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11.6: American and regional culture

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    American and regional culture

    How have ideas, beliefs, and art shaped the United States?

    From ancient cultures to modern cross-cultures.

    John Trumbull, Declaration of Independence, 1819, oil on canvas, 366 x 549 cm (United States Capitol)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): John Trumbull, Declaration of Independence, 1819, oil on canvas, 366 x 549 cm (United States Capitol)

    Art is a conversation with time

    Essay by Dr. Bryan Zygmont

    John Trumbull’s The Declaration of Independence (1817-18)—perhaps his most enduring and important work—has appeared in countless history textbooks, and in this way, American students of all ages have been led to believe that there was a magical day on the Fourth of July in 1776 when delegates gathered together at Independence Hall to sign this foundational document in the history of the United States. But paintings do not necessarily tell the truth, and Trumbull’s masterpiece is no exception. The Declaration of Independence was not formally signed on the Fourth of July (as yearly commemorative fireworks might suggest), and not all 56 men who would eventually sign the Declaration were present when it was officially autographed some weeks later.

    There is another whispered untruth in this painting. Trumbull has depicted 47 people in this somewhat confined space, 42 of whom were delegates who (eventually) would sign the Declaration of Independence. Each representative Trumbull painted is a white male, which makes this group far from representational of the population of the each colony they represented (the American colonies were far more pluralistic). The same has been true of the United States in all the decades that followed. “We the People” are both men and women, both native born and recently arrived, and look both similar to and distinct from the 47 landholders in Trumbull’s painting. The broad history of art in North America makes this succinctly clear. In that art we can get a more true sense of what the United States of America was in the past and what the United States of America is today.

    Robert W. Weir, Embarkation of the Pilgrims, 1844, oil on canvas, 548 cm x 365 cm (U.S. Capitol)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Robert W. Weir, Embarkation of the Pilgrims, 1844, oil on canvas, 548 cm x 365 cm (U.S. Capitol)

    The Puritans — less dour than you might suspect!

    But it is not only in regards to the signing of the Declaration of Independence that history textbooks might deceive high school students. In fact, if one can conjure up a mental image of what a seventeenth-century pilgrim might look like, that image would likely include joyless facial expressions and austere clothing that did not stray from black and white—for this is the somewhat romanticized view that nineteenth-century artists would later present (Robert Weir’s The Embarkation of the Pilgrims is but one example). But although the Puritans fled England and then Holland in search of religious liberty, they were not as dour as historical lore might suggest. Indeed, as the Freake Portraits (1671-74) make clear, the Puritans were far more colorful and extravagant than our history books might indicate. This is true of their dress and attire, and it is equally as true as it pertains to their home furnishings.

    Court Cupboard, 1665-73, red oak with cedar and maple (moldings), northern white cedar and white pine, 142.6 x 129.5 x 55.3 cm (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): Court Cupboard, 1665-73, red oak with cedar and maple (moldings), northern white cedar and white pine, 142.6 x 129.5 x 55.3 cm (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art)

    A Court Cupboard (c. 1665-73) in the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art aptly illustrates this important point. This particular cupboard was owned by Thomas Prence. Prence arrived in Plymouth Colony in what is now Massachusetts in November 1621, some 12 months after the Mayflower first brought Puritans to the New World. Pence was clearly a man of some talent and ability. He first served as Governor of Plymouth Colony from 1634-35 while still in his early 30s. He again served a short term from 1638-39, and then a much longer term from 1657 until is death in 1673.

    Court Cupboard, 1665-73, red oak with cedar and maple (moldings), northern white cedar and white pine, 142.6 x 129.5 x 55.3 cm (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\): Lathe-turned column, and doors decorated with spindles, Court Cupboard, 1665-73, red oak with cedar and maple (moldings), northern white cedar and white pine, 142.6 x 129.5 x 55.3 cm (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art)

    This cupboard is architectural in its mass and form and shows the ways in which domestic furniture made in the American colonies during the seventeenth century was influenced by European architecture. When looking at this object, for example, one can see various architectural elements. The topmost edge resembles a cornice and the open space underneath that cornice has the appearance of a kind of ionic frieze. Immense lathe-turned columns appear on the upper left and right edges, and twenty engaged columns—here called spindles—decorate the front.

    The patina of time has changed the color of this object, but when first made it would have appeared red, black and vibrant yellow. In total, this object suggests opulence far more than austerity. But this wealth is indicated not only by the object—its size, its decoration, its form—but also by what Prence and his wife would have placed both within and upon it. Without doubt, one of the reasons to own such a cupboard would be to display and store items of luxury, and we can well imagine silver plate displayed atop the cupboard and fine textiles in the drawers.

    But this display of opulence—both in this extravagant piece of furniture and the luxury items it was meant to display and contain—does not only comment on Prence’s wealth, but also upon his blessedness. As a Puritan, Prence was a firm believer in the concept of predestination, the idea that he had—from birth—been selected for heavenly salvation. And because God was omnipotent (that is, all powerful) the wealth that Prence and his family enjoyed was clearly a signifier of God’s favor. For the Puritans, then, the tasteful display of wealth (be it clothing, jewelry, or furniture) was a material representation of their own goodness and God’s divine esteem.

    A peaceable kingdom?

    As one of the governors of Plymouth Colony during the seventeenth century, Prence was forced to deal with those who were in the New World before the arrival of the Puritans—Native Americans—and those who would follow—the Quakers. The historical record suggests that he was far kinder to the former than the latter, but these two groups—the Quakers and Native Americans—serve as the primary subjects for Edward Hick’s most popular subject, The Peaceable Kingdom (1826). In total, Hick’s—who was a member of the Society of Friends (Quakers) himself—painted more than five dozen versions of this subject, but the one in Philadelphia Museum of Art is interesting for the ways in which the artist included text into the borders of the image. Together, the text and image eloquently speak to the religious toleration the Quakers hoped to preach and practice in Pennsylvania, a toleration they had not found when they first settled in Massachusetts.

    Edward Hicks, The Peaceable Kingdom, 1826, oil on canvas, 83.5 x 106 cm (Philadelphia Museum of Art)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{5}\): Edward Hicks, The Peaceable Kingdom, 1826, oil on canvas, 83.5 x 106 cm (Philadelphia Museum of Art)

    On the right we can see a young boy—so young, in fact, that he wears what appears to be a dress as he has not yet been “breeched” to wear pants—standing astride and with his left arm around an adult (if diminutive) lion. A leopard and wolf join the lion as predators in this implausible garden, seemingly at peace with the docile ox, sheep, and lamb. The text on the left, top, and right reference a passage from the Book of Isaiah (11: 1-9) in the Jewish Bible and speaks to what our own earthly world would be like if the peace of Heaven could be found on earth.

    If most of the text on the border references the Bible, the text on the bottom—When the great PENN his famous treaty made With indian chiefs beneath the Elm-tree’s shade—is decidedly secular. This text makes specific reference to the treaty William Penn signed with the Lenni Lenape (sometimes called the Delaware) Indians. In order to visually represent this, Hicks has depicted the mighty elm tree and a group of Quakers and Native Americans negotiating the treaty that bears Penn’s name. Hicks makes clear that Penn’s motives and intentions with the peoples who already occupied the land of what would become Pennsylvania were noble and good.

    A beaded Lakota suitcase

    But few of the interactions the new (European) arrivals had with longstanding (Native American) residents were so noble and good, and we are reminded of this in a beaded suitcase Nellie Two Bear Gates made and likely presented to her cousin, Ida Claymore. The artist was a member of the Lakota, who primarily lived in the Standing Rock area of North and South Dakota.

    Nellie Two Bear Gates, Suitcase, 1880-1910, beads, hide, metal, oilcloth, thread (Minneapolis Institute of Art)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{6}\): Nellie Two Bear Gates, Suitcase, 1880-1910, beads, hide, metal, oilcloth, thread (Minneapolis Institute of Art)

    Gates has decorated the valise on both sides in a way that was traditional to the Lakota people. The abstract patterns that decorate the valise are artistic elements that go back centuries, but the artist has also introduced figural elements that provide a narrative. In the lower part of the object, for example, a woman stands wearing a red dress with a white breastplate; this is presumably the bride. To her left hang a variety of decorated bags, two beautifully embellished buffalo hides, a trade cloth, and another robe. These objects—which suggest the wealth of the bride—are items she brought to her marriage. On the upper part of the valise we can clear see the bride’s father on the left and her mother on the right. The pails that hang from the rail between them suggest the sumptuous feast that would commemorate the wedding.

    Nellie Two Bear Gates, Suitcase, 1880-1910, beads, hide, metal, oilcloth, thread (Minneapolis Institute of Art)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{7}\): Nellie Two Bear Gates, Suitcase, 1880-1910, beads, hide, metal, oilcloth, thread (Minneapolis Institute of Art)

    If the front of the valise shows a happy event, the obverse shows one that is much more somber when it is considered within the framework of Lakota life. On it we see two Lakota men riding horses. One has already lassoed a branded bull, while another has raised his right arm and is set to capture the bull that gallops from left to right. Although this may at first seem to be a scene—like the other—that captures an element of every day Lakota life, there is something more somber at issue. The Lakota’s centuries old nomadic life ways came to an end during the final quarter of the nineteenth century when they were forced onto reservations. This forced relocation was in part a result of the destruction of the resource that the Lakota depended upon for their nomadic existence: the American bison. In this way, the narrative on the suitcase signifies an important shift in the Lakota way of life, from a nomadic one that followed the bison, to a confined, government-mandated way of life dependent upon cattle for sustenance.

    Coney Island and leisure

    Reginald Marsh, Wooden Horses, 1936, tempera on board, 61 x 101.6 cm (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art

    Figure \(\PageIndex{8}\): Reginald Marsh, Wooden Horses, 1936, tempera on board, 61 x 101.6 cm (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art)

    More than a thousand miles from the tragedy at Standing Rock Reservation, Americans delighted in the meteoric rise of Coney Island at the southern end of the borough of Brooklyn. Three competing amusement parks—Steeplechase Park, Luna Park, and Dreamland—opened between 1897 and 1904, and entertained the millions who came to visit. If at first Coney Island was a resort for the well to do, in the decades that followed it was venue where all different classes could mix and mingle regardless of race, gender, or socioeconomic status. At the height of the Great Depression, Coney Island was known as the Nickel Empire. A hotdog, a soda, and an excursion on one of the many rides all cost five cents (five cents in 1935 roughly equates to $.93 in 2019). Because of inexpensive nature of a trip to Coney Island, it attracted people of all walks of life who could collectively gather and forget—for a time—the hardships brought on by the economic crisis that then enveloped the world.

    The artist, Reginald Marsh was keenly interested in depicting the vibrant nature of city life, and his painting, Wooden Horses (1936), captures this energy. A Parisian by birth but a New Yorker by choice, Marsh is remembered today for his energetic, vibrant use of primary colors and line, and for the fact that he used tempera—pigment mixed with egg yolk—rather than the more common oil paint. In this image, we can see many figures who all ride—sometimes by themselves or in other instances in tandem—on extravagantly carved wooden horses on an attraction meant to mimic the speed and thrill of a steeplechase race.

