New Yorker managed so well to capture the Old West, Copland answered “It was just a feat of imagination.”
In the early 1940s, Copland produced two important works intended as national morale boosters. Fanfare for the Common Man, scored for brass and percussion, was written in 1942 at the request of the conductor Eugene Goossens, conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. It would later be used to open many Democratic National Conventions, and to add dignity to a wide range of other events. Even musical groups from Woody Herman’s jazz band to the Rolling Stones adapted the opening theme. Emerson, Lake & Palmer recorded a “progressive rock” version of the composition in 1977. The fanfare was also used as the main theme of the fourth movement of Copland’s Third Symphony, where it first appears in a quiet, pastoral manner, then in the brassier form of the original. In the same year, Copland wrote A Lincoln Portrait, a commission from conductor André Kostelanetz, leading to a further strengthening of his association with American patriotic music. The work is famous for the spoken recitation of Lincoln’s words, though the idea had been previously employed by John Alden Carpenter’s “Song of Faith” based on George Washington’s quotations. “Lincoln Portrait” is often performed at national holiday celebrations. Many Americans have performed the recitation, including politicians, actors, and musicians and Copland himself, with Henry Fonda doing the most notable recording.
Continuing his string of successes, in 1942 Copland composed the ballet Rodeo, a tale of a ranch wedding, written around the same time as Lincoln Portrait. Rodeo is another enduring composition for Copland and contains many recognizable folk tunes, well-blended with Copland’s original music. Notable in the final movement, is the striking “Hoedown”. This was a recreation of Appalachian fiddler W. H. Stepp’s version of the square-dance tune “Bonypart” (“Bonaparte’s Retreat”), which had been transcribed for piano by Ruth Crawford Seeger and published in Alan Lomax and Seeger’s book, Our Singing Country (1941). For the “Hoedown” in Rodeo Copland borrowed note for note from Seeger’s piano transcription of Stepp’s tune. This fragment (lifted from Ruth Crawford Seeger) is now one of the best-known compositions by any American composer, having been used numerous times in movies and on television, including commercials for the American beef industry. “Hoedown” was given a rock arrangement by Emerson, Lake & Palmer in 1972. The ballet, originally titled “The Courting at Burnt Ranch”, was choreographed by Agnes de Mille, niece of film giant Cecil B. DeMille. It premiered at the Metropolitan Opera on October 16, 1942, with de Mille dancing the principal “cowgirl” role and the performance received a standing ovation. A reduced score is still popular as an orchestral piece, especially at “Pops” concerts.
Figure 2. Martha Graham in 1948
Copland was commissioned to write another ballet, Appalachian Spring, originally written using thirteen instruments, which he ultimately arranged as a popular orchestral suite. The commission for Appalachian Spring came from Martha Graham, who had requested of Copland merely “music for an American ballet”. Copland titled the piece “Ballet for Martha,” having no idea of how she would use it on stage but he had her in mind. “When I wrote ‘Appalachian Spring’ I was thinking primarily about Martha and her unique choreographic style, which I knew well. . . . And she’s unquestionably very American: there’s something prim and restrained, simple yet strong, about her which one tends to think of as American.” Copland borrowed the flavor of Shaker songs and dances, and directly used the dance song Simple Gifts. Graham took the score and created a ballet she calledAppalachian Spring (from a poem by Hart Crane which had no connection with Shakers). It was an instant success, and the music later acquired the same name. Copland was amused and delighted later in life when people would come up to him and say: “Mr. Copland, when I see that ballet and when I hear your music I can see the Appalachians and just feel spring.” Copland had no particular setting in mind while writing the music, he just tried to give it an American flavor, and had no knowledge of the borrowed title, in which “spring” refers to a spring of water, not the season Spring.
Rodeo
Just as Bartok’s recordings of Hungarian and Romanian folk songs influenced his later compositions, a particular recording of an old cowboy tune had an impact on the “Hoedown” movement of Copland’s Rodeo. Listen to this NPR story on that tune and its transformation from a western march to an orchestral dance. To see what other folk tunes appear in “Hoedown” read the paragraph on that movement from the Wikipedia article on Rodeo. The link will take you directly to that paragraph.
John Cage’s influence is based as much on his ideas about music as it is on his music itself. He was a music philosopher as well as a composer, challenging readers and listeners alike with questions about the nature of sound versus that of music and whether there is any difference. This page provides a concise overview of his impact on the world of music and aesthetics and touches upon the two concepts I want you to understand in connection with Cage: prepared piano and aleatoric music. We’ll read about these two concepts next.
Introduction
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912–August 12, 1992) was an American composer, music theorist, writer, and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential American composers of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage’s romantic partner for most of their lives.
Cage is perhaps best known for his 1952 composition 4′33″, which is performed in the absence of deliberate sound; musicians who present the work do nothing aside from being present for the duration specified by the title. The content of the composition is not “four minutes and 33 seconds of silence,” as is sometimes assumed, but rather the sounds of the environment heard by the audience during performance. The work’s challenge to assumed definitions about musicianship and musical experience made it a popular and controversial topic both in musicology and the broader aesthetics of art and performance. Cage was also a pioneer of the prepared piano (a piano with its sound altered by objects placed between or on its strings or hammers), for which he wrote numerous dance-related works and a few concert pieces. The best known of these is Sonatas and Interludes (1946–48).
His teachers included Henry Cowell (1933) and Arnold Schoenberg (1933–35), both known for their radical innovations in music, but Cage’s major influences lay in various East and South Asian cultures. Through his studies of Indian philosophy and Zen Buddhism in the late 1940s, Cage came to the idea of aleatoric or chance-controlled music, which he started composing in 1951. The I Ching, an ancient Chinese classic text on changing events, became Cage’s standard composition tool for the rest of his life. In a 1957 lecture, Experimental Music, he described music as “a purposeless play” which is “an affirmation of life—not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we’re living.”
John Adams is one of the best-known composers who works in a minimal style, though as you’ll read in the linked article he is less rigid in his application of minimalism than some earlier composers such as Phillip Glass or Steve Reich. As you read the section entitled “Musical Style,” pay special attention to his feelings about twelve-tone composition and the influence of John Cage.
Introduction
Figure 1. John Adams
John Coolidge Adams (born February 15, 1947) is an American composer with strong roots in minimalism.
His works include Short Ride in a Fast Machine (1986), On the Transmigration of Souls (2002), a choral piece commemorating the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks (for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003), and Shaker Loops (1978), a minimalist four-movement work for strings. His operas include Nixon in China (1987), which recounts Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit to China, and Doctor Atomic (2005), which covers Robert Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project, and the building of the first atomic bomb.
The Death of Klinghoffer is an opera for which he wrote the music, based on the hijacking of the passenger liner Achille Lauro by the Palestine Liberation Front in 1985, and the hijackers’ murder of wheelchair-bound 69-year-old Jewish-American passenger Leon Klinghoffer. The opera has drawn controversy, including allegations by some (including Klinghoffer’s two daughters) that the opera is antisemitic and glorifies terrorism. The work’s creators and others have disputed these criticisms.
Musical Style
The music of John Adams is usually categorized as minimalist or post-minimalist although in interview he has categorised himself as a ‘post-style’ composer. While Adams employs minimalist techniques, such as repeating patterns, he is not a strict follower of the movement. Adams was born ten years after Steve Reich and Philip Glass, and his writing is more developmental and directionalized, containing climaxes and other elements of Romanticism. Comparing Shaker Loops to minimalist composer Terry Riley’s piece In C, Adams says,
rather than set up small engines of motivic materials and let them run free in a kind of random play of counterpoint, I used the fabric of continually repeating cells to forge large architectonic shapes, creating a web of activity that, even within the course of a single movement, was more detailed, more varied, and knew both light and dark, serenity and turbulence.
Many of Adams’s ideas in composition are a reaction to the philosophy of serialism and its depictions of “the composer as scientist.” The Darmstadt school of twelve tone composition was dominant during the time that Adams was receiving his college education, and he compared class to a “mausoleum where we would sit and count tone-rows inWebern.”
Adams experienced a musical epiphany after reading John Cage’s book Silence (1973), which he claimed “dropped into [his] psyche like a time bomb.” Cage posed fundamental questions about what music was, and regarded all types of sounds as viable sources of music. This perspective offered to Adams a liberating alternative to the rule-based techniques of serialism. At this point Adams began to experiment with electronic music, and his experiences are reflected in the writing of Phrygian Gates (1977–78), in which the constant shifting between modules in Lydian mode and Phrygian mode refers to activating electronic gates rather than architectural ones. Adams explained that working with synthesizers caused a “diatonic conversion,” a reversion to the belief that tonality was a force of nature.
Figure 2. John Adams, Phrygian Gates, mm 21–40 (1977)
Some of Adams’s compositions are an amalgamation of different styles. One example is Grand Pianola Music (1981–82), a humorous piece that purposely draws its content from musical cliches. In The Dharma at Big Sur, Adam’s draws from literary texts such as Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder and Henry Miller to illustrate the California landscape. Adams professes his love of other genres other than classical music; his parents were jazz musicians, and he has also listened to rock music, albeit only passively. Adams once claimed that originality wasn’t an urgent concern for him the way it was necessary for the minimalists, and compared his position to that of Gustav Mahler, J. S. Bach, and Johannes Brahms, who “were standing at the end of an era and were embracing all of the evolutions that occurred over the previous thirty to fifty years.”
Style and Analysis
Adams, like other minimalists of his time (e.g. Philip Glass), used a steady pulse that defines and controls the music. The pulse was best known from Terry Riley’s early composition In C, and slowly more and more composers used it as a common practice. Jonathan Bernard highlighted this adoption by comparing Phrygian Gates, written in 1977, and Fearful Symmetries written eleven years later in 1988.
Violin Concerto, Mvt. III “Toccare”
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Adams started to add a new character to his music, something he called “the Trickster.” The Trickster allowed Adams to use the repetitive style and rhythmic drive of minimalism, yet poke fun at it at the same time. When Adams commented on his own characterization of particular minimalist music, he stated that he went joyriding on “those Great Prairies of non-event.”
Mission San Agustín de la Isleta and houses, Isleta Pueblo (photo: MARELBU, CC BY 3.0)
Until relatively recently, houses at the Southern Tiwa Pueblo of Isleta in New Mexico were replastered every year using a mixture that contained mica from a culturally significant site in the southwestern United States. In the bright sunlight of the southwest, mica’s natural shimmer adds a reflective, lustrous quality to these homes. Yet using the mica to create this shimmering quality was not done simply because it is pleasing to look at, but because its appearance paralleled the transformative qualities that feature so prominently in Pueblo stories and songs. It is one of the many ways that Pueblo architecture reveals a close connection to the surrounding landscape and to Pueblo culture.
Map of modern Pueblo villages (image: Crow Canyon Archaeological Center)
Pueblo people
The Pueblo people are one of many Native American cultural groups living in the southwestern United States. Contemporary Pueblo villages are located throughout the north-central and western regions of New Mexico and in northeastern Arizona and are often broadly divided into two distinct geographical groups. These include:
the Eastern (or Rio Grande) pueblos of Cochiti, Isleta, Jemez, Nambe, Ohkay Owingeh, Picuris, Pojoaque, Sandia, San Felipe, Santa Ana, Santa Clara, Santo Domingo, Taos, Tesuque, and Zia; and
the Western pueblos of Acoma, Laguna, Zuni, and villages of the Hopi Mesas.
Cochiti pueblo, c. 1871–1907, photo by John K. Hillers, Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology (National Archives at College Park)
In addition to referring to the Pueblo people, the word “pueblo” is Spanish and means “town.” In this context it refers to the shared architectural style that early Spanish colonists encountered in many of the villages in the region (after they began colonizing the area after the late 16th century). While people living in Pueblo villages share a common form of architecture and communal life, as well as overlapping ancestries, they are also quite diverse—culturally, ethnically, and linguistically. Although interrelated, distinct customs and forms of social organization are found within the various Pueblo villages. Individuals’ participation in various social groups may reflect familial ties, ceremonial responsibilities, access to ritual knowledge, gender affiliations, and differences in migration histories and relationships to place. Throughout their lifetimes, Pueblo community members are affiliated with various social and ritual groups, frequently spanning across multiple villages.
Rock art at Petroglyph National Monument, New Mexico (photo: Mobilus In Mobili, CC BY-SA 2.0)
Some contemporary Pueblo villages have been occupied continuously for a period of 1,000 years or longer. Ancestral Pueblo occupation within the larger region extends back even further. We know this through both Puebloan oral tradition and archaeological sites—better referred to as “footprints”—that dot the landscape throughout the region. Examples of such “footprints” include rock art sites and ancestral villages that are no longer actively occupied but embody traces of the ancestors who came before.
Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (photo: Paul Williams, CC BY-NC 2.0)
A powerful example of such a “footprint” is the ancestral site of Pueblo Bonito, one of the “Great Houses” of the Chaco Canyon cultural area in northwestern New Mexico. Construction began on Pueblo Bonito in approximately 850 C.E. and continued, in stages, until approximately 1150 C.E. The sheer enormity of Pueblo Bonito and the richness of the archaeological record at the site indicate that it was an important ceremonial center for a period of approximately three hundred years, and it remains a culturally and spiritually significant site for Pueblo people today.
Large multi-level buildings of the south side of Zuni Pueblo, c. 1873, photograph by Timothy O’Sullivan (Library of Congress)
Main characteristics of Pueblo architecture
Characteristics of Pueblo architecture include large multi-level buildings, numerous contiguous rooms (rooms that touch one another or share a boundary wall), terraced design, and open-air plazas. Traditional Pueblo architectural design did not include doors, and in traditional buildings, each level was accessible by exterior and interior rooftop ladders. Contemporary Pueblo villages incorporate modern architectural elements and infrastructure (such as electricity, plumbing, glass windows, and exterior doors).
Terraced design at Taos Pueblo, 1880, photograph by Johannes Karl Hillers (Pitt Rivers Museum)
Late 19th-century photographs of Zuni and Taos Pueblos show many ladders raised against the walls of multi-leveled adobe buildings, as well as ladders emerging from interior rooms. We see the same design feature today at Acoma Pueblo.
Acoma Pueblo street with contiguous rooms in adobe buildings and ladders that lead to the upper story entrances to kivas (sacred ceremonial spaces; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-SA 2.0)
Contiguous rooms have many different uses, both public and private, and they are easily accessed via the ladders. Outer rooms, terraces, and other accessible rooms were used as common living spaces. Lower levels, interior rooms, and other more difficult-to-reach rooms were used for food storage and ceremonial purposes.
Open-air plaza at Acoma Pueblo (photo: osseous, CC BY 2.0)
Fall harvest at Santa Clara Pueblo, c. 1910 (American Museum of Natural History)
Plazas and kivas
Open-air plazas and terraces are significant architectural components in Pueblo villages. They served as sites for participation in public ritual and also facilitated multiple forms of daily household and village activities, such as harvest storage (as we see in the photograph of Santa Clara Pueblo), food preparation, and ceramics production.
Acoma Pueblo street ladders that lead to the upper story entrances to kivas (photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-SA 2.0)
In each Pueblo, various groups are responsible for the performance of culturally significant activities in accordance with the ceremonial calendar. Activities include public components such as songs and dances that take place in the village plazas and private components that take place within the kivas. Kivas are ceremonial structures, usually located in close proximity to the open-air plazas. Access to kivas is restricted to community members with the appropriate cultural and ritual authority to enter those spaces. Although many modern kivas may be built into the architecture of the contiguous surface room blocks or as free-standing structures, many ancestral kivas were built as subterranean or semi-subterranean spaces.
In the Pueblo world, a sense of place is connected to emergence and movement, an idea that Pueblo architectural forms embody. For example, rooftop entrances to kivas reinforce Pueblo cosmological ideas (or a knowledge system that explains the origin, development, and structure of the universe) about emergence and return. During special ceremonial performances, audience members can watch performances unfold from the terraces above rooms where kivas are located, yet performers may also emerge from upper-level terraces onto the plaza below. Similarly, the dances that are performed in the village plazas may reference movement and migration across the ancestral landscape.
Movement and the search for the middle place
Origin stories emphasize a long tradition of movement as the ancestors emerged from the underworld and searched for their “middle place,” the place where they were destined to live and perpetuate their cultural teachings. Mobility was characteristic of early Pueblo cultures as families and other small groups moved across the landscape, over the course of many generations. Santa Clara Pueblo scholar Tessie Naranjo writes that “the old people moved continuously, and that was the way it was.” Movement within fixed boundaries is a fundamental element of Pueblo thought and being and, she continues, “even these specific boundaries are not the important elements because as the people moved, their mountain boundaries also moved. The idea was to have boundaries to create a place—to fix a place—temporarily within a larger idea of movement.” [1]
Hopi Pueblo of Walapi (or Walpai) on mesa, c. 1901, photo by Charles C. Pierce (USC Libraries Special Collections)
The Tewa speak of two groups moving for many years along two mountain ranges before joining together to form one village. The Zuni speak of building villages in which to live for a period of four days and four nights, a phrase that may mean four years, four hundred years, or four thousand years. The Hopi speak of an ancestral promise to make footprints on their way to becoming Hopi. Pueblo ancestors carried a sense of cosmological place and situated-ness with them wherever they went on their path to the “middle place.”
Construction materials
WPA workers make adobe bricks, Santa Fe, New Mexico, June 1940 (National Archives and the New Deal Network)
Materials used in the construction of Pueblo architectural forms include clay, sand and silt, grasses and reeds, water, stone, and timber. Although building materials are often locally sourced, some materials travel great distances.
Depending upon availability, Pueblo room blocks are built using either sun-dried adobe or stone masonry, and sometimes both. Adobe is made from a mixture of clay, sand or silt, straw, and water, and is often formed into bricks that are held in place with a clay-based mortar. Stone masonry technology also employs mortar.
Core-and-veneer stone masonry technique of multistoried rooms, Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (photo: (photo: Jacqueline Poggi, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0); right: detail of the masonry (photo: Lars Hammar, CC BY-NC 2.0)
The Ancestral Pueblo sites of Pueblo Bonito and Chetro Ketl at Chaco Canyon were built using a highly refined core-and-veneer stone masonry technique in which coarsely cut stones form the interior (or core) of a wall and finely shaped and fitted stones form the exterior (or veneer) of a wall. Extraordinary surface patterns are also made possible with such a technique. The stone walls built during the period of Chaco’s cultural heyday were covered in plaster.
Annual replastering of an adobe structure at Chamisal, New Mexico, 1940, photo by Russel Lee
Structures built using traditional Pueblo techniques are replastered each year to maintain their structural integrity. In a 1940 photograph of Chamisal we see a group of people in the process of replastering a wall.
Buildings with vigas projecting outwards, Acoma Pueblo (photo: Beyond My Ken, CC BY-SA 4.0)
While adobe and stone are used to build the vertical walls of Pueblo rooms, long lengths of timber known as vigas provide the horizontal stability necessary to support a room’s ceiling and multi-level construction. Spaced at regular intervals, vigas span a roomblock front to back and are visible from the exterior of the building, such as we see at Acoma Pueblo. Wooden slats called latillas are placed in a crosswise layer above the vigas, and together these components form the foundation for the floor or terrace above and transfer the weight to the outer load-bearing walls. In the arid climate of the Pueblo landscape, transporting trees over long distances is quite laborious, and the archaeological record reveals evidence of viga re-use as well.
Lumber is often not the only material to travel great distances. Family and clan lineages often develop special “recipes” for paint, plaster, adobe, and other components, and individuals may travel great distances to collect the necessary materials. A particular material may be important because of its association with an origin or migration story. Similarly, the materials found at a particular place in the landscape could be understood to have transformative or otherwise powerful qualities. Incorporation of these materials into Pueblo architectural forms imbues structures with their particular powers.
Mica, quartz, feldspar, and selenite are minerals that appear in ancient rocky outcroppings and other sites throughout the Puebloan cultural landscape. Highly reflective in nature and often appearing to shimmer and move in the abundant sunlight of the Southwest, such minerals are highly valued within a Pueblo cultural context for their transformative qualities—qualities that also describe many of the doings in Pueblo stories and songs. Customarily, only individuals with the appropriate knowledge and permission may collect and process such powerful and “lively” materials for use in special clay, paint, and plaster recipes.
Depiction of the Pueblo cosmos showing its interconnectedness. Diagram modified from Severin M. Fowles, An Archaeology of Doings: Secularism and the Study of Pueblo Religion (Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press, 2013), (adapted from Saile 1990, based on Ortiz 1969)
A conceptual understanding of a Pueblo village
Metaphor is fundamental to Pueblo thought and being, and an understanding of the universe as a web of lively, dynamic, and interconnected beings are vital components of Pueblo architectural forms. The lower half of the Pueblo cosmos is often envisioned as a terraced bowl (the earth) with another bowl (the sky) inverted atop it. Together, the two bowls form the sphere of the universe within which all activity transpires. Naranjo writes:
All existence swirls around the center. The houses of the people, the hills, and mountains are in concentric circles around the center place. The sky and earth define the sphere within which the center is crucial to the orientation of the whole. The breath of the universe passes through this center place as did our people when they emerged into this level of life. [3]
The spatial organization of a typical Pueblo village is arranged to reflect the structure of the universe and to symbolize the ancestral search for the middle place. Located within the central village plaza is a small hole, or “earth navel,” that is considered to be the “true center of the village.” (Photographs are not permitted). Although often quite inconspicuous visually, the plaza earth navel functions as the site of the axis mundi—a sacred site of both emergence and return that joins the underworld, the middle place, and the upper world.
Connecting the village with the surrounding landscape, the plaza earth navel is nested within a landscape marked by other earth navels. Each earth navel designates a sacred shrine, hilltop, or mountaintop that corresponds to one of the four cardinal directions. Marked by a loose arrangement of stones forming an open keyhole shape pointing toward the village, these earth navels direct blessings inward, toward the village. Blessings arrive in the form of rain and a bountiful harvest. The village earth navel, on the other hand, is marked by a loose arrangement of stones forming a circle open on all sides to the earth navels surrounding the village, directing blessings outward and thereby ensuring that all sacred energy remains within the landscape. [4] Just as each village’s point of emergence is considered to be the true place of origin, so, too, is each village considered to be the true middle place. Rather than contradicting one another, however, Pueblo stories of emergence and migration both honor and reiterate the idea of multiple centers.
Notes:
[1] Tessie Naranjo, “Thoughts on Migration by Santa Clara Pueblo,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 14 (1995), 247–249.
[2] Janet Catherine Berlo and Ruth B. Phillips, Native North American Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 28.
[3] Tessie Naranjo, Wall text from the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture exhibition, “Here, Now, and Always,” 2018.
[4] Alfonzo Ortiz, The Tewa World: Space, Time, and Becoming in a Pueblo Society (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1969), pp. 19–21.
Stunning and dramatic, Acoma Pueblo is magnificent to visit not only for its spectacular location, but also because it is home to one of the best-preserved early mission churches in the United States. Standing on the edge of Acoma Pueblo (referred to as Sky City), one can see vast panoramas of the New Mexican landscape.
Acoma sits on a mesa—a flat-topped hill with steep sides—about 360 feet above sea level, and until the mid-20th century, the only access to the Pueblo was via a narrow stone staircase carved into the mesa itself (pueblo is the Spanish word for a town or village). The location of the Pueblo is imposing and impressive, and it is easy to grasp why so many described it as impregnable. In the past, its elevated location aided in protecting it from invaders. Acoma Pueblo is believed to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the United States.
Acoma Pueblo street with adobe buildings and ladders that lead to the upper story entrances to kivas (sacred ceremonial spaces)
A city in the sky
The Pueblo is filled with dwellings ranging from one to two stories, all fashioned in adobe (mud-brick). The tallest and largest structure is the mission church of San Esteban del Rey, built between 1629 and 1642. A Spanish Franciscan friar named Juan Ramirez directed the construction of the church in 1629. The Franciscans are mendicant friars that helped to convert the peoples of modern-day New Mexico beginning in the sixteenth century. The practice of building missions for the purpose of conversion began soon after Spaniards defeated the Mexica (often called the Aztecs) in their capital city of Tenochtitlan (what is today Mexico City) in 1521. The Spanish established the viceroyalty of New Spain, which eventually comprised parts of the southwestern United States, Mexico, Central America, Spain’s Caribbean colonies, and the Philippines. What is a viceroy and a viceroyalty?
Mission Church of San Esteban del Rey, 1629, Acoma Pueblo
The church of San Esteban del Rey is based on missionary churches found in Colonial Mexico, but combines local Indigenous techniques and architectural elements. Because it was the first mission built in New Mexico, it became the model for many others erected in this area.
It is a single nave church—it has no transept (or crossing), and is approximately 150 feet long and 40 feet wide. Typical of other mission churches of this era in the Spanish viceroyalty, it has a cloister (a covered walkway surrounding an open space) that may have been used to instruct Indigenous converts, an atrium (an open courtyard in front of the church), and an elevated open-balcony chapel. The walled atrium yard also functions as a cemetery, called a campo santo, in front of, and to the side of, the church.
Elevated open-balcony chapel, Mission Church of San Esteban del Rey, 1629, Acoma Pueblo
The Spanish in New Mexico
Spaniards had two primary interests for desiring missions like the one at Acoma in New Mexico—to convert peoples to Christianity and to protect mines in northern Mexico. Led by Francisco Vazquez de Coronado, the Spanish arrived in the area around 1540. In 1542, New Mexico and Arizona were claimed for Spain, but the geographic regions remained largely unsettled because of the harsh conditions and lack of water. The Spanish king, Philip II, officially authorized settlement of New Mexico in 1583, but it was not until 1598 that Juan Perez de Oñate officially claimed this region for Spain.
Franciscans arrived at Acoma in 1598. At first, the peoples of Acoma defeated the Spaniards, but in 1599 the Spaniards were successful after a strategic attack. They claimed St. James (Santiago), appeared on horseback brandishing a sword and intervened to help them conquer Acoma.
Façade, Mission Church of San Esteban del Rey, 1629, Acoma Pueblo
The façade of San Esteban del Rey
Façade of church and cloister of San Miguel Arcangel in Huejotzingo, c. 1520s–30s, Puebla, Mexico (photo: Alejandro Linares Garcia, CC BY-SA 4.0)
The church’s unadorned adobe façade is stark and austere, which is different from other Franciscan mission churches such as San Miguel in Huejotzingo, Mexico (in the state of Puebla). San Esteban del Rey has two bell-towers framing a rectangular central area and an elevated open balcony chapel above the main entrance. This elevated space allowed friars to preach to people in the atrium outside the church, and so provided both practical and spiritual functions. Any priest in the open chapel stood higher than any new converts, suggesting he was closer to God and to Heaven.
San Esteban del Rey’s massive adobe walls—bricks made from a mix of clay and straw—need continuous maintenance. In places the walls are seven feet thick, keeping the interior cool during the hot New Mexican summer, but also warm when the temperature drops. The heavy adobe construction limits the number of windows in the church structure. Small windows appear high above the ground, allowing little light into the church interior. The thick adobe walls and dark interior add a sense of awe and mystery to the space, especially as you pass through the main door from outside. You immediately know you have entered a holy space.
View of adobe wall (note that straw is visible to the right), Acoma Pueblo
The thick unadorned walls, interrupted by only a few windows, gives the façade an imposing quality. Some scholars describe it as having a militaristic or defensive appearance, yet there are no crenellations or other militaristic motifs like the ones we find on Central Mexican mission churches such as Huejotzingo. It is unclear whether San Esteban del Rey actually functioned as a fortress or if this impression was intended to symbolically convey the impression that the church was the stronghold of God.
To build the church, people gathered materials and then transported them up to the top of the mesa. The vigas (wooden beams), for instance, were brought from the San Mateo Mountains—some of which were considered sacred—and which are about thirty miles north of Acoma. This demonstrates the substantial labor required to construct the church.
View from Acoma Pueblo
Church interior
The church’s interior is simple like the outside. You’ll need to imagine what it looks like because interior photos are forbidden. There are no arches, domes, or stoneworking; instead, there are flat ceilings with vigas over forty feet long. The nave is narrow, due in part due to the use of adobe since it can’t hold as much weight as stone.
Packed earth covers the floor. A raised sanctuary demarcates the holiest space within the church. Some of the windows shine light on the altar, literally highlighting its importance. An altarpiece stands in the church’s raised sanctuary. Originally the interior was painted with frescoes, which were repainted often. Today sacred symbols like rainbows, clouds, and corn are visible. These symbols attest to the syncretic Catholicism practiced at Acoma, the result of Puebloan and Christian sacred ideas and practices becoming entangled over time.
The original interior frescoes were whitewashed likely as a result of the Pueblo Revolt (1680–92), a period during which many missions were destroyed and missionaries like the Franciscans killed or expelled. Yet San Esteban del Rey survived and it remains a stunning testament to the events that shaped this area during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Congo Square, New Orleans, Louisiana (photo: Southernbelle1628, CC BY-SA 4.0)
New Orleans, like many cities all around the world, is dotted with metal plaques marking sites associated with pivotal events or important figures. Visitors walking along Rampart Street and into Louis Armstrong Park will encounter one of these large red signs that deviates from this formula, commemorating neither a singular individual nor a specific date in history. Rather, the marker identifies the location where enslaved and free persons of African descent gathered for weekly community-building performances beginning in the 18th century.
Termed Congo Square, the communal activities undertaken here by largely unidentified artists gave rise to the greatest musical traditions of the United States: ragtime and jazz.
“Map of the City of New Orleans as it was on May 30, 1725,” 1725 (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)
New Orleans
New Orleans became part of the United States in 1803 when the government bought the entire French colony of Louisiana (New Orleans was the capital). Nearly a century prior, in 1718, the French naval officer Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville had established a colony in the swamp at this bend in the Mississippi River where it flows into the Gulf of Mexico. European settlers drove out the original inhabitants, members of the Choctaw and Chitimacha nations, and began importing enslaved Africans to provide free labor shortly thereafter. The 1725 map above by an unknown cartographer shows how the newly established city of New Orleans appeared just a few years later. Built on a uniform, rectangular grid system, the town was protected by a narrow retaining wall and had a place d’armes (public square) that opened onto the river. Many of the buildings were for colonial administration (such as the prison and military barracks) and religious functions (such as the church and hospital).
A market where enslaved Africans could sell items including foodstuffs and small manufactured goods quickly developed just outside the city’s walls. What was initially a way for enslavers to shirk their legal responsibilities of feeding and clothing those held in forced labor—termed the Code Noir—eventually became a source of income and economic power for Africans and free people of color under French and Spanish rule. In 1760, during the middle of the so-called French and Indian War, New Orleans military engineers extended the boundaries of the city, bringing the market within the city limits. After the United States purchased Louisiana from the French government in 1803, these walls were dismantled allowing for further expansion.
Williams Rollinson, “Plan of the city and suburbs of New Orleans: from an actual survey made in 1815,” (New York: Charles Del Vecchio, 1817) (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)
In the map above, this market was labeled as place publique (Congo Square today), located just a few blocks north of place d’armes (Jackson Square today). By 1815, when this map was made, this area on the outskirts of the city had become a well-known gathering place for enslaved Africans and free people of color in both the immediate urban area and the surrounding plantation environs. These Sunday convenings quickly expanded from commercial activities into opportunities to spend time with friends and relatives, to exchange news, and—most notably—to maintain musical and dance traditions from their homelands as well as develop new forms of artistic expression. New Orleans’ Black community is unique insofar as the ethnic composition of its inhabitants in the early years of colonization was relatively homogenous, with the majority of the enslaved population arriving from the same general area in Central Africa, and often spoke the same language, namely Bambara. Following the Haitian Revolution in 1791 and the occupation of the island of Cuba by the United States shortly thereafter, refugees—both free and enslaved—from these conflicts arrived in New Orleans. By 1848, the year that slavery was abolished in France, the majority of enslaved people in New Orleans had been born in the colony, rather than in Africa or the Caribbean. The square’s name derived from its association with Afro-descended people, colloquially referred to as Kongos despite the ethnic diversity outlined above, as well as the arrival of the so-called Congo Circus led by Cuban man referred to as Monsieur Gaetano.
Written accounts and early illustrations
Written accounts of these performances by European colonists appear almost immediately after the founding of the city itself. The earliest reference occurs in Antoine-Simon Le Page du Pratz’s Histoire de la Louisiane, a memoir of the nearly two decades he spent in Louisiana between 1718 and 1734. He stated: “In a word, nothing is more to be dreaded than to see the negroes assemble on Sundays, since under pretense of Calinda or the dance, they sometimes get together to the number of three or four hundred, and make a kind of Sabbath….” The French words calinda and bamboula were used as catch-all terms to refer to Afro-Caribbean performances, sometimes conflated with the religious rituals associated with Vodùn.
Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Page 31 from Journal IV, February 1819 (Maryland Center for History and Culture, Baltimore)
While the term calinda referred to both the martial art and the music accompanying it, the bamboula is associated with transverse drumming—that is, the drums are lying on their side, the drummers sitting astride them, sometimes pressing one heel on the drumhead to change the pitch. The British architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe recorded his observations of the activities in the square in his journal entries during the month of February in 1819. He described the arrangement and included illustrations of so-called bamboula drums, writing that, “one drummer placed a drum on the ground and sat upon it as he played.” Eventually, the latter term—referring to both the small drum and the syncopated musical cadence developed by enslaved Africans trafficked to the Americas—gained popularity.
The preponderance of written commentary about the activities in Congo Square appearing after 1803 is due to the cultural differences between Anglo-American settlers and French and Spanish colonial authorities and their Creole descendants. Roman Catholics’ exuberant secular celebrations and acceptance of ritual in liturgical activities stands in sharp contrast to Protestants’ repressive socio-religious norms. This rigidity extended to the treatment of enslaved persons: the severe regulation and restrictions upon the activities of Black residents prevalent elsewhere in the United States arrived in the Crescent City in 1856 when the new city council adopted an ordinance making it illegal to beat a drum or blow a horn. While impossible to suppress, these regulations caused gatherings to relocate outside the city limits.
The writings of George Washington Cable and Lafcadio Hearn were influential in spreading awareness about cultural heritage of Black New Orleanians. Hearn’s essay, “The Scenes of Cable’s Romances,” published in the November 1883 issue of Century offers some valuable information and attests to the diffusion of the so-called Congo Dances:
Congo Square, the last green remnant of those famous Congo plains, where the negro slaves once held their bamboulas. […] Every Sunday afternoon the bamboula dancers were summoned to a wood-yard on Dumaine Street by a sort of drum-roll, made by rattling the ends of two great bones upon the head of an empty cask; and I remember that the male dancers fastened bits of tinkling metal or tin rattles about their ankles, like those strings of copper gris-gris worn by the negroes of the Sudan.Lafcadio Hearn in “The Scenes of Cables Romances” [1]
While undoubtedly exaggerating his own powers of recollection—Hearn lived in New Orleans for just two years as a child—his emphasis on the characteristics of the accouterments of the performers is valuable.
Edward Windsor Kemble, “The Bamboula,” 1886, photomechanical print. First reproduced in George Washington Cable, “The Dance in Place Congo,” Century, volume 31, number 4 (February 1886), p. 524
When E.W. Kemble created the lithograph above in 1886, these gatherings were already in the process of transforming. Combining elements of the accounts of Cable, Hearn, and their predecessor Latrobe, the central couple are encircled by a ring of participants whose mouths are open in song. Immediately above the four crouching drummers on the right of the composition is another figure, his right arm raised in exhortation and wielding a long staff with a gourd attached to the end. The drummer at the far left of the circle closest to us appears to be holding a femur bone, while the church spire and the roof of the town hall seen in the background above the wall situate us firmly within the city.
Kemble was a successful illustrator specializing in pen and ink caricatures. Today he is perhaps most well known as the illustrator for Mark Twain’s 1884 novel Huckleberry Finn and Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus—both notable for their racist portrayal of Afro-Americans. Kemble’s depictions of Black Americans and newly arrived immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe were reproduced widely in serial publications such as Life and Century, and thus contributed to the normalization of dehumanization of non-white people. Kemble’s depiction of the so-called bamboula remains ambiguous—the open mouths of the participants and their energetic gestures edging just up to the line between satire and caricature, with only variations in attire and skin color to differentiate the participants from one another.
An area transformed
Unfortunately, little archaeological evidence of these gatherings remains today due to the extensive degree of landscaping following the end of the U.S. Civil War to transform the area into a public park. After the conclusion of the Civil War, the Southern Railroad laid down tracks alongside Carondelet Canal, further limiting Black residents’ access to the park. In 1897, the city created a so-called red-light district, Storyville, adjacent to the area in a futile attempt to control and contain sex work. At that time, the space was renamed Beauregard Square after General P.G.T. Beauregard, a leader of the Confederacy, as part of a large-scale campaign to maintain white supremacist social hierarchy by valorizing those who fought for slavery—and in which Kemble took part. In the late 1920s, the area was rezoned and demolished to make way for a public performing complex but the project was abandoned during the Great Depression. City officials were largely unable to regain momentum for the municipal resource until 1971, at which point they were galvanized by the death of Louis Armstrong, one of the city’s most influential native sons whose popular jazz music traces its roots to this very place. The name was officially changed to Congo Square—its more popular name—in 2011.
The Alamo, formerly part of Mission San Antonio de Valero, San Antonio, Texas (photo: Daniel Schwen, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Before the Alamo
Few places in the U.S. conjure as many images and legends about heroism and nationhood as the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas. The Alamo is an icon of American identity—like Gettysburg or Pearl Harbor—and as with these equally famous historic sites, our perception of the Alamo is malleable, as are the stories it purports to tell.
The site is firmly rooted in the popular imagination, having been the subject of countless works of literature, film, prints, paintings, cartoons, postcards, and even folklore. Long before it became an emblem of U.S. history though, the Alamo had been a Spanish mission that eventually became a ruin that was “repaired, rebuilt, and redefined.” [1] Yet a single event—the battle of 1836—overshadows the Alamo’s long and complex past. Today, visitors pay reverence to the Texians who died there while fighting the Mexican General Santa Ana—not to the holy Catholic saints who once filled the building’s niches nor to the Tejanos (Mexican settlers from Texas) who also died at the Battle of the Alamo. The current representation of the Alamo as the site of patriotic heroism and brave sacrifice eclipses Spain’s earlier colonial presence and the history of the site’s ruination, reconstruction, and reframing.