    At first glance this may seem to be a painting that captures the exhilaration of the ride, but upon further reflection, there are elements that may prompt a sense of unease. For example, the artist—at least to our modern eyes—seems to objectify the women in a way that was rather typical at the many dance halls that were a part of men’s Coney Island experiences. Their racy attire, bright lipstick, and their straddling of the horse (rather than sitting in side-saddle fashion) all suggest a certain bawdiness. The pair in middle are particularly interesting. He—a self portrait of the artist a generation or so older than she—sits on the hind end of the carved equine and wraps his arms around her bodice. She—seemingly indifferent to his advances—focuses on the ride while the forward motion of her steed flutters her skirt, showing a not insignificant amount of her thigh.

    Remembering Nazi Germany

    George Grosz, Remembering, 1937, oil on canvas, 71.2 x 91.76 cm (Minneapolis Institute of Art, © Estate of George Grosz)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{9}\): George Grosz, Remembering, 1937, oil on canvas, 71.2 x 91.76 cm (Minneapolis Institute of Art, © Estate of George Grosz)

    Although George Grosz painted Remembering (1937) only one year after Marsh completed Wooden Horses, the tone he captures could not be more different. Grosz was born in Berlin and immigrated to the United States in 1933 after spending the summer before in New York City teaching at the Art Students League. His departure from Germany preceded—by less than a month—Adolph Hitler’s mercurial rise to power when he was appointed chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. Grosz, of course, was familiar with Hitler and his ambitions, and had spent considerable effort in the 1920s using his art as a way to ridicule German political leadership. As early as 1923, for example, Grosz had drawn caricatures of Hitler. Given the ways in which he had used his art to criticize the government, the artist knew it was best to escape far beyond the Nazi’s reach. Grosz remained in the United States for much of the rest of his life, though he did venture back to Europe on occasion.

    One such trip was a brief return in 1935. If Grosz dreaded what fascist Germany was becoming when he immigrated to the United States in 1932, this subsequent visit confirmed his worst fears. Remembering is a product of that visit and the realization that the country of his birth had been completely swept up in an ideology of hate. In the painting, Grosz has painted his own likeness on the figure in the left foreground, and he sits in what looks to be a ruined building. A men’s jacket has been draped over his shoulders, but his arms cross his chest while the arms of the jacket lifelessly hang at his side. The worried look suggests he is aware of the chaos that surrounds him, but has turned his back to that bedlam. When Grosz escaped to the United States in 1933, he brought his wife and two sons with him, but his extended family and countless friends were forced to endure the atrocities that Hitler brought to the German people and to the world. One can imagine the guilt he felt at leaving loved ones behind.

    As an artist, Grosz part of something significant about the United States during the second quarter of the twentieth century, namely the mass exodus of talented men and women from Europe to the United States who sought to escape the totalitarian regimes that were coming to power. These people arrived with dreams and aspirations of finding a better life in the United States. In addition to receiving the liberty they were seeking, they enriched their adopted country and the communities in which they lived, contributed to the Melting Pot—the e pluribus unum—that the United States has always been.

    The AIDS epidemic

    Masami Teraoka, American Kabuki (Oishiiwa), 1986, watercolor and sumi ink on paper mounted on a four-panel screen, 196.9 x 393.7 x 3 cm (de Young Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco), © Masami Teraoka

    Figure \(\PageIndex{10}\): Masami Teraoka, American Kabuki (Oishiiwa), 1986, watercolor and sumi ink on paper mounted on a four-panel screen, 196.9 x 393.7 x 3 cm (de Young Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco), © Masami Teraoka

    Although born in the Hiroshima Prefecture of Japan prior to the beginning of World War II, Masami Teraoka moved to the United States in 1961. His mature artistic style of the 1980s engages contemporary events within the framework of traditional Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints. The genre of ukiyo-e flourished in the 18th and 19th centuries in Japan. Ukiyo-e works draw their subject matter from popular theater (Kabuki), and urban life—especially the streets of Edo (Tokyo).

    Although at first glance Teraoka owes an aesthetic debt to the great printmaker Hokusai and his iconic The Great Wave of Kanagawa (c. 1830), American Kabuki is different in many regards. Hokusai’s ukiyo-e print measures about 10” x 15”, while Teraoka’s colossal screen measures 6’5” x 12’10”. While The Great Wave is a small, almost intimate seascape with boats before Mount Fuji, the scale of American Kabuki is so large that it almost surrounds the viewer. And this enormity of scale forces the viewer to not only to address the landscape, but the horror that the landscape contains. The date—1986—is of paramount importance, for it was in the middle of the 1980s when America—and the entire world—came to more fully understand the horrors of the AIDS epidemic.

    Katsushika Hokusai, Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura), also known as The Great Wave, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei), c. 1830-32, polychrome woodblock print; ink and color on paper, 10 1/8 x 14 15 /16" / 25.7 x 37.9 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{11}\): Katsushika Hokusai, Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura), also known as The Great Wave, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei), c. 1830-32, polychrome woodblock print; ink and color on paper, 10 1/8 x 14 15 /16″ / 25.7 x 37.9 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

    First published in 1987—the year after Teraoka’s painting—Randy Shilts’s And the Band Played on: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic astutely chronicles the early years of this health tragedy. Although the terms were often used interchangeably during the 1980s, HIV—the human immunodeficiency virus—was the cause of AIDS, the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. Shilts explores the early populations most at risk for this mysterious disease. The largest of these groups was homosexual men. The second group was hemophiliacs, people—many of them children—who needed frequent blood transfusions in order to compensate for their genetic disorder that prevented their blood from clotting. The third group was intravenous drug users.

    Gay men, sick children, and intravenous drug users had at least one thing in common in the early to mid-1980s: none of these groups had much political influence. And as a result of this lack of voice and the political indifference of the American government, HIV became a national and worldwide pandemic. As journalist Igor Volsky reported:

    Reagan’s surgeon general…explained that “intradepartmental politics” kept Reagan out of all AIDS discussions for the first five years of the administration “because transmission of AIDS was understood to be primarily in the homosexual population and in those who abused intravenous drugs.” The president’s advisers, Koop said, “took the stand, ‘They are only getting what they justly deserve.'”Igor Volsky, “Recalling Ronald Reagan’s LGBT Legacy Ahead Of The GOP Presidential Debate ”

    Think Progress (September 7, 2011)

    This pandemic and the indifference that allowed it to fester and spread is the theme of Teraoka’s work. The artist had a friend whose child was infected with HIV when given a tainted blood product. In American Kabuki, we see a mother—either rising from the waves or being torn down by them, we cannot tell—who clutches her child under her left arm. Her wind-tousled hair and terrified eyes provide a sense of horror to the scene, as do the skeletal, finger-like shape of the waves.

    Within the framework of Japanese history, blackened teeth suggested the married status of a woman, but in Teraoka’s image it also serves to suggest eminent death and decay. The lesions on her cheek, forehead and forearm likely suggest Kaposi’s sarcoma, purple blotches on the skin that was one of the earliest symptoms of AIDS. The green hue around her eyes (and around the head of her largely hidden child) was frequently used in Kabuki theater performances to suggest a ghost or spirit. This, when combined with her teeth and lesions all suggest what people had come to know in 1986 even if they had not yet developed the vocabulary to express it: once a person had HIV they would in time have AIDS, and once they had AIDS they would soon die.

    In time, the HIV/AIDS pandemic would become a plague on all of our houses, a tidal wave of death that has not yet been cured. Teraoka eloquently speaks to that destruction and the indifference of the government to advocate on behalf of those in need.

    Understanding art to understand American culture

    Art is, of course, the product of a unique moment in time, and it can take many forms. It can be a piece of furniture carved from wood; it can be a large-scale folded screen meant to mimic works made centuries ago in a far-off land an ocean away. While art many not speak in absolute truths, a careful and thoughtful analysis of it can provide crucial information about the shifts of American society and how it has changed and evolved over the centuries. What America is now is not what it has always been, and what it is now is not what it will become in the future. But regardless of when or where, artists will create art to chronicle the happenings of their time and provide future generations with insight into to their own culture and society.

    Selected Contributors

    Seeing America is developed and distributed by Smarthistory together with a consortium of museums, including:

    Amon Carter Museum of American Art

    Art Institute of Chicago

    Brooklyn Museum

    Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

    Denver Art Museum

    Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

    Los Angeles County Museum of Art

    Minneapolis Institute of Art

    National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution

    Newark Museum

    Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts

    Philadelphia Museum of Art

    Portland Art Museum

    Smithsonian American Art Museum

    Terra Foundation for American Art

    Toledo Museum of Art

    Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art

    c. 11,000 B.C.E.
    Clovis culture

    The first clear evidence of human activity in North America are spearheads used to hunt large game.

    Clovis culture

    The first clear evidence of human activity in North America

    by

    The first clear evidence of human activity in North America are spear heads like this. They are called Clovis points. These spear tips were used to hunt large game. The period of the Clovis people coincides with the extinction of mammoths, giant sloth, camels and giant bison in North America. The extinction of these animals was caused by a combination of human hunting and climate change.

    Clovis spear point c. 11,000 B.C.E., found Arizona, flint, 2.98 x 8.5 x 0.7 cm

    Figure \(\PageIndex{12}\): Clovis Spear Point, c. 11,000 B.C.E., flint, 2.98 x 8.5 x 0.7 cm, found Arizona © Trustees of the British Museum

    How did humans reach America?

    North America was one of the last continents in the world to be settled by humans after about 15,000 BC. During the last Ice Age, water, which previously flowed off the land into the sea, was frozen up in vast ice sheets and glaciers so sea levels dropped. This exposed a land bridge that enabled humans to migrate through Siberia to Alaska. These early Americans were highly adaptable and Clovis points have been found throughout North America. It is remarkable that over such a vast area, the distinctive characteristics of the points hardly vary.

    Typical Clovis points, like the example above, have parallel to slightly convex edges which narrow to a point. This shape is produced by chipping small, parallel flakes off both sides of a stone blade. Following this, the point is thinned on both sides by the removal of flakes which leave a central groove or “flute.” These flutes are the principal feature of Clovis or “fluted” points. They originate from the base which then has a concave outline and end about one-third along the length. The grooves produced by the removal of the flutes allow the point to be fitted to a wooden shaft of a spear.

    The people who made Clovis points spread out across America looking for food and did not stay anywhere for long, although they did return to places where resources were plentiful.

    Clovis points are sometimes found with the bones of mammoths, mastodons, sloth and giant bison. As the climate changed at the end of the last Ice Age, the habitats on which these animals depended started to disappear. Their extinction was inevitable but Clovis hunting on dwindling numbers probably contributed to their disappearance.

    Although there are arguments in favor of pre-Clovis migrations to America, it is the “Paleo-Indian” Clovis people who can be most certainly identified as the probable ancestors of later Native North American peoples and cultures.