Map of the Viceroyalty of New Spain c. 1800, with Mexico City and San Antonio highlighted with red boxes
Mission San Antonio de Valero
Franciscan missionaries began to establish missions in what is today Texas beginning in the seventeenth century because this area was on the camino real (or royal road) that originated in the viceroyalty of New Spain’s capital, Mexico City. Forty missions originally dotted the Texan landscape, but only 9 survive today. None is more well-known than Mission San Antonio de Valero (which would later become the Alamo), established in 1718 on the west bank of the San Antonio River. Like the initial missionary centers constructed after the waves of conquest after 1521 in central Mexico, the San Antonio de Valero’s purpose was to convert local Indigenous people, including the Payayes, Ypanis, Xaranames, Zanas, and others. Soon after its establishment, the mission was moved across the river (to the east bank) and construction began in 1744 on a church (thought to be made of adobe) that would collapse. Construction eventually began on the stone and mortar structure that partially remains today. Adobe was a more common building material in this area, so the decision to use stone and mortar possibly associated the building with more Europeanized building practices (such as Spanish imperial buildings constructed in other parts of New Spain) and a clear deviation from local building types.
Lower half of the entry on the façade, Alamo/Mission San Antonio de Valero (photo: Noconatom, CC BY-SA 4.0)
An account in 1772 describes the building under construction as having a transept and cross-vaulted roof, complete with a dome. This building was never completed though. Friar Sáenz, who wrote the 1772 account, describes the façade as having scalloped-shell niches with sculptures of saints Dominic and Francis in them, each framed by solomonic (twisting) columns. Dominic and Francis are patron saints of the Franciscan and Dominican orders respectively—and were representatives of broader missionary efforts of the Spanish Crown. He notes the beauty of the façade and its carvings too. Decorative relief carvings also animated the rounded arch entryway on the façade.
Detail of the façade of the Alamo/Mission San Antonio de Valero (photo: David R. Tribble, CC BY-SA 3.0)
On the second level, St. Clare of Assisi and St. Margaret of Cortona (both female Franciscans) were to be carved and inserted into the niches (although descriptions cast doubt as to whether they ever were installed). A sculpture of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception was intended for the central niche (but was never installed). The façade was originally flanked by two towers that, along with the barrel vault and the dome, collapsed circa 1762. Like most missions, the church was connected to a larger complex with a cloister, atrium, and more—today, only part of the church remains. The famous façade we know today was actually a chapel.
The Spanish conversion efforts involved in the missionary project in Texas, as elsewhere, involved dislocating, transforming, and converting local Indigenous communities, and the iconography of the façade may have played a role in this with its inclusion of saints associated with the evangelizing efforts of the Spanish Crown and religious orders.
An 18th-century retablo from New Spain; it is possible that the retablos that no longer exist looked something like this (albeit probably smaller). Main altar inside Santa Prisca y San Sebastián, gilded wood, plaster, Taxco, Guerrero, Mexico (photo: Javier Castañón, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Elaborate retablos (or altarpieces) once stood inside the mission as well. Unfortunately, they no longer remain and the sculptures once adorning them do not either (or were dispersed elsewhere without records that could tell us where they are now). Written inventories do list the images that once appeared on them. On the main altar, one apparently could have seen the Virgin of Sorrows, Saint Francis, Christ Crucified, John the Evangelist, Saint Clare, and Saint Joseph (among others). The wooden altarpiece was gilded, as was in style at the time, and retablos in churches like Santa Prisca and San Sebastián in Taxco, Mexico give us a sense of what this may have looked like.
Mission San José y San Miguel de Aguayo, founded 1720; restored in the 1930s (photo: Shiva Shenoy, CC BY 2.0)
The remains of the façade point to the classicizing forms employed by the architects of the church, including the rounded arch of the doorway flanked by niches. It is an adaptation of a Roman triumphal arch motif, which had become popular again during the Renaissance. In essence, it looks similar to a Roman triumphal arch in its design, and also had associations with power and conquest. It is interesting to consider this choice and its interpretation today. While such classical language was found at other missions, this was not the en vogue architectural language found in New Spain’s bigger and older cities, or even at other Texas missions (where ultrabaroque designs were preferred). It is possible that this more restrained, classicizing ornament was intended to call to mind visions of the early Church in its simplicity as well as its formation within the boundaries of the Roman Empire. With the initial waves of colonization, friars often modeled themselves and their built environment on the early church because they perceived it as purer and therefore more ideal.
Edward Everett, View of the Alamo church, 1847 (Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth)
Abandonment and transformation: The mission becomes the Alamo
Mission San Antonio de Valero was abandoned in 1793 when it was secularized—the first of the Texas missions where this occurred. Its altars were removed in 1824 and this is when many of its statues were relocated or lost. Most of the mission’s structures have also been lost. As noted earlier, the Alamo’s iconic façade that today graces tourist trinkets and postcards was actually the chapel attached to the larger mission church.
José Juan Sánchez Navarro, earliest known view of the Alamo, ca. 1835–36 (Western Americana Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University)
The mission served as barracks for the Alamo Company (a military unit that came from Alamo de Parras, a town on the other side of the Rio Grande river, and which gave its name to the building we see today) and for the Mexican army until 1835, when Texians temporarily took the Alamo. It was at this moment that the famous battle involving the Mexican General Santa Ana occurred, in which Mexican troops defeated the Texians who sought independence from Mexico. The Mexican victory was brief; shortly thereafter Mexico would lose the war and Texas in the Mexican-American War. An early view of the Alamo by José Juan Sánchez Navarro shows how the artist envisioned the space as a fortified space, with turrets and tall, thick walls. It does not look like this any longer (if it ever really did).
Earliest known photograph taken in Texas, 1849 daguerreotype, photographer unknown (Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin)
Throughout the nineteenth century, Mission San Antonio de Valero—now known as the Alamo—suffered neglect and vandalism. After the battle of the Alamo in 1836, most of what remained of the façade’s sculptures were gone, and the building was badly damaged, much of it rubble. After Texas was annexed by the U.S. in 1845, the Alamo’s surviving structure was eventually given a roof (the gable was added in 1850), and it functioned as a storage depot and commissary. A daguerreotype from 1849 shows the damage to the chapel’s façade before the gable was added. After the Catholic Church sold the building in 1883, there were plans to transform it into a hotel.
It was not yet the shrine it would come to be in the following century.
Now with the façade restored and the addition of the gable. Alamo buildings in use as Army supply depot, c. 1850–1870 (The San Antonio Light Collection, UT Institute of Texan Cultures)
Restoring the Alamo
Restoration of the Alamo started at the end of the nineteenth century when the Daughters of the Republic of Texas (DRT) took over the care of the building (after controversial discussions regarding responsibility for its caretaking). What people see today is the result of restorations that began in 1915.
The Alamo Plaza souvenir postcard, c. 1900 (Collection of Randell Tarín)
Alamo gift shop and Centennial Museum
Much of what had been added after 1836 was removed, once again altering the site’s appearance and how people understood it. Newly created buildings would also participate in memorializing and historicizing the Alamo. The gift shop was built to look as if it were constructed centuries earlier, but in reality was made in 1937 as a Centennial Museum to honor the hundredth anniversary of Texas independence. It displayed artifacts until the DRT transformed it into a store to sell souvenirs. The Arcade was built in the 1930s as a WPA project to beautify the site and help people find work during the Great Depression. This simulated historical “authenticity” aids in the performance of the primary narrative—the battle of 1836—not the Spanish mission.
The arcades
Even the way that visitors engage with the space has dramatically changed, attesting to the importance of understanding both the site’s physical location and historical context. Where once a large mission structure stood, visitors now only see a remnant that occupies only one-third the original footprint. The Alamo sits in the middle of downtown San Antonio, below towering skyscrapers. The juxtaposition is jarring, although you’d be hard pressed to find commercial images that show the building in its present urban context.
The cultural memories of the mission/the Alamo
Picture depicting he Alamo as a stylish promenade ground. Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, 1854 (DRT Library at the Alamo, San Antonio, TX)
Drawings, prints, paintings, and photographs have participated in creating this cultural memory of the Alamo. Drawings and prints in the mid-nineteenth century use the ruined space as a backdrop for elites in their fine clothing and carriages, in line with other artistic and literary movements that glorified the ruin. History paintings depict the Battle of the Alamo, with the chapel serving as its own character within the story instead of a mere backdrop.
The Alamo, souvenir postcard, c. 1900 (Collection of Randell Tarín)
Early twentieth-century postcards often isolate the chapel, with little sense of the city around it gone. The longer history of the space as a mission is often obscured too. In the later twentieth and now in the twenty-first century, Latinx (including Chicanx) artists offer a new lens through which to remember the Alamo, with recent exhibitions such as “The Other Side of the Alamo: Art Against the Myth” in 2018. From César Martínez’s black and white photographs to Daniela Riojas’s digital photographic images, these artists draw attention to the ways this cultural icon signifies painful injustices and racial disparities. They are pushing back against the myth.
Daniela Riojas, “We Built It, We Will Dismantle It,” 2018, photograph, 20 x 16 inches
The complicated history of this place, a mission, ruin, battleground, emblem of patriotism, symbol of racial disparity, and tourist destination, has added yet one more layer to its story: in 2015, the Alamo became a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of the San Antonio missions.
Source: Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank, “The Alamo (& Mission San Antonio de Valero),” in Smarthistory, February 12, 2021, accessed July 15, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/the-alamo/.
Robert Mills and Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Lincoln Casey, Washington Monument
by Julia Langley
View of the National Mall showing the Washington Monument in the center. Robert Mills and Lietenant Colonel Thomas Lincoln Casey, Washington Monument, completed 1884, granite and marble, Washington, D. C
Evolving American narratives
Robert Mills and Lietenant Colonel Thomas Lincoln Casey, Washington Monument, completed 1884, granite and marble, Washington, D. C
At 555 feet high the Washington Monument towers over the National Mall. In a city of height-restricted buildings, this enormous, mottled-marble obelisk can be seen piercing the sky from miles around like a beacon to the country’s symbolic center. Once there, the observation deck at the top of the monument provides visitors with a breathtaking bird’s eye view of the city – from the World War II Memorial, past the Lincoln Memorial and over Arlington Bridge to the west, down the museum-lined Mall to the Capitol Building to the east, over the Ellipse and past the White House to the north, and beyond the Tidal Basin and the Jefferson Memorial into Virginia to the south. Built to honor the country’s first president, the Washington Monument is the linchpin of an evolving American narrative told through the buildings and monuments that surround it.
L’Enfant’s proposal
Pierre Charles L’Enfant, the architect and city planner responsible for the design of Washington D.C. and the National Mall, was the first to propose a monument to Washington. Inspired by the city planning in his native France, L’Enfant suggested placing an equestrian statue of George Washington as commander of the Continental Army in the middle of the National Mall. It was to be set on the spot where the sight lines from the White House and the Capitol intersected so that future presidents and members of Congress would always have Washington in view and on their minds as they deliberated on what was best for the country. Funding fell short for L’Enfants’ grand scheme, however, and his sculpture was never completed.
Mills’ proposal
Robert Mills, Sketch of the proposed Washington Monument, c. 1836
Fifty-four years later, Federal architect Robert Mills put forward plans to celebrate Washington with a 600 foot tall Egyptian-style obelisk surrounded by a vast colonnade decorated with sculptural elements recalling ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. Unlike a true Egyptian obelisk which was carved from a single block of stone, the one Mills proposed would be made of many marble blocks some carved with portraits of the first president in action. Its grandeur would serve to equate George Washington with the greatest leaders of antiquity.
With a modest amount of private funding in hand, Mills began work on the obelisk thinking he would be able to raise the rest. However, the venture did not go as planned. By 1851, the marble shaft of the obelisk was only one-quarter complete. It stuck up like a great stump and became a symbol for the government’s poor planning and mismanagement of the Mall.
Matthew Brady, Washington Monument, circa 1860, glass plate (wet collodion)
Money problems
The Monument’s Board of Managers lobbied Congress for money but was soon overthrown by a group of anti-immigration, anti-Catholic activists called the “Know-Nothings”. The Know-Nothings wanted to use the monument to promote their “America for Americans” agenda by having the monument paid for and built by those who supported their cause. However, the oncoming Civil War drained interest from the project and the Washington Monument remained stump-like for more than a quarter century. Then, in 1878, Congress appointed Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Lincoln Casey, an army engineer, to complete the project.
A flag representing the ideas of the Know-Nothing Party, originating in 1849 and active throughout the 1850s.
Colonel Casey
Colonel Casey jumped into the project by significantly altering Mills’ plans. Right away he simplified the design of the obelisk, stripping the structure of extraneous decoration, and creating a narrower, higher, peak at the top. Using a white marble that was a better quality, but not an exact match of the first stone used, Casey completed the monument. And while Congress gave Casey money incrementally and tried to intercede in the design process, they failed to get the Colonel to alter his vision of a façade free of any and all ornamentation. In 1884, over widespread objections about its lack of descriptive, narrative and historical elements, Casey completed the memorial.
In the end, it had taken more than three dozen years for the Washington Monument to be completed. Soil stability issues forced its move some 400 feet from the exact intersection point for the Capitol and White House. Funding shortages, politics and the intrusion of the Civil War delayed its completion.
But what does it actually tell us about Washington? Unlike the other monuments on the Mall, the Washington Monument says next to nothing about the subject for whom it was created. In contrast, one can learn a lot about Lincoln from visiting the Lincoln Memorial, viewing his sculptural likeness and reading his words inscribed on the walls. And a person can learn a lot about World War II by visiting that Memorial and studying the reliefs, inscriptions, sculptures and other symbolic features. But one cannot learn anything about the way Washington looked or his words or deeds by visiting the Washington Monument. And that is a result of the long and contentious process from which the Monument to America’s first president arose.
Diagram of the principle high buildings of the old world, showing the Washington Monument to be the tallest, 1884, lithograph color print
The Washington Monument receives an estimated 4 million visitors a year. It was the tallest building in the world until the completion of the Eiffel Tower in 1889, and remains the tallest stone building in the world today.
If you are a descendant of a Seneca Village resident, or know someone who is, please contact the Seneca Village Project at: diana.diz.wall[at]gmail.com.
Source: Dr. Diana diZerega Wall and Dr. Steven Zucker, “Seneca Village: the lost history of African Americans in New York,” in Smarthistory, January 13, 2018, accessed July 15, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/seneca-village-2/.
In the center of Manhattan Island lies a great expanse of sculpted nature. This large swath of greenery—Central Park—was the first great manifesto of a new urban vision that sought to introduce nature into the heart of commercial and industrial cities in the United States. As a measure of its tremendous success, the park quickly and enduringly became one of the most popular public attractions in New York City and an icon of a metropolis often famed more for its commercial power than for its art.
Nature and the city
A design of the magnitude and distinction of Central Park is necessarily the product of a fortuitous set of historical conditions. First, and broadly speaking, the park is an expression of the American fascination with the natural landscape that had defined the national character since colonial times. Although it was widely recognized that commercial cities had always been necessary, nineteenth-century American art, literature, politics, and popular culture all celebrated rural land as a central element of the nation’s “exceptionalism.” Henry David Thoreau, whose book Walden (1854) chronicled his retreat for self-renewal in rural Massachusetts, suggested every American city should be obliged to set aside land for a “primitive forest” in order to “preserve all the advantages of living in the country.”
View of Central Park, New York City (photo: alan-light, CC BY 2.0)
The second crucial factor, by the middle of the nineteenth century, was the widespread awareness that industrial cities needed to be carefully planned. Reformers such as the poet and newspaper editor William Cullen Bryant and the travel writer, horticulturalist, and co-designer of Central Park, Frederick Law Olmsted embraced the urban future, but they wanted to better the lives of all city dwellers by introducing nature as an antidote to what they saw as the unsafe and unsanitary qualities of large cities. Of course, these reformers knew that true rustic nature was impossible in the middle of cities. Instead, they sought to cultivate a man-made, pastoral landscape that captured the best qualities of nature as filtered through human invention and design. Large parks were to be “the lungs of the city.” The reformers professed a Romantic conviction that being surrounded by nature assuaged the nerves and mind and helped “unbend” certain physical and psychological tensions.
View of a grove with schist outcropping, Central Park, New York City (photo: kpaulus, CC BY 2.0)
Some reformers, though, expressed their views in a more paternalistic manner, showing disdain toward the poor and working classes. They argued that Central Park’s bucolic scenery should serve as a setting to refine the coarse, impolite manners thought to characterize especially the new, often impoverished immigrants then found in large cities like New York. Olmsted himself wrote that “a large part of the people of New York are ignorant” of a park’s social purpose and needed “to be trained in the proper use of it.” Olmsted’s original objective was to direct visitors to stroll through Central Park and quietly admire the natural scenery; they were not to partake, as they often do today, in strenuous exercise, large festivals or concerts, or any other behavior that would disturb the park’s bucolic ambience. Early on, he and his design partner Calvert Vaux issued regulations to achieve the desired behavior among park visitors: a polite sociability that might then filter out into behavior in the city itself.
The English landscape
View of sheltered valley, Leonardslee Gardens, England (photo: ukgardenphotos, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
These social concerns relied on the aesthetics of the natural landscape pioneered earlier in England. The “English landscape gardens” of the eighteenth century, as well as the early nineteenth-century suburban cemeteries of Paris, especially Père-Lachaise, strongly influenced landscape design in the United States. In the 1830s, for example, the Rural Cemetery Movement produced important landscape designs including Mount Auburn in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Green-Wood in Brooklyn (below), and Laurel Hill in Philadelphia. These suburban cemeteries were intended to provide a quiet retreat and confer physical and mental health benefits on visitors. They were designed according to the aesthetics of the English landscape garden (above), in which winding paths, open meadows, ponds, and occasional architectural “follies” created picturesque effects very different from the rigidly symmetrical or geometrical layouts of gardens in the Italian and French traditions, such as the Boboli Gardens in Florence or the royal gardens at Versailles.
Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, 1836 (photo: Dave Bledsoe, CC: BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Politics and Central Park
Political support was the third major factor in Central Park’s development. The land acquired for the park had been included in the city’s gridded urban plan of 1811, which was an early effort to take control of Manhattan Island’s development. The area was treeless, rocky terrain. On the west side it encompassed a small settlement that counted 264 residents in the 1855 census. About half of the modest houses in “Seneca Village,” as it was known, were owned by free African Americans, along with many German and Irish immigrants. There were at least two churches, cemeteries, and a school. City and state government used the legal power of eminent domain to claim the land as part of Central Park, forcibly evicting all the residents by 1857.
New York engineer Egbert Viele—who was responsible for the first, unbuilt plan for Central Park in 1856—described the land as a “pestilential spot” with “miasmatic odors” emanating from the untended ground. Unhealthy and unsightly, the land was ripe for reform as projections for Manhattan’s future growth pushed the boundary of built-up land further and further north. Reformers and politicians also soon realized that the 1811 plan had not sufficiently taken account of the need for recreational and other types of open space. Even the few parks provided by that plan had mostly been built over in the intervening decades as real estate interests trumped the public good.
In 1853, after more than a decade of agitation by Bryant, landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing, and others, the state of New York authorized the creation of a large park in Manhattan, originally to be built and designed by Viele. However, his design was considered perfunctory, offering little in the way of artistry or ingenuity. The Central Park Commissioners, as the governmental body was known, appointed Frederick Law Olmsted as superintendent of works and called for an open competition for a new design.
Olmsted was not a designer or engineer. He had been a farmer and horticultural enthusiast on Staten Island for several years before traveling in northern Europe, Mexico, and elsewhere. His travels inspired him to take up writing and, later, magazine publishing. Calvert Vaux approached Olmsted about jointly submitting a design to the park competition. Vaux, an English architect, had earlier worked in partnership with Downing and eagerly took up the latter’s Romantic ideas about landscape. His partnership with Olmsted resulted in a pairing of like-minded, strong-willed individuals determined to mold the park to their shared vision.
Calvert Vaux, Gothic Bridge, Central Park, New York City (photo: Bryan Schorn, CC BY-SA 3.0)
The plan
Olmsted and Vaux won the design competition with their “Greensward Plan,” the last of thirty-two to be submitted. Two elements distinguished the Greensward design from those of their competitors. One was the sheer allure of their landscape features, conveyed in twelve before-and-after panels included in their submission. The other was the ingenious separation of pedestrian and cross-park carriage (now vehicular) traffic.
65th Street transverse in red (detail), Frederick Law Olmsted, Central Park Plan, 1869
The competition brief had insisted that four roadways should connect the east and west sides of Manhattan through the park. All other submissions put those roads on the ground surface, effectively dividing the park into five zones separated by street traffic. However, Olmsted and Vaux submerged their “transverse” roads below ground level and created a continuous expanse of park differentiated by designed topography. As they discovered during construction, this critical invention gave them the chance to increase the park’s picturesque scenery since the many drives and walking paths that cross over the transverses and bridal paths could be embellished by attractive bridges.
Sheep Meadow, Central Park, New York City (photo: yourdon, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
From south to north, the park is laid out to create distinct visual experiences, helping the visitor navigate the vast space and creating picturesque variety in strong contrast to the rectilinearity of the gridded city around it. South of the reservoirs—there were originally three but today only the largest irregular one remains as a lake—the park is a series of pastoral areas, including the large glade called the Parade Ground (now the Sheep Meadow) surrounded by copses or small groves of trees (above).
The Mall, Central Park, New York City (photo: chrisschoenbohm, CC BY-NC 2.0)
In the southern end of the park, we find one area that departs from the naturalism: the long, tree- and bench-lined Promenade now know as the Mall (above) which leads to the Terrace and Bethesda Fountain (below).
Major and Knapp Engraving, Manufacturing, and Lithographic Company, The Terrace, 1869, color lithograph
Emma Stebbins, Angel of Waters, 1873, bronze, Bethesda Fountain (photo: Wayne Noffsinger, CC: BY 2.0)
The Terrace is divided into upper and lower sections, a remarkably classical environment with wide, symmetrical stairs and a sense of formality. Jacob Wrey Mould, an English architect who worked on the park for Olmsted and Vaux until 1874, designed its ornament. A surprising and elegant space, the Terrace is a delightful foil to the landscape around it. At its center is the much-photographed fountain surmounted by sculptor Emma Stubbins’ Angel of the Waters, installed in 1873 (left). Between the Terrace steps is the Arcade, a long subterranean space with a stunning ceiling decorated with tiles designed by Mould and manufactured by the Minton Tile Works in England. The formal but festive appearance of the Terrace is appropriate for a space conceived as the city’s “open air hall of reception.”
North of the Lake is the Ramble, a series of small, twisting paths along rocky outcroppings of the local stone, called schist, that can be seen throughout the park. At the northernmost edge of the park is the most rugged landscape with the densest foliage, then and now the park’s least visited section. But the area offers some of the park’s most stunning features, including the Ravine with its small brook, waterfalls, and tomb-like Glen Span Arch, made from massive, rough-faced stones. The quiet of the area is an almost haunting experience; it feels much more secluded than its actual distance from the busy surrounding streets would suggest.
Glen Span Arch, Central Park, New York City (photo: gigi_nyc, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
The park’s influence
Central Park was very much a product of its particular moment in time, a combination of aesthetic ideas, urban concerns, and political will that coalesced in the decade before the Civil War. Its instant success led to other opportunities for Olmsted and Vaux to apply their approach to landscape design: a few of the important projects were Prospect Park in Brooklyn (1866-73), the Buffalo park system (begun 1868), and the suburb of Riverside, Illinois (1868).
Later, working apart from Vaux, Olmsted had a flourishing practice: he designed the campus of Stanford University (1889), the Druid Hills district in Atlanta (1892), and the grounds of the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1893)—just three among many projects. The landscape philosophy developed by Olmsted and Vaux and first expressed at Central Park had lasting influence, inspiring, for instance, Jens Jensen’s “prairie landscapes” in Chicago and elsewhere in the early twentieth century. It was arguably no exaggeration when Harper’s Magazine declared in 1862 that Central Park was “the finest work of art ever executed in this country.” It may still be.
The light of democracy — examining the Statue of Liberty
by Dr. Elizabeth Macaulay and Dr. Steven Zucker
Statue of Liberty, New York Harbor, installed 1886, conceived by Édouard Laboulaye, sculpture designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, engineered by Gustave Eiffel, pedestal designed by Richard Morris Hunt. Speakers: Dr. Elizabeth Macaulay and Dr. Steven Zucker
Source: Dr. Elizabeth Macaulay and Dr. Steven Zucker, “The light of democracy — examining the Statue of Liberty,” in Smarthistory, April 25, 2018, accessed July 16, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/statue-of-liberty/.
The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition
Critics at the World’s Fair, “American art has made something of itself”
by Dr. Katherine Bourguignon, Terra Foundation of American Art and Dr. Beth Harris
Childe Hassam, Horticulture Building, World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893, oil on canvas 18-1/2 x 26-1/4 inches / 47.0 x 66.7 cm (Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1999.67). Speakers: Dr. Katherine Bourguignon, Terra Foundation of American Art and Dr. Beth Harris
Burnham and Root, The Monadnock Building, 1885–91 and Holabird & Roche south addition (Kearsarge) 1891–93, 53 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois
Hancock Building, Chicago (photo: Steven Miller, CC BY 2.0)
Walking amidst the endless crowd of tall buildings in Chicago’s downtown neighborhoods, the twenty-first century viewer, overwhelmed by the colossal Hancock Tower (1970) almost misses the comparatively stocky, whole-block office buildings and stores in Chicago’s Loop that first gave rise to the term “skyscraper” in the late nineteenth century. At the intersection of State and Madison Streets, however, one building with large glass windows and a rounded corner entryway covered with lavish decoration stands out. In contrast to its relatively plain neighbors, the pedestrian’s eye is immediately attracted to the structure’s bronze-colored ground floor and broad white façade stretching twelve stories above it. This is Louis Sullivan’s Carson, Pirie, Scott building, a department store constructed in two stages in 1899 and 1903–04.
Louis Sullivan, Carson, Pirie, Scott Building, 1899 and 1903–04, Chicago (photo: Ken Lund, CC: BY-NC 2.0)
Sullivan’s building is an important example of early Chicago skyscraper architecture, and can also be seen as a fascinating indicator of the relationship between architecture and commerce. The firm of Adler & Sullivan first became known in Chicago in the early 1880s for the design of the Auditorium Building (see below) and other landmarks utilizing new methods of steel frame construction and a uniquely American blend of Art Nouveau decoration with a simplified monumentality.
Dankmar Adler & Louis Sullivan, Auditorium Building, 1889, Chicago (photo: JW Taylor, 1890, Library of Congress)
By the mid-1890s, Sullivan struck out on his own and wrote his treatise on skyscraper architecture, “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered.” In it, Sullivan analyzed the problem of high-rise commercial architecture, arguing with his famous phrase “form must ever follow function” that a building’s design must reflect the social purpose of a particular space.
Sullivan illustrates this philosophy by describing an ideal tripartite skyscraper. First, there should be a base level with a ground floor for businesses that require easy public access, light, and open space, and a second story also publicly accessible by stairways. These floors should then be followed by an infinite number of stories for offices, designed to look all the same because they serve the same function. Finally, the building should be topped with an attic storey and distinct cornice line to mark its endpoint and set it apart from other buildings within the cityscape. For Sullivan, the characteristic feature of a skyscraper was that it was tall, and so the building’s design should serve that goal by emphasizing its upward momentum.
Louis Sullivan, Carson, Pirie, Scott Building, Chicago (while still Schlesinger & Mayer, with original cornice and before addition at right)
By the turn of the century, Sullivan adapted these ideas to a new context, a department store for the Schlesinger & Mayer company that was soon purchased by Carson, Pirie, Scott. In contrast to Sullivan’s earlier office buildings (like the 1891 Wainwright Building in St. Louis—image right), Carson, Pirie, Scott in downtown Chicago was intended to meet its patrons’ needs in a much different way. Instead of emphasizing the beehive of identical windows meant to reflect the identical work taking place in each individual office, in the Carson Pirie Scott building, Sullivan highlighted instead the lower street-level section and entryway to draw shoppers into the store. This was done in a number of ways. The windows on the ground floor, displaying the store’s products, are much larger than those above. The three doors of the main entrance were placed within a rounded bay on the corner of the site, so that they are visible from all directions approaching the building.
Detail of corner entrance, Louis Sullivan, Carson, Pirie, Scott Building, 1899 and 1903–04, Chicago (photo: Chris Smith, CC: BY-NC-SA 2.0)
The corner entryway and the entire base section are differentiated from the spare upper stories by a unified system of extremely ornate decoration. The cast-iron ornament contains the same highly complicated, delicate, organic and floral motifs that had become hallmarks of Sullivan’s design aesthetic. For Sullivan, the decorative program served a functional project as well: to distinguish the building from those surrounding it, and to make the store attractive to potential customers.
Detail of corner entrance, Louis Sullivan, Carson, Pirie, Scott Building, 1899 and 1903–04, Chicago (photo: Dauvit Alexander, CC: BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Louis Sullivan, Carson, Pirie, Scott Building, 1899 and 1903–04, Chicago (photo: artistmac, CC BY-SA 2.0)
The upper parts of the Carson, Pirie, Scott building also reflect Sullivan’s adaptation of his skyscraper theory to a department store. Each successive story of the white terra-cotta façade contains identical windows, in this case the three-sectioned “Chicago” window common to late nineteenth-century skyscrapers in the city. There is an overhanging cornice at the very top that seems to signify the end of the building’s ascent, and makes the slightly set-back attic level distinct from the broad mid-section and the dark cast-iron decoration of the base level.
Unlike Sullivan’s office buildings, however, the building’s primary thrust is horizontal rather than vertical. Sullivan’s design emphasizes the long, uninterrupted lines running under each window from each side of the building towards the entry bay, while the decorative base at the bottom and the cornice line at the top flow seamlessly around the corner.
Louis Sullivan, Open floorplan of Carson, Pirie, Scott Building
The wide rectangular window frames and relatively squat twelve-story frame were intended to meet the specific requirements of a department store, whose mission called for expansive open spaces to display products to customers, not endless individual offices.
Some later critics like Lewis Mumford and Sigfried Giedion viewed the lower, ornamental section of Sullivan’s Carson Pirie Scott building as an uncomfortable disruption to the otherwise stripped-down, planar style they favored. Nevertheless, the building’s continuous operation well into the twenty-first century speaks not only to the prestige of Sullivan’s name, but also to the sustained value of architecture as a corporate symbol.
Terracotta detail, Louis Sullivan, Carson, Pirie, Scott, 1899, 1903-04, Chicago (photo: Steve Minor, all rights reserved, by permission)
With its elaborate decorative program and attention paid to the functional requirements of retail architecture, Sullivan’s design was a remarkably successful display for the department store’s products, even if it diverged from the wholly vertical effect of his earlier skyscrapers.
Carrère & Hastings, The New York Public Library, 1902 and after, New York City (photo: wallyg, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Today, the massive New York Public Library lies amidst the bustle of some of the busiest streets in the city. Along 42nd Street to the west is Times Square, a tourist mecca filled with throngs of visitors at all hours. A few blocks to the east is Grand Central Terminal, one of the city’s gateways, and certainly the most elegant, built in a grandiose Beaux-Arts style almost simultaneously with the library. When construction on the library started in 1899, this area of the city had long been built up, but Fifth Avenue north of 42nd Street was still a mostly residential enclave, filled with the mansions of the newly-rich industrialists and bankers of recent generations. The tall skyscrapers that today hem in the library and the adjacent Bryant Park make the juxtaposition between the library’s insistent horizontality and its towering neighbors startling. Yet the staggering difference in scale may only serve to heighten the observant visitor’s appreciation for the consummate handling of details inside the library and out.
Façade (detail), Carrère & Hastings, The New York Public Library, 1902 and after, New York City (photo: endymion, CC BY 2.0)
A new library for a major city
Officially, the name of the library is The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. The long name resulted from a merger in 1895 between two earlier private libraries in New York, the Astor (below) and the Lenox, as well as the Samuel J. Tilden Trust, created specifically to fund a public library in New York as a major part of the former governor’s philanthropic legacy. New York City (consisting only of Manhattan until 1898) grew dramatically in the nineteenth century. In 1800, the city had a population of about 60,000; in 1890, more than 1.5 million. As a result, civic leaders and philanthropists felt that new cultural and social institutions were needed in order to provide the modern services expected of a major city, especially one with so diverse a population. Further, the two earlier libraries that joined the Tilden Trust were small and too peripherally-located to serve the needs of the new library.
Beginning in 1901, the main building of the New York Public Library became the center of a larger network of public libraries being built throughout the city to better reach citizens in each of its neighborhoods. Andrew Carnegie provided the funds to build the first round of these libraries, 39 in total, with the understanding that the New York Public Library would cover their future operations and maintenance. Carrère & Hastings’ building on Fifth Avenue would be the administrative and symbolic center of this network.
Planning the library
Nathaniel Currier, View of the Croton Distributing Reservoir, 1842, lithograph
An intensive public debate surrounded the selection of the best location for the new library. Within two years, the site of the old Croton Distributing Reservoir (above), slightly to the north of the city’s center at the time, had been chosen and, under the direction of the library’s first president John Bigelow, a competition held to select the architect. Prior to the competition, in 1892, Bigelow and architect Ernest Flagg anticipated the library’s formation and published ideal plans for the library in Scribner’sMagazine. Flagg’s drawings showed the library on the site of the reservoir, which had provided the city’s water since the 1840s, but which was obsolete already in the 1880s. Although the library as built by Carrère & Hastings would be very different, Flagg’s design set the parameters for a large Beaux-Arts-style building that would have a clear identity as a leading civic monument.
Ernest Flagg elevation view showing the position suggested for the Tilden Library Building, Bryant Park from the corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-Second Street, Scribner’s Magazine, vol. XII, 1892, p. 291
Among the designers invited to submit plans to a closed phase of the design competition, the favorites were McKim, Mead & White, a well-established firm that had trained both John Carrère and Thomas Hastings in the early 1880s. McKim, Mead & White had recently completed the Boston Public Library, a celebrated design that for the first time made the public library a commanding monument within an American city and that provided the most direct model for New York’s library.
Façade, McKim, Mead, & White, Boston Public Library, 1895 and after, Boston, MA (photo: AlexiusHoratius, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Carrère & Hastings, however, won the competition, having submitted a design that was deemed practical and monumental, functional and beautiful. Their entry prevailed over other senior architects of the day, including George B. Post, Cyrus Eidlitz, and Peabody and Stearns. Carrère & Hastings’ design closely followed the competition brief, which had been drafted by the first director of the new institution, John Shaw Billings. His guidelines provided specific dimensions and set a demanding parti. In the French Beaux-Arts terminology that would have been familiar to architects at the time, parti refers to a schematic floor plan that represents a building’s primary functions as a series of figural spaces and sets the parameters for the whole design. In Billings’ guidelines, the library was to be a three-story building organized around a central circulation core—grand entry hall and stairs—with two courtyards and a large reading room on the third floor.
Front façade of The New York Public Library, December 26, 1907 (NYPL Digital Collections)
The location
The Croton Reservoir site was unusual in one important respect: it was a double block stretching between 40th and 42nd Streets with a large park on its western half. This small but very noticeable rift within the gridiron plan of Manhattan gave the library the great privilege of having a long frontage on Fifth Avenue with a park directly adjacent to it. This urban condition would have set apart any building at that location, but the architects took advantage of the rare opportunity afforded by the site to design a library that would make it a particularly visible landmark in the cityscape. As the architecture critic (and Progressive political theorist) Herbert Croly wrote in his review of the nearly-completed building in 1910, it was “essentially and frankly an instance of street architecture.”
Façade of The New York Public Library along Fifth Avenue, New York, NY (photo: Sam67fr, CC BY 2.5)
By this, he meant that the architects had understood the importance of the broad street frontage along Fifth Avenue (above) and had adeptly configured the building to add to the variety and dignity of the streetscape. He perceptively described how the exterior “issues to the people an invitation to enter rather than a command.” It was, he said, an “ingratiating rather than imposing” building. On the side facing Bryant Park (below), below the round-arched windows of the reading room, the architects introduced tall, narrow rows of windows that articulate the seven levels of structural steel and cast-iron book stacks directly behind. The striping effect of the dark windows alternating with the white Vermont marble of the wall gives the park face of the library a strikingly modern look. Croly had a lukewarm reaction to the park façade, but other critics then and since have greatly admired the design, especially the strong contrast it provides to the more conventionally Beaux-Arts Fifth Avenue front.
Back of The New York Public Library facing Bryant Park, New York, NY (photo: strangejourney, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Design elements inside and out
One of the key means by which Carrère & Hastings took advantage of the double-block site was the terrace upon which they lifted up their building from street level. The terrace not only elevates the library, symbolically exalting the public that would use it, but also helps orchestrate a carefully calibrated sequence of movements into and through the building, starting with the approach from the street. As the visitor moves up the wide, inviting stairs of the terrace on Fifth Avenue, the main façade of the library expands horizontally and completely dominates the field of vision. Carrère & Hastings designed this long façade according to the five-part French palace type (central entry or frontispiece, recessed wings, and end pavilions). The central portico (a porch supported by columns) composed of three large, arched openings with a tall sculpted attic (wall) above recalls an ancient Roman triumphal arch, a symbolic reference suggesting a ceremonial welcome into the library.
Portico with “Fortitude” lion sculpture in foreground, Carrère & Hastings, The New York Public Library, 1902 and after, New York, NY (photo: Ken Thomas)
Once inside, the modest but exquisitely-detailed lobby splits into two stairs, which take the visitor to the functional rooms of the second floor and then further to the spacious and stately reading room on the third floor. There, the visit culminates in this surprisingly large space, split in two by the book delivery pavilion. The richly decorative Renaissance-style ceiling, with coffered (sunken) panels and luminous murals of a colorfully cloudy sky, and with the bright natural light provided by the massively-scaled windows create an atmosphere of airy and serene openness that feels far from the bustle of the world outside, an atmosphere eminently conducive to serious study and writing.
Frederick MacMonnies, Truth, 1914-1920, marble
This sequence of spaces, so clear that no guide map is needed by the visitor, is abundantly decorated with murals and sculpture, beginning most famously with the lions reclining atop the steps outside. Designed by Edward Clark Potter, the placid but attentive lions were nicknamed Patience and Fortitude (above) by former New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia during the Great Depression. Also among the outside sculptures are the allegorical fountains by Frederick MacMonnies, embedded in the walls adjacent to the portico: Truth (above) to the right and Beauty to the left. Above the latter is an inscription from a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier that begins, “Beauty old yet ever new,” which could be taken as the motto governing the aesthetic sensibility of the architects and artists who created the library. Inside, the numerous decorations include the large murals, not begun until 1938, by Edward Laning in the McGraw Rotunda on the third floor. Depicting the Story of the Recorded Word, they illustrate crucial periods of development in the history of books and printing. The ceiling is covered by the vast Prometheus Bringing the Gift of Fire, the mythological spark to human invention and knowledge, an appropriate symbolic reference to the library’s role in bringing all the world’s knowledge within reach of the city’s residents. Many more decorative features embellish nearly every corner of the interior public spaces.
Edward Laning, Prometheus Bringing the Gift of Fire, from The Story of the Recorded Word, 1938- 1942, McGraw Rotunda, New York Public Library, New York, NY
Beaux-Arts style
As good Beaux-Arts architects, Carrère & Hastings knew how to create grandeur and drama in a building by directing movement and creating sight-lines. This ability was one of the strengths that the Beaux-Arts method of design cultivated in architects. The method also prized the study of ancient and Renaissance classical architecture. Originating at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France, Beaux-Arts architecture was prevalent in the United States from the 1880s until World War II.
Reed & Stem, Grand Central Terminal (Park Avenue aqueduct entrance), 1871 and after, New York, NY (photo: Beyond My Ken, CC BY-SA 4.0)
No city in the country has a greater concentration of Beaux-Arts-style buildings than New York, primarily due to the fact that many of the architects based in the city at the turn of the twentieth century, including Carrère and Hastings, had gone to Paris in order to gain a cosmopolitan education at the École. Many resident architects in New York shared the feeling that its architecture needed to reflect its new status as a major world city on par with Paris and London. The Parisian École welcomed foreigners, and its rigorous design method provided American architects with a set of skills and aesthetic ideas that helped make their practice more competent and professional. The school’s reliance on historical forms chiefly drawn from the classical tradition in Italy and France enhanced the trend toward eclecticism in nineteenth-century architecture, which many critics have found problematic. However, its rigorous design methods and attention to spatial planning contributed, as in Carrère & Hastings’ library, to a sense of modernity in productive dialogue with the past. Insofar as the New York Public Library is seen as a product of the École, it should be considered one of its most distinguished successes in the United States.
A special space in the city
Main reading room, The New York Public Library, New York, NY (photo: endymion, CC BY 2.0)
For a large part of the twentieth century, Beaux-Arts architecture was held in low esteem by many architects, critics, and even historians. Yet the New York Public Library’s main building has always elicited a degree of reverence among its users—academics and other researchers, novelists and playwrights, cultural leaders and everyday citizens—who all seem to find things of special and enduring value in the building. Among these special things are, of course, its bountiful treasures: the books and documents that constitute its reason for being. But it also provides, by means of its beautiful halls, gracious and welcoming steps, and ambiance attuned to scholarly pursuits, a temporary refuge from the harshness of the world that great libraries, large and small, have always provided. Carrère & Hastings’ architectural dressing for the library has seemed to all these people, and even to the harshest critics today, to be an appropriate and enduring sign of the institution’s signal importance to the intellectual and cultural life of a world metropolis.
With its sky-piercing spire, its sleek, metallic ornament poking out over the streetscape, and its luxurious marble- and metal-lined interiors, the Chrysler Building epitomizes its time: an era of concentrated wealth, industrial power, and large-scale city building. It is often said that architecture is a measure of civilization. If so, there may be few better artifacts of the short-lived epoch called the Roaring Twenties than the Chrysler Building. Ironically, the Art Deco Chrysler Building also marked the end of that dizzying period.
Race to the top
In 1927, Architect William Van Alen received a commission for an office tower from real-estate developer William H. Reynolds. It was to be 808 feet tall with a crowning glass dome meant to “give the effect of a great jeweled sphere.” With mounting costs, Reynolds sold the lease in late 1928 to Walter P. Chrysler, who had formed his automobile manufacturing company in Detroit three years earlier and wanted to make a visible statement about his newfound prominence in business—he said the building would be “dedicated as a sound contribution to business progress.” Chrysler asked Van Alen to make his tower the tallest building in the world, but this was no singular act of hubris on Chrysler’s part. Both men had an interest in making the Chrysler Building as tall, glamorous, and unique as possible.
In the late 1920s, New York’s architects and developers were caught in a race to construct ever-taller buildings. By 1929, the Bank of Manhattan Trust Building on Wall Street (927 feet tall) was set to become the world’s tallest, displacing Cass Gilbert’s Woolworth Building (792 feet tall), which had held the honor since 1913. Several other buildings going up in the late 1920s near Wall Street also aimed for distinction and height.
Stages in the design for the Chrysler building, Progressive Architecture, v. 10, July-Dec 1929, page 525
The competition for the tallest building was fiercest between Van Alen and his former business partner, Craig Severance (architect of the Bank of Manhattan Trust Building along with Yasuo Matsui). In the end, Van Alen triumphed: in secret, he had the 185-foot spire of the Chrysler constructed in sections and assembled inside the building, then hoisted up and through the top (diagram right) only after Severance’s Bank of Manhattan Trust tower had reached its full height in November 1929. With the spire, the Chrysler now reached 1,046 feet. It claimed the title of world’s tallest building from its official completion on May 27, 1930, until the completion of the Empire State Building on April 11, 1931.
The Chrysler Building’s overall shape and composition put it into a distinctive local tradition of skyscraper design. New York architects developed a particular way of handling New York City’s 1916 zoning resolution known as the “setback” law. Although not all skyscrapers followed the model, it was a popular formula: a broad base on top of which rose a slender tower, often incorporating setbacks at multiple levels, all topped by a pyramidal cap or spire. Important examples include the Manhattan Life Insurance Building (completed 1894), the Singer Building (1908), the Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower (1909), the Woolworth Building (1913), and, of course, the Bank of Manhattan Trust (1930), Chrysler (1930), and Empire State Building (1931).
Left: Art Nouveau architecture, Fine art building, Prima Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte Decorativa Moderna, Turin, 1902; right: Art Deco architecture, Pavillon du Bon Marché, Exposition internationale des Arts décoratifs et industriels modernes de Paris en 1925, postcard, Les Éditions artistiques LIP : Paris & ses Merveilles – imprimeur: J. Cormault à Paris, 1925
Art Deco
The Chrysler Building’s style—Art Deco—was considered modern, urbane, and luxurious. The term itself originated from the Exposition internationale des Arts Décoratifs et industriels modernes (International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts), held in Paris in 1925 (above right), but the roots of the style went back further. Art Deco could describe everything from the style of a corporate office tower (such as the Chrysler Building), to the decorative pattern on furniture, murals, and tilework. The style incorporated chevron, sunburst, fountain, and arc motifs, endless varieties of geometric patterns, and, in later instances especially, cubic and machine-like forms. It was generally more rectilinear than the swirling floral and vegetal patterns common in the earlier Art Nouveau (above left), and was quite distinct from the forms and details of classical Beaux-Arts architecture and ornament, which was prominent in the early twentieth century.
Automobile friezes in the brickwork, photo: cogito ergo imago, CC: BY-SA 2.0
It would be an exaggeration to say that Art Deco fully rejected the Art Nouveau or the Beaux-Arts styles; instead, Art Deco designers synthesized and abstracted earlier motifs and patterns to create a decorative layer on buildings laid out in otherwise conventional ways. In New York, Art Deco exteriors ran a spectrum from the ornate to the spare (the Chrysler falls in the middle range of that spectrum). Interiors, however, tended to be colorful and lively, with marble and metal details in color schemes dominated by gold, silver, black, red, and green.
Eagle, Chrysler Building, 1931, photo: Jason Eppink, CC: BY 2.0
At the Chrysler Building, the distinctive elements of Art Deco include the horizontal black-and-white stripes between floors, the geometric decoration concentrated at each of the setbacks, the streamlined eagle heads and radiator caps with wings (referencing the hallmark Chrysler car ornaments) jutting out from the corners, and, above all, the great crown with its seven layers of crescent setbacks inset with triangular windows. Brightly lit at night, the crown is still one of the most distinctive elements on the New York City skyline. Although the ground-level experience is often described as lackluster, the building’s contribution to the skyline is its true achievement. It made the Chrysler Building a symbol of urban modernity, of New York’s business dynamism, and of the vibrant nightlife of the world’s newest metropolis.
Chrysler Building at night, photo: Kim Carpenter, CC: BY 2.0
Depression and Modernity
The stock market crashed on October 29, 1929, in the midst of the Chrysler Building’s construction. This initial shock did not immediately lead to the economic ruin of the Great Depression—that set in a few years later. However, the glamour, economic growth, and optimism associated with the Roaring Twenties was over. For some, the Chrysler Building came to be a symbol of a lost, hedonistic era, having resulted from the same supposedly rational economic decisions that had led to the market crash. However, some commentators in the 1930s also suggested the building’s lights and upward thrust be seen as symbols of hope for a better future.
Detail, Edward Trumbull, Transport and Human Endeavor, oil on canvas attached to lobby ceiling, 1930
The 1920s was a decade of great wealth disparities. Rich bankers and industrialists, including Walter Chrysler, had done very well. They used their patronage of architecture to convey their high status and the power some believed rightly accrued to those who had prospered in the system of American industrial capitalism. One could argue that the Chrysler Building’s height, glamour, and prestige was concocted to celebrate one man whose wealth was the result of huge profits he accrued at the expense of poorly paid laborers and other workers.
Chrysler Building Spire, photo: Paul Arps, CC: BY 2.0
But few buildings are only about one person. A huge building like the Chrysler cannot help but also be a monument in the city that surrounds it, and as such it helped fix for decades to come New Yorkers’ understanding of their city as stylish and forward-looking. After the depression and World War II, New York City became the world’s foremost cultural center. And the Chrysler Building was still there, glimmering high above almost everything else as a beacon and symbol of the city’s persistent optimism.
A loud abrasive buzzing bellows from the nightstand and I raise my head, only to be blinded by the red light emanating from the small—in size, not volume—machine against a backdrop of pure blackness. 4:00 A.M. Oy. I’m immediately beset by the eternal morning conflict: ten more minutes of sleep vs. the rush of adrenaline that wants to start the adventures that await. The latter quickly usurps the former as I realize today is September 25th, a day I’ve waited for my entire life (metaphorically speaking) and actually been counting down to since the spring. It’s Spiral Jetty day.
I bound out of bed, Gianfranco Gorgoni’s seminal photograph of Robert Smithson’s iconic earth work on repeat in my head as I shower and “pack” for the daylong adventure that will take me to a remote area of Utah. I meet the rest of my party at the gate at LAX and it’s immediately clear from the conversation that we’ve all arrived at this moment with decades of expectation accumulated. How would the experience compare to the visions (particular to each person) we had all conjured up over the years? Would the jetty “deliver” the transformative experience we all sought? Or would it fall victim to a case of excessively high and unattainable expectations? Time would tell.
But, it would indeed take time. An hour at the airport, followed by an hour plus on the plane, then a two plus hour bus ride over the bumpiest “trail”—it certainly wasn’t a road!—imaginable, and ultimately a fifteen-minute hike. Nearly eight hours after my day had begun, it came into view. At last, Spiral Jetty.
View of Spiral Jetty taken June 2016. Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970 (Great Salt Lake, Utah) (photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
But… it was so… so… so small. That couldn’t possibly be it! Naturally the distance made the work appear smaller and it “grew” as we approached, but even as we stood perched on the rocks right above it, it seemed utterly dominated by the landscape. Yet another surprise, the water from the Great Salt Lake no longer permeated the rocks, but was a significant distance beyond. Between the jetty and the lake, there was a blanket of white—a picture-perfect postcard image of a quiet winter’s morn, and yet, the “snow” wasn’t melted by the sun blazing down from above. Upon closer inspection, the “snow” was actually crystallized salt that brilliantly reflected the sun’s rays and the nearby water.
Rozel Point shore near Spiral Jetty, taken June 2016. (photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
We walked about the jetty with the sun hot upon our skin, the smell of the salt air filling our nose and lungs, and the feel of salt crystals on our fingers (having knelt to examine the minerals that carpeted the environ). An all-consuming, olfactory experience. We then decided to make our way across the white blanket to the water’s edge, fighting off fears that the salt—which had the distinct characteristics of ice—would “break” and we would plunge into the Great Salt Lake below (which was a physical impossibility since the water wasn’t below). From a distance the water had appeared a brilliant blue, but as we neared, gradations of color began to appear—shades of blue, purple, pink, and red—a traveler’s mirage, of sorts, and undeniably picturesque.
We found our way up to a piece of land overlooking the jetty and sat down on the rocks to enjoy our sandwiches and “debate” Smithson’s intentions and ethical issues in conserving the work with several scholars. One of them compared Smithson’s Spiral Jetty to Claude Monet’s Rouen Cathedral series, which conveyed the same location at various times of day so that he could capture the specific lighting and other nuances of a particular moment. He said, “Smithson’s doing that here but he’s not doing it on canvas, he’s doing it out there in the elements themselves… it has that same type of specificity too it, and yet specificity that is subject to all kinds of permutations.” The question was raised about Smithson’s vision for the work, his view on its ephemerality, and whether he ever envisioned groups such as ours making the journey out to this incredibly remote location to experience his work.
We were reminded that the physical jetty is only part of the work, which is actually a triad of the “sculpture” in the landscape, an essay by Smithson, and a film documenting the project. [1] But, as time has marched on, the work has become embodied in the minds of the general public in a single photograph, the aforementioned image taken by Gorgoni who hovered about the work in a helicopter and captured the piece from the perfect angle so that it looked colossal, while the hills looked minuscule.
View of Spiral Jetty partially submerged taken in 2005. Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970 (Great Salt Lake, Utah) (photo: Land Use Database, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)
This is due, in large part, to the fact that the jetty became submerged only a few years after it was made, and remained that way for decades. Only in the past ten years has it resurfaced and been “available” for visitation. Though Smithson may not have ever intended or even considered that people would take the time (and trouble) to visit, which begs the question that art historian Hikmet Sidney Loe posed to us, “Who is this work for?” Matthew Coolidge, president of the Center for Land Use Interpretation, said the work was for Gorgoni, that Smithson had literally made it for the photograph. They all agreed that the sculpture itself is the “gesture,” but the documentation is every bit as much a part of it.
Up until that moment, the essay, the film, and the Gorgoni photograph were the entirety of my experience with Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, which is probably true for all but a small population who’ve sought out the physical experience of the “gesture.” An object whose identity is so deeply intertwined with its documentation is fraught with complexities and paradox, but given interest in ephemerality and entropy, I’d imagine he’d be quite satisfied with the transient nature of his jetty—how it disappears and reappears at nature’s will. Such is the foundation for arguing against any conservation of the earth work, and allowing it to emerge and submerge with the tides. And yet, the thought of the work vanishing for another thirty years beneath the lake devastates me. With this debate reeling in my head, I made my way back down to the jetty. If I couldn’t be certain the work would be here waiting for my return in the distant future, I’d better take another promenade on the rocks.
This time I separated from my friends, put down my camera, and walked the spiral in absolute silence. Though physically alone, I felt the overwhelming presence of several invisible companions: Mother Nature herself, the spirit of Robert Smithson that is somehow pervades the rocks, and God. I thought about each of them in a way that the loud noise of my crowded, urban existence prohibits. I found the transcendental calm within that often only comes to me upon reading an Emerson poem, hearing a choir sing “Amazing Grace,” or staring into the floating color-field abyss of a Mark Rothko painting.
I began the walk back to the bus with my colleagues. We found ourselves humbled by the beauty of nature and the power of art, and hailed Smithson for giving us a reason to find our way to this breathtaking place.
On the bumpy ride back towards town, I realized that I had made a pilgrimage in search of a monument, an icon of culture and history, but found pleasure in the aesthetic of transience instead. Spiral Jetty looked nothing like I’d imagined—a.k.a. the Gorgoni photograph—and I’m grateful. Grateful because I saw the work on September 25, 2010 and no one will ever replicate the experience of seeing it on that day, for it reinvents itself with every change of light, tide, and weather.
Imagining the West, territorial expansion, and the politics of slavery
Americans’ stance on slavery colored their visions of the West.
by Dr. Kimberly Kutz Elliott
Asher B. Durand, Progress (The Advance of Civilization), 1853, oil on canvas, 58 7/16 x 82 1/4 x 4 3/8 inches (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Lush vegetation, broad rivers, rich farmland, spectacular mountains. In the 19th century, the western part of what is now the United States held the imagination of U.S. citizens as a place of almost limitless possibility. This vision of the West’s abundant opportunity is celebrated in Asher B. Durand’s painting Progress—commissioned by a railroad baron (whose own fortunes were tied up with westward expansion). [1]
Train (detail), Asher B. Durand, Progress (The Advance of Civilization), 1853, oil on canvas, 58 7/16 x 82 1/4 x 4 3/8 inches (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
In the painting, we see canals, railroads, and steamships crisscross the landscape, and towns, and churches spring up, all bathed in the light of the sun. In the shadowed foreground on the left, a small group of Indigenous Americans, set in a dark primeval forest, look out at the gleaming promise of Euro-American progress. At the lower right, white settlers are shown having built a homestead—beginning the process of taming the wilderness.
Left: Indigenous people look on (detail), right: Settler homestead (detail); Asher B. Durand, Progress (The Advance of Civilization), 1853, oil on canvas, 58 7/16 x 82 1/4 x 4 3/8 inches (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; photos: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
This was the essence of the once-broadly-held concept of Manifest Destiny: that the United States had a divine, “manifest” (self-evident) mission to create a nation that stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific, spreading the light of democracy and the word of God.
Divine providence as symbolized by the sun (detail), Asher B. Durand, Progress (The Advance of Civilization), 1853, oil on canvas, 58 7/16 x 82 1/4 x 4 3/8 inches (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Indigenous peoples, slavery, and the politics of geography
Even before the term Manifest Destiny was coined, the British colonists wanted to move west. In fact, they sought independence in part because of their frustration with Britain’s intent to honor its treaties with Indigenous allies (that barred British subjects from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains). [2]
A 1767 map of the placement of British military forces in North America. Daniel Paterson, Cantonment of His Majesty’s forces in N. America according to the disposition now made & to be completed as soon as practicable taken from the general distribution dated at New York, 29th. March, 1767 (Library of Congress)
A map of the placement of British military forces in North America from 1767 directed that lands between the British colonies on the eastern seaboard and the inland French territory of Louisiana were “reserved for the Indians.” Victory in the American Revolution gave citizens of the new United States license, as they saw it, to invade western lands and remove the Indigenous peoples there.
But what kind of nation would it be? At the same time that the United States was laying claim to enormous new territories—from the 1803 Louisiana Purchase to the 1848 Mexican Cession—the citizens of its existing states were becoming increasingly divided by region on the issue of slavery.
Slavery had existed in the 13 British colonies that would become the United States, but during the late 18th and early 19th centuries the geography of slavery began to shift. Northern states gradually outlawed slavery, often citing incompatibility with the principles of freedom and democracy espoused in support of the American Revolution.
Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick, miniature portrait of Elizabeth Freeman (Mumbet), 1811, watercolor on ivory, 7.5 cm x 5.5 cm (Massachusetts Historical Society)
As an example, Elizabeth Freeman successfully sued for her own freedom (in the case Brom and Bett v. Ashley, 1781) arguing that the state’s Bill of Rights guaranteed her freedom and equality. As a result, Massachusetts became the only state in the Union to end slavery because it was declared unconstitutional by a court. Here we see Freeman portrayed in watercolor on a precious piece of ivory. She looks directly at the viewer with a gently critical gaze. Her hair, just visible under her bonnet, has turned white, and her age is also expressed through the lines on her face. This fierce advocate for the abolition of slavery appears both alert and riveting.
Southern states, by contrast, passed laws further restricting the lives of enslaved people after the American Revolution. For example, numerous southern states passed anti-literacy laws that made it illegal for enslaved people to read or write (an enslaved person who was literate was perceived as more threatening). These repressive measures were taken just as white citizens became more and more dependent on enslaved people as laborers and as capital. It is important to note, however, that the northern states also profited from slavery. As late as the 1850s, the labor of the enslaved powered profitable northern textile mills and the New York Cotton Exchange. Nevertheless, by the mid-19th century, opinions on slavery in northern states and southern states had largely diverged.
The promise of the “West” crystallized these competing views. In the white imagination, the “West” encompassed any land beyond the Appalachian mountains (not limited to the present-day borders of the United States). White farmers from northern states feared that wealthy slaveholders would dominate the West and limit their opportunities there. Enslavers, on the other hand, feared that if slavery was barred in the West, their profitable system and the culture built upon it would soon wither and die. Neither side spared much thought for the people who already lived on the lands such as Indigenous people, Mexican Americans, or Californios, onto which these white people projected these hopes and fears.
Over the course of the 19th century, westward migration and the establishment of American settlements with and without slavery pushed Indigenous and Hispanic peoples off of their lands, and fueled the flames that would erupt in the Civil War.
Slavery and westward expansion
Who moved west, and why, differed by region. White northerners (who were increasingly less likely to own enslaved people as the 19th century progressed) moved westward to establish small farms. White southerners also moved westward in search of new land that might support ranching or large-scale agriculture—for example, cotton cultivation. Those southerners who owned enslaved people often sent them ahead to clear this new land, and to extend the plantation system westward.
Enslaved population by county, 1800
Enslaved population by county, 1850
Maps credit: Lincoln Mullen, “The Spread of U.S. Slavery, 1790–1860,” interactive map, doi: 10.5281/zenodo.9825, Minnesota Population Center, National Historical Geographic Information System: Version 2.0 (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 2011). Note that census data is incomplete and likely underestimates the enslaved population (along with the population as a whole).
The two maps above illustrate how slavery changed over time as the United States expanded westward: in 1800, there was a significant population of enslaved people in northern states (those above the blue line) and an even larger enslaved population concentrated along the coasts of the southern states. By 1850, slavery was nearly gone in northern states (including the new states to their west). In contrast, the number of enslaved people both increased and spread in the southern states (including the new states to their west).
Free states, slave states
The political imperatives of slavery were baked into the very framework of the United States. After much debate, the framers of the Constitution agreed to allow states to count three-fifths of their enslaved population toward their total population, even though enslaved people lacked citizenship rights. This was important because representation (and therefore voting power) in the legislative branch of the U.S. government was tied to the number of states and the size of their populations. New states got equal voting power with existing states in the upper house of the legislature (the Senate), and states with higher populations had more votes in the lower house (the House of Representatives). Therefore the question of whether new states would permit slavery was highly charged as it would permanently alter the balance of power between free and slave states.
With the Louisiana Purchase in 1804, the United States nearly doubled in size. Less than two decades later, and as a result, the question of slavery in states carved out of new territories became one with lasting political consequences. More states where slavery was permitted meant more pro-slavery senators, perhaps eventually enough to control the government and make slavery legal everywhere. The opposite was also true: if abolitionist sentiment grew along with the northern population and the number of free states, anti-slavery politicians might gain control of government and strip enslavers of their valuable human property.
With so much riding on the balance of power, there were several crisis points in the 19th century as new states joined the Union. The first was the Missouri Crisis of 1819, when the residents of the territory of Missouri (formed on land gained in the Louisiana Purchase) requested an enabling bill from Congress to begin the process of statehood. A House representative from New York proposed an amendment that would provide for gradual emancipation in Missouri, but southern representatives reacted angrily to the amendment, threatening secession. It took months for Congress to work out the “Missouri Compromise”: that Missouri would enter the Union as a slave state at the same time that Maine entered as a free state, and slavery would be banned in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase territory north of Missouri’s southern border.
But the Missouri Compromise did nothing to solve the underlying problem, and slavery continued, with the nation bitterly divided over its future. To avoid repeating the crisis, new “free” and “slave” states were admitted more or less in pairs in the succeeding decades: Arkansas and Michigan, Florida and Iowa. Congress sat on the Republic of Texas’s request for annexation for nearly a decade to avoid stirring up sectional tensions. It was only after the ardent expansionist and slaveholder James K. Polk took office as president in 1845 that the United States moved forward with claiming Texas. The U.S. also provoked a war with Mexico in 1846 in an effort to gain Mexican territory and the valuable Pacific ports of California.
George Caleb Bingham, Country Politician, 1849, oil on canvas, 51.8 x 61cm (de Young Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
As with the Missouri Compromise, a firestorm erupted in Congress early in the Mexican-American War when David Wilmot, an anti-slavery Democrat from Pennsylvania, introduced an amendment to a military appropriations bill in Congress. This “proviso” proposed to outlaw slavery in any territory that might be gained from Mexico in the ongoing war. George Caleb Bingham was a painter, a Whig, and a member of the Missouri House of Representatives. His canvas, Country Politician was first exhibited as Congress debated Wilmot’s amendment. Bingham depicts a politician (at right) earnestly addressing an older voter (at left), perhaps to persuade him to support the Wilmot Proviso. The artist here focuses on the political choices that citizens faced, including slavery and its future.
During the 1850s, disputes over the fate of slavery in the new western territories raged in Congress and among the general public. The Gold Rush in California in 1849 hastened immigration to the West. The most serious political conflicts over slavery, however, took place in the Great Plains region. Violence erupted when the existing ban on slavery north of the Missouri Compromise line (see map above) was overturned in favor of the doctrine of “popular sovereignty,” which allowed territories to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery. This resulted from the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which also stripped the Indigenous residents of their land rights and opened the territory to settlers. Thousands of armed pro- and anti-slavery settlers poured into the Kansas Territory to influence whether it would be free or would allow slavery. Dozens died in the skirmishes that followed, a period known as Bleeding Kansas.
Opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act brought anti-slavery members of the Democratic and Whig parties together to form a major new national party, the Republican Party, which opposed the extension of slavery into the West. When Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election in November of 1860, slaveholders feared that their enemies had secured the political power to defeat them at last. In December of 1860, slave states in the deep South began to secede in anticipation of potential legislation to limit slavery. The Civil War began shortly thereafter.
What was it about the West that so captivated white Americans that they went so far as to shed blood to determine its future? All sides envisioned using the West’s resources—fertile land for farming and grazing, abundant forests for timbering and trapping, rich mines for extracting mineral wealth—for their own gain.
William S. Jewett, The Promised Land—The Grayson Family, 1850, oil on canvas, 50 3/4 x 64 inches (Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection)
Andrew Jackson Grayson, whose family was among the earliest U.S. settlers to move to California in 1846, commissioned this painting of their arrival in 1850. Grayson dictated many of the painting’s details to the artist, William S. Jewett, including the clothing and the site in the Sierra Nevadas, where he claimed that they had first laid eyes on the plains of California. The painting’s Biblical overtones—its name, The Promised Land, recalling the prophet Moses, and its richly dressed family of three evoking the Holy Family—reinforced the Manifest Destiny notion that God sanctioned white settlement of the West (where a diverse population of Indigenous and Hispanic people already lived). The painting depicts California empty of people, erasing the region’s inhabitants whom white settlers persecuted and murdered as they sought control of the land. Grayson himself joined the fighting in the Mexican-American War (which would wrest California from Mexico), as part of the California Battalion, led by the explorer and army officer John C. Frémont.
Meade Brothers Studio, John Charles Frémont, c. 1856, photograph, 9.2 x 5.7 cm (National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution)
Frémont and violence against Native Americans
Frémont would become California’s first Senator. He held an anti-slavery position, but also had a near total disregard for Indigenous people and their cultures, typical of white people at this time. He led several massacres against Indigenous people, including the Sacramento River Massacre (1846), in which he and his men killed at least 120 Wintu men, women, and children (with some estimates of the dead as high as 700). Frémont directly supported the ideology of Manifest Destiny—through his violence against the Native populations of California, and by encouraging settlers in California to revolt against the Mexican government. In 1846, whites did in fact briefly establish the California Republic (in a move similar to the Texas Revolution a decade earlier), eventually ceding control of the region to U.S. Army forces. Despite his aggression toward Native Americans and the Spanish, Frémont was a fierce anti-slavery politician, and in 1856, he became the first Republican presidential candidate.
Solomon Nunes Carvalho, [View of a Cheyenne village at Big Timbers, in present-day Colorado, with four large tipis standing at the edge of a wooded area. Frame with pemmican or hides hanging at the right; two figures, facing camera, standing to the left of center], between 1853 and 1860, daguerreotype (Library of Congress)
In 1853, Frémont led an expedition to explore a possible route across the Rocky Mountains for a proposed rail line. The expedition included painter and photographer Solomon Nunes Carvalho, who produced hundreds of daguerreotypes of the people, landscape, and animals they encountered in Kansas, Utah, and Colorado. Carvalho’s image, badly damaged, of the Cheyenne village at Big Timbers is the only image known to have survived from the expedition. It shows two Cheyenne people (left of center) standing in front of a tepee (tepi) with animal hides or pemmican drying on wooden structures at the right. This early photograph, a daguerreotype, has suffered over time and now offers only a ghostly view of a history that is also often obscured.
Beyond the West: Latin America and the quest for new slave states
Proslavery expansionists also attempted the military takeover (called filibustering) of some Latin American countries, whose warm climates were suitable for plantation agriculture. Some of the regions already had systems of slavery, making them excellent candidates for an expansion of U.S. slavery.
For example, in the early 1850s, U.S. citizen William Walker led an illegal war with Mexico to create independent slaveholding republics, including the Republic of Lower California in what is today northern Mexico. An American jury acquitted Walker for violating the Neutrality Act of 1794, which barred American citizens from waging war against any country at peace with the United States. In 1856, Walker launched an invasion of Nicaragua, and took control of the country for nearly a year before a coalition of Central American armies removed him from office.
Narciso López, Gefe de los Piratas Invasores (Leader of the Invading Pirates), 19 de Mayo de 1850, 1850; color lithograph by Marq, lithographer; Víctor Patricio de Landaluze, draftsman (The Historic New Orleans Collection). This lithograph was part of a series depicting López’s attempt to invade Cardenás, Cuba, as part of a scheme of U.S. annexation.
Flag of Cuba
Similarly, between 1848 and 1851 Cuban exile Narciso López, who was financed by U.S. sugar growers (an industry reliant on slave labor), organized several filibustering expeditions to Cuba, which was then controlled by Spain. He aimed to expand U.S. sugar production to Cuba, where slavery was legal, and to add Cuba to the U.S. as yet another slave state. In the lithograph above, López is depicted leading a group of armed men in the Cuban town of Cardenás. They are flying a flag that independent Cuba would adopt as its own in 1902. During López’s final Cuban campaign, he was captured and executed along with dozens of U.S. citizens who had attempted to take the island from the Spanish.
The expansionist mindset
Although the stories of the failed states that William Walker and Narciso López pursued may seem like a detour from the story of U.S. westward expansion, they illustrate the breadth of the expansionist mindset. Today, the territorial boundaries of the greater United States (as well as those of the individual states within it) may seem inevitable and fixed, but when U.S. citizens looked beyond their established borders in the mid-19th century, they saw possibility in many directions. There could be many dozens of new states west of the Appalachian Mountains and south of Texas. There could be—and eventually would be—American territories and states on Pacific islands, Caribbean islands, and the far north. The whole western hemisphere might be up for grabs.
With these wild opportunities came fears on both sides. Each new state in the Union meant one side or the other accrued more power in government and more influence on the future of American society. It was only in 1860, when the election of an antislavery president demonstrated that enslavers had lost the game of states for good, that they turned to warfare.
What can and can’t we learn from the visual and material record of slavery?
by Dr. Kimberly Kutz Elliott
Leg shackles used to restrict the movement of enslaved people, 19th century, iron (Museum of the Civil War, Richmond; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Slavery has never been represented; Slavery never can be represented. . . . I may try to represent to you Slavery as it is; another may follow me and try to represent the condition of the Slave; we may all represent it as we think it is and yet we shall all fail to represent the real condition of the Slave.
William Wells Brown, From A Lecture Delivered before the Female Anti-Slavery Society of Salem, November 14, 1847
This quote, from William Wells Brown—who escaped from slavery in 1834—testifies to the impossibility of representing the experience of enslavement, even by someone who was enslaved. Artifacts often encountered in museum settings, such as shackles that once bound enslaved people, provide some tangible evidence, but also feel profoundly inadequate as records of the lives of so many human beings who were enslaved.
Not surprisingly, few, if any, images made or commissioned by enslaved people that address their lived experience survive. We do have enticing records of three enormous “moving panoramas” (a popular form of entertainment) that were commissioned by three African American men in the 1850s (Henry Box Brown, William Wells Brown, and James Presley Ball) specifically to arouse the sympathy of viewers and persuade them of slavery’s evils. All three were abolitionists, and Box Brown and Wells Brown both escaped enslavement.
Nevertheless, the vast majority of printed, painted, and sculpted images about slavery in the United States were created by white people to persuade other white people, and therefore tell us little about the actual lived experience of enslaved people.
From The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Tradeby the British Parliament, London, 1808 (British Library). The image dates to 1787, but it circulated later in many different versions.
The lasting power of slave ship diagram
One image, however, stands out for its power and longevity: a schematic diagram of the interior of the slave ship “Brookes,” created in 1788 in England by an organization seeking to abolish slavery. [1] This diagram (and the text that accompanied it) revealed how tightly enslavers packed human cargo in the lower decks of the ship (allotting six feet for men, less for women and children). With this image we see at a glance how hundreds of enslaved people were chained together without room to move and sailed across the Atlantic. In the case of this particular ship, 454 people were crammed into the hold after a stop on the west coast of Africa, after which it sailed to islands in the Caribbean (most slave ships from Africa sailed to South America and the Caribbean). Out of the 12 million people who were forced into slavery during the years that the Atlantic slave trade operated, approximately one third died before leaving Africa or during this “Middle Passage” by boat. [2]
Of the thousands of images made in the 18th and 19th centuries regarding slavery, the slave ship diagram has had particular resonance. For more than 200 years it has moved viewers, aided teachers, and inspired artists to repurpose it.
For example, in I’ll Bend but I will not Break, contemporary artist Betye Saar created a poignant image not of slavery per se, but of the experience of remembering the trauma of slavery. She combined an ironing board imprinted with the 18th-century diagram of the slave ship beside a 19th-century image of a “Mammy” figure (a racist caricature of an enslaved Black woman who cooked meals and cared for white children).
Behind, the letters “KKK” (for Ku Klux Klan—a white supremacist terrorist organization that threatened and murdered Black people and their political allies) are barely visible on the sheet in the background, which has been pinned to a laundry line hung across the corner of a room. A chain keeps the iron attached to the ironing board. This image joins references to the beginnings of enslavement to the oppression and violence suffered by Black people in the United States in the 20th century, and serves to, as Saar put it, “jab the memory—to remind people of their history.” [3]
Let’s take a moment to recount that history.
The Middle Passage
Beginning in 1492, Europeans began to seize land in North America (including the Caribbean islands) and in South America. Forced labor, diseases carried by Europeans, and enslavement in some areas devastated Indigenous populations.
At the same time, Europeans discovered the huge profits possible in the cultivation of sugar, mining, and other industries and rapidly began to expand their conquest of land and people. Africans—whom the Portuguese had begun forcibly enslaving to work in sugar colonies off the coast of Africa in the late 1400s—quickly became the target of an immense international slave trade to support the sugar plantations of the Western Hemisphere. Slave traders in the ports of West Africa sold people who had been kidnapped or taken as prisoners of war farther inland, practices which escalated as Europeans looking to extract resources from the Americas drove up the demand for enslaved laborers. As a result of centuries of exchange with Europe and Asia, Africans had developed immunity to the diseases that had devastated the Indigenous populations in the Americas. Enslaved Africans were brought to the Americas in ever increasing numbers between the 16th and early 19th centuries. Africans came to make up the overwhelming share of enslaved people.
Slavery and Blackness
In the British colonies (what would become the United States), bondage and skin color were not at first inextricably tied together: free people of color, white indentured servants, and people with Indigenous ancestry complicate the notion that all white people were free and all Black people were enslaved. But over time colonial governments enacted laws that codified slavery and tied it to Blackness.
By 1640, Black people in Virginia colony, for example, were being held as slaves for life, and by the 1660s, the colony’s laws defined slavery as a status that passed through the mother. By 1680, Blackness had become synonymous with enslavement throughout much of the British colonies, and liberty the province of whiteness.
By the late 17th century, slavery in the thirteen British colonies in North America had several unique characteristics compared to slavery in other times and places. First, slavery was for life: enslaved people had no possibility of becoming free except by escape, self-purchase (which was rare), or by voluntary manumission. Second, it was heritable: an enslaved woman’s children were also enslaved for life, regardless of the status of their father. Lastly, and most importantly, slavery became race-based: Africans or Afrodescendants were subject to enslavement, and white people were not.
Badges worn by people of African descent in Charleston, South Carolina. The badge on the left was issued to a free person of color during the 1780s. The badge on the right was issued to an enslaved person (“servant” was a euphemism for slave) in 1824. Left: Free badge, 1783–89, copper, 1.457 x 1.614 inches; right: Slave badge, 1825, copper, 2.717 x 2.559 inches (both, The Charleston Museum)
Enslaved people commonly worked directly for their owners but might also be hired out or rented for a fee. In Charleston, slaveholders forced enslaved people who were hired out to wear a ticket or metal badge (issued by the city) in a visible place. [4] For a brief time in the 1780s, Charleston even issued badges for its free Black population, an expression of the surveillance and control whites exercised over all Black people in the city. The copper badge on the left dates to this period. The badge features a pileus cap, a hat worn by ancient Roman slaves upon receiving their freedom. The copper badge on the right dates to decades later (1824) and was worn by an enslaved person. The badge is typical in that it is stamped with the year of issue, a number, and an occupational category. “Lafar” (on the bottom) identifies the silversmith who made it, but the wearer is only identified as “servant” (a euphemism for slave). It is likely that the person forced to wear it worked in a city household as a domestic servant.