    © Trustees of the British Museum

    Go deeper

    B. Fagan, Ancient North America (London, 2005).

    G. Haynes, The Early Settlement of North America: The Clovis Era (Cambridge, 2002).

    G. Haynes (ed.), American Megafaunal Extinctions at the End of the Pleistocene (New York, 2009).

    D. Meltzer, First Peoples in a New World: Colonizing Ice Age America(Berkeley, 2009).

    S. Mithen, After the Ice: A Global Human History 20000-5000 BC (London, 2003).

    c. 1000 C.E.
    Mesa Verde: carving a home from the cliffs

    Remarkable structures in the American Southwest were home to cliff-dwelling farmers until around 1300.

    Mesa Verde: a home in the cliffs

    Some of the most remarkable structures in the U.S. are a millennium old

    by

    Video \(\PageIndex{1}\): Cliff dwellings, Ancestral Puebloan, 450–1300 C.E., sandstone, Mesa Verde National Park. Speakers: Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank and Dr. Steven Zucker

    Wanted: stunning view

    Cliff dwellings, Ancestral Puebloan, 450–1300 C.E., sandstone, Mesa Verde National Park, (photo: Steven Zucker, CC: BY-NC-SA 2.0)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{13}\): Cliff dwellings, Ancestral Puebloan, 450–1300 C.E., sandstone, Mesa Verde National Park, (photo: Steven Zucker, CC: BY-NC-SA 2.0)

    Imagine living in a home built into the side of a cliff. The Ancestral Puebloan peoples (formerly known as the Anasazi) did just that in some of the most remarkable structures still in existence today. Beginning after 1000-1100 C.E., they built more than 600 structures (mostly residential but also for storage and ritual) into the cliff faces of the Four Corners region of the United States (the southwestern corner of Colorado, northwestern corner of New Mexico, northeastern corner of Arizona, and southeastern corner of Utah). The dwellings depicted here are located in what is today southwestern Colorado in the national park known as Mesa Verde (“verde” is Spanish for green and “mesa” literally means table in Spanish but here refers to the flat-topped mountains common in the southwest).

    Ladder to Balcony House, Mesa Verde National Park (photo: Ken Lund, CC BY-SA 2.0)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{14}\): Ladder to Balcony House, Mesa Verde National Park (photo: Ken Lund, CC BY-SA 2.0)

    The most famous residential sites date to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Ancestral Puebloans accessed these dwellings with retractable ladders, and if you are sure footed and not afraid of heights, you can still visit some of these sites in the same way today.

    To access Mesa Verde National Park, you drive up to the plateau along a winding road. People come from around the world to marvel at the natural beauty of the area as well as the archaeological remains, making it a popular tourist destination.

    The twelfth- and thirteenth-century structures made of stone, mortar, and plaster remain the most intact. We often see traces of the people who constructed these buildings, such as hand or fingerprints in many of the mortar and plaster walls.

    View of a canyon, Masa Verde National Park, Colorado (photo: cfcheever, CC: BY-NC-SA 2.0)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{15}\): View of a canyon, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado (photo: cfcheever, CC: BY-NC-SA 2.0)

    Ancestral Puebloans occupied the Mesa Verde region from about 450 C.E. to 1300 C.E. The inhabited region encompassed a far larger geographic area than is defined now by the national park, and included other residential sites like Hovenweep National Monument and Yellow Jacket Pueblo. Not everyone lived in cliff dwellings. Yellow Jacket Pueblo was also much larger than any site at Mesa Verde. It had 600–1200 rooms, and 700 people likely lived there (see link below). In contrast, only about 125 people lived in Cliff Palace (largest of the Mesa Verde sites), but the cliff dwellings are certainly among the best-preserved buildings from this time.

    Cliff Palace, Ancestral Puebloan (formerly Anasazi), 450–1300 C.E., sandstone, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado

    Figure \(\PageIndex{16}\): Cliff Palace, Ancestral Puebloan, 450–1300 C.E., sandstone, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado (photo: Steven Zucker, CC: BY-NC-SA 2.0)

    Cliff palace

    The largest of all the cliff dwellings, Cliff Palace, has about 150 rooms and more than twenty circular rooms. Due to its location, it was well protected from the elements. The buildings ranged from one to four stories, and some hit the natural stone “ceiling.” To build these structures, people used stone and mud mortar, along with wooden beams adapted to the natural clefts in the cliff face. This building technique was a shift from earlier structures in the Mesa Verde area, which, prior to 1000 C.E., had been made primarily of adobe (bricks made of clay, sand and straw or sticks). These stone and mortar buildings, along with the decorative elements and objects found inside them, provide important insights into the lives of the Ancestral Puebloan people during the thirteenth century.

    View of Cliff Palace structures, Mesa Verde (photo: Paul Middleton, Shadow Dancer Images, CC: BY-NC 2.0)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{17}\): View of Cliff Palace structures, Mesa Verde (photo: Paul Middleton, Shadow Dancer Images, CC: BY-NC 2.0)

    At sites like Cliff Palace, families lived in architectural units, organized around kivas (circular, subterranean rooms). A kiva typically had a wood-beamed roof held up by six engaged support columns made of masonry above a shelf-like banquette. Other typical features of a kiva include a firepit (or hearth), a ventilation shaft, a deflector (a low wall designed to prevent air drawn from the ventilation shaft from reaching the fire directly), and a sipapu, a small hole in the floor that is ceremonial in purpose. They developed from the pithouse, also a circular, subterranean room used as a living space.

    Kiva without a roof, Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde National Park (photo: Adam Lederer, CC: BY-NC-SA 2.0)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{18}\): Kiva without a roof, Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde National Park (photo: Adam Lederer, CC: BY-NC-SA 2.0)

    Kivas continue to be used for ceremonies today by Puebloan peoples though not those within Mesa Verde National Park. In the past, these circular spaces were likely both ceremonial and residential. If you visit Cliff Palace, you will see the kivas without their roofs (see above), but in the past they would have been covered, and the space around them would have functioned as a small plaza.

    Cliff Palace plan, Mesa Verde National Park

    Figure \(\PageIndex{19}\): Cliff Palace plan with circular kivas, National Park Service

    Connected rooms fanned out around these plazas, creating a housing unit. One room, typically facing onto the plaza, contained a hearth. Family members most likely gathered here. Other rooms located off the hearth were most likely storage rooms, with just enough of an opening to squeeze your arm through a hole to grab anything you might need. Cliff Palace also features some unusual structures, including a circular tower. Archaeologists are still uncertain as to the exact use of the tower.

    Kiva at Spruce Tree House, Mesa Verde National Park (photo: Doug Kerr, CC BY-SA 2.0)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{20}\): Kiva at Spruce Tree House, Mesa Verde National Park (photo: Doug Kerr, CC BY-SA 2.0)

    Painted murals

    The builders of these structures plastered and painted murals, although what remains today is fairly fragmentary. Some murals display geometric designs, while other murals represent animals and plants.

    Mural 30, Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde National Park (photo: National Park Service)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{21}\): Mural 30, Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde National Park (photo: National Park Service)

    For example, Mural 30, on the third floor of a rectangular “tower” (more accurately a room block) at Cliff Palace, is painted red against a white wall. The mural includes geometric shapes that are thought to portray the landscape. It is similar to murals inside of other cliff dwellings including Spruce Tree House and Balcony House. Scholars have suggested that the red band at the bottom symbolizes the earth while the lighter portion of the wall symbolizes the sky. The top of the red band, then, forms a kind of horizon line that separates the two. We recognize what look like triangular peaks, perhaps mountains on the horizon line. The rectangular element in the sky might relate to clouds, rain or to the sun and moon. The dotted lines might represent cracks in the earth.

    Mugs found at Mesa Verde (photo: by the author, Mesa Verde Museum)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{22}\): Mugs found at Mesa Verde (photo: by the author, Mesa Verde Museum)

    The creators of the murals used paint produced from clay, organic materials, and minerals. For instance, the red color came from hematite (a red ocher). Blue pigment could be turquoise or azurite, while black was often derived from charcoal. Along with the complex architecture and mural painting, the Ancestral Puebloan peoples produced black-on-white ceramics and turquoise and shell jewelry (goods were imported from afar including shell and other types of pottery). Many of these high-quality objects and their materials demonstrate the close relationship these people had to the landscape. Notice, for example, how the geometric designs on the mugs above appear similar to those in Mural 30 at Cliff Palace.

    Why build here?

    From 500–1300 C.E., Ancestral Puebloans who lived at Mesa Verde were sedentary farmers and cultivated beans, squash, and corn. Corn originally came from what is today Mexico at some point during the first millennium of the Common Era. Originally most farmers lived near their crops, but this shifted in the late 1100s when people began to live near sources of water, and often had to walk longer distances to their crops.

    New Fire House, Masa Verde National Park (photo: Ken Lund, CC: BY-SA)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{23}\): New Fire House, Masa Verde National Park (photo: Ken Lund, CC: BY-SA)

    So why move up to the cliff alcoves at all, away from water and crops? Did the cliffs provide protection from invaders? Were they defensive or were there other issues at play? Did the rock ledges have a ceremonial or spiritual significance? They certainly provide shade and protection from snow. Ultimately, we are left only with educated guesses—the exact reasons for building the cliff dwellings remain unknown to us.

    Why were the cliffs abandoned?

    The cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde were abandoned around 1300 C.E. After all the time and effort it took to build these beautiful dwellings, why did people leave the area? Cliff Palace was built in the twelfth century, why was it abandoned less than a hundred years later? These questions have not been answered conclusively, though it is likely that the migration from this area was due to either drought, lack of resources, violence or some combination of these. We know, for instance, that droughts occurred from 1276 to 1299. These dry periods likely caused a shortage of food and may have resulted in confrontations as resources became more scarce. The cliff dwellings remain, though, as compelling examples of how the Ancestral Puebloans literally carved their existence into the rocky landscape of today’s southwestern United States.


    Go deeper

    Mesa Verde National Park site

    Yellow Jacket Pueblo reconstruction

    Janet Catherine Berlo and Ruth B. Phillips, Native North American Art, 2 ed. Oxford History of Art series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

    Elizabeth A. Newsome and Kelley Hays-Gilpin, “Spectatorship and Performance in Mural Painting, AD 1250–1500,” Religious Transformation in the Late Pre-Hispanic Pueblo World, eds. Donna Glowacki and Scott Van Keuren, Amerind Studies in Archaeology (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2011).

    David Grant Noble, ed., The Mesa Verde World: Explorations in Ancestral Pueblo Archaeology (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 2006).

    David W. Penney, North American Indian Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 2004).

    Video \(\PageIndex{2}\)

    Smarthistory images for teaching and learning:

    Cliff Palace, Mesa VerdeCliff Palace, Mesa VerdeCliff Palace, Mesa VerdeCliff dwellings, Mesa Verde

    Figure \(\PageIndex{24}\): More Smarthistory images…

    c. 850 and 1250
    Chaco Canyon: urban center of the Ancestral Puebloans

    Located in a high desert, Chaco’s residents dedicated much of their energy to controlling water for crops.