It is important to note, however, that slavery did not only exist in the territories then controlled by the United States. In what is today New Mexico and elsewhere, there were Native peoples who in some cases had their own traditions of enslaving war captives known as genízaros which began with Spanish colonists in this region during the 16th century.
Eli Whitney patent for the cotton gin, March 14, 1794 (Records of the Patent and Trademark Office; Record Group 241, National Archives)
Cotton and slavery
For a variety of reasons, slavery’s profits in the United States grew slimmer in the late 18th century, leading some contemporary observers to predict its gradual extinction. But the 1794 invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney changed all that. The cotton gin (“gin” was a short form of “engine”) was a machine that removed seeds from cotton fiber, specifically from short-staple cotton—a significant advance over earlier devices. Whitney’s gin made the crop profitable, pushing plantation owners to expand well into the interior of the South, fueling the demand for land and enslaved laborers.
At the same time, demand for cotton increased with the growth of textile factories in the northern United States and in England. Instead of dying out, the institution of slavery expanded throughout the first half of the 19th century, both in the total number of people who were enslaved (which more than quadrupled) and the amount of territory where slavery was practiced. [5] This growth occurred despite the fact that Congress banned the international slave trade in 1808.
William J. Pierce and A. Hill, “Cotton Pressing in Louisiana,” Ballou’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, no. 15, April 12, 1856, p. 236.
The process of growing cotton and preparing it for sale involved many steps and significant labor. This image, made for a Boston-based periodical on the eve of the Civil War, illustrates the stages of work involved in pressing cotton into bales. The enslaved men working at the cart on the left move cotton into the press. At the right, others walk in a circle providing power to the press. In the foreground, enslaved men move the finished bales down from the press. A white overseer (center right, wearing a large-brimmed hat and with a rifle at his feet) supervises the work, his arm outstretched.
The engraving (and the text that accompanies it) employs vicious racist stereotypes that were common in both northern and southern periodicals of the time. Here, the only white figure is depicted managing the complex process. His graceful stance contrasts with the disarray of the line of enslaved laborers at the right. The text points out that the enslaved man in the center of this group is shown mocking the overseer, drawing on racist stereotypes of Black people as reckless and foolish. Innovations like the cotton gin and press, along with the economic boons realized from enslaved labor, enabled some white southerners to become incredibly wealthy. In contrast, the enslaved people who worked the cotton fields did not profit from their labor.
Huge cotton bales can be seen in the right foreground, likely headed for textile mills in the north of England. Samuel Colman, Jr., Ships Unloading, New York, 1868, oil on canvas, 105 x 76 cm (The Terra Foundation for American Art)
Cotton was the most valuable export from the United States, and it supplied the majority of the world’s cotton at this time. Few white southerners could envision a future where cotton did not rule their economy.
A slave society
Slavery was an economic system based on white supremacy where whites enslaved Black people to make use of their forced labor, often under harsh conditions. This system reduced people to commodities bought and sold for profit. An enslaved woman’s owner also owned any children she bore, so the owner’s “investment” grew along with her offspring. In a letter to a young relative, Thomas Jefferson (author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the United States) wrote of the people he enslaved, “I consider a woman who brings a child every two years as more profitable than the best man of the farm. What she produces is an addition to the capital, while his labors disappear in mere consumption.” [6] The South’s “capital” in enslaved people was its single most valuable asset—in fact, enslaved people were the most valuable asset in all of the United States, more valuable than all manufacturing and railroads combined. [7]
Although three quarters of white southerners did not own any enslaved people themselves, they overwhelmingly supported slavery. Poor white farmers perceived themselves as sharing a racial identity with the “great planters,” who owned hundreds of enslaved people and dominated politics. This outweighed any economic commonality they may have shared with enslaved or free Black people. Assured that they would never be at the bottom of the social ladder, poor whites helped to uphold slavery and often aspired to one day own enslaved people themselves. [8]
We can divide the economic history of U.S. slavery into two periods. The first period ends in 1808, when the U.S. government banned the transatlantic slave trade. The second period, from 1808 through the end of the Civil War in 1865, saw the development of a slave trade within the United States. As the need for enslaved labor expanded across the South, planters purchased enslaved people from places like Shokoe Bottom in Richmond, Virginia. They were then forced to march, often chained together in a coffle, to locations further south or west.
Lewis Miller, Slave Trader, Sold to Tennessee, page from Sketchbook of Landscapes in the State of Virginia, 1853, watercolor and ink on paper (Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation)
We have a mid-19th-century image of this common sight from Lewis Miller, a Pennsylvania carpenter who traveled widely and kept journals in the form of watercolor sketchbooks. We see twenty enslaved men, women, and children purchased in Staunton, Virginia, being taken in a coffle to Tennessee. Though barefoot, the figures appear neat and orderly, and the composition is framed by the tree on the right, and the figure on horseback on the left. The hill in the center helps to visually unify the group of enslaved men, women and children. Two armed white figures on horseback ensure that no one escapes. The artist wrote down the words he heard sung by the enslaved people, and included them in the upper right:
Arise! Arise! And weep no more
Dry up your tears, we shall part
No more, come rose we go to Tennessee,
That happy Shore, to old Virginia
Never-never-return.as quoted in Maurie D. McInnis, Slaves Waiting for Sale (2011), p. 151
Though these words may at first appear to be hopeful, they embodied a double meaning. The thinker and abolitionist Frederick Douglass noted, “Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.” We should understand the lyrics Miller recorded on the page as deeply mournful. [9]
The experiences of the enslaved
Slavery varied greatly from region to region, from city to country, from estate to estate. Although many enslaved people did live on plantations in the Deep South and worked in cotton fields, enslavement was integrated into all aspects of southern life. Universities owned slaves, and students at universities—usually the sons of wealthy slaveowners—brought enslaved personal servants with them to campus. In cities, enslaved people may have worked as maids, on the docks, as laundresses, or as carpenters. Some enslaved people were skilled artisans, like potter David Drake of Edgefield, South Carolina.
David Drake, Doubled-handled Jug (Lewis J. Miles Factory, Horse Creek Valley, Edgefield District, South Carolina), 1840, stoneware with alkaline glaze, 44.13 x 35.24 cm (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
This expertly made large double-handled jug is inscribed on one side with the artist’s own name, “Dave” (for David Drake) as well as the name of his enslaver, “L Miles” (for Lewis J. Miles).
Names and date (detail), David Drake, Doubled-handled Jug (Lewis J. Miles Factory, Horse Creek Valley, Edgefield District, South Carolina), 1840, stoneware with alkaline glaze, 44.13 x 35.24 cm (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
The opposite side of the shoulder of the vessel is inscribed with a poem,
Ladys & gentlemens Shoes
Sell all you can: & nothing you’ll loose.David Drake
Poem detail, David Drake, Doubled-handled Jug (Lewis J. Miles Factory, Horse Creek Valley, Edgefield District, South Carolina), 1840, stoneware with alkaline glaze, 44.13 x 35.24 cm (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Works by David Drake are extremely rare examples of objects produced by enslaved people that can be identified with a particular maker. Even more uncommon is the fact that this pot is inscribed with text written by the artist at a time when literacy was illegal for the enslaved in South Carolina, where this was produced.
Violence and threats were the main methods of coercion that enslavers used on enslaved people. Whippings, along with other forms of physical torture, were commonplace. Enslavers also sold Black children away from their parents or enslaved spouses away from each other when it was financially advantageous to them, or threatened to do so if an enslaved person did not meet certain demands.
For enslaved women and girls, the threat of sexual assault was constant. In addition to the near-limitless power slaveowners exercised over women’s bodies, the rape of enslaved women was incentivized as any children that women bore would become valuable property. The sexual exploitation of enslaved women was an open secret in the South. Mary Chesnut, a white enslaver in South Carolina, observed that in gossip among white women, “every lady tells you who is the father of all the [mixed-race] children in everybody [else]’s household, but those in her own she seems to think drop from the clouds, or pretends so to think.” [10] Harriet Jacobs, who published a memoir of her life in slavery, was relentlessly pursued by her enslaver and feared that his wife would kill her out of jealousy. [11]
Resistance and uprisings
It was extremely difficult for an enslaved person to fight back against the slave society of the South, where they were oppressed by laws, individuals, and even the landscape, as some plantations were so rural as to make each “a little nation of its own,” in the words of one formerly enslaved man. [12] The tie between Blackness and slavery aided whites in constantly monitoring people of color to prevent attempted rebellion or escape. But enslaved people did fight back, in ways both big and small. Everyday resistance could take the form of breaking tools, feigning sickness, or slowing the pace of work. Some enslaved people, especially skilled workers like smiths or seamstresses, negotiated with their enslavers to purchase themselves or their family members by hiring out their labor and putting a portion of their wages toward freedom.
Some enslaved people escaped to northern states, Canada, or after 1837, Mexico, where slavery was illegal. Enslaved people who lived in a border state or near a body of water (as boats provided the fastest means of transportation at the time), had the best chances of escape. Tens of thousands of enslaved people in the first half of the 19th century also escaped through the “Underground Railroad,” a network of abolitionists (both whites and free people of color) who sheltered refugees on their way to freedom. The most famous Underground Railroad “conductor” was Harriet Tubman, who escaped from slavery in Maryland in 1849 and then returned to the South more than a dozen times in the decade that followed to assist others in escaping. [13]
Enslaved people also resisted through coordinated uprisings, which occurred with regularity. Southern whites were terrified of uprisings and tried to suppress news of rebellion from reaching enslaved people, but often failed. News of the successful Haitian Revolution ending slavery in 1804 inspired several uprisings in the United States.
Woodcut depicting Nat Turner’s uprising, 1831 (University of Virginia Special Collections)
In 1831 Nat Turner led a group of enslaved people in a rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia, which resulted in the deaths of 60 white people and widespread fear and retribution (approximately double that number of Black people were killed by militias and mobs). This event prompted the General Assembly of Virginia to debate whether to abolish slavery through gradual emancipation, attempt a colonization scheme (freeing enslaved people but forcing them to emigrate to Africa), or continue with slavery as it existed. After six weeks of debate, the General Assembly decided not to pursue any steps toward emancipation, instead cracking down on gatherings of free and enslaved Black people. [14] One wonders how the rest of the century might have unfolded had Virginia abolished slavery in the 1830s.
With whites creating and distributing most imagery, uprisings were depicted as savage murders of innocents rather than defensive responses by enslaved people to ongoing violence and oppression. In the woodcut above, for example, we see two registers, clearly labeled for maximum legibility. At the top, and up close, the first figure we encounter is a Black man wielding an axe as a woman and four children plead for mercy. In the second scene, a white man falls to the ground as he is outnumbered and assaulted by two Black men who tower above him, one of whom wields a sword. In the final scene on the right, a standing white man with a sword engages in a fight with an axe, while a white woman carrying an infant wrapped in her cloak, moves to the right. Along the bottom, we see a more expansive view of white soldiers on horseback pursuing Black figures. The woodcut, intended for a white audience, tells a story that moves from violence against white women and children to a reassuring scene of the Black culprits of the rebellion (just three men are shown) being chased and punished.
Absence and presence
The visual record of slavery is severely limited, yet it tells us a great deal. We read as much from its absences as from its presences. Much of what was made has likely been lost to time, discarded by the same people who worked to preserve the houses, furnishings, and papers of wealthy enslavers. Instead we must imagine the hearts behind copper badges worn around necks, and conjecture what the hands that were forced into manacles would have made had they been able to make whatever they chose.
Notes:
[1] See Cheryl Finley, Committed to Memory, the Art of the Slave Ship Icon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019).
[2] Thomas Clarkson, Diagram of the Brookes Slave Ship, in The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament, 1787 (British Library). For the most recent Middle Passage statistics, see the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database.
[3] Finley, Committed to Memory, p. 206.
[4] Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts, Denmark Vesey’s Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy (New York: The New Press, 2018), p. 37.
[5] See the Seventh Census of the United States, 1850.
[7] See Matthew Desmond, “In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation,” The New York Times Magazine, 2019.
[8] Slaveowning data from Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty! An American History, AP 5th ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2017), pp. 394–395.
[9] Phillip D. Troutman, “A ‘Sorrowful Cavalcade’: Enslaved Migration through Appalachian Virginia,” The Smithfield Review, no. 1 (2001): pp. 23–45.
[10] See C. Vann Woodward, ed. Mary Chesnut’s Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), p. 29.
[11] Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of Slave Girl (Boston: Thayer & Eldridge, 1861).
[12] Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (Auburn: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1855), p. 64.
[13] See Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2004).
Cheryl Finley, Committed to Memory, the Art of the Slave Ship Icon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019).
Aston Gonzalez, Visualizing Equality: African American Rights and Visual Culture in the Nineteenth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020).
Images were used on both sides of the argument: should slavery continue?
by Dr. Kimberly Kutz Elliott
Frederick Douglass, c. 1850, photograph, 6.6 x 5.3 cm (National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution)
It is evident that the great cheapness and universality of pictures must exert a powerful, though silent, influence upon the ideas and sentiment of present and future generations.Frederick Douglass, Lecture on Pictures, Boston (December 3, 1861) [1]
Images played a central role in the debates over slavery and Black citizenship that consumed the United States in the years leading up to the Civil War. For example, Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist, writer, publisher, and thinker, who escaped from slavery as a young man, was an ardent admirer of Louis Daguerre, the inventor of the daguerreotype, an early form of photography. Douglass celebrated photography as a democratic art, and he saw portraits as a tool in the battle for abolition and citizenship, at a time when popular, widely circulated images depicted racist stereotypes of Black people. During his travels, he sought out photographic studios, and sat for numerous photographs over decades, always consciously attired in the clothes of a gentleman. This was part of his effort to represent himself, especially his self-possession, dignity, and character—his full humanity, and therefore by extension, the humanity and rights of all Black people to freedom and citizenship. Through this project, Douglass became the most photographed man of the 19th century. [2]
Art is always a register of the historical era in which it was made. It expresses, consciously or not, the concerns, prejudices, and assumptions of its cultural moment. In an era when cultural assumptions were at loggerheads, images can reveal, sometimes in stark relief, the clash of ideas and ideologies.
For example, when we consider images of slavery, we are usually looking at either images that sought to rally sympathy for enslaved people and motivate political advocacy for change, or we are looking at imagery that softened the brutal reality of slavery to make it appear as a beneficial institution for all. Much as we would like an objective window into the past, there are no neutral images that can tell us about the realities of life as an enslaved person. All images, including drawings and even photographs, require contextualization.
We have to ask, who took the photograph or picked up the paint brush? What was their motive? What can the image itself tell us about the point of view of its creator? Where was the image circulated? Who was its intended audience? What is the relationship of the image to other images of the same subject?
Two photographs
Let’s begin with two photographs of Black men taken in the 1850s, not long after photography’s invention. Photography was celebrated for its astonishing ability to accurately portray the world, but in the images here we see the ways that photography could be used to further both pro- and anti-slavery positions.
Left: Frederick Douglass, c. 1855, daguerreotype, 8.3 x 7 cm (Metropolitan Museum of Art); right: Joseph T. Zealy, daguerreotype of Renty Taylor, 1850 (Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University; photo: Unibond)
On the left is another portrait of Douglass wearing an impeccable suit, as he turns to present a three-quarter profile and looks directly at the viewer with a confident, even challenging expression. The other, an older man, is stripped to the waist, his sinews and scars suggest a long life of labor. He too is looking directly at the viewer, but his expression is harder to read: resigned, defiant, entreating?
Despite the similarities in media, subject, and era, the circumstances and purpose of these photographs could not be more different. On the right is Renty Taylor, an enslaved man who was born in central Africa in the late 18th century. He posed for the photograph not of his own volition but at the direction of Harvard biologist Louis Agassiz.
Agassiz was a Harvard professor and regent of the Smithsonian Institution and helped to found the National Academy of Science. He was a naturalist, but also an opponent of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Agassiz turned to photography to support the racist pseudo-scientific theory of polygenesis, which posited that the races had separate origins, and therefore racial difference—both white supremacy and Black inferiority—were immutable scientific facts. [3]
Joseph T. Zealy, daguerreotype of Delia Taylor (cropped), 1850 (Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University; photo: Hannolans)
Agassiz commissioned daguerreotypes of enslaved men and women and their adult children living in South Carolina, believing that the photographs would demonstrate Black people had innate physical differences. Delia, who was Renty Taylor’s daughter, was also forced to pose, stripped to the waist, for a daguerreotype taken by Joseph T. Zealy. As an enslaved Black woman, Delia was not afforded the protection of modesty that white women of her era could command. Agassiz also had Renty Taylor and numerous other Black men and women photographed nude.
Agassiz used his interpretation of their physical features to argue (incorrectly) that Black people had been created separately from whites. As Douglass used photography as a tool to humanize Black people born into slavery, Agassiz used the camera as a weapon to dehumanize his subjects, reducing human beings to specimens.
In the end, Agassiz’s photographs are not evidence of the inferiority of one race in comparison to another, but of the brutality of white supremacy and slavery, and the physical harm and humiliation it caused. The photographs of Delia and Renty document people exposed against their will, but also represent the many millions whose identities have been lost to history, who were bought and sold and who labored so that their white owners might prosper.
Promoting abolition
In the North, free Black people, including Douglass, formed a vital part of the abolitionist movement. Along with white abolitionists, they were active in raising money and helping enslaved people escape to free territory. They published narratives of their experiences in slavery and freedom, printed abolitionist newspapers, and lectured to audiences in the Canada, United States, and Europe.
Eyre Crowe, After the Sale: Slaves Going South from Richmond, 1853, oil on canvas, 27 x 36 inches (Chicago History Museum)
Many of the images produced to support abolition, however, were created by white artists. Take, for example, the 1853 painting by the British artist Eyre Crowe entitled After the Sale: Slaves Going South from Richmond, which was exhibited in London in 1854. Crowe was inspired to learn more about slavery in the United States after reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin (the best-selling antislavery novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe). Crowe made several paintings of this subject, all based on sketches made from life at Shockoe Bottom, in Richmond, Virginia. It was at Shockoe Bottom where enslavers bought and sold men, women, and children, forcibly separated families, and procured slave labor for whites across the American South. Crowe was clearly sympathetic to the abolitionist cause, and intended to use the painting (and others he made on the subject) to expose the brutality of slavery. He also wanted his paintings to be well received when exhibited.
Crowe’s painting is full of specific details that seek to convince the viewer of the authenticity of what we’re seeing. We see the Richmond skyline in the distance. Just beside the top of the train car we can see the state capitol building designed by Thomas Jefferson in the style of an ancient Greek temple—a reference to the origins of democracy and ideals of justice and equality. Below can be seen a rocky creek in the foreground, a railway car clearly labeled with its destination, a dog nipping at a girl, and sacks of clothing on the ground. At the far left, enslaved people are marched in—likely from a jail where they were kept after being sold, and are headed toward the railway car. On the far right, we see two disreputable white figures engaged in a transaction that we assume has something to do with the enslaved figures. Above them, a Black man (perhaps enslaved to the railroad), holds a chain and an open lock in front of the doorway leading into the train car. An American flag flutters behind and above him.
Eyre Crowe, After the Sale: Slaves Going South from Richmond (detail), 1853, oil on canvas, 27 x 36 inches (Chicago History Museum)
The most important action though, takes place in the center, where we see a young woman in a wagon handing a child (hers, we assume), to a man. We presume this family is being torn apart because the woman has been sold. Another woman in a white cap located behind and between the mother and child seems to gasp and hold her hand to her mouth. In the center foreground a dog nips at the skirt of a woman holding a baby, recalling how those who escaped from slavery were often pursued by bloodhounds. Taken together with the state capitol building in the distance, we can see that Crowe has carefully crafted his painting to underscore the great distance between the ideal of democracy and the abomination of American slavery.
Left: Domenico Ghirlandaio, Birth of St. John the Baptist (detail), 1486–90, fresco, Santa Maria Novella, Florence; Right: Eyre Crowe, After the Sale: Slaves Going South from Richmond (detail), 1853, oil on canvas, 27 x 36 inches (Chicago History Museum)
Crowe described the “sense of horror” he felt when he visited the slave market, and yet, as cultural historian Maurie D. McInnis has pointed out, this image, and others Crowe made of slavery, hardly seem that brutal at all. [4] The figures exchange meaningful glances (for example, the upright figure in the carriage and the man holding chains), but their expressions do not match the emotional turmoil of the scene.
The artist used a number of pictorial strategies to make the work palatable for viewers, including drawing on the history of art. [5] Take for instance the woman in the orange dress striding forward who looks out (perhaps to implicate us?) carrying a basket on her head. Her graceful stance and the way her dress moves even as it clings to her body looks back to Italian Renaissance art.
Defending slavery
At a time of dire poverty for many workers (both Black and white), slavery’s defenders argued (untruthfully) that slavery was a superior system, where owners cared for enslaved people from birth until death, whereas factory owners abandoned white laborers the moment they could no longer work. An 1841 lithograph by Edward Williams Clay (a northern artist who created many prints advocating for white supremacy) contrasted the “happy” slaves of the American South with the abused wage laborers of English factories. Clay’s print includes stereotypical images that would have been familiar to popular audiences.
This cartoon contrasts the “happy, well cared-for” enslaved Black people of the American South with the “wage slaves” of England’s factories. Edward Williams Clay, America (Black and White Slaves), c. 1841, lithograph published by A. Donnelly, 31.43 x 48.26 cm (Smithsonian National Museum of American History)
On the left, Clay offers the slave quarters on a plantation with dancing Black figures. In the foreground, the enslaved of all ages appear content and well cared for by a young, fashionably dressed white family. The captions are even less subtle. Here, the enslaved are given the degrading words, “God bless you massa! You feed and clothe us.” The white man calls the Black family “poor creatures” and vows to “spare nothing to increase their comfort and happiness.” The image underscores the paternalistic premise that white owners generously provided for the enslaved (the way a father cares for his children).
In opposition, the image on the right depicts figures distinguished by economic and social class rather than race. A white mother lays dying as her family mourns and a wealthy landowner evicts them from their home. In the distance, a factory emits smoke from its chimney. While the two images purport to contrast a harmonious view of southern plantation life with destructive industrialization in Britain, many viewers would have understood that it also referenced the abuses of the more industrialized economy of the northern United States. Clay’s lesson is clear: the southern way of life (the enslavement of Black people) is moral and just and superior to the barbarous inhumanity of industrialization.
Images at the forefront
Images were at the forefront of arguments for and against slavery in the 19th century and helped to inform contemporary opinions about slavery and the status of Black people in the United States. The new medium of photography was an especially potent weapon in this debate—employed both by abolitionists to counter racist stereotypes of Black people and by white supremacists in support of slavery. But photography’s “truth” was no more objective than the scenes conjured in paintings and prints: all such images were ammunition in a larger battle over the future of the nation.
Notes:
[1] Opening Douglass quote from his “Lecture on Pictures” (also called “Pictures and Progress”) in Boston’s Tremont Temple, 1861. See also John Stauffer, Zoe Trodd, and Celeste-Marie Bernier, Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most Photographed American (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2015).
[2] See John Stauffer, Zoe Trodd, and Celeste-Marie Bernier, Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most Photographed American (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015).
[5] For a full discussion, see Maurie D. McInnis, Slaves Waiting for Sale, Abolitionist Art and the American Slave Trade (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), chapter 6.
Additional resources
Ilisa Barbash, Molly Rogers, and Deborah Willis, eds., To Make Their Own Way in the World: The Enduring Legacy of the Zealy Daguerreotypes (New Haven and Reading, Pennsylvania: Peabody Museum Press and Aperture Press, 2020).
Maurice O. Wallace and Shawn Michelle Smith, eds., Pictures and Progress: Early Photography and the Making of African American Identity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012).
John Stauffer et. al., Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most Photographed American (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2015).
Literacy and slavery: David Drake, Double-handled jug
by Dr. Susan J. Rawles and Dr. Steven Zucker
David Drake (Lewis J. Miles Factory, Horse Creek Valley, Edgefield District, South Carolina), 1840, stoneware with alkaline glaze, 44.13 x 35.24 cm (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts).
Jill B. Koverman, I Made This Jar: The Life and Works of the Enslaved African-American Potter, Dave (McKissick Museum, University of South Carolina, 1998).
Leonard Todd, Carolina Clay: The Life and Legend of the Slave Potter Dave (W.W. Norton & Company, 2008).
Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, the Dakotas, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah, Wisconsin, Wyoming—all state names derived from Native American sources. Pontiac, moose, raccoon, pecan, kayak, squash, chipmunk, Winnebago. These common words also derive from different Native words and demonstrate the influence these groups have had on the United States. Pontiac, for instance, was an 18th century Ottawa chief (also called Obwandiyag), who fought against the British in the Great Lakes region. The word “moose,” first used in English in the early seventeenth century during colonization, comes from Algonquian languages.
Stereotypes
“Balboa and the Indian Princess,” 1906, in Frederick A., Ober, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa (New York, Harper, 1906), p. 68
Stereotypes persist when discussing Native American arts and cultures, and sadly many people remain unaware of the complicated and fascinating histories of Native peoples and their art. Too many people still imagine a warrior or chief on horseback wearing a feathered headdress, or a beautiful young “princess” in an animal hide dress (what we now call the Indian Princess). Popular culture and movies perpetuate these images, and homogenize the incredible diversity of Native groups across North America. There are too many different languages, cultural traditions, cosmologies, and ritual practices to adequately make broad statements about the cultures and arts of the indigenous peoples of what is now the United States and Canada.
In the past, the term “primitive” has been used to describe the art of Native tribes and First Nations. This term is deeply problematic—and reveals the distorted lens of colonialism through which these groups have been seen and misunderstood. After contact, Europeans and Euro-Americans often conceived of the Amerindian peoples of North America as noble savages (a primitive, uncivilized, and romanticized “Other”). This legacy has affected the reception and appreciation of Native arts, which is why much of it was initially collected by anthropological (rather than art) museums. Many people viewed Native objects as curiosities or as specimens of “dying” cultures—which in part explains why many objects were stolen or otherwise acquired without approval of Native peoples. Many sacred objects, for example, were removed and put on display for non-Native audiences. While much has changed, this legacy lives on, and it is important to be aware of and overcome the many stereotypes and biases that persist from prior centuries.
Repatriation
One significant step that has been taken to correct some of this colonial legacy has been NAGPRA, or the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1992. This is a U.S. federal law that dictates that “human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony, referred to collectively in the statute as cultural items” be returned to tribes if they can demonstrate “lineal descent or cultural affiliation.” Many museums in the U.S. have been actively trying to repatriate items and human remains. For example, in 2011, a museum returned a wooden box drum, a hide robe, wooden masks, a headdress, a rattle, and a pipe to the Tlingít T’akdeintaan Clan of Hoonah, Alaska. These objects were purchased in 1924 for $500.
In the 19th century, many groups were violently forced from their ancestral homelands onto reservations. This is an important factor to remember when reading the essays and watching the videos in this section because the art changes—sometimes very dramatically—in response to these upheavals. You might read elsewhere that objects created after these transformations are somehow less authentic because of the influence of European or Euro-American materials and subjects on Native art. However, it is crucial that we do not view those artworks as somehow less culturally valuable simply because Native men and women responded to new and sometimes radically changed circumstances.
Many twentieth and twenty-first century artists, including Oscar Howe (Yanktonai Sioux), Alex Janvier (Chipewyan [Dene]) and Robert Davidson (Haida), don’t consider themselves to work outside of so-called “traditional arts.” In 1958, Howe even wrote a famous letter commenting on his methods when his work was denounced by Philbrook Indian Art Annual Jurors as not being “authentic” Native art:
Who ever said that my paintings are not in the traditional Indian style has poor knowledge of Indian art indeed. There is much more to Indian Art than pretty, stylized pictures. There was also power and strength and individualism (emotional and intellectual insight) in the old Indian paintings. Every bit in my paintings is a true, studied fact of Indian paintings. Are we to be held back forever with one phase of Indian painting, with no right for individualism, dictated to as the Indian has always been, put on reservations and treated like a child, and only the White Man knows what is best for him? Now, even in Art, ‘You little child do what we think is best for you, nothing different.” Well, I am not going to stand for it. Indian Art can compete with any Art in the world, but not as a suppressed Art….[1]
More terms and issues
The word Indian is considered offensive to many peoples. The term derives from the Indies, and was coined after Christopher Columbus bumped into the Caribbean islands in 1492, believing, mistakenly, that he had found India. Other terms are equally problematic or generic. You might encounter many different terms to describe the peoples in North America, such as Native American, American Indian, Amerindian, Aboriginal, Native, Indigenous, First Nations, and First Peoples.
Native American is used here because people are most familiar with this term, yet we must be aware of the problems it raises. The term applies to peoples throughout the Americas, and the Native peoples of North America, from Panama to Alaska and northern Canada, are incredibly diverse. It is therefore important to represent individual cultures as much as we possibly can. The essays here use specific tribal and First Nations names so as not to homogenize or lump peoples together. On Smarthistory, the artworks listed under Native American Art are only those from the United States and Canada, while those in Mexico and Central America are located in other sections.
You might also encounter words like tribes, clans, or bands in relation to the social groups of different Native communities. The United States government refers to an Indigenous group as a “tribe,” while the Canadian government uses the term “ban.” Many communities in Canada prefer the term “nation.”
Identity
In order to be legally classified as an indigenous person in the United States and Canada, an individual must be officially listed as belonging to a specific tribe or band. This issue of identity is obviously a sensitive one, and serves as a reminder of the continuing impact of colonial policy. Many contemporary artists, including James Luna (Pooyukitchum/Luiseño) and Jaune Quick-to-See-Smith (from the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Indian Nation), address the problem of who gets to decide who or what an Indian is in their work.
Luna’s Artifact Piece (1987) and Take a Picture with a Real Indian (1993) both confront issues of identity and stereotypes of Native peoples. In Artifact Piece, Luna placed himself into a glass vitrine (like the ones we often see in museums) as if he were a static artifact, a relic of the past, accompanied by personal items like pictures of his family. In Take a Picture with a Real Indian, Luna asks his audience to come take a picture with him. He changes clothes three times. He wears a loincloth, then a loincloth with a feather and a bone breastplate, and then what we might call “street clothes.” Most people choose to take a picture with him in the former two, and so Luna draws attention to the problematic idea that somehow he is less authentically Native when dressed in jeans and a t-shirt.
Even the naming conventions applied to peoples need to be revisited. In the past, the Navajo term “Anasazi” was used to name the ancestors of modern-day Puebloans. Today, “Ancestral Puebloans” is considered more acceptable. Likewise, “Eskimo” designated peoples in the Arctic region, but this word has fallen out of favor because it homogenizes the First Nations in this area. In general, it is always preferable to use a tribe or Nation’s specific name when possible, and to do so in its own language.
by Linda Sioui, M.A. Anthropologist and Dr. Annette de Stecher
Left: Marguerite Vincent Lawinonkié, Lord Elgin’s tray, 1847–54, birch bark, moose hair, porcupine quill, cotton thread, 2.3 x 38.7 x 24.7 cm (Elgin collection, Canadian Museum of History, Gatineau; photo: Stéphane Laurin); right: Marguerite Vincent Lawinonkié, Lady Elgin’s tray, 1847–54, birch bark, moose hair, porcupine quill, cotton thread, 5.2 x 31 x 39 cm (Elgin collection, Canadian Museum of History, Gatineau; photo: Stéphane Laurin)
From the 18th century and earlier, First Nation Wendat women of Wendake, Québec have been experts in the challenging techniques of moosehair and porcupine quill embroidery. They transform materials harvested from the land into exquisite embroidered works of art in brilliant colors and complex motifs on hide and birchbark. Beautifully worked items such as trays and moccasins can be seen in museums across the United States, Canada, and Europe.
Ludger Ruelland, Madame Paul Picard, née Marguerite Vincent, c. 1865, pencil on paper, 67.6 x 50.1 cm (Musée de la Civilisation, Québec City)
The Elgin Trays served Wendat diplomacy as adapted to the Victorian era. French fur traders and settlers were the first Europeans to arrive in the region that is today known as Québec. Following the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in Québec City on September 13, 1759, the region became a British colony. Lord Elgin was Governor General of Canada, the head of the British settler administration, from 1847 to 1854. During this period, he and Lady Elgin, his wife, each received a tray from the Wendat Nation. The trays, designed to honor the recipients, are primarily made of birch bark. Complex moosehair and porcupine quill-embroidered arrangements executed in vivid detail depict leaves and floral motifs that frame Lord and Lady Elgin’s initials and their family heraldry.
Though the trays are attributed to Wendat artist Marguerite Vincent “Lawinonkié,” there were many noted embroidery artists in Wendake, and she may have commissioned another woman to make the trays. Marguerite Vincent “Lawinonkié,” the half-sister of Grand Chief Nicolas Vincent “Tsawenhohi,” was from a family of hereditary chiefs, and she was the wife of Paul Picard “Hudawathont,” a prominent business leader from Wendake. She was born at the Bay of Quinte on the north shore of Lake Ontario in 1783. An outstanding artist and craftswoman, she mastered and taught moosehair and quill embroidery to other Wendat women and excelled at embroidery work on clothing and objects for sale.
The Wendat First Nation
Moosehair and porcupine quill embroidery have origins in the long history of the Wendat Nation, which consisted of a confederacy of several nearby nations. Their ancestral homeland was located in the area south of Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay in what is today Ontario, Canada, as well as along the shores of the Saint Lawrence River. The Wendat grew corn, squash, and beans (the “Three Sisters”), as well as tobacco. In addition to hunting on their own, they also traded their agricultural produce for game, hide, and furs with allied Indigenous nations to the north. Today the Wendat Nation is known as the “Huron-Wendat Nation.” In the early 17th century, French explorer Samuel de Champlain named these semi-sedentary and agricultural people “Huron” from the French hure for a boar’s head, alluding to the hairstyle of Wendat men.
From the 1630s to 1650, following the arrival of French settlers, the Wendat Confederacy faced a number of challenges: there were diverging interests with the arrival of Christianity; there were conflicts and wars with the Haudenosaunee; and the unfathomable tragedy of two-thirds of the Wendat population dying from smallpox within a decade. As a result, the Wendat Confederacy split up into several groups. Some were adopted by the Haudenosaunee and other neighboring First Nations. Others made their way westward to the Petun (or Tionontati), a cousin nation, to later form the Wyandotte people. Meanwhile, Wendat converts to Christianity arrived in the Québec City area, finally settling in 1697 on the site currently known as Wendake. [1] According to Wendat oral tradition, the Wendat people originated from the region of the Saint Lawrence River valley before they lived on the Georgian Bay, and thus this relocation was seen as a return. [2] This Wendat community—those who converted to Christianity and were living in the Québec City area—produced the magnificent moosehair and quill embroidery so admired by European newcomers.
Marguerite Vincent Lawinonkié, Lord Elgin’s tray, 1847–54, birch bark, moose hair, porcupine quill, cotton thread, 2.3 x 38.7 x 24.7 cm (Elgin collection, Canadian Museum of History, Gatineau)
Upon settling in the Québec City region in 1650, the Wendat resumed their farming traditions. [3] However, by the early 18th century, they had begun shifting from their agricultural practices to hunting, fishing, and harvesting medicinal plants. From the 1700s, the Wendat continued their own cultural traditions and hunters traveled great distances over their territories. The community also adapted elements of French visual culture while using traditional Native materials, such as quill, moosehair, brain-tanned hide, and vegetable dyes. Wendat artists continued their ancient embroidery traditions and integrated European embroidery stitches into their repertoire, drawing on European church textiles and techniques used by theUrsuline convent nuns in Québec. The Elgin Trays are an extension of this practice.
At the start of the 19th century, European settlers and colonial authorities began appropriating Wendat lands. Wendat women realized their nation’s livelihood was threatened. They had already developed a European market for their embroidered arts in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and they expanded this market and their traditional arts in the 19th century. By drawing on their traditional forms, they created highly successful commercial wares and souvenir arts and brought new sources of income to their community. Located on the Saint Lawrence River, a major route to the Great Lakes, Québec City was one of the main port cities in North America and provided a steady community of European buyers. Located eight miles from Québec City, the village of Lorette, later known as Village des Hurons, and today known as Wendake, became a popular tourist spot for the many visitors who flocked to Québec City. The Wendat people responded by producing moccasins, mittens, snowshoes, ash baskets, and souvenirs, which they sold to visitors.
Wendat artists produced more and more elaborate work using leather, red or black fabric, and birch bark. They embroidered complex stylized and naturalistic floral motifs on men’s and women’s clothing for ceremonial use in their community and as souvenirs. Towards the second half of the 19th century, thanks to the spirit of initiative and entrepreneurship of Marguerite Vincent “Lawinonkié,” the production of tourist art increased, ensuring Wendat families a livelihood. She was instrumental in providing Wendat families with arts and crafts work at a time when Wendat people were struggling to survive due to settler encroachment on their lands and later, colonial government regulations prohibiting access to their traditional hunting territories.
Marguerite Vincent Lawinonkié, Lady Elgin’s tray, 1847–54, birch bark, moose hair, porcupine quill, cotton thread, 5.2 x 31 x 39 cm (Elgin collection, Canadian Museum of History, Gatineau; photo: Stéphane Laurin)
The Elgin Trays and Wendat diplomatic traditions
The trays memorialized the formal visits made by Wendat delegations to Lord Elgin, Lord and Lady Elgin’s visit to Lorette, and the harmonious relations between Lord and Lady Elgin and the Wendat Nation. In addition, they acted as personal souvenirs to Lord and Lady Elgin, reflecting all aspects of Wendat ceremonial arts tradition.
In Wendat diplomatic protocols presentation gifts affirmed alliances with other Indigenous nations. The Elgin Trays continued this tradition in an innovative adaptation of Wendat diplomatic artwork, designed to meet the changing circumstances caused by European settlement. The trays’ use of the heraldic thistle (which is found in the coat of arms of James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin), is unusual in the tradition of Wendat moosehair-embroidered bark work. The iconography of the trays, the heraldry, and the association of motifs combining Wendat traditional beliefs with motifs symbolizing European nations place these trays within the sphere of Wendat diplomacy.