    The ancient community of Chaco Canyon

    Ancestral Puebloans built a thriving society in the desert

    by

    Fajada Butte, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. Chacoan petroglyphs can be found at the base of the cliffs (photo: Adam Meek, CC BY 2.0)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{25}\): Fajada Butte, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. Chacoan petroglyphs can be found at the base of the cliffs (photo: Adam Meek, CC BY 2.0)

    New Mexico is known as the “land of enchantment.” Among its many wonders, Chaco Canyon stands out as one of the most spectacular. Part of Chaco Culture National Historical Park, Chaco Canyon is among the most impressive archaeological sites in the world, receiving tens of thousands of visitors each year. Chaco is more than just a tourist site however, it is also sacred land. Pueblo peoples like the Hopi, Navajo, and Zuni consider it a home of their ancestors.

    Map of key ancestral Puebloan sites in the Four Corners region (map: National Park Service, public domain)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{26}\): Map of major ancestral Puebloan sites in the Four Corners region (National Park Service)

    The canyon is vast and contains an impressive number of structures—both big and small—testifying to the incredible creativity of that people who lived in the Four Corners region of the U.S. between the 9th and 12th centuries. Chaco was the urban center of a broader world, and the ancestral Puebloans who lived here engineered striking buildings, waterways, and more.

    Petroglyphs, Chaco Canyon (photo: KrisNM, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{27}\): Petroglyphs, Chaco Canyon (photo: KrisNM, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

    Chaco is located in a high, desert region of New Mexico, where water is scarce. The remains of dams, canals, and basins suggest that Chacoans spent a considerable amount of their energy and resources on the control of water in order to grow crops, such as corn. Today, visitors have to imagine the greenery that would have filled the canyon.

    Astronomical observations clearly played an important role in Chaco life, and they likely had spiritual significance. Petroglyphs found in Chaco Canyon and the surrounding area reveal an interest in lunar and solar cycles, and many buildings are oriented to align with winter and summer solstices.

    The great kiva in Chetro Ketl, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (National Park Service)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{28}\): The great kiva at Chetro Ketl, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (National Park Service)

    Great Houses

    “Downtown Chaco” features a number of “Great Houses” built of stone and wood. Most of these large complexes have Spanish names, given to them during expeditions, such as one sponsored by the U.S. army in 1849, led by Lt. James Simpson. Carabajal, Simpson’s guide, was Mexican, which helps to explain some of the Spanish names. Great Houses also have Navajo names, and are described in Navajo legends. Tsebida’t’ini’ani (Navajo for “covered hole”), nastl’a kin (Navajo for “house in the corner”), and Chetro Ketl (a name of unknown origin) all refer to one great house, while Pueblo Bonito (Spanish for “pretty village”) and tse biyaa anii-ahi (Navajo for “leaning rock gap”) refer to another.

    Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (photo: Paul Williams, CC BY-NC 2.0)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{29}\): Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (photo: Paul Williams, CC BY-NC 2.0)

    Multistoried rooms, Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (photo: Jacqueline Poggi, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{30}\): Multistoried rooms, Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (photo: Jacqueline Poggi, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

    Pueblo Bonito is among the most impressive of the Great Houses. It is a massive D-shaped structure that had somewhere between 600 and 800 rooms. It was multistoried, with some sections reaching as high as four stories. Some upper floors contained balconies.

    There are many questions that we are still trying to answer about this remarkable site and the people who lived here. A Great House like Pueblo Bonito includes numerous round rooms, called kivas. This large architectural structure included three great kivas and thirty-two smaller kivas. Great kivas are far larger in scale than the others, and were possibly used to gather hundreds of people together. The smaller kivas likely functioned as ceremonial spaces, although they were likely multi-purpose rooms.

    Doorway, Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon (photo: Thomson20192, CC BY 2.0)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{31}\): Doorway, Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon (photo: Thomson20192, CC BY 2.0)

    Among the many remarkable features of this building are its doorways, sometimes aligned to give the impression that you can see all the way through the building. Some doorways have a T shape, and T-shaped doors are also found at other sites across the region. Research is ongoing to determine whether the T-shaped doors suggest the influence of Chaco or if the T-shaped door was a common aesthetic feature in this area, which the Chacoans then adopted.

    Recently, testing of the trees (dendroprovenance) that were used to construct these massive buildings has demonstrated that the wood came from two distinct areas more than 50 miles away: one in the San Mateo Mountains, the other the Chuska Mountains. About 240,000 trees would have been used for one of the larger Great Houses.

    Chacoan Cultural Interactions

    Traditionally, we tend to separate Mesoamerica and the American Southwest, as if the peoples who lived in these areas did not interact. We now know this is misleading, and was not the case.

    Chacoan culture expanded far beyond the confines of Chaco Canyon. Staircases leading out of the canyon allowed people to climb the mesas and access a vast network of roads that connected places across great distances, such as Great Houses in the wider region. Aztec Ruins National Monument (not to be confused with ruins that belonged to the Aztecs of Mesoamerica) in New Mexico is another ancestral Puebloan site with many of the same architectural features we see at Chaco, including a Great House and T-shaped doorways.

    Aztec Ruins National Monument, New Mexico (photo: Jasperdo, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{32}\): Aztec Ruins National Monument, New Mexico (photo: Jasperdo, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

    Cylindrical Jar from the Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, 3 5/8 inches in diameter (National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{33}\): Cylindrical Jar from the Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, 3 5/8 inches in diameter (National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution)

    Archaeological excavations have uncovered remarkable objects that animated Chacoan life and reveal Chaco’s interactions with peoples outside the Southwestern United States. More than 15,000 artifacts have been unearthed during different excavations at Pueblo Bonito alone, making it one of the best understood spaces at Chaco. Many of these objects speak to the larger Chacoan world, as well as Chaco’s interactions with cultures farther away. In one storage room within Pueblo Bonito, pottery sherds had traces of cacao imported from Mesoamerica. These black-and-white cylindrical vessels were likely used for drinking cacao, similar to the brightly painted Maya vessels used for a similar purpose.

    The remains of scarlet macaws, birds native to an area in Mexico more than 1,000 miles away, also reveal the trade networks that existed across the Mesoamerican and Southwestern world. We know from other archaeological sites in the southwest that there were attempts to breed these colorful birds, no doubt in order to use their colorful feathers as status symbols or for ceremonial purposes. A room with a thick layer of guano (bird excrement) suggests that an aviary also existed within Pueblo Bonito. Copper bells found at Chaco also come from much further south in Mexico, once again testifying to the flourishing trade networks at this time. Chaco likely acquired these materials and objects in exchange for turquoise from their own area, examples of which can be found as far south as the Yucatan Peninsula.

    Current Threats to Chaco

    The world of Chaco is threatened by oil drilling and fracking. After President Theodore Roosevelt passed the Antiquities Act of 1906, Chaco was one of the first sites to be made a national monument. Chaco Canyon is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Chacoan region extended far beyond this center, but unfortunately the Greater Chacoan Region does not fall under the protection of the National Park Service or UNESCO. Much of the Greater Chaco Region needs to be surveyed, because there are certainly many undiscovered structures, roads, and other findings that would help us learn more about this important culture. Beyond its importance as an extraordinary site of global cultural heritage, Chaco has sacred and ancestral significance for many Native Americans. Destruction of the Greater Chaco Region erases an important connection to the ancestral past of Native peoples, and to the present and future that belongs to all of us.

    Go deeper

    Chaco Canyon UNESCO World Heritage Site webpage

    Chaco Research Archive

    “Unexpected Wood Source for Chaco Canyon Great Houses” from the University of Arizona

    Stephen H. Lekson, ed. The Architecture of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2007).

    c. 1590
    Inventing "America": Theodore de Bry's Collected Travels...

    De Bry's images of the Americas affirm and assert a sense of European superiority.

    Picturing America

    Theodore de Bry's collected travels

    by

    Theodore de Bry’s Collected travels in the east Indies and west Indies

    In the center of this image we see a finely-dressed Christopher Columbus with two soldiers. Columbus stands confidently, his left foot forward with his pike planted firmly in the ground, signaling his claim over the land. Behind him to the left, three Spaniards raise a cross in the landscape, symbolizing a declaration of the land for both the Spanish monarchs and for the Christian God.

    Theodor de Bry, Christopher Columbus arrives in America, 1594, etching and text in letterpress, 18.6 c 19.6 cm (Rijksmuseum)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{34}\): Theodore de Bry, Christopher Columbus arrives in America, 1594, engraving, 18.6 c 19.6 cm, from Collected travels in the east Indies and west Indies (Collectiones peregrinationum in Indiam occidentalem), vol. 4: Girolamo Benzoni, Americae pars quarta. Sive, Insignis & admiranda historia de primera occidentali India à Christophoro Columbo (Frankfurt am Main: T. de Bry, 1594) (Rijksmuseum)

    Unclothed Taínos, the indigenous peoples of Hispaniola, walk toward Columbus bringing gifts of necklaces and other precious objects. Further in the background, on the right side of the print, other Taínos, with arms raised and twisting bodies, flee in fear from the Spanish ships anchored offshore.

    This print from 1592, by the engraver Theodore de Bry, presents Columbus and his men as the harbingers of European civilization and faith, and juxtaposes them with Tainos, who are presented as uncivilized, unclothed, and pagan. This print, along with hundreds of others de Bry made for his 27 volume series, published over more than forty years, Collected travels in the east Indies and west Indies (1590–1634), affirm and assert a sense of European superiority, as well as invent for Europeans what America—both its land and its people—was like.

    Though de Bry is most famous for his engravings of European voyages to the Americas (and Africa, and Asia), he never actually traveled across the Atlantic. It is not surprising then that de Bry’s depiction of the indigenous peoples of the Americas was a combination of the work of other artists who had accompanied Europeans to the Americas (artists were often brought on journeys in order to document the lands and peoples of the Americas for a European audience) as well as his own artistic inventions. For instance, he adapted (without credit) some of the images created by Johannes Stradanus, a well-known illustrator who created early images of the Americas. In his Collected travels in the east Indies and west Indies, de Bry republished (and translated into multiple languages) the accounts of others who had spent time traveling around the globe, and created more than 600 engravings to illustrate the volumes. The engraving above of Columbus and the Taínos comes from volume 4 of the Collected travels in the east Indies and west Indies. This volume reprinted the accounts of the Milanese traveler Girolamo Benzoni, who himself had drawn on the accounts of Columbus in his own writings.

    The volumes of the Collected travels in the east Indies and west Indies that treat the voyages across the Atlantic to the Americas are known as the Grands Voyages, while the Petit Voyages (small voyages), were those to Africa and Asia.

    Documenting America

    De Bry’s copperplate engravings were among the first images that Europeans encountered about the peoples, places, and things of the Americas, even if he began making them almost a century after Columbus’s initial voyage. In the engraving with Columbus on the shoreline, the barely clothed Taínos resemble Greco-Roman sculptures, especially their poses and musculature. De Bry apparently had no interest in documenting the actual appearance of the Taínos.