Initials (detail), Marguerite Vincent Lawinonkié, Lady Elgin’s tray, 1847–54, birch bark, moose hair, porcupine quill, cotton thread, 5.2 x 31 x 39 cm (Elgin collection, Canadian Museum of History, Gatineau)
Border with maple leaves (detail), Marguerite Vincent Lawinonkié, Lady Elgin’s tray, 1847–54, birch bark, moose hair, porcupine quill, cotton thread, 5.2 x 31 x 39 cm (Elgin collection, Canadian Museum of History, Gatineau)
Lady Elgin’s tray
In Lady Elgin’s tray, the initials of her title appear in the center of the tray below a coronet. These initials may stand for Mary Lambton Elgin, Lambton being Lady Elgin’s family name before she married. A precisely placed border of maple leaves floats down each side panel, the leaves represent the colors of the seasons: pale green, dark green, and autumnal shades.
In the center of the tray, a border of small green leaves provides edging around a garland formed by groupings of blue morning glory, three strawberries (each at different stages of ripeness), a spray of white strawberry flowers, and what may be a rose. [4] The blossoms, stems, and leaves are balanced in a play of light and dark colors, with heavy and light forms that create rhythm through regular repetition, suggesting gentle, constant movement. Strawberries and strawberry flowers are an important sacred symbol of Wendat spiritual traditions and cosmology. Elements from Lord and Lady Elgin’s coat of arms, brought together with the strawberries, demonstrates the esteem and respect of the Wendat Nation toward the recipients, as well as an alignment of both cultures in this gift.
Marguerite Vincent Lawinonkié, Lord Elgin’s tray, 1847–54, birch bark, moose hair, porcupine quill, cotton thread, 2.3 x 38.7 x 24.7 cm (Elgin collection, Canadian Museum of History, Gatineau; photo: Stéphane Laurin)
Lord Elgin’s tray
Thistle and white flowers (detail), Marguerite Vincent Lawinonkié, Lord Elgin’s tray, 1847–54, birch bark, moose hair, porcupine quill, cotton thread, 2.3 x 38.7 x 24.7 cm (Elgin collection, Canadian Museum of History, Gatineau)
In Lord Elgin’s tray, each side has a border of small green leaves. In the center of the tray, the initials of his title, E & K, Earl of Elgin and Kincardine, are embroidered under an earl’s coronet. The initials are surrounded by a garland of lavender thistles and white and pink flowers, stitched with fine detail in an exquisite example of naturalistic floral style. The interconnected elements form harmonious color arrangements with a strong sense of life and movement. The thistle is the emblem of Scotland and of the Scottish Order of the Thistle. Lord Elgin, a Scotsman, was a member of this order of chivalry; by including the thistle motif the Wendat artist recognized and honored both Lord Elgin and his nation.
The coronets and initials demonstrate Wendat familiarity with European heraldry, and the association of thistle and strawberry suggests they were also familiar with the symbolic meanings Europeans associated with flowers. [5] Lord and Lady Elgin would have recognized the thistle motif and the coronets’ heraldic notation, and, as Wendat presentation speeches that accompanied gift giving often explained the symbolic meanings of gifts, they may also have had some understanding of the significations of the strawberry flowers, symbolizing understanding between two national identities. [6]
Marguerite Vincent Lawinonkié, Lady Elgin’s tray, 1847–54, birch bark, moose hair, porcupine quill, cotton thread, 5.2 x 31 x 39 cm (Elgin collection, Canadian Museum of History, Gatineau)
Diplomatic guests: Lord and Lady Elgin visit Chief Francois-Xavier Picard “Tahourenché”
The trays, which were received by Lord and Lady Elgin between 1847 and 1854, were an important diplomatic gift at a pivotal time in relations between the British colonial government and Indigenous communities. Between 1837 and 1854 a major shift took place in colonial policy toward Indigenous peoples in Canada, the consequences of which are felt today. Colonial legislation attempted to move Indigenous peoples from a nation-to-nation relationship and a position as military allies essential to the stability of the British colony in North America, to a position as subjects. The British colonial government was focused on policies of assimilation and moving toward industrial schools, the forerunners of residential boarding schools. In this same period, late 18th-century educational strategies and early 19th-century land rights strategies initiated by Wendat chiefs moved forward, as community members worked to further Wendat interests and boundaries of geography and culture. Wendat and British interests were in opposition. The Elgin Trays, as diplomatic gifts, followed Wendat traditions to maintain good relations with allied nations.
Global trade and an 18th-century Anishinaabe outfit
by Dr. David W. Penney, National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution and Dr. Steven Zucker
Anishinaabe outfit, c. 1790, collected by Lieutenant Andrew Foster, Fort Michilimackinac (British), Michigan, Birchbark, cotton, linen, wool, feathers, silk, silver brooches, porcupine quills, horsehair, hide, sinew; the moccasins were like made by the Huron–Wendat people (National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution), a Seeing America video
Speakers: Dr. David Penney, Associate Director for Museum Scholarship, Exhibitions, and Public Engagement, National Museum of the American Indian and Dr. Steven Zucker
Dr. David W. Penney, National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution and Dr. Steven Zucker, “Global trade and an 18th-century Anishinaabe outfit,” in Smarthistory, January 13, 2018, accessed July 16, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/anishinaabe-outfit/.
Bandolier Bags
by Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank
Bandolier bag (detail at right), 1880s, Winnebago (?), wool and cotton trade cloth, wool yarn, glass, metal, 34 1/2 x 12″ / 87.6 x 30.5 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
When looking at photographs of what we today call a “bandolier bag” (in the Ojibwe language they are called Aazhooningwa’on, or “worn across the shoulder”), it is nearly impossible to see the thousands of tiny beads strung together that decorate the bag’s surface. This is an object that invites close looking to fully appreciate the process by which colorful beads animate the bag, making a dazzling object and showcasing remarkable technical skill.
What is a bandolier bag?
Bandolier bag, Lenape (Delaware tribe, Oklahoma), c. 1850, hide, cotton cloth, silk ribbon, glass beads, wool yarn, metal cones, 68 x 47 cm (National Museum of the American Indian, New York)
Bandolier bags are based on bags carried by European soldiers armed with rifles, who used the bags to store ammunition cartridges. While bandolier bags were made by different tribes and First Nations across the Great Lakes and Prairie regions, they differ in appearance. The stylistic differences are the result of personal preference as much contact with Europeans and Euro-Americans, goods acquired in trade, and travel.
The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in New York City has a wonderful example of a bandolier bag, most likely made by a Lenape artist (the Lenape are part of the Delaware tribe or First Nation), who lived along the Delaware River and parts of what is today New York State).
Bandolier bags are often large in size and decorated with a wide array of colorful beads and ribbons. They are worn as a cross-body bag, with a thick strap crossing a person’s chest to allow it to rest on the hip.
These bags were especially popular in the late nineteenth-century in the Eastern or Woodlands region, which comprised parts of what is today Canada and the United States. The Woodlands area encompasses the Great Lakes Region and terrain east of the Mississippi River. This enormous geographic area has a long, complex history including the production of objects we today recognize as “art” that date back more than 4,000 years.
The Eastern Woodlands (on the map above “Northeast” and “Southeast”) extended roughly from the Atlantic Ocean to the eastern Great Plains, and from the Great Lakes region to the Gulf of Mexico
Bandolier bags were created across this vast expanse of land, and the NMAI has examples from the Upper Great Lakes region and Oklahoma. Due to events and laws like the Indian Removal Act of 1830 (signed by President Andrew Jackson), the Lenape were forcibly removed from these ancestral lands and relocated to areas of Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Ontario, Canada. Despite these traumatic relocations, tribes like the Lenape continued to create objects as they had in ancestral lands. Bandolier bags are one example of this continued artistic production.
Material and design
Chief Cloud Wearing a bandolier bag (Wisconsin Historical Society)
While men most commonly wore these bags, women created them. Initially, bandolier bags did not have a pocket, but were intended to complement men’s ceremonial outfits. Men even wore more than one bag on occasion, dressing themselves in a rainbow of colors and patterns. Even those bags with pockets weren’t necessarily always used to hold objects.
Women typically produced bandolier bags using trade cloth, made from cotton or wool. It is often possible to see the exposed unembroidered trade cloth underneath the cross-body strap. The NMAI bag uses animal hide in addition to the cotton cloth, combining materials that had long been used among these groups (animal hides) with new materials (cotton trade cloth).
Beads and other materials were embroidered on the trade cloth and hide. The tiny glass beads, called seed beads, were acquired from European traders, and they were prized for their brilliant colors. Glass beads replaced porcupine quillwork, which had a longstanding history in this area. Before the use of glass beads, porcupine quills were acquired (carefully!), softened and dyed. Once they were malleable enough to bend, the quills were woven onto the surfaces of objects (especially clothing or other cloth goods like bags). Quillwork required different working techniques than embroidering with beads, so people adopted new methods for decorating the surfaces of bags, clothing, and other goods.
Silk ribbons (detail), bandolier bag, Lenape (Delaware tribe, Oklahoma), c. 1850, hide, cotton cloth, silk ribbon, glass beads, wool yarn, metal cones, 68 x 47 cm (National Museum of the American Indian, New York)
In addition to glass beads, the NMAI bag is decorated with silk ribbons—also procured via trade with Europeans. Much like the glass beads, silk ribbons offered a new material with a greater variety of color choices. Looking at the NMAI bag, we can see that the artists attached strips of yellow, blue, red, and green ribbons, like tassels, to the ends of the straps, as well as longer orange ribbons that fall below the bottom of the bag. Before the introduction of ribbons, women would paint the surface of hides in addition to decorating the bags with quillwork. Ribbons afforded women the opportunity to produce more textural variation, and to expand the surface of the bags in new ways. Imagine wearing this bag: the bright colors would attract attention and the sparkle of the beads would reflect sunlight as the ribbons fluttered in the wind or moved as one walked.
Further animating the surface of the NMAI bandolier bag is a red wool fringe, capped with metal cones that attach to the bag’s rectangular pouch. Like the ribbons and beads, the fringe and metal offered more colors and textures to the bag’s surface.
Fringe (detail), bandolier bag, Lenape (Delaware tribe, Oklahoma), c. 1850, hide, cotton cloth, silk ribbon, glass beads, wool yarn, metal cones, 68 x 47 cm (National Museum of the American Indian, New York)
The designs on the bag are abstracted and symmetrical. White beads act as contour lines to help make the designs more visible to the naked eye. On the cross-body strap, we see a design that branches in four directions. Yet notice how the artist has actually made each side slightly different. The left portion of the strap displays a light blue background, and the repeating form is more rounded, with softer edges. On the right side of the strap, the blue is darker, the framing pink and green is varied, and the repeating form displays more straight lines. The small size of seed beads allowed for more curvilinear designs than quillwork.
Strap (detail), bandolier bag, Lenape (Delaware tribe, Oklahoma), c. 1850, hide, cotton cloth, silk ribbon, glass beads, wool yarn, metal cones, 68 x 47 cm (National Museum of the American Indian, New York)
It is possible that the contrasting colors represent the Celestial/Sky and Underworld realms. The abstracted designs on the sash may also be read in relation to the cosmos because they branch into four directions, which might relate to the four cardinal directions (north, south, east, and west) and the division of the terrestrial (earthly) realm into four quadrants.
Prairie Style
The NMAI bandolier bag relates to a broader array of objects that demonstrate the so-called “Prairie Style.” The artist of the NMAI bandolier bag borrowed from older Delaware traditions, as well as those of other Native peoples after they were forcibly relocated. Another bandolier bag in the NMAI collection by an Anishinaabe artist demonstrates the Prairie Style clearly in the upper section where a floral motif floats against a dark ground.
Bandolier bag, Anishinaabe (Chippewa/Ojibwe), c. 1870, Upper Great Lakes, wool, cotton cloth, and glass beads. 87 x 26 cm (National Museum of the American Indian, New York)
Sac and Fox man’s breechcloth, c. 1880, Oklahoma, wool cloth, cotton, glass bead/beads, cotton thread, 135 x 45 cm (National Museum of the American Indian, New York)
The Prairie Style used colorful glass beads fashioned in floral patterns. The patterns could be either naturalistic flowers or abstract floral designs. A Sac and Fox breechcloth in the NMAI collection is a clear example of the more abstract Prairie Style because the floral designs do not closely resemble flowers that you might see in nature. The Sacs or Sauks are an Eastern Woodlands group and the Fox tribe is closely related to them. They are both centered in Oklahoma today, though there are Sac and Fox tribes in Iowa and Kansas as well.
The Prairie Style is the result of peoples coming into contact with one another, particularly in the wake of removal from their ancestral homelands. Floral forms, combined with the use of ribbons and colorful glass beads, not only attest to the transformations in artistic production, but also testifies to the creativity of people as they adapted to new situations. Bandolier bags, as well as other objects and clothing, helped to express group identities and social status. In the wake of forced removals and threats to traditional ways of life, objects like the NMAI bandolier bag demonstrate the resilience and continued creativity of groups like the Lenape.
Today
Bandolier bags are still made and worn today—attesting to their rich and complex history and their continuing ceremonial and cultural functions. For example, in 2004 when the NMAI opened a new museum in Washington, D.C., Ojibwe men wore colorful bandolier bags during the opening festivities and ceremonies. Artists continue to innovate by creating new interpretations of bandolier bags. Maria Hupfield, who belongs to the Wasauksing First Nation in Ontario, Canada, and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, made a bandolier bag from gray felt—an industrial material transformed into something beautiful and historically significant.
Anishinaabe, possibly Mississauga Ojibwa, Shoulder bag (missing strap), c. 1800, tanned leather, porcupine quills, dye, glass beads, silk ribbon, metal cones, and deer hair, Possibly made in Ontario, Canada; possibly made in Michigan, United States; possibly made in Wisconsin, United States, 30.5 × 22.9 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
George Catlin, Máh-to-tóh-pa, Four Bears, Second Chief, in Full Dress, 1832, oil on canvas (Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.)
Today it might be fairly common to see feathered headdresses worn at outdoor music festivals as an attractive or visually powerful accessory. However, feathered headdress replicas in this context misuse important cultural and spiritual objects of the Native tribes of the Great Plains. These objects have become so popular in our contemporary cultural imagination (like in many Western movies) that we often assume that the feathered headdress was a prevalent item of Plains dress (and all First Nations and Indigenous groups)—especially as they were envisioned by nineteenth-century Euro-American artists such as Karl Bodmer or George Catlin.
Catlin’s Máh-to-tóh-pa (”Four Bears,” painted 1832), for instance, shows the Mandan chief standing in a war shirt with leggings and festooned with a feathered headdress that frames his head and extends down the length of his back.¹ Works like this one were often sent around North America to introduce unfamiliar people to Native peoples of the Great Plains, causing many to assume that such headdresses were commonplace items.
Sioux or Cheyenne Artist, Feathered War Bonnet (Pawhuska, Oklahoma), late 19th-early 20th c., feathers, beads, pigment, hide, dyed horsehair, 174 x 21.5 cm (The Brooklyn Museum)
However, feathered headdresses, or more correctly, eagle-feather war bonnets, were and are objects of great significance for peoples of the Plains tribes. As described in a White River Sioux story about Chief Roman Nose, “He had the fierce, proud face of a hawk, and his deeds were legendary. He always rode into battle with a long warbonnet trailing behind him. It was thick with eagle feathers, and each stood for a brave deed, a coup counted on the enemy.”¹
A male warrior had to earn the privilege of wearing a war bonnet, like the Cheyenne or Sioux war bonnet in the Brooklyn Museum’s collection (left). This item of adornment, along with the warrior’s clothing, communicated his rank in a given warrior society. Someone could not just decide to wear one–it was decidedly not a fashion accessory. In fact, to acquire a war bonnet a warrior had to display great bravery in battle. On those occasions that a warrior accomplished great deeds or battle coups, he received an eagle feather. For this reason, feathers also recalled specific moments in time. When worn into battle, a warrior could not surrender his war bonnet, and so it acquired associations with bravery and valiancy. Warriors who had elaborate bonnets clearly possessed these desirable qualities in great quantities.
Antonio Zeno Shindler, Portrait of Deloria or Ceca Hinna (Chief with the Big War Bonnet) or Delaurier (Half-Breed) in Native Dress with Headdress and Holding Pipe Tomahawk, 1867 (Dakota Yankton/Hunkpapa), photograph (BAE GN 03547 06594600, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution)
Only important chiefs and warriors could don a war bonnet, and they were typically worn during ceremonies; certain types of war bonnets would have been difficult to wear into battle, especially those that trailed down the length of the back. Regardless of when they were worn, imagine a warrior on horseback wearing a war bonnet: he would seem to be moving, as if he were a bird in flight—a striking and intimidating appearance. War bonnet feathers could take several different forms, they might stand straight-up, create a halo around the face, or trail down the back.
Sioux or Cheyenne Artist, Feathered War Bonnet (Pawhuska, Oklahoma), late 19th-early 20th c., feathers, beads, pigment, hide, dyed horsehair, 174 x 21.5cm (The Brooklyn Museum)
From the front, the Brooklyn Museum’s war bonnet fanned outwards and framed an individual’s head, almost like the rays of the sun. Eagle feathers—actually the tail feathers of golden eagles—rise upwards and outwards from a hide band decorated with colored glass beads. The beads, common on many mid-to late nineteenth-century war bonnets, were acquired from European and Euro-American traders, often replacing quillwork decoration (decorative element made with porcupine quills). Colorful and easy to manipulate, glass beads were used to create intricate decorative patterns on a variety of objects, including clothes. The Brooklyn Museum’s war bonnet shows a stepped-fret pattern that alternates between red and blue, with all the forms picked out by a thick contour line. These bead colors paired with the white and grey eagle feathers, yellow-dyed horse hair, and tiny red-pink downy tufts create a beautiful, colorful object, one that is also remarkable for the different textures presented to the eye. The materials of this object betray its date of creation in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Earlier war bonnets did not have the pink fluff, but would have had only horsehair at the tips.
Sioux or Cheyenne Artist, Feathered War Bonnet (Pawhuska, Oklahoma), late 19th-early 20th c., feathers, beads, pigment, hide, dyed horsehair, 174 x 21.5cm (The Brooklyn Museum)
This particular war bonnet was clearly for someone of great importance. This is evident because of the numerous feathers in the bonnet itself and because of the feathers that run down the length of the body. Women did not traditionally wear war bonnets, although occasionally after battle, when their male family members—say their husbands—returned, they might don the war bonnet while dancing to celebrate.
Warrior dress
It is important not to think of the feathered war bonnet alone or as the only dress item that demonstrated a warrior’s status and accomplishments. A warrior would also be wearing a war shirt, breastplate, and leggings to complete his outfit. Similar to the way in which a feather was earned for brave deeds, the stripes on a warrior’s leggings could designate specific exploits. War shirts also communicated a warrior’s status because locks of hair (horse or human) could be attached to a shirt to showcase accomplishments such as combat or capturing horses. Designs on war shirts, too, could note such accomplishments.
Lakota War Shirt, associated with Tashunca-uitco (Crazy Horse, Ogala Lakota), c. 1870s (South Dakota), hide, human- and horsehair, quill, pigment, woodpecker feathers, arrowhead, cocoon (NMAI, NYC)
Tipi liners
Besides dress, other objects related triumphs in battle including narrative tipi liners (hides used to decorate the interior of a tipi, also teepee) or buffalo-hide robes. While the tipi itself would be fashioned by women, tipi liners with narrative scenes were created by men. These autobiographical and historical narrative scenes often depicted battle scenes that commemorated brave deeds in battle.
Rain-In-The-Face (Hunkpapa, Lakota, Sioux), Tipi Liner, 1850-1889, cotton, pigment, crayon, pencil, 512.9 x 171.9 cm (Brooklyn Museum)
A muslin tipi liner in the Brooklyn Museum’s collection (above, and detail below), created during the early Reservation period (1880–1920) shows the battle exploits of the Lakota warrior Rain-In The-Face (Ité Omágaˇzu, who lived on the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota) at a time when life for many people living on the Great Plains had been violently disrupted by Euro-American soldiers. Native peoples had been forcibly removed from their homes and lands and placed on reservations, and so their previous ways of life were in a moment of crisis and transition. As a result, prior deeds and acts of battle coups became important to remember as a source of cultural, historical, and ceremonial pride. Rain-In-The-Face’s tipi liner draws on earlier traditions commemorating a warrior’s battle exploits—in this case his own—but does so in a new medium (muslin, crayon and pencil rather than painted hide) and in a new context—living on the reservation. In some scenes on the liner, Rain-In-The-Face is shown on horseback, holding weapons and a shield and riding in battle.
Detail, Rain-In-The-Face (Hunkpapa, Lakota, Sioux), Tipi Liner, 1850-1889, cotton, pigment, crayon, pencil, 512.9 x 171.9 cm (Brooklyn Museum)
Today people do not earn war bonnets from great battle accomplishments, but by helping a given community in some way. A war bonnet might also commemorate one’s deeds in the U.S. military, a different way to remember one’s strength and courage (versus the battles of the nineteenth century and earlier).
The war bonnet in popular culture
While the feathered headdress is common at many outdoor music festivals and makes a regular appearance in many popular culture films, images, and objects, there have been sustained attempts by many Native groups to end this appropriation for the problematic stereotypes and misunderstanding it conveys. In particular, the misconception that all Native American peoples wore and still wear feathered headdresses, rather than the male warriors and chiefs of the Great Plains who earned the right to wear them. The war bonnet as a contemporary fashion accessory perpetuates a lack of understanding of the postcolonial fate of Native groups across North America.
1. “Chief Roman Nose Loses His Medicine,” in American Indian Myths and Legends, edited by Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 256.
Headdress, late 19th–Early 20th century, Tsitsistas (Cheyenne) or Lakota Artist, bald eagle and other feathers, wool, buffalo and cow hide, horse hair, beads and pigments (Minneapolis Institute of Art)
by Dr. John P. Lukavic, Denver Art Museum and Dr. Steven Zucker
Bear Claw Necklace (Pawnee), before 1870, grizzly bear claws and hide, otter pelt, beads, cedar, tobacco and other materials (Denver Art Museum), a Smarthistory Seeing America video
Speakers: Dr. John Lukavic, curator of Native Arts, Denver Art Museum and Dr. Steven Zucker
Additional historical narratives:
Matt Reed Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, Cultural Resource Division of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma notes that:
When the Lakota attacked, Sky Chief put the necklace and the family’s sacred bundle on his young daughter, put her on his horse, and told her to run. She made it to safety. Sky Chief died right after he killed his own little boy to prevent the child’s capture, torture, and death by the Sioux. When Sky Chief’s daughter eventually got back to Genoa, Nebraska (then the Pawnee Reservation), the little girl, now an orphan, was taken in by Bluehawk (Matt Reed’s grandfather), who raised her as his own. She grew up, married, and in 1987, her granddaughter, Elizabeth, gave the sacred bundle to the Earthlodge Museum in Republic, Kansas. More information on the bundle can be found here.
Roger Echo-Hawk Pawnee tribal historian, notes that:
Stacy Matlock, a Chaui Pawnee chief, was said to have worn this necklace in 1925 during a visit to the Lakota when they formally apologized for the 1873 attack at Massacre Canyon. The Denver Art Museum acquired the necklace in 1973.
Source: Dr. John P. Lukavic, Denver Art Museum and Dr. Steven Zucker, “Bear Claw Necklace (Pawnee),” in Smarthistory, January 10, 2018, accessed July 16, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/bear-pawnee/.
Juana Basilia Sitmelelene, Coin (Presentation) Basket, Chumash, Mission San Buenaventura, c. 1815-22, sumac, juncus textilis, mud dye, 9 x 48 cm (National Museum of the American Indian).Speakers: Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank and Dr. Steven Zucker
Learn about this beautiful basket—a luxury item made by a Chumash woman in California (then, New Spain) at the time of the Mexican War of Independence from Spain—with motifs derived from Spanish coins.
by Dr. Jill Ahlberg Yohe, Minneapolis Institute of Art and Dr. Beth Harris
Nellie Two Bear Gates (Iháƞktȟuƞwaƞna Dakhóta, Standing Rock Reservation), Suitcase, 1880-1910, beads, hide, metal, oilcloth, thread (Minneapolis Institute of Art)
Source: Dr. Jill Ahlberg Yohe, Minneapolis Institute of Art and Dr. Beth Harris, “Nellie Two Bear Gates, Suitcase,” in Smarthistory, December 21, 2018, accessed July 16, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/two-bear-gates-suitcase/.
Southwest
Acoma polychrome water jar
by The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Acoma polychrome water jar, c. 1890, from Acoma, clay and pigment, 25.1 x 29.8 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art); speaker: Brian Vallo, Director, Indian Arts Research Center School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Velino Shije Herrera (Ma Pe Wi), Design, Tree and Birds, c. 1930, watercolor on paper, 25.25 x 17.75 inches (Newark Museum of Art, Gift of Amelia Elizabeth White, 1937, 37.216). Speakers: Dr. Adriana Greci Green and Dr. Beth Harris. URL: https://youtu.be/A6vKcMdD0Fg
Puebloan: Maria Martinez, Black-on-black ceramic vessel
by Dr. Suzanne Newman Fricke
Born Maria Antonia Montoya, Maria Martinez became one of the best-known Native potters of the 20th century due to her excellence as a ceramist and her connections with a larger, predominantly non-Native audience. Though she lived at the Pueblo of San Ildefonso, about 20 miles north of Santa Fe, New Mexico, from her birth in 1887 until her death in 1980, her work and her life had a wide reaching importance to the Native art world by reframing Native ceramics as a fine art. Before the arrival of the railroad to the area in the 1880s, pots were used in the Pueblos for food storage, cooking, and ceremonies. But with inexpensive pots appearing along the rail line, these practices were in decline. By the 1910s, Maria Martinez found a way to continue the art by selling her pots to a non-Native audience where they were purchased as something beautiful to look at rather than as utilitarian objects.
Maria Martinez shown with physicist Enrico Fermi, c. 1948 (photo: U.S. Government employee made for U.S. Government)
Her mastery as a ceramist was noted in her village while she was still young. She learned the ceramic techniques that were used in the Southwest for several millennia by watching potters from San Ildefonso, especially her aunt Nicholasa as well as potters (including Margaret Tafoya from Santa Clara), from other nearby Pueblos. All the raw materials had to be gathered and processed carefully or the final vessel would not fire properly. The clay was found locally. To make the pottery stronger it had to be mixed with a temper made from sherds of broken pots that had been pounded into a powder or volcanic ash. When mixed with water, the elasticity of the clay and the strength of the temper could be formed into different shapes, including a rounded pot (known as an olla) or a flat plate, using only the artist’s hands as the potting wheel was not used. The dried vessel needed to be scraped, sanded, smoothed, then covered with a slip (a thin solution of clay and water). The slip was polished by rubbing a smooth stone over the surface to flatten the clay and create a shiny finish—a difficult and time-consuming process. Over the polished slip the pot was covered with designs painted with an iron-rich solution using either pulverized iron ore or a reduction of wild plants called guaco. These would be dried but required a high temperature firing to change the brittle clay to hard ceramics. Even without kilns, the ceramists were able to create a fire hot enough to transform the pot by using manure.
John K. Hillers, San Ildefonso, New Mexico, c. 1871–1907 (photo: Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, National Archives and Records Administration #523752)
Making ceramics in the Pueblo was considered a communal activity, where different steps in the process were often shared. The potters helped each other with the arduous tasks such as mixing the paints and polishing the slip. Martinez would form the perfectly symmetrical vessels by hand and leave the decorating to others. Throughout her career, she worked with different family members, including her husband Julian, her son Adam and his wife Santana, and her son Popovi Da. As the pots moved into a fine art market, Martinez was encouraged to sign her name on the bottom of her pots. Though this denied the communal nature of the art, she began to do so as it resulted in more money per pot. To help other potters in the Pueblo, Martinez was known to have signed the pots of others, lending her name to help the community. Helping her Pueblo was of paramount importance to Maria Martinez. She lived as a proper Pueblo woman, avoiding self-aggrandizement and insisting to scholars that she was just a wife and mother even as her reputation in the outside world increased.
Maria Martinez, Black-on-black ceramic vessel, c. 1939 (Tewa, Puebloan, San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico), blackware ceramic, 11 1/8 x 13 inches (National Museum of Women in the Arts, New York)
Maria and Julian Martinez pioneered a style of applying a matte-black design over polished-black. Similar to the pot pictured here, the design was based on pottery sherds found on an Ancestral Pueblo dig site dating to the 12th to 17th centuries at what is now known as Bandelier National Monument. The Martinezes worked at the site, with Julian helping the archaeologists at the dig and Maria helping at the campsite. Julian Martinez spent time drawing and painting the designs found on the walls and on the sherds of pottery into his notebooks, designs he later recreated on pots. In the 1910s, Maria and Julian worked together to recreate the black-on-black ware they found at the dig, experimenting with clay from different areas and using different firing techniques. Taking a cue from Santa Clara pots, they discovered that smothering the fire with powdered manure removed the oxygen while retaining the heat and resulted in a pot that was blackened. This resulted in a pot that was less hard and not entirely watertight, which worked for the new market that prized decorative use over utilitarian value. The areas that were burnished had a shiny black surface and the areas painted with guaco were matte designs based on natural phenomena, such as rain clouds, bird feathers, rows of planted corn, and the flow of rivers.
Design bands (detail), Maria Martinez, Black-on-black ceramic vessel, c. 1939 (Tewa, Puebloan, San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico), blackware ceramic, 11 1/8 x 13 inches (National Museum of Women in the Arts, New York)
The olla pictured above features two design bands, one across the widest part of the pot and the other around the neck. The elements inside are abstract but suggest a bird in flight with rain clouds above, perhaps a prayer for rain that could be flown up to the sky. These designs are exaggerated due to the low rounded shapes of the pot, which are bulbous around the shoulder then narrow at the top. The shape, color, and designs fit the contemporary Art Deco movement, which was popular between the two World Wars and emphasized bold, geometric forms and colors. With its dramatic shape and the high polish of surface, this pot exemplifies Maria Martinez’s skill in transforming a utilitarian object into a fine art.
The work of Maria Martinez marks an important point in the long history of Pueblo pottery. Ceramics from the Southwest trace a connection from the Ancestral Pueblo to the modern Pueblo eras. Given the absence of written records, tracing the changes in the shapes, materials, and designs on the long-lasting sherds found across the area allow scholars to see connections and innovations. Maria Martinez brought the distinctive Pueblo style into a wider context, allowing Native and non-Native audiences to appreciate the art form.
Maria and Julian Martínez, pot with avanyu design, 1934-43, 21.7 x 26.7 cm (National Museum of the American Indian)
Famous Pueblo pottery
As an artist, Julian Martínez from San Ildefonso Pueblo is best known for the ceramics he made with his wife, Maria Martínez. Together, they produced the matte-black on polished-black pottery for which they and their Pueblo colleagues gained international fame.
Maria formed the pots into elegant shapes and Julian painted the designs, both geometric and figurative, including historic motifs such as the feather pattern from Mimbres pottery and the avanyu, the horned serpent similar the Mesoamerican deity Quetzalcoatl.
Julian Martínez also worked at the Museum of New Mexico, where he took advantage of the opportunity to study the Museum’s collection of Southwestern pottery, and he learned more during the summers when he worked at the field school at the Pajarito Plateau (later renamed Bandelier National Monument). In addition to his work on pottery, Martínez drew on paper; he always kept a notebook where he sketched ideas and recorded what he had seen. Though most of his images were painted on paper, he created a few murals on walls and, on rare occasions, he painted on hide, as he did for his Buffalo Dancers from about 1930, now in the collection of the National Museum of the American Indian in New York City (below).
Awa Tsireh (Alfonso Roybal), Girl Holding Kachina, c. 1920-30, watercolor and pencil on paper (Smithsonian American Art Museum)
Pueblo painting
Painting has long been part of Pueblo life; it can be found on the walls of the kivas (the round ceremonial structures usually partially underground) and on dance regalia such as wands, tablitas (ceremonial headdresses), clothing, and other items. A thriving art community developed around 1900 during a difficult time in Pueblo history: due to illness and outward migration, the population was reduced to less than 200. When the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railway extended its track to the area in 1880, the economy of the Pueblo was transformed as more outside goods were purchased and more items, especially ceramics and paintings on paper, were made to sell to tourists traveling to the area.
An important group of Pueblo artists called the San Ildefonso Self-Taught Group, active from around 1900 to around 1930, included Julian Martínez, Tonita Peña, Crescencio Martínez, and Awa Tsireh (Alfonso Roybal). Most of their work depicted scenes common to Pueblo life, mainly ceremonial dances and genre scenes.
The Buffalo Dance
Martínez was elected governor of San Ildefonso in 1925 and he served as a leader in ceremonies. Like other Pueblo painters, he refrained from depicting ritual objects, sites, and altars that were considered private, and focused instead on dances that were open to the public. The Buffalo Dance is one of the most commonly represented of all Pueblo dances by the Self-Taught Group. Art historian J.J. Brody described it as one of the most “comprehensible to outsiders of all public ritual dances of the Pueblo people.” [1] Performed annually on January 23rd to honor the Pueblo patron saint, San Ildefonso, the Buffalo Dance enacts a hunting scene, with three dancers playing the roles of a hunter, buffalo, and a buffalo maiden (or buffalo mother) who has the power to induce the animals to sacrifice themselves to provide food and hide.
Early twentieth-century Pueblo paintings by artists including Tsireh, Peña, and Martínez all depict the Buffalo Dance in the same way, with the three figures in profile, facing the same direction as they would be during the dance. The men wear a buffalo headdress and dance kilts with depictions of avanyu (a horned serpent), and their skin is painted black. The buffalo maiden wears an embroidered one-shouldered manta, or dress.
Julian Martínez, Buffalo Dancers, c. 1930s, hide and paint, 79 x 61 cm (National Museum of the American Indian)
In this hide painting, Martínez gave all three figures the same facial features, focusing instead on varying details in their clothing and regalia. There is no sense of space; the figures lack modeling and do not cast shadows. The flatness of the figures and the lack of a background suggest the influence of early Modernist abstraction. The empty space might also symbolize an area that is sacred—unbound by place or time. Paintings of such dances might even portray a space where the viewers themselves also participate in the dance, because, as anthropologist Alfonso Ortiz from Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo has observed, everyone in the community dances in ceremonies.[2]
Though Martínez painted several versions of the Buffalo Dance, the NMAI version is unusual for its material: animal hide. More commonly used in art from the Plains, hide is stronger and suppler than paper as a base. This particular hide has small holes on three of its sides, suggesting that it was used to cover a portfolio or large book, with a string or leather cord run through the holes to attach it over a group of drawings.[3] Later, the image may have been unlaced and cut along one side, accounting for the smooth edge.
Pueblo painting continues
With its bright colors and strong forms, Julian Martínez’s Buffalo Dancers exemplifies the early period of Pueblo painting. In 1932, the Santa Fe Indian School (whose painting program became known as “The Studio School”) started teaching art, and developed the Santa Fe Indian School Style. This new style retained the earlier emphasis on dance and genre scenes with the same flatness and lack of modeling, but the work became more decorative and lost the intimacy of the earlier works.
During Martínez’s life, local artists, anthropologists, and ethnographers expressed their appreciation for his work, noting his radiant colors, technical skill, and mastery of form. Martínez’s Buffalo Dancers, like other paintings produced by the San Ildefonso Self-Taught Group, conveys a sense of movement and energy in its figures and shares the joy of the ceremonies.
Indigenous peoples on the Northwest Coast created one of the world’s great art traditions, renowned for its monumental poles, its complex two-dimensional design system, advanced weaving techniques, and literary wealth.
by Dr. Emily Moore and Ishmael Hope
In Yáay Hít, the Whale House of the Tlingit Ghaaanaxhteidí clan, a man wearing a tunic beaded with a beaver crest stands proudly beside the many clan treasures on display. These treasures—painted tunics, woven hats and baskets, carved and painted house posts, screens, and boxes—proclaim the identity, pride, and history of the Ghaanaxhteidí clan. The magnificent house post on the left, for example, deeply carved by the renowned Tlingit carver Khaajisdu.áxhch, one of the great sculptors in world history, depicts at its top a figure wearing a woodworm headdress. This figure recalls a clan ancestor who fed a woodworm until it was found and killed, creating a division in the clan which led to a split with the Ghaanaxhteidí traveling northward to found the village of Klukwan. To the right of the house post is the great Séew Xh’éen (Rain Screen), a masterful painting carved in relief by Shkeedlikháa, one of the most gifted painters who ever lived. Bordering the screen are beings who represent “the back splash of raindrops,” according to Tlingit leader and historian William Paul, while the main figure contains many eye-shapes which represent the raindrops. [1] Intricate carvings and paintings cover all of the household items: mountain goat horn spoons for sipping soups, elaborate bentwood boxes for storage of food and precious items, and sacred objects that are brought out during the great potlatch.
In this house, where members of Yáay Hít live with their spouses and children, everyone wakes up early, well before daylight, to work on their many tasks: fishing and hunting, weaving and repairing tools, cooking, and carving and painting. At night, the Elders tell stories around the fire, illuminating through oral literature all of the figures and crests depicted in the arts they see throughout their lives. These are aspects of the traditional life of Northwest Coast Native people. Many aspects of the richly artistic and literary life are retained to this day.
The Northwest Coast refers to a narrow geographical area of North America that skirts the Pacific Ocean, running from the northern end of what is currently known as Southeast Alaska, through British Columbia, and south to the Columbia River in Oregon. Tlingit scholar Andrew Hope III aptly coined this region the “Raven Creator Bioregion,” given the shared oral tradition of the Raven told throughout the Northwest Coast. [2] The region is characterized by rich ocean and river habitats that have long oriented Indigenous people to fishing and whaling, and temperate rainforests that provide cedar, spruce, and other wood for many arts.
Scholars typically discuss three areas of the Northwest Coast: Northern, Central, and Southern. Each of these areas is home to diverse Indigenous nations with different languages, kinship patterns, and histories. Nevertheless, there are several commonalities, including the prevalence of carved and woven arts to assert identity and record histories, as well as participation in major winter ceremonies, often called “potlatches.” The potlatch, which comes from the Chinook word “patshatl” (to give), plays an important role in honoring ancestors, establishing leaders and land ownership, passing on oral histories, and re-distributing wealth. The potlatch was banned in Canada and condemned in Alaska from the late nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, although many communities quietly continued their “doings.” Today, these important ceremonies are hosted proudly across much of the Northwest Coast, as well as the commissioning of masks, poles, beadwork and other art forms that are often dedicated and gifted at a potlatch.