    Left: Apollo Belvedere, c. 150 C.E., Roman copy of a original bronze statue of 330-320 B.C.E. (Vatican Museums); right: detail. Theodor de Bry, Christopher Columbus arrives in America, 1594, etching and text in letterpress, 18.6 c 19.6 cm (Rijksmuseum)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{35}\): Left: Apollo Belvedere, c. 150 C.E., Roman copy of an original bronze statue of 330-320 B.C.E. (Vatican Museums) (photo: Tetraktys, CC BY-SA 3.0); right: detail. Theodore de Bry, Christopher Columbus arrives in America, 1594, etching and text in letterpress, 18.6 c 19.6 cm (Rijksmuseum)

    De Bry’s Collected travels belongs to the genre of travel literature, which had been popular since the Middle Ages. Accounts of the Americas became wildly popular after Columbus’s first voyage. For example, Columbus’s 1493 letter to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel (who had helped finance the voyage) was published in seventeen editions by 1497, and often included woodcuts depicting select moments of his voyage.

    De Bry and his audiences

    De Bry was a Protestant, and fled Liège (today in Belgium) where he was born to avoid persecution. He made his way to Frankfurt, which is where he started work on Grands Voyages. After his death in 1598, his family continued his work and finished the remaining volumes in 1634. Interestingly, different versions of the Grands Voyages catered to different Christian confessional groups. The volumes in German were geared towards Protestants, while those in Latin appealed to Catholics. De Bry created images that he could market to either audience, but he made changes to the texts to appeal more to either Catholics or Protestants. Psalms that Calvinists felt encapsulated their beliefs or longer passages criticizing Catholic beliefs or colonial practices were omitted from Latin versions, which were often filled in with more engravings duplicated from other parts of the text.

    General subjects of the Grands Voyages engravings

     Theodor de Bry, Indians pour liquid gold into the mouth of a Spaniard, 1594

    Figure \(\PageIndex{36}\): Theodore de Bry, Indians pour liquid gold into the mouth of a Spaniard, 1594, from Collected travels in the east Indies and west Indies (Collectiones peregrinationum in Indiam occidentalem)

    While some of de Bry’s prints in Grands Voyages focus on the exploits of famed European navigators like Columbus, others show indigenous groups and their customs. Some of these images display the atrocities that occurred in the wake of Europeans’ arrival, violent conquest, and colonization. Indigenous peoples are fed to dogs, hanged, or butchered. Still others depict native responses to the European invasion, such as drowning Spaniards in the ocean or pouring liquid gold into invaders’ mouths.

    John White, The town of Secoton; bird's-eye view of town with houses, lake at the top, fire, fields and ceremony, 1585-1593, watercolour over graphite, heightened with white (British Museum)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{37}\): John White, The town of Secoton (bird’s-eye view of town with houses, lake at the top, fire, fields and ceremony), 1585-1593, watercolour over graphite, heightened with white (British Museum)

    Travels to Virginia

    The Grands Voyages (the section on cross-Atlantic voyages) begins with a reprint of an earlier text by the English colonist Thomas Hariot, A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1590). It also includes translations of this text into Latin, German, and French. De Bry’s accompanying engravings were based on watercolors by John White, who had settled on Roanoke Island, North Carolina in 1585 and who had created paintings while there. His watercolors document clothing, dwellings, and rituals of the eastern Algonquian peoples.

    Even though Virginia and North Carolina were colonized by Europeans after they had seized other areas in the Americas, de Bry placed them in the first volume of his Grands Voyages. This may be because he had visited London just after Hariot’s book was published in 1588, and was given both that text and the watercolors of White. De Bry was clearly not interested in a providing a chronological account of European exploration and colonization.

    One of White’s paintings represents the town of Secoton, with people going about their daily life activities. In the right foreground people dance in a circle. Corn grows in neat rows. Dwellings line a road. In his engraving, de Bry made several changes to White’s watercolor. He expanded the village and removed the textual inscriptions that identified important features of the village (instead incorporating a separate key).

    Theodor de Bry, Bird's-eye view of a native American village, 1590, engraving after a watercolor by John White for A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia, of the commodities and of the nature and manners of the naturall inhabitants by Thomas Hariot (British Library)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{38}\): Theodore de Bry, Bird’s-eye view of a native American village (Secoton), 1590, engraving (after the watercolor by John White above) for volume 1 of Collected travels in the east Indies and west Indies which reprinted Thomas Hariot, A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia, of the commodities and of the nature and manners of the naturall inhabitants (British Library)

    For his engravings, de Bry also transformed watercolors White had created of Scottish Picts (an ancient pagan indigenous peoples of Scotland who lived in a loose confederation of groups and who painted their bodies). But why include a discussion of Picts in a book on the Americas?

    Theodor de Bry, Female Pict, 1590, engraving after a watercolor by John White for A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia, of the commodities and of the nature and manners of the naturall inhabitants by Thomas Hariot (British Library)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{39}\): Theodore de Bry, A Young Daughter of the Picts, 1590, engraving (after a watercolor by Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues — originally attributed to John White) for Collected travels in the east Indies and west Indies which reprints Thomas Hariot, A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia, of the commodities and of the nature and manners of the naturall inhabitants (British Library)

    Hariot’s text states that “Some picture of the Picts which in the old time did inhabit one part of the great Britain,” which according to him “show how that the inhabitants of the great Britain have been in times past as savage as those of Virginia.”[1] White compares them to the Algonquian peoples to suggest that Europe has its own history of uncivilized, pagan people. Despite attempting to reconcile the Algonquian peoples with the Picts in Europe, the manner in which he compares them—as savages—speaks to a presumed European superiority.

    Theodor de Bry, Indians worship the column in honor of the French king, 1591, engraving for Collectiones peregrinationum in Indiam occidentalem, vol. 2: René de Laudonnière, Brevis narratio eorum quae in Florida Americae provincia Gallis acciderunt (Frankfurt am Main: J. Wechelus, 1591) (Rijksmuseum).

    Figure \(\PageIndex{40}\): Theodore de Bry, Indians worship the column in honor of the French king, 1591, engraving for Collectiones peregrinationum in Indiam occidentalem, vol. 2: René de Laudonnière, Brevis narratio eorum quae in Florida Americae provincia Gallis acciderunt (Frankfurt am Main: J. Wechelus, 1591) (Rijksmuseum)

    Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, Laudonnierus et rex athore ante columnam a praefecto prima navigatione locatam quamque venerantur floridenses, gouache (New York Public Library)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{41}\): Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, Laudonnierus et rex athore ante columnam a praefecto prima navigatione locatam quamque venerantur floridenses, gouache (New York Public Library)

    Travels to Florida

    Volume 2, published in 1591, focused on French voyages to Florida, and was based on the accounts of the French colonist René Goulaine de Laudonnière. De Bry created engravings based on the watercolors of Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, who was part of the French expeditions to Florida that were headed by Jean Ribault in 1562 and Laudonnière in 1564. One of the engravings adapted from Le Moyne’s watercolors shows the Timucua worshipping a column that had supposedly been erected by Ribault. The most prominent figure, identified as chief Athore, stands next to Laudonnière, who has followed him to see the sight. The other Timucua kneel, while raising their arms in gestures of reverence in the direction of the column, itself decorated with garlands. Before it, offerings of food and vegetables abound. De Bry made several notable changes to the print, such as adjusting Athore’s features to look more European, with raised cheekbones and an aquiline nose. Le Moyne’s earlier watercolor had also Europeanized the Timucua peoples: he paints them with the same complexion as Laudonnière, but with even blonder hair.

    Cannibalism in Brazil

    Theodor de Bry, engraving depicting cannibalism in Brazil for  volume 3 of Collected travels in the east Indies and west Indies which reprinted Hans Staden’s account of his experiences in Brazil, 1594 (British Library)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{42}\): Theodore de Bry, engraving depicting cannibalism in Brazil for volume 3 of Collected travels in the east Indies and west Indies which reprinted Hans Staden’s account of his experiences in Brazil, 1594 (British Library)

    Cannibalism was (and remains) commonly associated with certain indigenous peoples of the Americas. In de Bry’s series, his third volume recounted Hans Staden’s experiences of cannibalism in Brazil. De Bry’s engravings for this volume were among the most well-known in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, in large part because of their gruesome and sensationalistic character. Note that de Bry’s print, “Indians pour liquid gold into the mouth of a Spaniard,” may also depict cannibalism among the figures shown in the background.

    Theodor de Bry, engraving depicting cannibalism in Brazil for  volume 3 of Collected travels in the east Indies and west Indies which reprinted Hans Staden’s account of his experiences in Brazil (British Library), 1594

    Figure \(\PageIndex{43}\): Theodore de Bry, engraving depicting cannibalism in Brazil for volume 3 of Collected travels in the east Indies and west Indies which reprinted Hans Staden’s account of his experiences in Brazil, 1594 (British Library)

    Staden, a German soldier who traveled to South America, had been captured in 1553 by the Tupinambá, an indigenous group in Brazil. After his return to Europe in 1557, he wrote about Tupinambá customs, family life, and cannibalism, describing how the Tupinambá practiced it ceremonially, especially eating their enemies. Staden’s initial book included simple woodcuts, but de Bry’s updated engravings proved far more popular and enduring in the European cultural imagination. Perceptions of indigenous Brazilians were shaped by these images, and reinforced the notion that the Tupinambá, and others like them, were depraved, primitive, and sinful.

    One of his images depicts naked adults and children drinking a broth made from a human head and intestines, visible on plates amidst the gathering of people. Another depiction of the Tupinamba shows a fire below a grill, upon which body parts are roasted. Figures surround the grill, eating. In the back is a bearded figure, most likely intended to be Staden. Hand-colored versions of de Bry’s prints emphasize the disturbing subject of the images even more.

    Cannibalism would come to be closely associated with peoples of the Americas. De Bry would even use images of cannibals to serve as the engraved frontispiece to volume 3. Showing the Tupinambá eating human flesh exoticized them, and justified European control.

    Other volumes and the legacy of de Bry

    The fourth, fifth, and sixth volumes of the set focus on Girolamo Benzoni’s accounts, such as Historia Mondo Nuovo, with part 6 discussing the atrocities committed against the indigenous population of Peru. Parts 7 to 12 incorporated the travel accounts of Ulricus Faber, Sir Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh, José de Acosta, Amerigo Vespucci, John Smith, and Antonio de Herrera among others. Like the volumes that came before them, de Bry provided numerous images to increase readers understanding of the narratives.

    The Grands Voyages, and the entire Collected Travels, relate more generally to the forms of knowledge and collecting popular at the time. Like a cabinet of curiosity, de Bry’s project organized information in text and images so that readers could come to know the Americas. The volumes seek to provide encyclopedic knowledge about the Americas, much as the objects did in a curiosity cabinet. De Bry’s many prints were important resources for Europeans who sought to better understand the Americas. It allowed readers to take possession of these distant lands and peoples, where they could become participants in the colonial projects then underway, allowing them to feel a sense of dominance over the peoples and lands across the Atlantic—lands which many in Europe would never see firsthand. These often inaccurate images and narratives supported a sense of superiority, with Europeans positioned as more civilized and advanced, and the American “others” as less so. De Bry’s images of America would cement for Europeans a vision of what America was like for centuries to come.

    [1] “Some Pictvre of the Pictes which in the olde tyme dyd habite one part of the great Bretainne,” which according to him “showe how that the inhabitants of the great Bretainne haue been in times past as sauuage as those of Virginia.” 67. Thomas Hariot, with illustrations by John White, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1590).

    Additional resources:

    Early Images of Virginia Indians: The William W. Cole Collection at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture

    Picturing the New World: The Hand-Colored de Bry Engravings of 1590

    White Watercolors and de Bry engravings, on Virtual Jamestown

    De Bry engravings of the Timucua, on Florida Memory

    Columbus reports on his first voyage, 1493

    Kim Sloan, ed., European Visions, American Voices, British Museum Research Publication 172 (2009).

    Bernadette Bucher, Icon and Conquest: A Structural Analysis of the Illustrations of de Bry’s Great Voyages (Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1981).

    Michael Gaudio, Engraving the Savage: The New World and Techniques of Civilization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008).

    Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1991).

    Michiel van Groesen, “The de Bry Collection of Voyages (1590–1634): Early America reconsidered,” Journal of Early Modern History 12 (2008): 1–24.

    Michael van Groesen, Representations of the Overseas World in the de Bry Collection of Voyages (1590–1634) (Leiden: Brill, 2008).

    Maureen Quilligan, “Theodore de Bry’s Voyages to the New and Old Worlds,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 41, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 1–12.

    1665-73
    Thought the Puritans were dour? Think again!

    We think of Puritans aesthetics as restrained and humble, but this elaborate cupboard proves otherwise.

    Thought the Puritans were dour?

    This elaborate cupboard proves otherwise

    by and

    Video \(\PageIndex{3}\): Court Cupboard, 1665-73, red oak with cedar and maple (moldings), northern white cedar and white pine, 142.6 x 129.5 x 55.3 cm (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art). Speakers: Brandy Culp, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art and Dr. Beth Harris

    Test your knowledge with a quiz

    START

    Key points

    • The Puritans came to North America as religious pilgrims, establishing Plymouth Colony in 1620.* Thomas Prence, the original owner of this cupboard, served three terms as the colony’s governor. Prence set policy regarding the inclusion or exclusion of Quakers (in fact, Plymouth Colony was particularly intolerant of the Quakers, a group that was also persecuted in England), and established more peaceful relations with the region’s indigenous population.
    • Decorative domestic objects signified social status and values among colonial families. Silver was most highly prized, followed by textiles, furniture, ceramics, and glass. For Puritans like Thomas Prence, the display of such objects also reflected the religious belief that their wealth signified that they were predestined to go to Heaven.
    • In British colonial America, makers combined artistic influences from different European periods, styles, and countries to produce ornate furniture. These objects were important for their daily domestic use and as a visible display of the owner’s wealth and status.

    *The Separatist Pilgrims were part of the larger Puritan movement in England. However, in American history texts, the term Puritan often refers only to the colonists at Massachusetts Bay. Those who founded Plymouth colony are often referred to as “Separatists” or “Pilgrims.”

    The earliest English settlers of New England were called “Puritans,” a label coined and hurled at them derisively by their enemies. The label stuck; and even today, nearly four hundred years later, we tend to think of the first settlers of Massachusetts as dour killjoys. This view of Puritan society derives from the prejudices of later generations, who disparaged their Puritan progenitors as the kind of repressive folk they most loved to hate.

    The “Puritan” epithet both clarifies and obscures these early English settlers for us. Members of the Church of England, they did not wish to leave the church but to purify it. Their “purifying” mission sought to rid the church of its elaborate customs and showy ritual. They wanted a simple style of worship, appropriate to what they viewed as God’s truth . As their model , they took the “primitive church,” Christianity in its earliest years before its institutionalization- and to Puritan eyes, corruption-in Rome.

    In rejecting pomp and ostentation, the Puritans were also condemning the church as an elitist institution allied with the aristocracy. They sought to make religion appropriate to the values of their own emerging middle class. The Puritans believed that salvation did not lie in a set of rituals performed by the church on behalf of the sinner but in a drama within the soul of the believer, and they called those whom God had saved “saints.” They believed in a “revolution of the saints” and viewed themselves as the culmination of a biblical narrative that extended without interruption from ancient Jerusalem to their own time.

    The Puritans were not democrats: like most people of their day, they subscribed to a hierarchical view of the world organized in a “Great Chain of Being,” a scale that ranked all creation from the lowest orders to the highest in graduated steps, mirroring the mind of God. Though they despised the “corruption” of aristocratic culture, they nonetheless maintained the deferential customs of a class society in which the “lower orders” deferred to the authority of their “betters.” They had only a limited notion of what we call today scientific causality. They viewed all events as direct signs from God, rather than as the results of natural causes.

    And yet, even as they dragged a large portion of the late- medieval world across the ocean with them, the Puritans also produced the first outlines of modern social life. They enjoyed the highest literacy rate in seventeenth-century Western society, insisting that salvation was tied to a person’s ability to read the Bible. Within six years of founding the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in Boston, the Puritans established Harvard College (1636); and within ten years, they were publishing the first books in English in the New World.

    From Angela L. Miller, Janet Catherine Berlo, Bryan J. Wolf, and Jennifer L. Roberts, American Encounters: Art, History, and Cultural Identity (Washington University Libraries, 2018), p. 64. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

    More to think about

    In the colonial homes of Puritans, the display of the family’s silver and textile collections showed their social status and reflected their cultural values. How is this practice continued today through objects displayed in the home? What are some examples in your own home that serve as displays of your values, concerns, and beliefs?

    c. 1671
    Were they Freakes? The quiet ostentation of the early Puritans

    Forget what you think you know about Puritan fashion and get ready to Freake.

    The quiet ostentation of early Puritans

    Forget what you think you know about Puritan fashion—get ready to Freake

    by

    Robert W. Weir, Embarkation of the Pilgrims, 1843, oil on canvas, 12 x 18 feet (Rotunda, U.S. Capitol)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{44}\): Robert W. Weir, Embarkation of the Pilgrims, 1843, oil on canvas, 12 x 18 feet (Rotunda, U.S. Capitol)

    Elementary school history books in the United States might give young students a slightly misleading impression of what the earliest Puritans in North America—those who history calls the Pilgrims—were really like. If images in these texts are to be believed, the men wore black pants and matching waistcoats that were embellished with plain rectangular lace collars. When feeling particularly formal, these Puritans would often wear a plain black hat that was only decorated with an inexplicable buckle in the front. Puritan women dressed in similarly austere attire, seldom straying from dark, somber clothing.

    Mr. Freake

    While this may have been true for the earliest Puritans in North America, it is significantly less accurate for the Puritans who came to live in the northeast as the seventeenth century moved onwards. This fallacy is visually demonstrated by portraits completed about 1670 by an unidentified artist called the Freake Painter, an artist so named because of his most well known sitters—members of the Freake family. These two paintings, both begun in 1671, depict John Freake in the first portrait, and his wife Elizabeth and their daughter Mary in the second. In many ways, these pendant portraits eloquently speak as to what it meant to be part of the upper-middle-class elite in Colonial New England during the final decades of the seventeenth century.

    Unknown artist (known as Freake painter), John Freake, c. 1671 and 1674, oil on canvas, 42 x 36 3/4 inches / 108 x 93.3 cm (Worcester Art Museum)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{45}\): Unknown artist (known as Freake painter), John Freake, c. 1671 and 1674, oil on canvas, 42 x 36 3/4 inches / 108 x 93.3 cm (Worcester Art Museum)

    We can learn much about John Freake (1631-1674), his perception of self, and his place within society through a careful analysis of his portrait. Born in England, Freake immigrated to Boston in 1658 when in his mid twenties and became a merchant and attorney of significant wealth. Indeed, before his death he owned two homes, a mill and brew house, and profitable shares in six mercantile ships. Clearly, he was a man of assets and wealth, and this is reflected in his attire. To begin, Freake wears a fine velvet coat that is dark brown in color rather than the more stereotypical black most of his Puritan brethren may have worn 50 years before. In addition, his coat is decorated with more than two-dozen silver buttons, both along the front of the jacket and atop the pocket flaps. The tailor—either one in colonial Boston or, more likely, one across the Atlantic in England—embellished each buttonhole with expensive silver thread.

    Freake’s expensive coat is but one indicator of his elevated social and economic status. In addition, Freake wears a fashionable white muslin shirt with puffed sleeves and elaborate crenulated cuffs. His collar is not the plain, rectangular one we might expect on the basis of our elementary school history books, and is instead a highly decorated and elaborate lace collar imported from Europe, likely from Venice, Italy. Rather than descend from his throat to his sternum, this collar instead circles his neck and stretches across both of Freake’s shoulders. The ornate silver broach Freake touches with his left hand and the gloves he holds with his right—in addition to the ring he wears on the pinky of his left hand—all speak to his wealth and his status as a gentleman.

    Roundhead or Cavalier? Look at the hair!

    Thus, Freake’s clothing announces something important about his prosperity. Likewise, his hair comments on his sense of religious identity. During the end of the seventeenth century, there were two distinct hairstyles that helped identify those who wore them. If one were to wear their hair in short manner, they announced themselves to be a Roundhead, a visual representation of Puritan austerity. In contrast, long hair—or, the wearing of a wig—announced the man as one who was a morally questionable Cavalier. With these two extremes in mind—the Puritanical Roundhead and the suspicious Cavalier—John Freake comfortably resides in the middle. Neither too short nor too long, Freake’s hair—and it is that, rather than an artificial wig—announces his morality and religiosity squarely in the middle, a kind of hirsute juste milieu (middle ground).

    Thus, Freake’s clothing and hair does much to identify him during the end of the seventeenth century. His attire is fashionable, but not overly extravagant. Freake was among those who believed that his prosperity in life was due to God’s blessing, and as that was the case, it was not inappropriate to dress in a way that highlighted that divine favor. Likewise, his hair identifies him as religiously moderate; neither excessively devout nor liturgically loose.

    Freake painter, Elizabeth Clarke Freake (Mrs. John Freake) and Baby Mary, c. 1671 and 1674, oil on canvas, 42 1/2 x 36 3/4 inches / 108 x 93.3 cm (Worcester Art Museum)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{46}\): Freake painter, Elizabeth Clarke Freake (Mrs. John Freake) and Baby Mary, c. 1671 and 1674, oil on canvas, 42 1/2 x 36 3/4 inches / 108 x 93.3 cm (Worcester Art Museum)

    Mrs. Freake

    Similarly, the artist has depicted John’s wife, Elizabeth, in a way that highlights her appropriate wealth—and thus her favorable position within the eye’s of God—and her religious moderateness. Like her husband, Elizabeth wears unexpectedly fine attire. A small amount of blond hair is visible underneath her white lace hood. That hood, tied nearly underneath a slightly protruding chin, brings visual attention to the white collar and the striking white lace that covers most of the bodice of her silver taffeta dress. Underneath her skirt is a striking red-orange velvet underskirt that is embroidered with a gold, lace-like pattern. She wears a white blouse that features lace cuffs on the sleeves, while red and black bows provide a visual splash of color and contrast against an otherwise somewhat achromatic ensemble.