Northern Northwest Coast
This chapter focuses on the northern Northwest Coast, which includes the Tlingit (Lingít), Haida (Xaadas), and Tsimshian (Ts’msyen) nations. Future chapters will highlight the art of Indigenous nations from the central and southern Northwest Coast as Smarthistory adds more material to illustrate the rich practices of these regions.
The Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian on the northern Northwest Coast all follow matrilineal and exogamous social organization, meaning that children inherit their clan identity from their mother and marry someone from a different clan or lineage. For the Tlingit and Haida, clans are divided into one of two moieties (“halves” in French), Raven and Wolf/Eagle. Tsimshian clans are divided into four phratries, Killerwhale (or Fireweed among the Gitksan), Wolf, Raven, and Eagle. Clans offer “balance” to each other across moiety and phratry, marrying, hosting, and burying their “opposites” (members of a clan from outside their moiety or phratry) to ensure health and harmony in their communities.
The importance of clan identity on the northern Northwest Coast is expressed in art forms that center on crests (symbols owned by and used to identify clans). Many crests depict animals or other beings that ancestors of the clan encountered in the distant past and earned the right (sometimes through their death) to claim as identifying symbols for clan descendants. In addition to the physical objects that display crests, clans own the stories, names, songs, dances, and other intangible property associated with the crest.
Monumental Poles
The most famous crest objects on the northern Northwest Coast are the monumental carvings commonly known as “totem poles.” This term is misleading, because “totem” is an English word that derives from an Anishinaabe word from the Great Lakes region, “dodem,” which references animals and other beings from which clans trace their lineal descent.
“Crest pole” is probably a better English translation for a pole on the northern Northwest Coast that depicts the animals or beings encountered by clan ancestors and used as identifying symbols, but this meaning also differs from Indigenous names for the poles. In Lingít yoo xhʼatángi, the Tlingit language, poles are “kootéeyaa” (large object carved with a chisel or adze); in Xaad kíl, the Haida language, they are “gyáaʼaang” (man standing up); and in Smʼalgyax, the Tsimshian language, they are “ptsʼaan” (he/she raises his/her history up).
Contrary to popular conception, monumental poles were never worshipped. Poles serve many other functions: mortuary and memorial poles honor the dead, heraldic poles recall stories of clan history or the origins of world phenomena, house frontal and interior posts identify the crests of the house’s resident clan, and ridicule poles shame another clan or person for an unresolved offense. Most poles depict at least one crest of the clan that owns them, while other figures allude to clan histories and stories from oral literature. Tlingit scholar Nora Marks Dauenhauer notes that these figures do not “tell a story” but “refer to stories already known, in much the same way a Christian cross does not ʼtellʼ the Christmas or Easter ʼstory,ʼ but alludes to an entire spiritual tradition.” [3] The rich stories elicited by poles are recounted at potlatches and other events, and always credited to the clan that owns them.
Northern Northwest Coast Design
Two-dimensional art of the northern Northwest Coast is most distinctly characterized by what Tlingit anthropologist Louis Shotridge characterized as the “eye motif.” In Tlingit it is called “a waakh” (its eye). According to Tlingit tradition, as told by Louis Shotridge, the form originated among the Tsimshian peoples. A young Tsimshian woman had a dream that she went into the undersea home of Sáanáxhéit, the South Wind, and reported back to her people all the things she saw, most distinctly the many eyes which she felt were looking back at her. The people recreated what the girl described to them, and thus one of the world’s great art traditions was born.
The beauty and complexity of the two-dimensional design system of the northern Northwest Coast is showcased in many arts, including bentwood boxes made of a single cedar plank that is notched, steamed, and bent into shape before being sewn shut on the final side. Boxes had many uses and were numerous, giving artists a large domain to explore two-dimensional design on the boxesʼ sides. In fact, noted anthropologist and art historian Wilson Duff considered a “box” (more precisely a feast dish) “the final exam” of Northwest Coast art, the highest point of the art’s expression.
Boxes often depict the “Sea Wolf” design (in Tlingit, Ghunakadeit; in Haida, Waasghu), which is characterized by the motif of two eyes within a single eye on the flat design surface of the box, as in the box by Albert Edenshaw above. The story of the Sea Wolf is told across the northern Northwest Coast. The belief is that when someone encounters the Ghunakadeit or Waasghu in the sea that good fortune will come to the person who encounters it. Depicting the being which holds riches such as furs, hides, and the clan’s sacred possessions, the people hope that good fortune will come to the owners of such boxes.
Boxes also carry deeply important mythological and metaphorical meanings for the people. The people liken the Elders to “boxes of knowledge.” There is also the very famous history of the baby Raven who cried for the boxes of the Sun, Moon, Stars, and Daylight. In oratory, Tlingits reference the Khei.á Daakeit, the Box of Daylight, likening the joy they wish for their dear opposites to be like the daylight shining upon them.
By the twentieth century, many Indigenous names for the complex design system on the northern Northwest Coast were lost and others overwritten by English terms like “ovoid” for the eye motif, and “formline” for the curving, calligraphic line that outlines figures on a two-dimensional surface. These English terms were coined in 1965 by non-Native scholar Bill Holm in his book, Northwest Coast Indian Art: An Analysis of Form. However, today many Indigenous communities on the northern Northwest Coast are utilizing their own Native language names for their designs, such as the Haida word “kunjuu” rather than “U-form,” or the Tlingit word “a waakh” rather than “ovoid.”
The two-dimensional design system is also brilliantly displayed on house screens, both on the front exterior of the house and in the interior, where a screen separates the chiefʼs familyʼs quarters from the rest of the living area. The Haida storyteller Skaay tells of very ancient clan houses having a front house screen that was “painted and sewn,” where the boards of the house screen were sewn together. For example, in the story “One Who Acquired a Wolverine for a Mother,” translated by Robert Bringhurst from ethnographer John Swanton’s transcription, two young brothers leave their home of Kwunwoq and travel to the Nass River. The older brother comes upon the house of Mouse Woman, an important figure in Haida oral tradition. Skaay says,
He’d been riding the falling tide for a time
when a woman, who leaned halfway out of a house up ahead,
said, “Come in!”
The front of the house was painted and sewn.From “One Who Acquired a Wolverine for a Mother” [4]
Skaay’s storytelling doesn’t overlook—and in actuality luxuriates in—such details, as such a “painted and sewn” house front would surely impress visitors with the sense that the host possesses wealth, character, and knowledge of their own history. Since the story is set in Tsimshian country, one imagines a house front similar to the Tsimshian screen pictured here, possibly with mouse designs to signify the owner of the house.
House fronts and house screens usually depict at least one major crest of the house group. In the lush, monumental Tsimshian screen from Lax Kwʼalaams, for example, the figure that frames the entry way is the human form of the sea chief Nagunak, crest of the Gisbutwada clan.
Screens are often rendered in a “classical” style, reflective of the established precepts of the design, which nevertheless innovate because of the skill and talent of the artist. The house front from Lax Kwʼalaams epitomizes this monumentality and grace in its fluid interplay between figuration and lineation, with bold strokes and finely tapered lines delineating the two killerwhales and the sea chief, Nagunak.
At other times, the style may be slightly more idiosyncratic, such as the delightful Gijook Xh’éen of the Teikhweidí, painted by the well-known early 20th-century Tlingit master artist and silversmith, Silver Jim Jacobs, Yéilnaawú, Kichxhaak. Silver Jim’s touch is bold yet elegant, with the Gijook practically flying out of the screen, offering good fortune to the clan members who treated it with respect.
Weaving
In another story told among the Haida, Tsimshian, and Tlingit, a group of siblings were lowered by a basket from the land of the Sun, by their father who was the Sun himself. Some consider this basket to be the first spruce root basket of its kind.
Baskets served many practical purposes, from a holder of foods and other objects, to a pot for boiling water, made out of water-tight baskets in which hot rocks can be placed to boil the water.
Weaving is a highly mathematical, perhaps algorithmic art, which is also reflected in the geometric designs that are masterfully woven with false embroidery on the surface of many baskets.
Spruce root and cedar bark can also be woven into wide-brimmed hats to protect the wearer from the rainy climate of the Northwest Coast and at the same time to display the wearerʼs crests. This hat was woven in the late nineteenth century by Isabella Edenshaw, an extraordinary Haida artist originally from Southeast Alaska. Edenshaw used a skip stitch to create the subtle raised diamond pattern on the surface of the hat; her husband, Charles Edenshaw, then painted a killerwhale crest across the surface, masterfully using the peak of the hat as the dividing line for the two sides of the whale.
Raven’s Tail Weaving
The twining techniques used for weaving tree fibers into baskets are also used for weaving mountain goat wool into prestigious ceremonial robes. According to the late Tlingit weaver Teri Rofkar, spruce root basket weaving is essentially the same as the Raven’s Tail blanket weaving style, which was widespread on the northern Northwest Coast in the eighteenth century.
Featuring black geometric designs studded on a white rectangular background, these eye-dazzling robes are known to the Tlingit as “yéil koowú” (ravenʼs tail) after the long black “tails” of weft strings left hanging on the sides of the geometric motifs. To the Haida, they are known as “qwēgal giaʼt” (sky blankets), and figure prominently in Haida oral literature. Ravenʼs Tail weaving was rare for much of the twentieth century, but a resurgence since the 1980s has made this style popular once again on the Northwest Coast.
“Chilkat” weaving
By the early nineteenth century, weavers were pushing beyond the geometric designs of Ravenʼs Tail robes and seeking to translate the curvilinear designs of carved and painted figures into wool. The result is one of the most complex weaving techniques in the world, with twining and braiding techniques that allow for circles and other curved forms to arc across the rectilinear grid of warp and weft.
This figurative form of weaving, commonly known in English as “Chilkat weaving” after the Chilkat valley in Alaska where the style proliferated, is called “naaxein” by Tlingit people and “naaxiin” by the Haida. Tsimshian people call robes of this type “Gwishalaayt” (the spirit wraps around you).
Tlingit historians such as the late weaver Jennie Thlunaut, Shaax’sáani Kéek’, and Louis Shotridge, Stuwukhaa, credit the Tsimshian with developing this complex figurative weaving style. Thlunaut stated that a Tsimshian woman named Hayuwáas Tláa was married to a Ghaanaxhteidí man. She owned the S’igeidí K’ideit, the Beaver Apron, which she gave to the Ghaanaxhteidí. Her husband’s clan sisters of the Ghaanaxhteidí unraveled and then reconstructed the apron. This is how the Tlingit learned the art—and given how challenging it is to weave in the Chilkat style, this is truly a feat of ingenuity. The technique spread by marriage to more Tlingit and to the Haida (and later to certain groups among the Kwakwakaʼwakw in the Central Northwest Coast).
Today, a handful of weavers continue this complex weaving tradition. Tlingit weaver Lily Hope estimates there are just 200 weavers capable of weaving a circle (one of the most challenging aspects of Chilkat weaving), and 10 who have completed a full-sized robe.
Beadwork and buttons
Beadwork
Long before the arrival of glass trade beads from Europeans, artists on the northern Northwest Coast used shells obtained from extensive Indigenous trade routes, including abalone from California and dentalium from Vancouver Island. Later, glass beads became popular on the Northwest Coast, particularly among the Tlingit, whose trade with interior Athabascan groups brought floral designs to the coast.
In an interesting twist, however, many Tlingit women chose to bead “geesh” or seaweed designs, transforming the floral traditions of the Interior tundra into beach plants more appropriate to their coastal homelands. Some of the distinguished beadworkers include Esther Littlefield, Aanwooghéex’; Emma Marks, Seigheighei (shown in a photograph earlier); Emma’s daughter Florence Sheakley, Khaakal.aat; and Irene Lampe, Latseenk’i Tláa.
Button blankets
Buttons are also used like beads to embellish crest designs in the famous “button blankets” of the Northwest Coast. Button blankets—worn as robes draped over the wearer’s shoulders to display their clan crest across their back—developed in the nineteenth century with the availability of woolen blankets from settler trading posts, particularly the Hudson’s Bay Company. Using the technique of appliqué, artists cut one color of woolen blanket (often red) into the crest design and sew it onto another color (often black); the appliqued crest is then painstakingly outlined in hundreds of buttons.
As artist Dempsey Bob (Tahltan and Tlingit) says of button blankets,
Our people say, when we wear our blankets, we show our face. We show who we are and where we come from.
The pride in the crests and the beauty of the art of button blankets have led many to call them “robes of power.” Today, artists such as Kwakwakaʼwakw artist Marianne Nicholson and Haida fashion designer Dorothy Grant are known for their distinguished work in appliqué and artistry inspired by their button-blanket-making ancestors.
One of the world’s great art traditions
Indigenous peoples on the Northwest Coast created one of the world’s great art traditions, renowned for its monumental poles, its complex two-dimensional design system, advanced weaving techniques, and literary wealth. They are proud that their ancestors have continued to make these arts despite the impacts of colonization, which began in the eighteenth century and continue to this day. Still, the art traditions, and the languages and ceremonies which encircle them, persist, spreading the beauty and greatness in their region and across the world. Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian people have found strength in their art forms and continue to uphold “the spirit of the ancestors” in their art today.
Notes:
[1] William Paul, The Alaska Tlingit: Where Did We Come From (Trafford Publishing, 2011), p. 257.
[2] Andrew III Hope, Sacred Form. Andrew Hope III Papers. Unpublished manuscript.
[3] Nora Marks Dauenhauer, “Tlingit At.óow: Traditions and Concepts,” in The Spirit Within: Northwest Coast Native Art form the John H. Hauberg Collection, ed. Steve Brown (Seattle: Seattle Art Museum, 1995), p. 26.
[4] Being in Being: The Collected Works of a Master Haida Mythteller by Skaay of the Qquuna Quiighawaay, translated by Robert Bringhurst (2001).
Teresa DeWitt, Totem Heritage Center Museum Attendant and Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank, “Bentwood Boxes of the Northwest Coast peoples,” in Smarthistory, December 9, 2021, accessed August 25, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/bentwood-boxes-northwest-coast/.
In the Arctic, where temperatures are below freezing for most of the year, warm clothing is of great importance. It is vital for hunters who spend many hours outside fishing or hunting seals, walrus, whales, and caribou. Traditional Inuit skin clothing is well suited to this purpose because it provides excellent insulation.
In winter, two layers of clothes were worn when hunting or traveling. The inner layer has the fur turned inwards towards the body, while the fur of the outer layer is turned outwards. Warm air is trapped between the two layers of clothing and the body, providing excellent insulation against the cold.
Today traditional skin clothing remains important to Inuit. Not only are certain kinds of traditional clothing still preferred over manufactured garments, but the making and use of clothing plays a significant role in keeping Inuit cultural values and knowledge alive. Clothing both sustains and expresses Inuit identity.
Unfortunately, there is no documentation on this beautiful woman’s outer parka. However, the design of the costume, particularly the shape of the back flap and the decoration on the garment’s edges, indicate that it was made in Nunavik or Labrador. The back flap is narrow, curving slightly inwards below the waist, and ending in a rounded tip. The decoration with bands of contrasting white and dark stripes of sealskin at the edges of the garment are characteristic of costumes from this part of the eastern Canadian Arctic.
Traditional Arctic clothing consists of two layers of caribou skin garments. Caribou skin is used because the hollow hair follicles contain an air bubble; they also trap insulating air. The inner layer has the fur turned inwards towards the skin, while the outer layer has the fur turned outwards. A pocket of insulating air is caught between the body and the two layers of clothing.
Amauti of this style were used by the Inuit of Labrador until their costume changed through the influence of missionaries in the 18th century. Thus, it is possible that the amauti dates to the very first years of contact. It may have been worn by one of the Inuit women brought to England by British explorers, who often brought back inhabitants to prove their discoveries. Many of these captured Inuit were painted by European artists, and the paintings—although varying in accuracy of representation—remain valuable documents of Inuit clothing from that time.
Alternatively, the amauti could have been made somewhat later by Inuit of Nunavik. It is very similar to an amauti now in the McCord Museum, Canada that was collected by Dr William Wakeham in 1897, probably on the southern shores of Hudson Strait. This amauti may have been made around the same time in that area.
Kamleikas are outer garments made of sea mammal gut, an extremely light, tough, and waterproof material. They were sewn with grass or sinew threads which expanded when soaked, making the garment waterproof. Among the Aleut, hooded kamleikas were worn as protection against wind and rain over a birdskin or fur parka. These rather sparsely decorated everyday garments usually had drawstrings around the hood and at the cuffs. Although strong, gut can tear, and of course wears out with frequent use. Aleut men, who used their kamleikas almost daily, needed about three new garments each year. Each would take about a month to make.
The Aleut also made beautiful kamleikas for festive or ceremonial occasions. These were hoodless, with a high collar and decorative bands of colored skin at the collar, cuffs, and hem. Such parkas, like this example from the 19th century, were extremely valuable status symbols and articles for trading. After contact, they were given as gifts or sold to visiting Europeans and Russian officials, who appreciated them for their beauty and usefulness.
Conserving a gutskin parka
The gut used to make these kamleikas only stays flexible as long as it is saturated with water. In use, gut parkas were stored by rolling when damp, and were again dampened before unrolling. By the time they are brought to the Museum, they have usually become stiff, brittle and misshapen. Therefore, before display, the hardened gut of this kamleika was relaxed using water vapor. As the garment regained flexibility, it was gradually cleaned and reshaped into its original form. Holes, tears and loose elements of the decorative bands were then secured and supported with an adhesive and tinted Japanese tissue paper.
Thomas Cole, View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm — The Oxbow, 1836, oil on canvas, 51 1/2 x 76″ / 130.8 x 193 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City). Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker
During the nineteenth century—an expanse of time that saw the elevation of landscape painting to a point of national pride—Thomas Cole reigned supreme as the undisputed leader of the Hudson River School of landscape painters (not an actual school, but a group of New York city-based landscape painters). It is ironic, however, that the person who most embodies the beauty and grandeur of the American wilderness during the first half of the nineteenth century was not originally from the United States, but was instead born and lived the first seventeen years of his life in Great Britain. Originally from Bolton-le-Moor in Lancashire (England), the Cole family immigrated to the United States in 1818, first settling in Philadelphia before eventually moving to Steubenville, Ohio, a locale then on the edge of wilderness of the American west.
At The Metropolitan Museum of Art, looking at Thomas Cole, View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow, 1836, oil on canvas, 130.8 x 193 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Early years
Cole worked briefly in Ohio as an itinerant portraitist, but returned to Philadelphia in 1823 at the age of 22 to pursue art instruction that was then unavailable in Ohio. Two years later, Cole moved to New York City where he exchanged his aspirations of painting large-scale historical compositions for the more reasonable artistic goal of completing landscapes. For instruction, Cole turned to a book, William Oram’s Precepts and Observations on the Art of Colouring in Landscaping (1810), an instructional text that had a profound effect on Cole for the remainder of his artistic career.
William Oram, Precepts and observations on the art of colouring in landscape painting (Charles Clarke, 1810)
An important ally and an influential patron
Cole found quick success in New York City. In the year of his arrival, 1825, John Trumbull, the patriarch of American portraiture and history painting, and the president of the American Academy of Design “discovered” Cole, and the older artist made it an immediate goal to promote the talented landscape painter. In the months to follow, Trumbull introduced Cole to many of the wealthy and prominent men who would become his most influential patrons in the decades to follow. One such man was Luman Reed, an affluent merchant who, in 1836, commissioned Cole to paint the five-canvas series The Course of Empire.
Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire: Destruction, 1833–36, oil on canvas, 39 ½ × 63 ½” (The New-York Historical Society, photo: Brandmeister, public domain)
Landscapes imbued with a moral message
It is in this series—and in many of the paintings to follow—that Thomas Cole found the aesthetic voice to lift the genre of landscape painting to a level that approached history painting. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, great artists aspired to complete large-scale historical compositions, paintings that often had an instructive moral message. Landscape paintings, in contrast, were often though more imitative than innovative. But in The Course of Empire, Cole was able to take the American landscape and imbue it with a moral message, as was often found in history paintings. Indeed, the landscapes Cole began to paint in the 1830s were not entirely about the land. In these works, Cole used the land as a way to say something important about the United States.
The Oxbow: More than a bend in the Connecticut River
A wonderful illustration of this is Cole’s 1836 masterwork, A View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm, a painting that is generally (and mercifully) known as The Oxbow. At first glance this painting may seem to be nothing more than an interesting view of a recognizable bend in the Connecticut River. But when viewed through the lens of nineteenth-century political ideology, this painting eloquently speaks about the widely discussed topic of westward expansion.
Thomas Cole, View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow, 1836, oil on canvas, 130.8 x 193 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
When looking at The Oxbow, the viewer can clearly see that Cole used a diagonal line from the lower right to the upper left to divide the composition into two unequal halves. The left-hand side of the painting depicts a sublime view of the land, a perspective that elicits feelings of danger and even fear. This is enhanced by the gloomy storm clouds that seem to pummel the not-too-distant middle ground with rain. This part of the painting depicts a virginal landscape, nature created by God and untouched by man. It is wild, unruly, and untamed.
Blasted tree (detail), Thomas Cole, View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow, 1836, oil on canvas, 130.8 x 193 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Within the construction of American landscape painting, American artists often visually represented the notion of the untamed wilderness through the “Blasted Tree, a motif Cole paints into the lower left corner. That such a formidable tree could be obliterated in such a way suggests the herculean power of Nature.
Pastoral landscape (detail), Thomas Cole, View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow, 1836, oil on canvas, 130.8 x 193 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
If the left side of this painting is sublime in tenor, on the right side of the composition we can observe a peaceful, pastoral landscape that humankind has subjugated to their will. The land, which was once as disorderly as that on the left side of the painting, has now been overtaken by the order and regulation of agriculture. Animals graze. Crops grow. Smoke billows from chimneys. Boats sail upon the river. What was once wild has been tamed. The thunderstorm, which threatens the left side of the painting, has left the land on the right refreshed and no worse for the wear. The sun shines brightly, filling the right side of the painting with the golden glow of a fresh afternoon.
Manifest Destiny
When viewed together, the right side of the painting—the view to the east—and that of the left—the west—clearly speak to the ideology of Manifest Destiny. During the nineteenth century, discussions of westward expansion dominated political discourse. The Louisiana Purchase of 1804 essentially doubled the size of the United States, and many believed that it was a divinely ordained obligation of Americans to settle this westward territory. In The Oxbow, Cole visually shows the benefits of this process. The land to the east is ordered, productive, and useful. In contrast, the land to the west remains unbridled. Further westward expansion—a change that is destined to happen—is shown to positively alter the land.
Self-portrait (detail), Thomas Cole, View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow, 1836, oil on canvas, 130.8 x 193 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Charles Willson Peale, The Artist in His Museum, 1822, oil on canvas, 263.5 x 202.9 cm (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts)
Although Cole was the most influential landscape artist of the first half of the nineteenth century, he was not completely adverse to figure painting. Indeed, a close look at The Oxbow, reveals an easily overlooked self-portrait in the lower part of the painting. Cole wears a coat and hat and stands before a stretched canvas placed on an easel, paintbrush in hand. The artist pauses, as if in the middle of the brushstroke, to engage the viewer. This work, then, in a kind of “artist in his studio” self-portrait—is akin, in many ways, to Charles Willson Peale’s 1822 work The Artist in His Museum. In each, the artist depicts himself in his own setting. For Peale, this was his natural history museum in Philadelphia. For Cole, this was the nature he is most well known for painting.
Lasting influence
Frederic Edwin Church, Heart of the Andes, 1859, oil on canvas, 168 x 302.9 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Although he only formally accepted one pupil for instruction—this was, of course, Frederic Edwin Church—Thomas Cole exerted a powerful influence on the course of landscape painting in the United States during the nineteenth century. Not content to merely paint the land, Cole elevated the landscape genre to approach the status of historical painting. The landscape painters who followed during the middle of the nineteenth century—Church, Durand, Bierstadt, and others—would often follow the trail that Cole had blazed.
Hicks’s The Peaceable Kingdom as Pennsylvania parable
by Barbara Bassett, Philadelphia Museum of Art and Dr. Beth Harris
Edward Hicks, The Peaceable Kingdom, 1826, oil on canvas, 83.5 x 106 cm (Philadelphia Museum of Art) Speakers: Barbara Bassett, Curator of Education, School and Teacher Programs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Beth Harris A Seeing America video
Source: Barbara Bassett, Philadelphia Museum of Art and Dr. Beth Harris, “Hicks’s The Peaceable Kingdom as Pennsylvania parable,” in Smarthistory, February 3, 2019, accessed July 16, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/americas/hicks-peaceable/.
George Catlin, The White Cloud, Head Chief of the Iowas
by Farisa Khalid
George Catlin, The White Cloud, Head Chief of the Iowas, 1844–45, oil on canvas, 71 x 58 cm (National Gallery of Art, Washington; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Robed in his most splendid costume, his face gleaming with precious vermillion paint, he sits, like the prince he is, among his proud acolytes, solemnly smoking his pipe. [He is] a modern Jason.George Sand [1]
This is what the nineteenth-century French novelist and critic George Sand said when she first saw this striking portrait of the head chief of the Iowas, The White Cloud, or “Mew-hu-she-kaw,” painted by the American artist, explorer, and ethnographer, George Catlin. This painting, along with a series of other portraits of Indigenous peoples by Catlin, was exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1846. They stunned and titillated bourgeois Parisians with the spectacle and strangeness of the vast American wilderness and its “noble savages.”
Charles Bird King, Young Omahaw, War Eagle, Little Missouri, and Pawnees, 1821, oil on canvas, 71.1 x 91.8 cm (Smithsonian American Art Museum)
The comparison to the Greek mythological seafarer Jason is not unusual; the tendency to link the diminishing American Indian population to a vanished race of classical heroes was popular among Europeans and Americans in the nineteenth century. In 1821 the American artist Charles Bird King caused a sensation when he painted a group of Plains chiefs in profile as dignified and as stately as Roman statues.
But rhapsodizing over the Indigenous population’s innate nobility was easy to do in the face of their near extinction. By the mid-nineteenth century the popular image of the terrifying Indigenous person who threatened Western expansion and Manifest Destiny (the widely held belief in the United States that American settlers were destined to expand throughout the continent) gave way to a more dignified, but defeated figure as the numbers of Indigenous peoples across the country fell due to diseases, forced relocation, and poverty. By 1750, the Native American population east of the Mississippi River fell by approximately 250,000 while the Caucasian and African American population rose from around 250,000 in 1700 to nearly 1.25 million by 1750. [2]
George Catlin, The White Cloud, Head Chief of the Iowas, 1844–45, oil on canvas, 71 x 58 cm (National Gallery of Art, Washington; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Catlin painted this portrait of The White Cloud around 1844, twenty years after the Iowa tribes were forced by the U.S. government to move from Iowa to small reservations in Kansas and Nebraska. The displacement from their ancestral and spiritual homeland left the dwindling Iowa people in a fragile state. Only thirteen years before Catlin’s painting, American Indians endured one of their most traumatic collective experiences, “The Trail of Tears.” As part of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the government forced many of the southeastern tribes, the Cherokee, Seminole, Choctaw, and Chickasaw, to leave their homes and move west to designated Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. Hundreds of thousands died along the grueling journey from disease, exposure, and starvation.
A dignified portrayal
Catlin met The White Cloud, not in the U.S., but in Victorian London, when the Indigenous chief and his family were touring Europe as part of P.T. Barnum’s traveling circus from 1843 to 1845. The Indigenous dancers were a featured act in Barnum’s “Greatest Show on Earth” that showcased what Barnum believed to be rare cultural curiosities from all over the world.
William Fisk, George Catlin, 1849, oil on canvas. 62.5 x 52.5 inches (National Portrait Gallery, Washington)
By 1844, George Catlin was already something of a celebrity in America and in Europe with his Indigenous portraits. Catlin exaggerated his rustic backwoods character by occasionally wearing fur and moccasins to entrance his eager European audience who were hungry for an undiluted taste of the American wilderness (Catlin had grown up in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania).
The exotic plumage of traditional Plains dress appealed to Catlin at a fundamental level. It connected him to another culture and to the roots of American identity and the land. In his journals he describes their beauty in detail:
I love the Indians for their dignity, which is natural and noble. Vanity is the same all the world over. Good looks in portraiture and fashions, whatever they are—crinoline of the lip or crinoline of the waist (and one is as beautiful and reasonable as the other), or rings in the nose or rings in the ears, they are all the same.George Catlin, Episodes from “Life among the Indians” and “Last Rambles,” (New York: Dover Publications: 1997), p. 251
However, Catlin’s portrayal of The White Cloud, in his resplendent warrior regalia, stands in sharp contrast to the squalid way in which Barnum treated him. Indigenous performers during the nineteenth century, whether they were with Buffalo Bill’s “Wild West Show” or P.T. Barnum’s circus, were by and large cruelly exploited. In an 1843 letter to the collector and cultural historian Moses Kimball, founder of the Boston Museum, Barnum writes of the challenges of including Indigenous people in his act while denigrating them:
Dear Moses:
The Indians arrived and danced [last] night….They dance very well but do not [look] so fine as those last winter. They rowed, or rather paddled, another [race] last Saturday at Camden. I hired them out for the occasion for $100 and their board.
You must either get a [building] near the museum for the Indians to sleep and cook their own victuals [in] or else let them sleep in the museum on their skins & have victuals sent them from Sweeny shop. I boil up ham & potatoes, corn, beef, &c. at home& send them at each meal. The interpreter is a kind of half-breed and a decent chap; he must have common private board. The lazy devils want to be lying down nearly all the time, and as it looks so bad for them to be lying about the Museum, I have them stretched out in the workshop all day, some of them occasionally strolling about the Museum. D—n Indians anyhow. They are a lazy, shiftless set of brutes—though they will draw [in a crowd].As quoted in P.T. Barnum: America’s Greatest Showman (Knopf, 1995)
Barnum’s view of the Indigenous individuals in his employ is the opposite of Catlin’s portrayal of The White Cloud, which brings out this man’s inherent grace and dignity.
George Catlin, The White Cloud, Head Chief of the Iowas (detail), 1844–45, oil on canvas, 71 x 58 cm (National Gallery of Art, Washington; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Traditional dress
The White Cloud wears the traditional costume of the Iowa chieftain, indicative of his strengths as a warrior and hunter. His face is painted in glowing vermillion with a green a handprint across his cheeks, a sign that he was skilled in hand-to-hand combat.
Feather headdress (detail), George Catlin, The White Cloud, Head Chief of the Iowas, 1844–45, oil on canvas, 71 x 58 cm (National Gallery of Art, Washington; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
He wears a headdress of two eagle feathers and deer’s tail (also dyed vermillion) and a black band across his forehead made of otter fur. His earrings are made of carved conch shells. White wolf skin covers his shoulders over his deerskin robe and he wears a necklace made of grizzly bear claws, which testifies to his superior skill as a hunter.
Necklace (detail), George Catlin, The White Cloud, Head Chief of the Iowas, 1844–45, oil on canvas, 71 x 58 cm (National Gallery of Art, Washington; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
The necklace is the costume’s pièce de résistance, the aspect that signifies that The White Cloud is indeed the chief of his tribe. Catlin added the hazy blue sky in the background from his own imagination—the portrait was actually painted indoors in a draughty studio in London.
Catlin’s portrayal of Indigenous chiefs galvanized the imagination of a generation of European writers such as George Sand, Charles Baudelaire, and J.M. Barrie, whose Indigenous characters in Peter Pan are derived in part from Catlin’s portraits. Yet underneath the images of plumed warriors and bold individuals there was a sense of underlying sadness and determination to document a vanishing way of life. “We travel to see the perishable and the perishing,” Catlin wrote in his journal in the 1830s. “To see them before they fall.” [3]
Catlin’s portraits today
It is difficult to look at Catlin’s The White Cloud today without overlaying our knowledge of the oppression and violence Indigenous peoples suffered over hundreds of years. Nevertheless, it’s important to remember that during Catlin’s time, painting was an important means that Europeans used to record and preserve the changing status of Native Americans. The cultural historian Richard Slotkin said, “Catlin tried to deal with the ephemeral quality of the wilderness—the fact that white men were destroying it as they were trying to appropriate it.” [4] The Indigenous person, to Catlin, represented a beautiful, primordial aspect of America endangered in the face of industrialization and westward expansion.
George Catlin’s paintings of Indigenous peoples remain an enduring window onto the “Old West,” one of the most fascinating and contentious periods of American history. In certain aspects the art of the Old West shows us what the art historian Bryan J. Wolf calls, “the eternal last act in an imperial drama that began, as it ended, not just with territorial expansion but with cultural conquest as well.” [5] Catlin’s paintings and illustrations, free of sanctimony or fabrication, show us the Indigenous individual not as a perceived “noble savage,” as the European audiences often saw him, or as a demonic figure in the view of many nineteenth-century settlers, but as a real person in a real, though exotic, setting.
See also:
George Catlin and his Indian Gallery from the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Washington Crossing the Delaware is one of the most recognizable images in the history of American art. You might be surprised, however, to learn that it was not painted by an American artist at work in the United States, but was instead completed by Emanuel Leutze, an artist born in Germany, and that it was painted in Düsseldorf during the middle of the nineteenth century.
Leutze painted two versions of this painting. He began the first in 1849 immediately following the failure of Germany’s own revolution. This initial canvas was eventually destroyed during an Allied bombing raid in World War II. The artist began the second version of Washington Crossing the Delaware in 1850. This later painting was transported to New York where it was exhibited in a gallery in October 1851. Two years later, Marshall O. Roberts, a wealthy capitalist, purchased the work for the then-staggering price of $10,000. It was donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1897. It remained there until 1950 when long held curatorial concerns about its bombastic, crowd-pleasing qualities led the museum to send it to Dallas and eventually to a site near the actual river crossing. The painting returned to New York in 1970.
Washington (detail), Emanuel Leutze, Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851, oil on canvas, 378.5 x 647.7 cm (Metropolitan Museum of Art, photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Although Emanuel Leutze was born in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany, his family immigrated to the United States before he turned ten years of age. His first art instruction came in 1834 when he studied drawing and portraiture with John Rubens Smith, a London-born artist who worked in the United States during the first half of the 19th Century. Wealthy Philadelphian patrons recognized Leutze’s talent and sponsored the young artist to study at the Königliche Kunstacademie in Düsseldorf. While there, Leutze came to know many American artists who were then studying in Germany. These artists included Worthington Whittredge, Albert Bierstadt, Charles Wilmar, and Eastman Johnson.
Although he was active in portraiture, Leutze’s fame today rests upon his history paintings, and among these, Washington Crossing the Delaware is the most recognizable and ambitious. It is, in one word, colossal, both in scale and patriotic zeal.
Brilliance and desperation on a vast scale
Little can prepare a viewer for the experience of standing before a painting that measures more than 12 x 21 feet. The monumental scale of the composition is matched by the importance of the historical event Leutze painted. Without doubt, Leutze took his subject from one of the turning points in the American Revolutionary War.
Rowers breaking up the ice as they cross the river on Christmas Day (detail), Emanuel Leutze, Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851, oil on canvas, 378.5 x 647.7 cm (Metropolitan Museum of Art, photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
The Colonial cause appeared exceptionally bleak as the year 1776 came to a close. In a military move that navigated the fine line between brilliance and desperation, George Washington led the Colonial army across the Delaware River shortly after nightfall on 25 December in order to attack the Hessian encampment outside Trenton, New Jersey. Washington and his army achieved an unprecedented tactical surprise and delivered a much-needed military and moral victory. Washington’s army killed 22 Hessian soldiers, wounded 98 more, and captured more than 1,000 (Hessians were Germans soldiers hired by the British Empire). The Colonial Army had less than ten combined dead and wounded soldiers. After many military setbacks in the North, Washington’s bold move on Christmas night 1776 helped provide a sense of hope for the Colonial cause.
Farmers huddled against cold at middle of boat (detail) Emanuel Leutze, Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851, oil on canvas, 378.5 x 647.7 cm (Metropolitan Museum of Art, photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
In addition to General Washington, Leutze has filled the boat with a variety of ‘types’ of soldiers. Washington and his two officers are distinguished by their blue coats, the trademark attire of a Continental officer.
The remaining nine men appear to be members of the militia. Three men row at the bow of the boat. One is an African American, another wears the checkerboard bonnet of a Scotsman, and the third wears a coonskin cap.
Two farmers, distinguished by their broad-brimmed hats, huddle against the frigid cold in the middle of the boat, while the man at the stern wears the moccasins, pants, and hat of a Native American. This collection of people suggests the all-inclusive nature of the Colonial cause in the American Revolutionary War.
Poetic license
Native American at back of boat (detail), Emanuel Leutze, Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851, oil on canvas, 378.5 x 647.7 cm (Metropolitan Museum of Art, photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Despite Leutze’s interest in history, there is little historical accuracy to be found within the painting. First, the “Stars and Stripes” flag shown in the painting was not in use until September 1777, and the size of the boat is far too small to accommodate the twelve men who occupy it.
And although this event happened in the middle of the night, Leutze shows the crossing occurring at the break of dawn. Rather than depict the Delaware River, a waterway that was rather narrow where Washington and the Continental Army crossed, Leutze paints what appears to be a river with the breadth and ice formation of the Rhine. Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, Leuzte paints Washington standing upright, an unlikely and precarious posture for anyone in a short-walled rowboat.
It is clear then that Washington Crossing the Delaware‘s strength is not in the correct rendering of an historical event. Leutze’s primary goal was to create a work of art that deliberately glorified General Washington, the Colonial-American cause, and commemorated a military action of particular significance. In doing so, Leutze created one of the most iconic images in the history of American art.
Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way
by Carol Wilson and Dr. Steven Zucker
Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way (mural study for the United States Capitol building), 1861, oil on canvas, 84.5 x 110.1 cm (Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Sara Carr Upton, 1931.6.1)
Source: Carol Wilson and Dr. Steven Zucker, “Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way,” in Smarthistory, September 16, 2019, accessed July 16, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/leutze-manifest-destiny/.