    Like her husband, Elizabeth’s portrait is filled with baubles that speak to their affluence and to the family’s growth. She wears a triple-stranded string of pearls about her neck, a gold ring on her finger and a beautiful four-stranded garnet bracelet can be seen on her left thumb and wrist. She sits on a fashionable chair, and a Turkey-work rug can be seen resting on the back of the chair. Although Elizabeth currently holds her infant Mary, radiograph x-ray photography shows that she originally held a fan. That the painting has been modified—fan out, new baby who wears a fashionable dress in—tells us much about the extravagant cost of having one’s portrait commissioned in the seventeenth century. It was more practical to have your daughter painted into an old portrait than to pay for a new one.

    Displays of wealth

    A twenty-first-century audience might scoff at these images, thinking them, perhaps, too flat, too inanimate, and too serious for our own particular aesthetics. However, this pair of images powerfully speaks to the Freakes’ understanding of their place in their world while at the same time dismissing our mistaken stereotypes of seventeenth-century Puritans. The Freakes are not an austere couple, entirely clad in black. Instead, they display their wealth—both in dress and in accessories—in a moderate and acceptable way that suggests divine blessing. In addition, while we might dismiss this artist as an unaccomplished limner (an artist with no or little formal training), he was instead a talented portraitist who was working within a rich tradition of Elizabethan painting. His images helped situate his sitters within a distinguished and rich traditional of English court portraiture.

    Go deeper

    Elizabeth Clarke Freake at the Worcester Art Museum

    John Freake at the Worcester Art Museum

    Art and Identity in the British North American Colonies, 1700–1776 on The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

    1768
    A portrait and a poem: the making of Paul Revere's fame

    Well known in his own day as a silversmith, Revere is shown in casual attire, with a teapot brimming with meaning.

    The making of Paul Revere’s fame

    Where a silver teapot brims with meaning

    by

    The fame of Paul Revere

    Listen, my children, and you shall hear
    Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
    On the eighteenth of April in Seventy-Five;
    Hardly a man is now alive
    Who remembers that famous day and year.
    He said to his friend, –“If the British march
    By land or sea from the town to-night,
    Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
    Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light—
    One if by land and two if by sea;
    And I on the opposite shore will be,
    Ready to ride and spread the alarm
    Through every Middlesex village and farm,
    For the country-folk to be up and to arm.

    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Paul Revere’s Ride”

    Thus begins Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous poem “Paul Revere’s Ride,” a work that was first published in the January 1861 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. Although Paul Revere is now famous as one of the Massachusetts Minutemen—a local militia who would defend the colony against the British army at a moment’s notice—he was hardly a public figure during his own lifetime. History tells us that he did ride from Boston’s Old North Church to warn of the approach of the British, but he was never elected to public office and he was only tangentially involved with Revolutionary politics. Indeed, Revere’s limited fame in his own day stems from his considerable talents as a silversmith. His fame during the second half of the nineteenth century comes from his appearance in Longfellow’s poem. Revere’s fame today, however, can be attributed—in part at least—to the remarkable portrait John Singleton Copley painted of the artisan in 1768.

    Copley’s beginnings

    Copley had extensive access to early eighteenth century prints, and he often incorporated poses and clothing from older images into his portraits of Bostonians (his mother married Peter Pelham, an engraver who specialized in mezzotints after his father died). At the age of 15, for example, Copley painted the portrait of Mrs. Joseph Mann (Bethia Torrey). Her pose—holding a sting of pearls—and attire of a scoop-neckline dress with white trim—were directly taken from a mezzotint of Princess Anne. In today’s world, we might look at such “borrowing” as a kind of visual plagiarism. But this was the vein in which eighteenth-century artists worked and learned. It was expected that one could become great through the attentive copying of the Old Masters.

    Left: Queen Anne when Princess of Denmark by Isaac Beckett, after William Wissing, mezzotint, 1683-1688, 32.6 mm x 25 cm (National Portrait Gallery, London); right: John Singleton Copley, Mrs. Joseph Mann (Bethia Torrey), 1753, oil on canvas, 91.44 x 71.75 cm (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{47}\): Left: Queen Anne when Princess of Denmark by Isaac Beckett, after William Wissing, mezzotint, 1683-1688, 32.6 x 25 cm (National Portrait Gallery, London); right: John Singleton Copley, Mrs. Joseph Mann (Bethia Torrey), 1753, oil on canvas, 91.44 x 71.75 cm (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

    John Singleton Copley, A Boy with a Flying Squirrel (Henry Pelham), 1765, oil on canvas, 77.15 x 63.82 cm (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{48}\): John Singleton Copley, A Boy with a Flying Squirrel (Henry Pelham), 1765, oil on canvas, 77.15 x 63.82 cm (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

    As Copley matured as an artist, however, he became more compositionally inventive. A great example of this is an early masterpiece, Boy with a Squirrel, a portrait of the artist’s half-brother, Henry Pelham. Copley sent this portrait to London for the 1766 exhibition of the Society of Artists. Copley received feedback from his contemporary expatriate Benjamin West and Sir Joshua Reynolds—perhaps the most authoritative voice on British art at the time. Captain R.G. Bruce, Copley’s friend, took Boy with a Squirrel to London and returned with Reynolds’s assessment: “in any Collection of Painting it will pass for an excellent Picture, but considering the Disadvantages…you had labored under, that it was a very wonderfull Performance.” The “disadvantages” to which Reynolds refers to are likely those that involve Copley’s location (Boston, the very fringe of the British empire) and his opportunity for formal artistic instruction there (none).

    John Singleton Copley, John Hancock, 1765, oil on canvas, 124.8 x 100 cm (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{49}\): John Singleton Copley, John Hancock, 1765, oil on canvas, 124.8 x 100 cm (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

    And yet despite these disadvantages (although some scholars of American art believe that it was because of them), Copley quickly became the most sought after portrait painter in the colonies. By the middle of the 1760s, he was painting the economic and political elite of his city, and had become a rather wealthy man himself. Before the 1760s were done, Copley had married into a wealthy family and had purchased a 20-acre farm with three houses on it. This estate placed Copley next door to John Hancock, one of the wealthiest merchants in Boston (and future president of the Continental Congress and governor of Massachusetts) when Copley painted him in 1765 (left).

    But it was not only the wealthy and political elite who Copley painted. Indeed, during a politically tumultuous time, Copley painted both sides of this vitriolic divide, both Whigs (those in favor of a break with Great Britain) and Tories (those who wished to remain a part of the Empire).

    It seems that Copley’s only requisite was that the sitter had the finances to pay for the likeness. It is also possible that Copley would paint a sitter for exchange for past or future goods or services. Paul Revere, a silversmith with modest if not affluent means, might just be one such case.

    The portrait of Paul Revere

    Copley’s portrait of Paul Revere is striking in many ways. To begin, Revere sits behind a high polished wooden table. Rather than wear his “Sunday’s Best” clothing, as sitters for portraits (and elementary school pictures) so commonly did (and still do), Revere instead wears simple working attire, a decision that underscores his artisan, middle-class status. His open collared shirt is made from plain white linen, and the lack of cravat—a kind of formal neckwear—lends to the informal nature of the portrait. What looks to be an undershirt peeks from underneath his linen shirt, and a wool (or perhaps a dull silk) waistcoat is likewise unbuttoned (although decorated with two gold buttons, features that were not likely present in Revere’s work vest). He does not wear a jacket or coat, and even his wig—something almost every male would have worn if they could to afford to do so—is missing. We can compare what Revere wears to men’s attire from the twenty-first century. Imagine a man wearing a three-piece suit (blazer, vest, buttoned white dress shirt, and a tie). If you were to remove the jacket and tie and unbutton the shirt and vest, you would have an idea of the informality present in Copley’s eighteenth-century portrait of Revere.

    John Singleton Copley, Paul Revere, 1768, oil on canvas, 89.22 x 72.39 cm (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{50}\): John Singleton Copley, Paul Revere, 1768, oil on canvas, 89.22 x 72.39 cm (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

    Indeed, comparing Copley’s portrait of the silversmith with that of Copley’s neighbor, John Hancock, makes the differences all the more obvious. Both seem to be at work in some ways—Revere on his teapot and Hancock at his ledger—but there the similarities end. Even though Hancock is not dressed as ostentatiously as he could have been, he still wears a dark blue coat that is embellished and trimmed with golden braid and buttons. White cuffs extend beyond his sleeves, and a silken cravat is tied around his neck. His breeches have golden buckles and silk stockings cover his lower legs. A modest powered wig sits upon his head. This modest attire—modest for Hancock, at least—demonstrates the uniqueness of Copley painting Revere while wearing what amounts to working clothes. Indeed, this is the only completed portrait Copley painted of an artisan wearing less than formal attire.

    Face (detail), John Singleton Copley, Paul Revere, 1768, oil on canvas, 89.22 x 72.39 cm (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{51}\): Face (detail), John Singleton Copley, Paul Revere, 1768, oil on canvas, 89.22 x 72.39 cm (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

    But it is not only what Revere is wearing, it is also what he is doing. The sitter looks at the viewer, as if we have momentarily distracted him from his work. The edge of the table in the foreground suggests that the table he sits behind is parallel to the picture plane. Few would claim that this table is his workbench, for the surface is far too polished and pristine to have been used in the daily activity of his trade. The surface of the table reflects Revere’s white shirt, and the tools in front of him, his engraver’s burins. With his right hand, Revere seems to support his head—and as a corollary, his brain—the source of his artistic ingenuity. His left hand holds the product of that mind, a nearly completed silver teapot, a vessel that has been polished to such a high sheen that Revere’s hand beautifully reflects on its surface.

    Tabletop and teapot (detail), John Singleton Copley, Paul Revere, 1768, oil on canvas, 89.22 x 72.39 cm (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{52}\): Tabletop and teapot (detail), John Singleton Copley, Paul Revere, 1768, oil on canvas, 89.22 x 72.39 cm (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

    As a silversmith, Revere made many kinds of objects; spoons, bowls, shoe buckles, dentistry tools, beer tankards, creamers, coffee pots, and sugar tongs. That he should be shown with a teapot was an overtly political decision. By the end of the 1760s, Great Britain was nearing financial ruin after the conclusion of the Seven Years’ War (the North American component of this conflict is called the French and Indian War; the most famous depiction of this war is Benjamin West’s 1770 painting The Death of General Wolfe). In order to increase the revenue in the crown’s coffers in 1767 the British Parliament passed the Townshend Acts, which placed a tax on the colonials’ use of tea (among other imported goods). Paul Revere was clearly engaged in this political issue, for his signature appears on an October 1767 Non-importation agreement. Clearly tea was becoming a politicizing good and it is interesting that Revere chose to be shown holding an object so tied to a commodity that became a divisive symbol. Indeed, this political thread reached a climax with the so-called Boston Tea Party on 16 December 1773 when a collection of colonials—some disguised as Native Americas—raided a merchant vessel in Boston Harbor and threw the tea overboard. Interestingly, the owner of that boat was Richard Clarke, John Singleton Copley’s father-in-law.

    Copley, Revere and the Boston Massacre

    One other facet of the portrait of Paul Revere is worth exploring, that of its date of completion, for the artist seldom dated or signed his portraits. Copley and Revere had been acquainted since at least 1763 when Revere’s account book notes that Copley had ordered a gold bracelet. Revere also subsequently made sliver frames for Copley’s miniature portraits, and it has been suggested that this portrait might have served as a kind of payment from Copley to Revere for past services rendered and goods received. Clearly, Revere and Copley had a professional relationship. However, this relationship did not likely extend beyond the first half of 1770.