Frederic Edwin Church, Niagara and Heart of the Andes
by Dr. Bryan Zygmont
Frederic Edwin Church, Niagara, 1857, oil on canvas, 106.5 x 229.9 cm (National Gallery of Art)
A precise depiction of nature
If Thomas Cole represents the first generation of the Hudson River School of painters, then Frederic Edwin Church, the only pupil Cole ever instructed, certainly represents the generation that followed. Yet despite the teacher/student relationship that they shared, they differed in the ways in which they conceived of the American landscape. For Cole, landscape painting was a pictorial device in which to reach allegorical or narrative ends. While Church at first followed his teacher’s instruction in this regard, the younger artist set allegory and narrative aside in favor of a more focused and precise depiction of nature.
A teacher’s praise: “The finest eye of drawing in the world”
Church was born in Hartford, Connecticut, to a wealthy family; his father was a prosperous silversmith and watchmaker. Daniel Wadsworth, one of the most influential art patrons of his time and the founder of the oldest public art museum in the United States—the Wadsworth Atheneum—introduced Church to Cole in 1844. Although still but a teenager, Cole remarked that Church possessed ‘the finest eye of drawing in the world.’ Church’s immense skill is demonstrated by his election as an Associate of the National Academy of Design in May of 1844. Just barely 24 years of age, Church was the youngest artist so honored. But one year later his status was to that of Academician. Clearly, his career was off to a meteoric beginning.
Blockbuster landscapes
Today, Church is most famous for his large, blockbuster-sized landscapes. Among the many he painted, Niagara (1857) and The Heart of the Andes (1863) are justifiably the most famous. Together, these two paintings vaulted Church to the position of the most famous painter in the United States.
Although Church was not the first artist to depict the Great Falls of Niagara—John Vanderlyn, John Trumbull, and Cole had made attempts earlier in the nineteenth century—he was the first to somehow capture the roaring essence of what many then considered to be the greatest natural treasure in the United States. In contrast to earlier painters, however, Church placed the viewer close to the falls and suspends them immediately above the ledge from which the water thrillingly descends. Even the panorama-like horizontal format and the colossal size (106.5 x 229.9 cm) accentuate the sublime nature of the composition.
An American image
Even though Church depicted the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, this image became wildly popular, both in the United States and in Europe, and has, over time, become a uniquely “American” image. When completed in 1857, Church exhibited this work at a one-painting show at the New York commercial art gallery of Williams, Stevens, and Williams. Within two weeks of the exhibition’s opening, more than 100,000 visitors had paid twenty-five cents each to view Church’s masterwork. The art-loving public was clearly fascinated and enchanted by this image. Many used opera glasses to discern the minute details that were only visible upon close inspection. Church, ever the businessman, generated additional revenue through the sale of chromolithographs of the painting.
After a successful exhibit in New York, Church then toured Niagara to various cites on the east coast, and eventually even took the image to London and Paris. In all, Niagara made Church both a wealthy man and amongst the most famous of American painters.
Return to South America
If 1857 marks the year of Church completed Niagara, it also marks his return to South America, a location the artist had visited just four years prior. Cyrus Field, a wealthy New York businessman who was to become one of Church’s most reliable patrons, financed both of these adventures. Church spent more than two months in South America—most of this in Ecuador—and became keenly interested in Alexander von Humboldt, the Prussian naturalist and acclaimed author of Kosmos. This two-volume study of geology and natural history was published in Germany in 1845 and 1847. English translations followed shortly thereafter, and Humboltdt’s theories had an immense impact on Church’s views of the natural world. When the artist returned to his New York studio, he arrived with countless preparatory drawings and watercolors from which to base a monumental composition.
Frederic Edwin Church, Heart of the Andes, 1859, oil on canvas, 168 x 302.9 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Not just a painting—an experience
And complete a monumental composition Church did, not only in size (168 x 302.9 cm), but also in visual scope. Church unveiled the painting at Lyrique Hall on 27 April 1859, and was moved to the Tenth Street Studio Building two days later. Like Niagara, The Heart of the Andes was more for contemporary viewers than just a painting; countless writers agreed that seeing the painting was an experience. Church placed the painting in a darkened room and dramatically illuminated it through the use of gas lamps. An enormous frame that resembled window molding only increased the painting’s visual impact. As with Niagara, the twenty-five cent ticket price for The Heart of the Andes entitled viewers to borrow a pair of opera glasses and a set of pamphlets that explained the composition through the geographical ideas von Humboldt wrote of in his Kosmos.
Waterfall and geologic formations (detail), Frederic Edwin Church, Heart of the Andes, 1859, oil on canvas, 168 x 302.9 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Praise from Mark Twain
Indeed, if Niagara was a depiction of a singular scene, The Heart of the Andes is instead a pictorial composite view of Humboldt’s theories. The public was once again smitten with Church’s efforts, and more than 12,000 visitors paid the quarter admission charge. After New York, Church sent The Heart of the Andes on tour to both domestic and foreign locations. Mark Twain saw it when it arrived in St. Louis in 1860 and wrote to this brother:
Pamela and I have just returned from a visit to the most wonderfully beautiful painting which this city has ever seen–Church’s “Heart of the Andes”–which represents a lovely valley with its rich vegetation in all the bloom and glory of a tropical summer–dotted with birds and flowers of all colors and shades of color, and sunny slopes, and shady corners, and twilight groves, and cool cascades–all grandly set off with a majestic mountain in the background with its gleaming summit clothed in everlasting ice and snow! I have seen it several times, but it is always a new picture–totally new–you seem to see nothing the second time which you saw the first. We took the opera glass, and examined its beauties minutely, for the naked eye cannot discern the little wayside flowers, and soft shadows and patches of sunshine, and half-hidden bunches of grass and jets of water which form some of its most enchanting features…You will never get tired of looking at the picture, but your reflections –your efforts to grasp an intelligible Something–you hardly know what –will grow so painful that you will have to go away from the thing, in order to obtain relief. You may find relief, but you cannot banish the picture–It remains with you still. It is in my mind now–and the smallest feature could not be removed without my detecting it.
The composition
Minute detail of flowers, wind, and seasons (detail), Frederic Edwin Church, Heart of the Andes, 1859, oil on canvas, 168 x 302.9 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
If Church had ever read Twain’s remarks, there can be little doubt the artist would have been delighted. Church aspired to take many different components and assemble them into a cohesive and believable whole. The monumental snow-capped mountain in the deep background is Mt. Chimborazo, one of the highest peaks in South America. Moving to the foreground, Church leads the viewer through a variety of topographical zones which all contain unique flora and fauna. There is but a little human presence in this vast depiction of space.A colonial Spanish hacienda appears in the central middle ground, resting on the banks of a river. This waterway flows to the viewer’s right, eventually arriving at a waterfall—a Niagara in miniature—on the right side of the painting. A well-traveled footpath in the left foreground leads the eye to a pair of people who worship before a simple wooden cross. Beyond these ‘major’ elements, the composition is filled with minute details unobservable in any reproduction. Flowers bloom, birds flutter, water flows, and wind seems to blow.
A nineteenth-century artistic entrepreneur
Niagara and The Heart of the Andes are only two paintings from a long and productive professional career that spanned North and South America, Europe, and the Middle East. However, they stand as excellent examples of Frederic Church’s extensive oeuvre and his practices as a nineteenth-century artistic entrepreneur. Whereas Thomas Cole, Church’s artistic mentor, used the landscape as a visual tool on the path towards allegory and narrative, Church instead placed great artistic focus on exactitude and specificity in regards to flora, fauna, and geological formations. The huge size, panoramic views, and incredible detail vaulted him into the highest ranks of nineteenth century American landscapists.
Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris, “Science, religion, and politics, Church’s Cotopaxi,” in Smarthistory, March 15, 2021, accessed July 16, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/church-cotopaxi/.
Dr. Peter John Brownlee, Curator, Terra Foundation for American Art and Dr. Beth Harris, “Frederic Edwin Church, The Iceberg,” in Smarthistory, April 4, 2020, accessed July 16, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/frederic-church-iceberg/.
Albert Bierstadt, Hetch Hetchy Valley, California
by Erin Monroe, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art and Dr. Beth Harris
Albert Bierstadt, Hetch Hetchy Valley, California, c. 1874–80, oil on canvas, 94.8 x 148.2 cm (Bequest of Laura M. Lyman, in memory of her husband Theodore Lyman, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art)
Source: Erin Monroe, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art and Dr. Beth Harris, “Albert Bierstadt, Hetch Hetchy Valley, California,” in Smarthistory, December 21, 2018, accessed July 16, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/bierstadt-hetch-hetchy-valley/.
Thomas Moran, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
The painting that inspired a National Park
Awe and grandeur in the service of an expanding United States
by Dr. Eleanor Jones Harvey and Dr. Beth Harris
Thomas Moran, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, 1872, oil on canvas mounted on aluminum, 213 x 266.3 cm (Smithsonian American Art Museum, lent by the Department of the Interior Museum, L.1968.84.1). Speakers: Dr. Eleanor Jones Harvey and Dr. Beth Harris.
In the 19th century, Americans living in the eastern United States had little access to the western territories. When Ferdinand Hayden led the first geological survey of Yellowstone in 1871, he brought along a photographer, William Henry Jackson, and a painter, Thomas Moran, to document the area. Their images helped influence Congress to make Yellowstone the first National Park and this painting was purchased to celebrate that legislation.
After the Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869, railroad companies sought to expand throughout the west and encouraged travelers to visit the region. Moran’s images of Yellowstone helped transform the area known as “Colter’s Hell” to a tourist destination considered a “wonderland.” Although Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is actually a composite of different locations, the precise geological and biological details make this painting feel authentic.
Part of the myth of the American West was that these were untouched lands, erasing the local Native Americans who often assisted explorers, as we see in this painting. Around Yellowstone, these tribes were forced onto reservations when gold was discovered in the region two years later, contributing to the larger Plains Indian wars that had intensified after the Civil War.
Moran painted another version of Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone for the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, where Frederick Jackson Turner argued his “frontier thesis.” He characterized American expansion as a civilizing force across the continent.
Thomas Moran’s paintings of Yellowstone were very popular with the viewing public and part of a successful tourism campaign. Today, professional and amateur photographs document and share images of iconic locations. Find an example from a familiar landmark or site and look at how it is framed, composed, or filtered. Does this modern image share any similarities with how Moran portrayed Yellowstone?
During the 1871 expedition, William Henry Jackson and Thomas Moran worked side-by-side and frequently collaborated. Compare some of the photographs taken by Jackson with Moran’s paintings. Why do you think Ferdinand Hayden brought both a photographer and a painter on his survey of Yellowstone?
Richard Caton Woodville, War News from Mexico, 1848, oil on canvas, 68.6 × 63.5 cm (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas). Speakers: Dr. Mindy Besaw, curator, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and Dr. Steven Zucker
Richard Caton Woodville, War News from Mexico, 1848, oil on canvas, 68.6 × 63.5 cm (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas)
A crowd gathered for the news
The young man in the center of a crowd in Richard Caton Woodville’s War News From Mexico (1848) holds open a newspaper with his elbows up, but the paper is low enough that we can see the astonished look on his face.
Map of Mexico, color-filled areas show Mexican territory in 1847. The yellow and green areas at the top left became part of the southwestern United States in 1848.
Volunteer Flyer (detail), Richard Caton Woodville, War News from Mexico, 1848, oil on canvas, 68.6 × 63.5 cm (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas)
And the news itself? As the title indicates, this is a dispatch from the front of the Mexican-American War. United States troops entered Mexico City in 1848, bringing to an end a war that had begun in 1846 over a territorial dispute involving Texas. In the resulting Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico ceded half its territory to the United States, effectively concluding the U.S. program of westward expansion.
To convey the characteristics of a Western outpost, the men gathered in the painting are shown standing on the porch of a building typical of the kind erected in the American frontier during the rush for territories in the early decades of the nineteenth century. In fact, the building serves multiple functions: it is both an “American Hotel” and post office, as indicated on the signs. While the building emulates in wood the style of stone classical structures found in Philadelphia or New York City, the artist has taken great care with the details to remind the viewer this is on the frontier: the wood is worn, and underneath the “post office” sign is tacked a recruitment notice asking for “Volunteers for Mexico!”
A range of responses
Opinion on the war was divided and Woodville thus depicts a range of responses. An older man in Revolutionary-era clothing just to the right of the standing figure holding the newspaper, strains to hear as another repeats into his ear what is being read. One young man in the background is tossing his hat into the air; he clearly welcomes the news but the seated elder shows far less enthusiasm. His outdated clothing identifies him as part of the generation that fought the Revolutionary War but did not endorse the expansion embraced by the new Jacksonian-era democracy. And what of the inhabitants themselves of the former Spanish colonies in the southwest (Mexico had gained independence from Spain in 1821)? This could only be bad news; the surrendering of territory spelled the loss of cultural identity. A protestant, Anglo-American culture, pushing westward, acquiring new states for the Union, would seek to eradicate any vestiges of Hispanic-Catholic identity. Mexicans would wake up the day after the treaty was signed and find themselves second-class citizens in a new country.
Porch (detail), Richard Caton Woodville, War News from Mexico, 1848, oil on canvas, 68.6 × 63.5 cm (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas)
Genre scenes
American genre-scene painters during this period typically strove to represent an array of social types in their rapidly modernizing nation, and Woodville’s painting is no exception (“genre” paintings depict scenes of everyday life). There were often humorous illustrations of class status or newly immigrant Americans in genre scene paintings but they also betrayed, in equal measure, social anxiety about a shifting demography in a new political environment. There are African-American figures in the painting but they are pushed to the border, outside the framing beams of the hotel’s portico—a seated man in a bright orange shirt and a child wearing a tattered white dress. They look on from the bottom right, at the foot of the steps, but their facial expressions seem to register only weariness or perhaps resignation. The question as to whether the new territories would be slave states or free ones was hotly debated—some saw the war as extending the institution of slavery—and Woodville nods to this larger political reality. There is also an elderly woman barely visible in the shadows; she leans out a window and looks in the direction of the group on the porch. These figures are not included within the immediate circle of white men—perhaps suggesting their less central position within society.
Man and child, lower right (detail), Richard Caton Woodville, War News from Mexico, 1848, oil on canvas, 68.6 × 63.5 cm (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas)
Images of frontier life were popular in the years leading up to the Civil War and Woodville had great success depicting this kind of everyday subject matter. He specialized in domestic interiors—an important subset of this newly emergent category of genre-scene painting. This subject type was popular in Europe (particularly during the 17th century in the Dutch Republic), however it was a relatively new phenomenon in American art—reaching its height of popularity in the period that stretched from the 1830s through the Civil War of 1861-65. Genre scene paintings were aimed at a broadly expanded and increasingly literate middle-class whose tastes ran to familiar scenarios of everyday life, rather than the mythic or historical themes favored by the art academies (the Royal Academies of Europe and the National Academy in the United States). Genre-scene paintings were promoted by organizations like the American Art Union (AAU). The AAU was formed in 1839 to promote American artists and specifically to forge a uniquely American art. Once exhibited under the aegis of the AAU—Woodville’s War News From Mexico was exhibited in 1849 right after the war ended—paintings were then turned into engravings and sold to AAU members by subscription.
Woman in window (detail), Richard Caton Woodville, War News from Mexico, 1848, oil on canvas, 68.6 × 63.5 cm (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas)
In contrast to the marginalized figures of the woman and the African Americans, the newspaper takes pride of place in this painting. The “penny presses,” as they were called, a relatively recent invention, were mass-produced commercial newspapers that emerged in the 1830s during a period of rapid industrialization and modernization. Unlike their more expensive, subscription-based counterparts, the penny presses (so named because they cost mere pennies) reached a broad swath of the American public. Not only was the Mexican-American War one of the very first to be photographed, it was also extensively broadcast through print—through the very type of paper depicted in the painting, with its top banner emblazoned with the words “EXTRA.” The newspaper, in fact, functioned as a powerful symbol of the power of the press to bring Americans together and the painting suggests the role of the paper in shaping public opinion.
Newspaper (detail), Richard Caton Woodville, War News from Mexico, 1848, oil on canvas, 68.6 × 63.5 cm (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas)
Genre-scene paintings often conveyed a sense of immediacy and here War News From Mexico orients itself towards the viewer in such a way that one feels as if one has just stumbled upon the scene. Notice, for example, how the perspective is tilted to the right of the viewer; this has the effect of positioning us off to the left side as if we have just come around some imaginary corner and the American Hotel, its porch crowded with the town’s inhabitants, careens into view.
Manifest Destiny
Despite this seeming spontaneity, War News from Mexico is as carefully composed and even as moralizing as the staid history paintings and Neoclassical subjects favored by the academies. Though it was commonplace to view genre-scene paintings as “snapshots” of daily American life without larger purpose, this unfolding scene (meant to indicate some place on the frontier far removed from the military action, but close enough that it mattered), takes place against the backdrop of Manifest Destiny—the theory that drove and justified westward expansion.
The ideology of Manifest Destiny construes Anglo-Americans as God’s chosen people who—like the ancient Israelites of the Old Testament—are guided by God to their destiny. This was a subject often depicted in painting. For example, in Emmanuel Leutze’s mural for the west stairway of the U.S. Capitol, Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way, we see American pioneers and their covered wagons looking towards the sunset and the Pacific Ocean while one of the scenes in the lower right border (illustrated left) depicts Moses leading the Israelites through the desert.
Emanuel Leutze, Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way, 1862, stereochrome, 6.1 × 9.1 m (United States Capitol, Washington, D.C.)
Beginning with the American Revolution, this American “exceptionalism” (as it also came to be known), rationalized not only the acquisition of land all the way to the Pacific Ocean, but also the subjugation and removal of people from their land—the Indian Removal Act of 1830 that President Andrew Jackson signed into law strengthened the rapid acquisition of land that went hand in hand with expulsion and extermination.
Woodville makes no overt statement of his politics in War News from Mexico but his painting nevertheless encapsulates a larger history than the scale of this relatively small painting (it measures approximately 27 x 25 inches) would seem to allow. If War News from Mexico does, however ambiguously, extol the ideology of Manifest Destiny and the inevitability of America’s domination of a large part of the continent, it is an ironic fact of history that Woodville’s scenes of life in the American West were painted while he lived in Europe. Born in Baltimore, Woodville left for Europe as a young man to train in Düsseldorf, Germany, and remained abroad until his death in London at the age of 30.
The U.S. Civil War, sharpshooters and Winslow Homer
by Dr. Kimberly Kutz Elliott and Sarah Alvarez
Winslow Homer, “The Army of the Potomac—A Sharpshooter on Picket Duty,” 1862, wood engraving, illustration in Harper’s Weekly (November 15, 1862, Smithsonian American Art Museum) A conversation between Sarah Alvarez and Dr. Kimberly Kutz Elliott
by Sara Klein, Amon Carter Museum of American Art and Dr. Beth Harris
Frederic Remington, The Fall of the Cowboy, 1895, oil on canvas, 24 x 35 1/8 inches (Amon Carter Museum of American Art), a Seeing America video Speakers: Sara Klein, Teacher and School Programs Manager, Amon Carter Museum of American Art and Steven Zucker
Source: Sara Klein, Amon Carter Museum of American Art and Dr. Beth Harris, “Frederic Remington, The Fall of the Cowboy,” in Smarthistory, January 20, 2018, accessed July 16, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/remington-fall-cowboy/.
Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket
by Meg Floryan
James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold, the Falling Rocket, 1875, oil on panel, 60.3 × 46.7 cm (Detroit Institute of Arts); a conversation with Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris
James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, 1875, oil on panel, 60.2 x 46.7 cm (Detroit Institute of the Arts; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
A personal interpretation
One might say that for some artworks, seeing beyond the artist’s intention to form a more indefinite, personal interpretation is, ironically, the creator’s ultimate objective after all. Much like Alice stepping tentatively through the two-dimensional plane of the looking glass into the possibilities beyond, the viewer is invited to deduce his own meaning, to form his own associations, thus essentially taking part in the creative process itself. While ambiguity is standard in the conceptual contemporary pieces of today, what mattered most in early American art was what could be read on the surface: narrative clarity, illusionistic detail, realism, and straightforward moral instruction. When did things change? Perhaps, it seems, around the time avant-garde artists began to pursue abstraction, flirt with modernism, and challenge the aesthetic standards of the past.
Consider Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket of 1875. In the mass of shadowy dark hues, vague wandering figures, and splashes of brilliant color, museum-goers might construe myriad meanings from the same scene: perhaps sparks from a blazing campfire, flickering Japanese lanterns, or visions of far-off galaxies mystically appearing on a clear summer night. Indeed, while the Massachusetts-born artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) was inspired by a specific event (a fireworks display over London’s Cremorne Gardens) the intangibility, both in appearance and theme, of the oil on panel was deliberate. The questions it conjures, the emotions it evokes, may differ from one viewer to another, and frankly, that’s the point.
Detail, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, 1875, oil on panel, 60.2 x 46.7 cm (Detroit Institute of the Arts; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
“flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face”
Detail, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, 1875, oil on panel, 60.2 x 46.7 cm (Detroit Institute of the Arts; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
The Falling Rocket resonates with many 21st-century beholders, yet when it was first exhibited at a London gallery in 1877, detractors deemed the painting too slapdash, incomprehensible, even insulting. Art critic John Ruskin dismissed Whistler’s effort as “flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face,” as in his opinion it contained no social value. In response, Whistler – cheeky man that he was – sued Ruskin for libel, and though he won the case in court, he was awarded only a farthing in damages. During the highly publicized trial, the artist defended his series of atmospheric “nocturnes” as artistic arrangements whose worth lay not in any imitative aspects but in their basis in transcendent ideals of harmony and beauty.
Music
Whistler saw his paintings as musical compositions illustrated visually, and delineated this idea is his famed “Ten O’Clock” lecture of 1885:
Nature contains the elements, in colour and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music. But the artist is born to pick and choose… that the result may be beautiful – as the musician gathers his notes, and forms his chords, until he brings forth from chaos glorious harmony.
Detail, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, 1875, oil on panel, 60.2 x 46.7 cm (Detroit Institute of the Arts; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Many of his titles incorporate allusions to music: “nocturnes,” “symphonies,” “arrangements,” and “harmonies.” The immaterial, the spiritual – these principles are subtly interwoven throughout Whistler’s oeuvre, and he preached his ideas on the new religion of art throughout his career.
Edmonia Lewis, Forever Free, 1867, Carrara marble, 106 x 57.2 cm, 31.4 cm in diameter (Howard University Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Standing a little over three feet high, Forever Free (Morning of Liberty) depicts two figures carved out of white marble. On the left is a kneeling woman with hands clasped in prayer and her chin and eyes lifted. Her left foot, visible under her simple dress, appears to be chained to the base of the statue. On the right is a man who stands with his left foot unshackled and resting on the ball and chain that once bound him. His right hand rests on the shoulder of his companion while his left hand is raised triumphantly with broken shackles still encircling his wrist. Like the woman whom he touches protectively and lovingly, his face and eyes are lifted.
Edmonia Lewis, Forever Free (detail), 1867, Carrara marble, 106 x 57.2 cm, 31.4 cm in diameter (Howard University Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
While her hair is relatively straight and flowing, his is tightly coiled. These visual elements, together with the title of the work, Forever Free, incised on the base on the sculpture, suggest that the figures are Black and that we see them at the very moment of their liberation from enslavement.
Edmonia Lewis, Forever Free (detail), 1867, Carrara marble, 106 x 57.2 cm, 31.4 cm in diameter (Howard University Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., photo Olivia Chiang)
Sculpted in 1867 by Mary Edmonia Lewis, Forever Free (Morning of Liberty) is positioned between and among three events that forever changed the trajectory of African Americans and the United States. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln announced the largely symbolic Emancipation Proclamation. With the victory of the United States army in 1865, Congress passed the 13th Amendment, which abolished enslavement and among other liberties, entitled freed people to basic human rights, including the right to marry. Made two years later in 1867, Forever Free embodies this basic and universal right to marriage, which had been illegal for those in bondage. The following year, in 1868, the 14th Amendment was passed, which guaranteed citizenship rights to those who were formerly enslaved.
Thomas Ball, Emancipation Statue (Freedmen’s Memorial to Abraham Lincoln), 1876, Lincoln Park, Washington, D.C. (photo: Renée Ater)
Countering the status quo in emancipation sculptures
Edmonia Lewis, Forever Free, 1867, Carrara marble, 106 x 57.2 cm, 31.4 cm in diameter (Howard University Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
In addition to focusing on the freedoms granted by the 13th Amendment, Forever Free also significantly breaks from the tradition of showing emancipation as a passive event for Black Americans. Typical renderings of emancipation tended to feature a single, Black male figure who still carried symbols of oppression, such as shackles. Sculptures such as Thomas Ball’s Freedmen’s Memorial of 1875, while referring to emancipation, couched the idea of freedom for African Americans as dependent upon the benevolence of white men. Ball’s sculpture features two Presidents—Lincoln standing and holding the Emancipation Proclamation, and George Washington, shown in a bas-relief profile on the column upon which the Proclamation rests. These men watch over a kneeling Black man who wears a loincloth and whose eyes and gestures present him as a harmless supplicant. Lincoln’s sweeping gesture of benevolence presents “liberty” as a gift to be granted rather than a return of what had been cruelly stolen.
What made Forever Free unusual and radical among such sculptures depicting emancipation was the posture assumed by the male figure. Normally shown kneeling and with his back bent, Lewis’s figure is upright and defiant with no implied presence of Lincoln or any other white figure to bestow freedom upon him or the woman he protects. Instead, the couple in Lewis’s sculpture appears to be thankful only to God.
Furthermore, in Forever Free emancipation is shown as an issue for a family unit rather than the usual rendering of a single Black male. Lewis’s focus on a Black couple suggests that the sexual and reproductive energies of Black Americans would now belong wholly to themselves. This contrasts to the conditions of enslavement when owners saw reproduction as a means to generate more labor and property. Enslaved people were also often victims of sexual violence, including men who were sexually abused by their owners. Forever Free is a sculpture that demonstrates how previously outlawed affection and intimacy between enslaved people could now be recognized and formalized through marriage. The inclusion of the word “forever” in the title of the sculpture alludes to the future generations of free and equal citizens that this and many other couples will produce.
In Longfellow’s poem, Minnehaha (left), leaves her father (right) to marry Hiawatha. Edmonia Lewis, The Old Arrow Maker, modeled 1866, carved c. 1872, marble, 50.8 x 35.6 x 35.6 cm (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
It is important to note that Forever Free was not Lewis’s first and only representation of family. It shares with her works based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Song of Hiawatha” a reaffirmation of heterosexual relationships in which men and women of the same race marry. A common belief among abolitionists like Harriet Beecher Stowe was that the only legitimate families were “biological” ones, meaning that the parents were of the same race. The belief was thus a critique of the pairings outside of marriage that saw the birth of mixed-race children who were often the product of Black women raped by white men.
More importantly, the sculptures represent Lewis’s refusal to share more of herself than distant references to her heritage. She never created works in which the couples were of different racial heritages—such as a Black father and Indigenous mother, like her own parents. Lewis was born free around 1845 in upstate New York. Her mother was Ojibwa and Black and her father was of African descent and an immigrant from Haiti. Lewis never made sculptures based on her direct experiences with her mother’s people, and born free, she had never experienced enslavement.
An independent artist and business person
Portrait of Edmonia Lewis, c. 1874–76, photograph by Fratelli d’Alessandri in Rome, Italy, albumen print mounted as a carte de visite on card, 10.16 x 6.35 cm (The Walters Art Museum)
Lewis’s parents died when she was about eight years old, and her half-brother Samuel took on the responsibility of raising and educating her. He sent her first to McGrawville (New York Central College), an antislavery boarding school run by Baptists in McGraw, New York. In 1861, her brother then sent her to Oberlin College where she trained in courses that were considered suited to women (by the standards of the time) and where she expressed an early interest in art.
Lewis left Oberlin in 1863 but, armed with letters of introduction to abolitionists in Boston, met Lydia Maria Child, one of the foremost antislavery advocates and the editor of the prominent abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator. Child would become Lewis’s most powerful white abolitionist patron though, in private letters, would at times express frustration with what she saw as Lewis’s outsized ambitions.
Edmonia Lewis, Portrait Medal of the Abolitionist Wendell Phillips, 1871, marble, 46 cm in diameter (National Portrait Gallery)
While in Boston, Lewis trained under the sculptor Edward Augustus Brackett, and created and sold medallions of abolitionists like John Brown and plaster busts of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (despite disapproval from Child for taking on such a revered figure). With the money she earned from selling her own work, Lewis was able to travel to Italy and eventually establish a studio in Rome where she began producing her works based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem The Song of Hiawatha (1855) as well as biblical, historical, and mythological figures. She also continued to sculpt busts of prominent abolitionists.
It was in Italy that Lewis sculpted Forever Free in 1867, a fact she inscribed on the base of the work in Latin, the language of ancient Rome. She used Latin because it was precedent for her peers—it positions sculptors as heirs to the traditions of ancient Roman sculpture; the marble was from Carrara; the works were made in Rome; and finally, it made the British, German, Dutch, US, etc. artists legitimate in the face of their Italian competition.
White marble was the common currency of fine art sculpture during the first 75 years of the nineteenth century. Typically, such a medium would be used to depict “ideal” subject matter, such as figures from the bible, history, mythology, or literature. White marble also evoked the ancient classical past and its traditions of depicting gods, goddesses, and imperial rulers. What makes Lewis’s sculpture so profound was the use of such an elevated medium for the subject of enslaved people.
Edmonia Lewis, Forever Free, 1867, Carrara marble, 106 x 57.2 cm, 31.4 cm in diameter (Howard University Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Forever Free also marks Lewis’s defiance against her white patrons who attempted to dictate her creative path. Specifically, Lydia Maria Child had discouraged Lewis from attempting any more “ideal works,” including creating a sculpture based on the Emancipation Proclamation. Despite Child’s disapproval of the sculpture’s subject matter, Lewis completed the work, and rather than allow Forever Free to languish in her European studio as her patron wished, Lewis shipped the sculpture to Boston where it was publicly advertised and exhibited at the A.A. Childs Gallery. [1]
Lewis followed the sculpture to Boston in 1869, and with recent passage of the 14th Amendment, her decision to have a formal dedication ceremony of the sculpture in honor of Leonard Andrew Grimes was even more meaningful. Grimes was an African American minister and abolitionist who served as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. During the antebellum era, one of his overriding missions was to reunite families torn apart by enslavement. Thus, Lewis’s depiction of this new family that freedom had created was rendered as a fulfillment of Grimes’s activism. In many ways, Forever Free (Morning of Liberty) became a blueprint for how Lewis would conduct her career and demonstrated her determination to work at her own pace and according to the needs of her creative impulses, rather than to the dictates of white patrons. The story of this sculpture is the story of her career where neither forgiveness nor permission was ever asked by the artist.
Notes:
[1] In an event typical of the nineteenth century, this exhibition would include a single work of art, advertised to the public, who would be charged general admission (usually twenty-five cents) to view the work.
Technological advances, large-scale production methods, and the opening of new markets encouraged the rise of industrial capitalism in the United States.
World’s Fair, St. Louis 1904 (Library of Congress)
Wondrous new innovations for modern life
From 265 feet above the St. Louis Fair of 1904, ferris wheel riders looked down on “palaces” dedicated to electricity, transportation, and “varied industries” whose halls held wondrous new innovations for modern life including an electric streetcar, private automobiles, wireless telephones, X-ray machines, and infant incubators.
From the turn of the century and through two world wars, Americans witnessed technologies that advanced transportation, business, and health. Mass culture spread throughout the nation via movie theaters, radios, and department stores. From the view on the ferris wheel, the narrative of American progress glowed bright in the electric lights below. But on the ground, Americans experienced the inequalities of industrial development spawned by an era of mass consumption.
Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones, The Shoe Shop, c. 1911, oil on canvas, 99.1 x 79.4 cm (Art Institute of Chicago)
The fair was a centennial celebration of the Louisiana Purchase. When planning began in 1898, the U.S. was engaged in war with Spain in both the Caribbean and the Philippines. Often sensationalized in newspapers through “yellow journalism,” the Spanish-American War was a topic of debate that revealed differing ideologies of America’s place in the world.
The war ended the same year it began with American acquisition of Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, and temporary control of Cuba. Although many disagreed with the politics of imperial expansion, when the fair opened in 1904 the Philippines pavilion was among the largest on site and included a small lake where model ships reenacted battles from the war.
A booklet advertising the Philippine Exposition at the St. Louis World’s Fair, 1904 (Smithsonian Institution)
Rights and reforms
The processes that enabled mass consumption also created great economic divisions. As industrial production increased, monopolies came to dominate American business. Workers, photographers, and “muckraking” journalists sought to expose the excesses of big business and the horrific conditions of factory labor. In 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire killed 146 workers, many of them female or children, and most immigrants of Italian or Jewish descent. In response, 20,000 New York garment workers went on strike uniting across ethnic boundaries for the common goal of safety and economic opportunity. Other strikes followed around the country, spawning more organized unionization and activism for working conditions and fair pay.
The early twentieth-century saw more women entering the workforce in factories and offices, and as telephone operators or domestic servants. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who inspired the term “feminism,” saw changes as the “spirit of personal independence” and encouraged women to leave the home environment which was preventing them from full freedom and social engagement.
Several female leaders emerged expounding similar ideas including Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger. Some, such as Jane Addams, actively sought to help women improve their situations though housing, career training, education, and social services. After advocating for decades, women earned the right to vote in 1920.
Jacob Lawrence, “During World War I there was a great migration north by southern African Americans,” from The Migration Series, 1940-41, 60 panels, tempera on hardboard (Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.)
Throughout the era, laws and intimidation tactics prevented African Americans from full participation in democratic society. Southern states enforced segregation of facilities arguing for a doctrine of “separate but equal” that the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed in its 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson. Even when similar schools and healthcare facilities were provided for the black population, they were not of the same standard as those offered to the white population. In 1900, no southern state offered a high school education to African Americans.
Thousands of black Americans made their way to the industrial cities of the North in the “Great Migration.” At the same time there was an explosion of literature, music, and art that has come to be known as the Harlem Renaissance or The New Negro movement. Artists and writers looked to black history—and specifically to the art of Africa—for inspiration, joining that to a modern African American identity (Romare Bearden, Aaron Douglas, and Jacob Lawrence, for example) .
Consumer society
Mass culture offered new forms of entertainment in vaudeville, radio, film, phonographs, dance halls, and amusement parks. Increased leisure time and transportation in the form of affordable automobiles like Ford’s Model T, which hit markets in 1908, made entertainment and tourism accessible for a wider variety of Americans. Mainstream culture flourished, but so did artistic expression beyond the center such as African Americans in the Harlem Renaissance and American Indians in a burgeoning Southwestern art and tourist market (see for example, Nampeyo).
Nampeyo (Hopi-Tewa), polychrome jar, c. 1930s, clay and pigment, 13 x 21 cm (National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution)
Mass culture and the growing entertainment industry spawned the Roaring Twenties—a time of carefree, youthful indulgence. When the Great Depression hit, that indulgence and optimism disappeared. Banks failed and people lost their savings, homes, farms, and businesses. Unemployment skyrocketed. Through its early years, federal aid came only for farmers and businesses; it did not reach those who needed it most.
In 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt promised a “new deal” for workers, winning the presidency where he remained for four terms. The New Deal actively placed restrictions on big business; sent direct aid to small businesses, farmers, and cultural workers; and created new jobs building infrastructure like roads, libraries, schools, and dams. It even employed cultural workers like photographers and artists who depicted Depression life and created public works of art. Anthropologists collected oral histories and folk songs.
The wars and the world
The U.S. initially sought not to be involved in World War I, though sympathy lay with the Allied Forces (The United Kingdom, France and Russia). In April 1917, however, Germany attacked American ships leading to the declaration of war. U.S. troops helped lead the Allies to victory in November 1918. President Woodrow Wilson imagined this was the “war that will end wars” (as H.G. Wells had written in 1914) and pushed the establishment of a League of Nations to keep peace, but in the end his own country favored isolation over involvement.
Isolationism remained strong during the start of World War II. Congress passed the neutrality act which banned the sale of war goods to fighting countries. In 1940, France surrendered to Germany and President Roosevelt sent supplies to England. The next year Japan bombed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor and the U.S. declared war on Japan. After securing the European front at Normandy in 1944, the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan surrendered nine days later.
Illustration by Romare Bearden for “The Negro’s War,” Fortune (May 1942)
World War II increased opportunity for African Americans in the workplace with the signing of Executive Order 8802 preventing racial discrimination in federal hiring practices. Romare Bearden’s Factory Workers (1942) addressed such discrimination portraying workers being turned away from employment in the steel industry. Because the U.S. was at war with Japan, many people of Japanese descent living in the United States (like Ruth Asawa) were forced into internment camps, losing their homes, businesses, and freedoms.
Ruth Asawa, Untitled, c. 1958, iron wire, 219.7 × 81.3 × 81.3 cm (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art)
During the war, women took the place of men in many fields of employment, including factory work to produce supplies needed both at home and overseas. In order to recruit women, the U.S. government printed posters of a strong female dressed in a blue jumpsuit and red bandanna saying, “We Can Do It.” Rosie the Riveter is still an icon of working women in America. Beneath the icon, however, women experienced much lower wages than men for the same positions and, when the soldiers came home, were expected to give up their jobs and resume more traditional roles.
The horrors of the Holocaust stunned people around the globe. America had refused to admit many of the Jews who sought to escape Nazi persecution though some who had secured employment were allowed entry including the scientist Albert Einstein. The United States was immeasurably strengthened by the many brilliant immigrants who fled Europe including composer Igor Stravinsky, author Thomas Mann, architect Walter Gropius, and artist George Grosz whose painting Remembering speaks the agony of have left friends and family behind in Nazi Germany.
Seven miles of traffic backed up the Santa Ana Freeway on a hot July day in 1955. Families in their vehicles baked in the sun while waiting to arrive at the opening of filmmaker Walt Disney’s new California amusement park. The much-anticipated opening of Disneyland brought a crowd connected by popular culture and eager for respectable middle-class entertainment.
The Disneyland parking lot on opening day, 1955 (University of Southern California, Los Angeles Examiner Photographs Collection, 1920-1961)
The freeway that connected them to the park had only recently been built. Freeways and interstate highways throughout the nation connected people to burgeoning suburbs and the promise of the American dream, a peaceful family life, and home ownership.
Inside those homes, families watched television programs that packaged the American middle class lifestyle in cheery and gender-stratified roles. This seemingly simple conformist society quickly gave way to conflicts in the 1960s and 70s that unmasked discontents that lurked behind post-war prosperity.
In the summer of 1955, the opening of Disneyland signaled the fictions of the screen come to life. The entire park landscape questioned the division between fantasy and reality, and blurred the lines between history and fairytale.
Disney’s Main Street USA represented nostalgia for an imagined naïve America before the war, while Tomorrowland optimistically cast technology as the road to national contentment. Lost in this land, Americans suspended their disbelief, entertained their children and themselves, and, as the century progressed, escaped their increasingly complex social and political present.
Tomorrowland actors at Disneyland (Disney Parks)
A new war
Emerging from the conflict of World War II as a dominant power, the U.S. embroiled itself in a new conflict — the Cold War. With the Marshall Plan, the U.S. helped aid recovery in Western Europe and Asia, but the underlying goal, to stop Communist expansion, led to an arms race with the Soviet Union and culminated, in 1962, in an event that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war — the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Telegram from President Kennedy to Soviet officials on October 28th, 1962 (John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)
In attempts to stop Russia and China’s communist models from being replicated, the U.S. engaged in wars in both Korea and Vietnam. Fear of communists at home reemerged as well. Unions were investigated for pro-communist leaders beginning in 1947 and, in 1950, Senator Joe McCarthy investigated suspected spies inside the U.S. government using methods widely seen as an abuse of power.
Throughout the 1960s, the space race promoted technology as political prowess. The Soviets launched the first man-made satellite of earth, Sputnik, while the U.S. landed the first man on the moon in 1969. But, with the aftermath of the atomic bomb that had ended the world war, Americans in the mid-twentieth century also questioned technology’s impact upon society and the environment.
A family watches television, c. 1958 (National Archives and Records Administration, public domain)
Cultural changes
Entering the 1950s, elements of the New Deal remained strong with many in support of unions and business regulation. As a result, the post-war middle class grew — as did the population in an unsurpassed “baby boom” that lasted until the 1960s.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower funded an expansive interstate highway system just as affordable cookie-cutter houses popped up in growing suburban neighborhoods. American dreams of home-owning and the accoutrements of middle class life became more accessible to white Americans who increasing fled from cities. In addition, with the Fair Labor Standards Act and the establishment of a regulated 40-hour work week in most industries and paid leisure time, came the motels, and tourist attractions that began to dot the new highway system. Consumer culture depicting this new American lifestyle rapidly spread through television programs and advertisements.
Kodak advertisement showing a family on holiday, Look Magazine, July, 1949 (image: Classic Film, CC BY-NC 2.0)
With young people newly able to enjoy increasing leisure time, a teenage culture thrived. It rebelled against postwar conformity while simultaneously becoming mainstream and commercially potent. Rock and roll music grew in popularity during this era, with the controversial moves of Elvis Presley ringing in the phenomenon.
Anti-war protestors, 1967 (Lyndon B. Johnson Library and Museum)
Popular music began to express the feelings, as well as the politics, of the younger generation through performers like Bob Dylan and the Beatles. Hollywood portrayed appealing rebels and “greasers” while the Beat Generation sought isolation from the reach of popular culture and consumerism.
This generation grew to launch protests against unjust politics, racial and gender discrimination, and the Vietnam War. The countercultural movements of the 1960s and 70s also sought to change attitudes about sexuality, homosexuality, reproductive rights, and divorce.
Women who had worked in jobs on the home front while men were fighting World War II, had been pushed back into the domestic realm. In 1963, Betty Friedan expressed the discontent of housewives in the book The Feminine Mystique and helped found the National Organization for Women. She was among the promotors of the Equal Rights Amendment which ultimately failed to pass — leaving the legal protection of equal opportunities for women in the hands of other, narrower federal laws, and piecemeal state regulations.
Women’s Liberation march, Washington, D.C., 1970 (Library of Congress)
With the legalization of contraception and abortion, and the introduction of the Pill, women found they could more easily delay marriage and children to pursue careers. But as the work of the artist Mierle Ukeles makes clear, women continue to struggle in the modern workplace.
The Great Society
When John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960, he was the youngest to ever serve in that office, and he was the first Catholic to do so. His promise was to build a Great Society that was both democratic and equal.
Before his assassination in 1963, JFK began pushing federal programs aimed at alleviating poverty and dismantling segregation, as well as introducing Medicare, federal financial aid for education, funding for arts, and environmental protections. Though these plans were ultimately implemented under Lyndon B. Johnson, JFK’s celebrity only grew after his death.
President Lyndon B. Johnson with Civil Rights leaders Martin Luther King, Jr., Whitney Young, and James Farmer, 1964 (Lyndon B. Johnson Library and Museum)
Among the legislation that President Johnson pushed forward were the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, marking major victories for the civil rights movement. The 1950s saw several landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions that were important moves toward racial equality, but none fully established desegregation. Brown v. Board of Education (1954), for example, ended “separate but equal” but left implementation to the states where there were often long traditions of racial discrimination.
Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. (Library of Congress)
Many civil rights leaders, such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., promoted peaceful direct action, such as boycotts and sit-ins, to demonstrate African American resistance to segregation, while other civil rights leaders wished for a more radical course of action. Nonviolent tactics, sought to bring awareness through media coverage and political attention, to the plight of their cause, but even peaceful actions were met with violence and arrests by police.
While African Americans had long fought for equal rights through such actions, the protests of the civil rights movement grew to include women, Native Americans, LGBT, and other marginalized Americans. The momentum of these movements also helped to galvanize protests to the Vietnam War as people questioned the purpose and the expansion of American involvement in Southeast Asia.
Front page of TheNew York Times, 1 May, 1970
When Richard Nixon took office, he expanded the war beyond Vietnam to the neighboring country of Cambodia, further escalating protests against the war. Demonstrations at Kent State and Jackson State resulted in live fire from the National Guard and police, fueling nationwide protests not just against the war but against the government’s abandonment of the principles of law and order.
A new reality
In 1973, cars backed up along roadways not in anticipation of the fantasies of Disneyland but in long lines at gas stations as the oil crisis limited availability of the commodity that fueled twentieth-century America.
As the 1970s came to an end, the culture war between conservatives, liberals, and the New Left simmered. The liberal decades after the Second World War ended with a swing to conservatism signaled by the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.
What had begun as a tranquil era of idealism ended with an awareness that inequality and other injustices had undermined the American dream. Throughout the 1970s, many had become uncertain or discontent with their role in society, unsure of future economic prosperity, and confused about the ethical course of the American political system.
Maya Lin, Vietnam Veterans Memorial (detail), 1982, granite, National Mall, Washington, D.C. (photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
But progress had been made. In a blind competition of 1,400 entries, a young Asian American woman won the bid to design the national Vietnam War Memorial. Maya Lin’s design was something entirely new in war memorialization. It honored not generals or leaders or individual faces. Instead, it listed the name of every known individual who had lost their life in the controversial war.
With its abstract design and apolitical approach, the memorial symbolized the need for the nation to move beyond the conflicts of the 1970s, even if the root of those conflicts remained largely unresolved.
It’s ironic that many people say they don’t “get” contemporary art because, unlike Egyptian tomb painting or Greek sculpture, art made since 1960 reflects our own recent past. It speaks to the dramatic social, political, and technological changes of the last 50 years, and it questions many of society’s values and assumptions—a tendency of postmodernism, a concept sometimes used to describe contemporary art. What makes today’s art especially challenging is that, like the world around us, it has become more diverse and cannot be easily defined through a list of visual characteristics, artistic themes, or cultural concerns.
Girl looking at: Andy Warhol, Campbell’s Soup Cans, 1962, synthetic polymer on 32 canvases each 20 x 16 inches (The Museum of Modern Art; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Minimalism and Pop Art, two major art movements of the early 1960s, offer clues to the different directions of art in the late 20th and 21st century. Both rejected established expectations about art’s aesthetic qualities and need for originality. Minimalist objects are spare geometric forms, often made from industrial processes and materials, which lack surface details, expressive markings, and any discernible meaning. Pop Art took its subject matter from low-brow sources like comic books and advertising. Like Minimalism, its use of commercial techniques eliminated emotional content implied by the artist’s individual approach, something that had been important to the previous generation of modern painters. The result was that both movements effectively blurred the line distinguishing fine art from more ordinary aspects of life, and forced us to reconsider art’s place and purpose in the world.
Minimalism and Pop Art paved the way for later artists to explore questions about the conceptual nature of art, its form, its production, and its ability to communicate in different ways. In the late 1960s and 1970s, these ideas led to a “dematerialization of art,” when artists turned away from painting and sculpture to experiment with new formats, including photography, film and video, performance art, large-scale installations, and earth works. Although some critics of the time foretold “the death of painting,” art today encompasses a broad range of traditional and experimental media, including works that rely on Internet technology and other scientific innovations.
Contemporary artists continue to use a varied vocabulary of abstract and representational forms to convey their ideas. It is important to remember that the art of our time did not develop in a vacuum; rather, it reflects the social and political concerns of its cultural context. For example, artists like Judy Chicago, who were inspired by the feminist movement of the early 1970s, embraced imagery and art forms that had historical connections to women.
Maya Lin, Storm King Wavefield, 2009, earthwork, 240,000 square feet (Storm King Art Center, New Windsor; photo: Glenn Kraeck, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
In the 1980s, artists appropriated the style and methods of mass media advertising to investigate issues of cultural authority and identity politics. More recently, artists like Maya Lin, who designed the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., and Richard Serra, who was loosely associated with Minimalism in the 1960s, have adapted characteristics of Minimalist art to create new abstract sculptures that encourage more personal interaction and emotional response among viewers.
These shifting strategies to engage the viewer show how contemporary art’s significance exists beyond the object itself. Its meaning develops from cultural discourse, interpretation, and a range of individual understandings, in addition to the formal and conceptual problems that first motivated the artist. In this way, the art of our times may serve as a catalyst for an on-going process of open discussion and intellectual inquiry about the world today.
An introduction to photography in the early 20th century
by Dr. Juliana Kreinik
Eadweard Muybridge, “Thoroughbred bay mare ‘Annie G.’ galloping,” from Human and Animal Locomotion, plate 626, 1887, 23.7 x 30.6 cm (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)
Eastman Kodak Advertisement for the Brownie Camera, Recreation 13 (1900): p. xxiv (New York Public Library)
Photography undergoes extraordinary changes in the early part of the twentieth century. This can be said of every other type of visual representation, however, but unique to photography is the transformed perception of the medium. In order to understand this change in perception and use—why photography appealed to artists by the early 1900s, and how it was incorporated into artistic practices by the 1920s—we need to start by looking back.
In the later nineteenth century, photography spread in its popularity, and inventions like the Kodak #1 camera (1888) made it accessible to the upper-middle class consumer; the Kodak Brownie camera, which cost far less, reached the middle class by 1900.
In the sciences (and pseudo-sciences), photographs gained credibility as objective evidence because they could document people, places, and events. Photographers like Eadweard Muybridge created portfolios of photographs to measure human and animal locomotion. His celebrated images recorded incremental stages of movement too rapid for the human eye to observe, and his work fulfilled the camera’s promise to enhance, or even create new forms of scientific study.
In the arts, the medium was valued for its replication of exact details, and for its reproduction of artworks for publication. But photographers struggled for artistic recognition throughout the century. It was not until in Paris’s Universal Exposition of 1859, twenty years after the invention of the medium, that photography and “art” (painting, engraving, and sculpture) were displayed next to one another for the first time; separate entrances to each exhibition space, however, preserved a physical and symbolic distinction between the two groups. After all, photographs are mechanically reproduced images: Kodak’s marketing strategy (“You press the button, we do the rest,”) points directly to the “effortlessness” of the medium.
Alfred Stieglitz, The Terminal, photogravure, 1893, 12.1 x 15.9 cm (Art Institute of Chicago)
Since art was deemed the product of imagination, skill, and craft, how could a photograph (made with an instrument and light-sensitive chemicals instead of brush and paint) ever be considered its equivalent? And if its purpose was to reproduce details precisely, and from nature, how could photographs be acceptable if negatives were “manipulated,” or if photographs were retouched? Because of these questions, amateur photographers formed casual groups and official societies to challenge such conceptions of the medium. They—along with elite art world figures like Alfred Stieglitz—promoted the late nineteenth-century style of “art photography,” and produced low-contrast, warm-toned images like The Terminal that highlighted the medium’s potential for originality.
So what transforms the perception of photography in the early twentieth century? Social and cultural change—on a massive, unprecedented scale. Like everyone else, artists were radically affected by industrialization, political revolution, trench warfare, airplanes, talking motion pictures, radios, automobiles, and much more—and they wanted to create art that was as radical and “new” as modern life itself.
Left: Pablo Picasso, Still-Life with Chair Caning, 1912, oil, oilcloth and pasted paper on canvas with rope frame, 27 x 35 cm (Musée Picasso, Paris; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0); right: Hannah Höch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany, 1919–20, collage, mixed media, 90 x 144 cm (Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin)
If we consider the work of the Cubists and Futurists, we often think of their works in terms of simultaneity and speed, destruction and reconstruction. Dadaists, too, challenged the boundaries of traditional art with performances, poetry, installations, and photomontage that use the materials of everyday culture instead of paint, ink, canvas, or bronze.
By the early 1920s, technology becomes a vehicle of progress and change, and instills hope in many after the devastations of World War I. For avant-garde (“ahead of the crowd”) artists, photography becomes incredibly appealing for its associations with technology, the everyday, and science—precisely the reasons it was denigrated a half-century earlier. The camera’s technology of mechanical reproduction made it the fastest, most modern, and arguably, the most relevant form of visual representation in the post-WWI era. Photography, then, seemed to offer more than a new method of image-making—it offered the chance to change paradigms of vision and representation.
Left: August Sander, Disabled Ex-serviceman, c. 1928, 25.8 x 18.7 cm (The Museum of Modern Art); center: August Sander, Pastrycook, 1928, 25.8 x 18.7 cm (The Museum of Modern Art); right: August Sander, Secretary at West German Radio, Cologne, 1931, 25.8 x 18.7 cm (The Museum of Modern Art)
With August Sander’s portraits such as Disabled Ex-serviceman, Pastrycook, or Secretary at West German Radio, Cologne, we see an artist attempting to document—systematically—modern types of people, as a means to understand changing notions of class, race, profession, ethnicity, and other constructs of identity. Sander transforms the practice of portraiture with these sensational, arresting images. These figures reveal as much about the German professions as they do about self-image.
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Behind the Gare St. Lazare, 1932, 35.2 x 24.1 cm (The Museum of Modern Art)
Umbo (Otto Umbehr), The Roving Reporter, photomontage, 1926 (Berlinische Galerie Museum of Modern Art)
Cartier-Bresson’s leaping figure in Behind the Gare St. Lazare reflects the potential for photography to capture individual moments in time—to freeze them, hold them, and recreate them. Because of his approach, Cartier-Bresson is often considered a pioneer of photojournalism. This sense of spontaneity, of accuracy, and of the ephemeral corresponded to the racing tempo of modern culture (think of factories, cars, trains, and the rapid pace of people in growing urban centers).
Umbo’s photomontage The Roving Reporter shows how modern technologies transform our perception of the world—and our ability to communicate within it. His camera-eyed, colossal observer (a real-life journalist named Egon Erwin Kisch) demonstrates photography’s ability to alter and enhance the senses. In the early twentieth-century, this medium offered a potentially transformative vision for artists, who sought new ways to see, represent, and understand the rapidly changing world around them.
It was not until in Paris’s Universal Exposition of 1859, twenty years after the invention of the medium, that photography and “art” (painting, engraving, and sculpture) were displayed next to one another for the first time; separate entrances to each exhibition space, however, preserved a physical and symbolic distinction between the two groups. After all, photographs are mechanically reproduced images: Kodak’s marketing strategy (“You press the button, we do the rest,”) points directly to the “effortlessness” of the medium.
John Brown with flag (detail), Augustus Washington, John Brown, c. 1846–47, quarter-plate daguerreotype, 11.4 x 19.7 cm (National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.)
Staring directly at the viewer with his right hand raised, palm facing out, his left hand gripping a flag, the abolitionist John Brown was photographed in Hartford, Connecticut in 1846 by the professional daguerreotypist, Augustus Washington. Brown’s right hand is raised as if pledging allegiance, taking a silent oath, or warning the viewer to stop. The pose is balanced by the hand holding a flag believed to be the emblem for Brown’s Subterranean Pass-Way (an alternate Underground Railroad, intended to draw enslaved Black people North towards New York and the Adirondacks). The pose is fascinating for all it suggests about Brown’s hopes for the country and the actions he might take to fight slavery. What might Brown be suggesting about his expectations for the future in this early photograph?
Augustus Washington, John Brown, c. 1846–47, quarter-plate daguerreotype, 11.4 x 19.7 cm (National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.)
Considering the relationship between the white abolitionist sitter, John Brown, and the free Black photographer, Augustus Washington, is equally fascinating. Who decided for Brown to stand in such a manner? To hold the flag? Who determined that Brown should be standing and not sitting, with eyes fixed ahead? How did this interaction between a white and a Black man produce one of the most potent photographic portraits of the 19th century?
Augustus Washington
Augustus Washington was born in Trenton, New Jersey in 1820 or 1821 to a formerly enslaved father and an Asian mother who died while he was quite young. Washington’s father and stepmother encouraged his education, and he attended a multi-racial school. His commitment to his studies meant that by his teen years, Washington was a teacher in a local school for Black children in New Jersey. He left for New York to study at the Oneida Institute. With his limited family resources, Washington was forced to leave Oneida when he had spent through his savings. He taught at a Black public school in Brooklyn in the early 1830s and hoped to attend Dartmouth College in New Hampshire with the money he saved. His activist friends suggested the Kimball Union Academy instead, and Washington joined the class of 1843. After graduation he attended Dartmouth. Concerned about expenses at the semester break, he invested in daguerreotype equipment and began photographing friends, neighbors, and residents.
Southworth & Hawes, Frederick Douglass, c. 1845, whole-plate daguerreotype (Onondaga Historical Association Museum, Syracuse)
In 1839, French inventor Louis Daguerre developed the daguerreotype: a silver-coated copper plate, which after exposure to heat, light, salt baths, mercury, and gold chloride, reflects the subject’s image. Daguerreotypes were seen as a magical union of art and science that Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and other Black Americans believed could impart some element of truthful representation that media, such as painting, drawing, and prints could not. Photographs could combat racist renderings of Black people by reinforcing representations of Black humanity rather than caricature. As he toured the country, Frederick Douglass scheduled photographic portrait sittings in many of the cities he visited. He shaped his portrait image as carefully as any 21st-century image maker might to emphasize dignity, humanity, and the serious nature of anti-slavery work. He didn’t smile and he knew which side and angle were his best. Douglass wrote frequently about photography and progress, and he became the most photographed American of his time. [1]
For Washington, the public interest in daguerreotypes generated enough money for him to focus on his classes at Dartmouth for the semester. However, in 1844 Washington left the isolation of Hanover, New Hampshire for Hartford, Connecticut’s comparatively bustling Black community where he taught at the school run by one of the nation’s first Black Congregational churches, the Talcott Street Church’s school. It was in Hartford that he also eventually resumed his daguerreotype practice.
Washington led the church’s African School until 1846, and in that first year he paid his debt to Dartmouth and collected the photography equipment and books he’d left in Hanover. He ran an ad in a December 1846 issue of the local Hartford antislavery newspaper The Charter Oak. It publicized the “durable memento” of a daguerreotype as a cheap and beautiful Christmas present.
Another advertisement, this one from The Hartford Daily Courant, October 8, 1852 (Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford)
Washington advertised in other regional antislavery papers and made his abolitionist colleagues a primary audience. Between New York and Boston, the New Haven, Hartford, Springfield corridor linked a network of activist churches, abolitionist funders, and committed free Black communities that had been galvanized by the 1830s legal cases against Prudence Crandall’s school for Black girls, against the Amistad captives fight for freedom, against a proposed college for African Americans in New Haven, and other outrages.
Hartford in the mid-19th century was home to several nationally known activists such as the Reverend James Pennington and regionally recognized figures like the activist James Mars who survived slavery in northwest Connecticut and later published his memoir, A Life of James Mars, a Slave Born and Sold in Connecticut, Written by Himself in 1864. In Springfield, Mars’ brother, Methodist minister John Newton Mars, served a larger abolitionist community that assisted Black people escaping enslavement and tutored impassioned white abolitionists, including temporary resident John Brown, on life in a multi-racial neighborhood.
Photographing John Brown
As an abolitionist, and with his experience living in multi-racial Springfield, John Brown was probably more relaxed during his studio visit with Washington than other clients. Washington typically worked with white and wealthy Hartford residents whose business kept Washington financially stable into the 1850s, but were not necessarily seeking to fight for racial equality.
Augustus Washington, Portrait of John Brown, c. 1846–47, quarter-plate daguerreotype, 11.43 x 9.84 cm (Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City)
In Brown’s signature portrait from the sitting, the one introduced at the start of the essay, Washington captures Brown’s characteristically intense gaze and slightly stern expression. Yet another image from the sitting—which is in the collection of the Nelson Atkins Museum—feels like the after-hours portrait. It is an image of John Brown after the hard work of abolitionism is finished for the day. He is no longer posed to defend an oath or a flag, but instead with his arms comfortably crossed and slightly leaning back, he warily welcomes the viewer into this happier world. Brown’s face is relaxed into a pleasant expression if not an actual smile, and the sensible luxury of his cravat and shirt suggest this could have been a happy and prosperous period in his life. This image confirms that Brown was one of the most comfortable subjects to have spent time in Washington’s Hartford studio.
John Brown was a unique subject for Augustus Washington. The sensitivities Washington encountered as a 19th-century Black man photographing white men and women in a private studio are not surprising. Most of Washington’s Hartford subjects would have had few occasions when they were instructed or directed by an unfamiliar African American.
Augustus Washington, Lydia Huntley Sigourney, c. 1852, 10.8 x 11.32 cm (Watkinson Library, Trinity College, Hartford)
One such sitter was the well-known Hartford poet, Lydia Sigourney, who Washington photographed in 1852. Sigourney’s writings on slavery, abolition, and the colonization of Africa for African Americans suggest that she endorsed deportation to Africa as the solution for the freedom and equality for Black people in America, rather than equal citizenship in the United States. Thus, she couldn’t have seen Augustus Washington as her equal while sitting for her portrait.
Leaving for Liberia
Initially, Augustus Washington believed in America and expected the situation for free and enslaved Black people would improve. However, Washington, along with other free Black creatives, makers, and thinkers of the early 19th century lived in a country where they could not access the realities of freedom, the ideals of citizenship, and the rewards of creativity regularly invoked all around them. A generation of Black Northeasterners who lived through the American Revolution in the 1700s had begun discussions about moving abroad. In the early years of the Federal era, African American activists in Boston, Newport, and Philadelphia debated the benefits of leaving America permanently. Massachusetts-based Black and Indigenous shipping magnate Paul Cuffe promoted emigration as the route to new trade possibilities and employment opportunities for free Black workers. In 1815 Cuffe sailed 38 free Blacks from America to Sierra Leone through his Black-led repatriation effort.
Liberia (source map: Andreas 06, public domain)
The episode inspired other Black entrepreneurs and activists frustrated by the obstacles blocking their commercial and political ventures. Bowdoin College’s first Black graduate, John Brown Russwurm, class of 1826, taught school in Boston and started the first African American newspaper Freedom’s Journal, before leaving for Liberia within a decade of his graduation. Future efforts of Black-led repatriation would include the abolitionist physician Martin Delany’s journey to Liberia to negotiate terms for a Black American homeland in the 1850s. In the coming decades, Black hair-care tycoon Madam C.J. Walker, political leader Marcus Garvey, civil rights activist W.E.B. DuBois, and R&B Godfather James Brown all saw West Africa as the solution to America’s contradictions.
After repeated attempts to live as an artist and an intellectual in America, Augustus Washington left Hartford for a new life in West Africa in 1853, only seven years after photographing John Brown in his Hartford studio. The 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, his continued abolitionist sentiments, and his frustration over the situation for Black entrepreneurs led Washington to reveal his plans to emigrate to Liberia in an 1851 New York Daily Tribune editorial:
I have been unable to get rid of a conviction, long since entertained and often expressed, that if the coloured people of this country ever find a home on earth for the development of their manhood and intellect, it will first be in Liberia or some other parts of Africa. We must mark out an independent course and become the architects of our own fortunes.New-York Daily Tribune, July 1851
The announcement of his departure was good advertising. His Hartford studio was soon busier than ever so he added space and staff to accommodate the demand.
Before the journey, American Colonization Society (ACS) staff commissioned Washington to produce promotional photographs of Liberia. In 1853, Washington, his wife Cordelia, and their two children sailed from New York to West Africa. They were beneficiaries of a fund the Connecticut legislature approved to encourage colonization. By February, Washington had established a studio in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. It took some time to perfect the landscape images requested by the ACS, but demand for portraits increased quickly. Limited equipment and delays in ordering supplies led him to develop farmland and rental properties. Augustus Washington divided his investments between artmaking and his small business ventures and saw them all flourish. Washington farmed most of his 1000 acres, ran factories and stores, had a ship for trading, and published the New Era newspaper.
I love Africa because I can see no other spot on earth where we can enjoy so much freedom … I believe that I shall do a thousand times more good for Africa, and add to our force of intelligent men.Augustus Washington, 1854 letter, ACS records
Washington’s investment in photographic supplies for the journey supported his ACS assignment and signaled his interest in new projects. He soon had orders for a series of family portraits and a commission for the official portraits of Liberia’s political leaders. The portraits seem to have been part of a larger project that wasn’t completed.
Portraits and public office in West Africa
Washington’s 1857 portrait of Chancy Brown, the sergeant at arms of the Liberian Senate—which is in the Library of Congress collection—incorporates elements of the after-hours John Brown portrait with the lighter sensibility of his West Africa portraits. Many of the portraits of Liberia’s senators have the subjects seated in a ¾ turn in the style of Frederick Douglass as elder statesman. Some include a book, scroll, or an arm raised as if holding a flagpole, similar to the pose of John Brown from the previous decade. The photographer’s skill is evident in his adjustments to create flattering light for his brown-skinned subjects, a skill not usually required for his Hartford subjects.
Augustus Washington, Chancy Brown, c. 1856–58, sixth-plate daguerreotype (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)
Chancy Brown, a formerly enslaved emigrant from North Carolina, looks at the viewer but manages to hold a bit back. He stands tall, a sword tied with a sash on his left side and an epaulet at his left shoulder. The sash—like John Brown’s cravat—makes it easier to see the summer weight texture of Chancy Brown’s suit as well as the shadows and textures that Washington records. Brown’s pose, self-fashioning, the plain background, and his status as a recently emancipated emigrant imbue the portrait with signs of optimism.
Later in the decade Washington realized his hopes to become active in governance and to hold public office. By 1871 he’d been elected to the House of Representatives and the Senate of Liberia. Four years later, Washington died and the death notice in the African Repository ended with, “Nothing could induce him to return to this country [the United States], having acquired a handsome property and freedom and a home in his ancestral land.”
Augustus Washington’s commitment to teaching and photography traveled with him to Liberia. Though Washington died before he could welcome other West African artists into the profession, photographers, such as: John Parkes Decker, Francis Wilberforce Joaque, Alphonso and Arthur Lisk Carew, all of Sierra Leone, and Alex Agbaglo Acolatse of Togo and Neils Walwin Holm of Nigeria, are all beneficiaries of Augustus Washington’s investment in artmaking, his determination to make a life in West Africa, and the path to citizenship which photography and education created for him.
by Dr. Kimberly Kutz Elliott and Dr. Steven Zucker
One of the most famous landscape photographs showing the horrible aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg.
Timothy O’Sullivan, A Harvest of Death, 1863, albumen print, 17.2 × 22.5 cm, illustration in Alexander Gardner’sPhotographic Sketchbook of the War, 1866 (Library of Congress); a conversation between Dr. Kimberly Kutz Elliott and Dr. Steven Zucker
This photograph was included in Gardner’sPhotographic Sketch Book of the War (1866). Each photograph had a lengthy caption that explained what was captured in each scene.
For the “Harvest of Death” photo the caption read: “It was, indeed, a ‘harvest of death.’ . . . Such a picture conveys a useful moral: It shows the blank horror and reality of war, in opposition to its pageantry. Here are the dreadful details! Let them aid in preventing such another calamity falling upon the nation.”
Timothy O’Sullivan, Ancient Ruins in the Cañon de Chelle
by Dr. Rebecca Jeffrey Easby
Timothy O’Sullivan, Ancient Ruins in the Cañon de Chelle, N.M. In a niche 50 feet above present Cañon bed., 1873, photographic albumen print, 27.4 x 20.1 cm (Art Institute of Chicago)
The impressive natural landscape of Timothy O’Sullivan’s photograph Ancient Ruins in the Cañon de Chelle, 1873, immediately commands attention. The yawning black hole in the center is emphasized by the dramatic striations in the rocks, the black and white contrast of the photograph making the layers of sediment far more obvious than they would be in reality. In fact, the drama of the surrounding landscape makes it possible to almost overlook the ancient ruins at the mouth of a black cave.
Borrowing from landscape painting
Although clearly a documentary image of the scene, the photograph also employs many of the artistic conventions of landscape painting. The narrowly focused composition does not allow the viewer’s eye to wander through the landscape. In fact, our vision is confined solely to the rock and the ruins, without the standard light source found in most landscape painting. However, light plays an obvious role in the play of light and dark on the rock walls. The ruins themselves, which suggest the passage of time, are so small as to emphasize the traditional Romantic interest in man’s insignificance when confronted with the immensity of nature.
Timothy O’Sullivan, A Harvest of Death, 1863, albumen print, 17.2 × 22.5 cm, illustration in Alexander Gardner’s Photographic Sketchbook of the War, 1866 (Library of Congress)
The realities of war
Timothy O’Sullivan began his photographic career as an apprentice in the studio of Mathew Brady. At the start of the Civil War, he became part of Brady’s team assigned to document the conflict, although O’Sullivan resigned after an argument with Brady over who was to receive credit for authorship of his photos. Many of O’Sullivan’s war images have a haunting quality, for example, A Harvest of Death (1863), which captures a misty landscape in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania littered with corpses. At a time when standard war images consisted of portraits of soldiers in uniform and camp life, O’Sullivan’s photograph is a stark reminder of the realities of the conflict.
Geological expeditions
During the late 1860s and 1870s O’Sullivan traveled west several times photographing as part of various geological survey teams. The difficulties of these trips must have been huge, carrying men and equipment through the wilderness in wagons and small boats. O’Sullivan himself nearly drowned on an early expedition when he was thrown from a boat and carried down stream by rapids before finally making his way to shore. Managing his personal equipment must have also been a challenge. Photographs at the time were exposed on large glass plates, and understandably, many of O’Sullivan’s images simply didn’t make it home.
In 1873 O’Sullivan himself led a group to explore the rock formations and long abandoned archaeological remains found in Arizona around the Canyon de Chelly. The ancient pueblos in the photograph were built by the Anasazi or Navajo for “ancient ones.” Although O’Sullivan was one of the first to capture this impressive scene, many others have followed in his footsteps, including the legendary twentieth-century landscape photographer Ansel Adams. The Canyon de Chelly became a National Monument in 1931 and is today jointly managed by the National Park Service and the Navajo Nation.
Jacob Riis, “Knee-Pants” at Forty-Five Cents a Dozen—A Ludlow Street Sweater’s Shop, from How the Other Half Lives
by Miriam Bader
Jacob August Riis, “Knee-pants” at forty five cents a dozen—A Ludlow Street Sweater’s Shop, c. 1890, 7 x 6″, from How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons: New York, 1890 (The Museum of the City of New York)
The slums of New York
Jacob Riis documented the slums of New York, what he deemed the world of the “other half,” teeming with immigrants, disease, and abuse. A police reporter and social reformer, Riis became intimately familiar with the perils of tenement living and sought to draw attention to the horrendous conditions. Between 1888 and 1892, he photographed the streets, people, and tenement apartments he encountered, using the vivid black and white slides to accompany his lectures and influential text, How the Other Half Lives, published in 1890 by Scribner’s. His powerful images brought public attention to urban conditions, helping to propel a national debate over what American working and living conditions should be.
Jacob August Riis, How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons: New York, 1890
A Danish immigrant, Riis arrived in America in 1870 at the age of 21, heartbroken from the rejection of his marriage proposal to Elisabeth Gjørtz. Riis initially struggled to get by, working as a carpenter and at various odd jobs before gaining a footing in journalism. In 1877 he became a police reporter for The New York Tribune, assigned to the beat of New York City’s Lower East Side. Riis believed his personal struggle as an immigrant who “reached New York with just one cent in my pocket”¹ shaped his involvement in reform efforts to alleviate the suffering he witnessed.
As a police reporter, Riis had unique access to the city’s slums. In the evenings, he would accompany law enforcement and members of the health department on raids of the tenements, witnessing the atrocities people suffered firsthand. Riis tried to convey the horrors to readers, but struggled to articulate the enormity of the problems through his writings. Impressed by the newly invented flash photography technique he read about, Riis began to experiment with the medium in 1888, believing that pictures would have the power to expose the tenement-house problem in a way that his textual reporting could not do alone. Indeed, the images he captured would shock the conscience of Americans.
Jacob August Riis, The Mulberry Bend, c. 1890, 7 x 6″, from How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons: New York, 1890 (The Museum of the City of New York)
Midnight rounds
At first Riis engaged the services of a photographer who would accompany him as he made his midnight rounds with the police, but ultimately dissatisfied with this arrangement, Riis purchased a box camera and learned to use it. The flash technique used a combination of explosives to achieve the light necessary to take pictures in the dark. The process was new and messy and Riis made adjustments as he went. First, he or his assistants would position the camera on a tripod and then they would ignite the mixture of magnesium flash-powder above the camera lens, causing an explosive noise, great smoke, and a blinding flash of light. Initially, Riis used a revolver to shoot cartridges containing the explosive magnesium flash-powder, but he soon discovered that showing up waving pistols set the wrong tone and substituted a frying pan for the gun, flashing the light on that instead. The process certainly terrified those in the vicinity and also proved dangerous. Riis reported setting two fires in places he visited and nearly blinding himself on one occasion.
Jacob August Riis, “A man atop a make-shift bed that consists of a plank across two barrels,” c. 1890, 7 x 6″, from How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons: New York, 1890 (The Museum of the City of New York)
Home and work
While it is unclear if Riis’ pictures were totally candid or posed, his agenda of using the stark images to persuade the middle and upper classes that reform was needed is well documented. A major theme of Riis’ images was the terrible conditions immigrants lived in. In the 1890s, tenement apartments served as both homes and as garment factories. “Knee-Pants at Forty-Five Cents a Dozen—A Ludlow Street Sweater’s Shop” depicts the intersection of home and work life that was typical. Note the number of people crowded together making knickers and consider their ages, gender, and role. Each worker would be paid by the piece produced and each had his/her own particular role to fill in the shop which was also a family’s home.
Detail, Jacob August Riis, “Knee-pants” at forty five cents a dozen—A Ludlow Street Sweater’s Shop, c. 1890, 7 x 6″, from How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons: New York, 1890 (The Museum of the City of New York)
While Riis did not record the names of the people he photographed, he organized his book into ethnic sections, categorizing the images according to the racial and ethnic stereotypes of his age. In this regard, Riis has been criticized for both his bias and reducing those photographed to nameless victims. “Knee-Pants,” appears in the chapter Jewtown and one can assume that the individuals are part of the large wave of Eastern European Jewish migration that flooded New York at the turn of the twentieth century.
Detail of the “Table of Contents,” Jacob August Riis, How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons: New York, 1914
They are likely conversing in Yiddish and share some type of familial or neighborly connection. Some of the workers depicted might have lived in a neighboring New York City apartment or next door back in the old country. Home life, family relations and business relations, are intertwined. Just as it is impossible to know the names of the people captured in Riis’ image, and what Riis actually thought of them, one also cannot know their own impressions of the workplace, or their hopes and day-to-day challenges.
Jacob August Riis, “12 year old boy at work pulling threads. Had sworn certificate he was 16—owned under cross-examination to being 12. His teeth corresponded with that age,” c. 1890, 7 x 6″, from How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons: New York, 1890 (The Museum of the City of New York)
The work performed in tenements like these throughout the Lower East Side made New York City the largest producer of clothing in the United States. Under the contracting system, the tenement shop would be responsible for assembling the garments, which made up the bulk of the work. By 1910, New York produced 70% of women’s clothing and 40% of men’s ready-made clothing. That meant that the knee-pants and garments made by the workers captured in this Ludlow Street sweatshop were shipped across the nation. Riis’ photographs helped make the sweatshop a subject of a national debate and the center of a struggle between workers, owners, consumers, politicians, and social reformers.
The Progressive Era
Riis’ photographs are part of a larger reform effort undertaken during the Progressive Era, that sought to address the problems of rapid industrialization and urbanization. Progressives worked under the premise that if one studies and documents a problem and proposes and tests solutions, difficulties can ultimately be solved, improving the welfare of society as a whole. Progressives like Riis, Lewis Hine, and Jessie Tarbox Beals pioneered the tradition of documentary photography, using the tool to record and publicize working and housing conditions and a renewed call for reform. These efforts ultimately led to government regulation and the passage of the 1901 Tenement House Law, which mandated new construction and sanitation regulations that improved the access to air, light, and water in all tenement buildings.
Jessie Tarbox Beals, Child on Fire Escape, c. 1918, for the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor (Columbia University Libraries)
In the introduction to the How the Other Half Lives, Riis challenged his readers to confront societal ills, asking “What are you going to do about it? is the question of to-day.” It was a question of the past, but one that endures.