    One of the most pivotal movements leading up to the American Revolutionary War was the so-called Boston Massacre. On 5 March 1770, a group of British soldiers fired at an unarmed group of protesters who were throwing snowballs (loaded with rocks) and other objects at the infantrymen. The crowd also repeatedly yelled “Fire!” at Captain Preston, the commanding officer on duty, daring him to order his soldiers to fire their muskets into the crowd. Eventually, the British army obliged their tormentors; five men were mortally wounded and another six were wounded. The soldiers were arrested and stood trial, accused of murder. Their lawyer was future President John Adams, achieved six acquittals and two reduced charges of manslaughter.

    This event was instantly politically divisive, and both Whigs and Tories began to use visual propaganda as a way to bring those who were neutral in regards to declaring independence from Great Britain onto their side. In short time, Henry Pelham, Copley’s half-brother completed one such attempt at depicting the events of the Boston Massacre. Pelham finished his engraving immediately following the events of 5 March and then lent a copy to Paul Revere. The silversmith, who had been engraving political cartoons since at least 1765, and ever the entrepreneur, then faithfully copied Pelham’s print and placed an advertisement for its sale no later than 26 March, just three weeks after the event and a week prior to Pelham’s own print being available for purchase.

    Left: Henry Pelham, Boston Massacre; right: Paul Revere, Boston Massacre

    Figure \(\PageIndex{53}\): Left: Henry Pelham, Boston Massacre; right: Paul Revere, Boston Massacre

    When seen side by side, it is clear that Revere plagiarized Pelham’s then unpublished work; the same arrangement of dead and injured bodies on the left, the same organization of the British soldiers on right, the same dog, the same framing architecture. Although the crescent moon is placed in the same part of the print—the upper left-hand corner—the biggest difference between these two images could be that Pelham’s moon is open on its right side whereas Revere’s is open to the left. This egregious affront against a family member likely brought an end to John Singleton Copley’s relationship with Paul Revere.

    It is ironic that Revere is most known today because of Longfellow’s poem, a work that does not mention his more famous artisanal career. Copley’s portrait of the silversmith, likewise as famous, was hidden in a descendant’s attic for most of the nineteenth century and was not publicly displayed until 1928. Since that time, however, the image has contributed to the sitter’s prestige, and the sitter’s fame has likewise contributed to the painting’s fame.

    Smarthistory images for teaching and learning:

    Revere, The Bloody Massacre

    Figure \(\PageIndex{54}\): More Smarthistory images…

    1770-1806
    An architect of the Enlightenment, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello

    In addition to being an politician, Jefferson was an ardent supporter and practitioner of classical architecture.

    Architect of the Enlightenment

    Thomas Jefferson's Monticello

    by

    Thomas Jefferson, Monticello, Charlottesville, Virginia, 1770-1806 (Photo: Rick Stillings, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{55}\): Thomas Jefferson, Monticello, Charlottesville, Virginia, 1770-1806 (Photo: Rick Stillings, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

    A gentleman architect

    In an undated note, Thomas Jefferson left clear instructions about what he wanted engraved upon his burial marker:

    Here was buried
    Thomas Jefferson
    Author of the Declaration of American Independence
    of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom
    Father of the University of VirginiaJefferson’s tombstone

    Jefferson explained, “because by these, as testimonials that I have lived, I wish most to be remembered.” To be certain, there are important achievements Jefferson neglected. He was also the Governor of Virginia, American minister to France, the first Secretary of State, the third president of the United States, and one of the most accomplished gentleman architects in American history. To quote William Pierson, an architectural historian, “In spite of the fact that his training and resources were those of an amateur, he was able to perform with all the insight and boldness of a high professional.”

    Indeed, even had he never entered political life, Jefferson would be remembered today as one of the earliest proponents of neoclassical architecture in the United States. Jefferson believed art was a powerful tool; it could elicit social change, could inspire the public to seek education, and could bring about a general sense of enlightenment for the American public. If Cicero believed that the goals of a skilled orator were to Teach, to Delight, and To Move, Jefferson believed that the scale and public nature of architecture could fulfill these same aspirations.

    Thomas Jefferson, Monticello (view from the north), Charlottesville, Virginia, 1770-1806 (Photo: Virginia Hill, CC BY-ND 2.0)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{56}\): Thomas Jefferson, Monticello (view from the north), Charlottesville, Virginia, 1770-1806 (Photo: Virginia Hill, CC BY-ND 2.0)

    Return to the classical

    Jefferson arrived at the College of William and Mary in 1760 and took an immediate interest in the architecture of the college’s campus and of Williamsburg more broadly. A lifelong book lover, Jefferson began his architectural collection while a student. His first two purchases were James Leoni’s The Architecture of A. Palladio (1715-1720) and James Gibbs’ Rules for Drawing the Several Parts of Architecture (1732).

    Although never formally trained as an architect, Jefferson, both while a student and then later in life, expressed dissatisfaction with the architecture that surrounded him in Williamsburg, believing that the Wren-Baroque aesthetic common in colonial Virginia was too British for a North American audience. In an oft-quoted passage from Notes on Virginia (1782), Jefferson critically wrote of the architecture of Williamsburg:

    “The College and Hospital are rude, mis-shapen piles, which, but that they have roofs, would be taken for brick-kilns. There are no other public buildings but churches and court-houses, in which no attempts are made at elegance.”

    Thus, when Jefferson began to design his own home, he turned not to the architecture then in vogue around the Williamsburg area, but instead to the classically inspired architecture of Antonio Palladio and James Gibbs. Rather than place his plantation house along the bank of a river—as was the norm for Virginia’s landed gentry during the eighteenth century—Jefferson decided instead to place his home, which he named Monticello (Italian for “little mountain”) atop a solitary hill just outside Charlottesville, Virginia.

    French Neo-Classicism for an American audience

    Construction began in 1768 when the hilltop was first cleared and leveled, and Jefferson moved into the completed South Pavilion two years later. The early phase of Monticello’s construction was largely completed by 1771. Jefferson left both Monticello and the United States in 1784 when he accepted an appointment as America Minister to France. Over the next five years, that is, until September 1789 when Jefferson returned to the United States to serve as Secretary of State under newly elected President Washington, Jefferson had the opportunity to visit Classical and Neoclassical architecture in France.

    Thomas Jefferson, Rotunda, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, 1819-26 (Photo: Michael Hebb, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{57}\): Thomas Jefferson, Rotunda, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, 1819-26 (Photo: Michael Hebb, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

    This time abroad had an enormous effect on Jefferson’s architectural designs. The Virginia State Capitol (1785-1789) is a modified version of the Maison Carrée (16 B.C.E.), a Roman temple Jefferson saw during a visit to Nîmes, France. And although Jefferson never went so far as Rome, the influence that the Pantheon (125 C.E.) had over his Rotunda (begun 1817) at the University of Virginia is so evident it hardly need be mentioned.

    Politics largely consumed Jefferson from his return to the United States until the last day of 1793 when he formally resigned from Washington’s cabinet. From this year until 1809, Jefferson diligently redesigned and rebuilt his home, creating in time one of the most recognized private homes in the history of the United States. In it, Jefferson fully integrated the ideals of French neoclassical architecture for an American audience.

    In this later construction period, Jefferson fundamentally changed the proportions of Monticello. If the early construction gave the impression of a Palladian two-story pavilion, Jefferson’s later remodeling, based in part on the Hôtel de Salm (1782-87) in Paris, gives the impression of a symmetrical single-story brick home under an austere Doric entablature. The west garden façade—the view that is once again featured on the American nickel—shows Monticello’s most recognized architectural features. The two-column deep extended portico contains Doric columns that support a triangular pediment that is decorated by a semicircular window. Although the short octagonal drum and shallow dome provide Monticello a sense of verticality, the wooden balustrade that circles the roofline provides a powerful sense of horizontality. From the bottom of the building to its top, Monticello is a striking example of French Neoclassical architecture in the United States.

    Rembrandt Peale, Thomas Jefferson, 1805, oil on linen, 28 x 23 1/2 in (New-York Historical Society)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{58}\): Rembrandt Peale, Thomas Jefferson, 1805, oil on linen, 28 x 23 1/2 inches (New-York Historical Society)

    Jefferson changed political parties and was a Democratic-Republican by the time he was elected president. He believed the young United States needed to forge a strong diplomatic relationship with France, a country Jefferson and his political brethren believed were our revolutionary brothers in arms. With this in mind, it is unsurprising that Jefferson designed his own home after the neoclassicism then popular in France, a mode of architecture that was distinct from the style then fashionable in Great Britain. This neoclassicism—with roots in the architecture of ancient Rome—was something Jefferson was able to visit while abroad.

    Buildings that speak to democratic ideals

    By helping to introduce classical architecture to the United States, Jefferson intended to reinforce the ideals behind the classical past: democracy, education, rationality, civic responsibility. Because he detested the English, Jefferson continually rejected British architectural precedents for those from France. In doing so, Jefferson reinforced the symbolic nature of architecture. Jefferson did not just design a building; he designed a building that eloquently spoke to the democratic ideals of the United States. This is clearly seen in the Virginia State Capitol, in the Rotunda at the University of Virginia, and especially in his own home, Monticello.

    1820
    Daily life in Brooklyn, Francis Guy, Winter Scene in Brooklyn

    This snowy image of a bygone Brooklyn is sprinkled with farm animals, townspeople... and casual racism.

    Daily life in 1820 Brooklyn

    Francis Guy, Winter Scene in Brooklyn

    by and

    Video \(\PageIndex{4}\): Francis Guy, Winter Scene in Brooklyn, 1820, oil on canvas, 147.3 x 260.2 cm (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art). Speakers: Dr. Margaret C. Conrads and Dr. Beth Harris.

    Key points

    • While this painting looks spontaneous and like it is capturing a frozen moment, it is a composite of views from the artist’s studio windows. It does however give an accurate image of this location. Francis Guy has taken pains to carefully render the buildings, and they would have been identifiable to people who knew this part of Brooklyn.
    • The scene shows the physical specifics of the neighborhood but also its social hierarchy. We see the fancy houses and shops of those higher on the social scale, and a carpenter speaking with a man who wears a fur coat and is obviously well-fed. There are also figures caring for farm animals and possibly enslaved African-American men who are sawing wood and selling coal.
    • As a further indication of social hierarchy, Guy identified all of the white figures in his painting, but not any of the African-American ones. He also includes a comic scene at the expense of one African-American man who has slipped on the icy ground. This kind of making fun of African-Americans was also found in the literature and theater of the time.
    • Guy has also placed himself in the painting, walking in the foreground with a painting under his arm. His attention to detail, social situations, and the broad expanse of the sky harken to the Dutch landscape and genre painting traditions, a reminder that Brooklyn was originally a Dutch colony.

    More to think about

    Francis Guy’s representation of the people of Brooklyn — from the elites and lower classes, whites and African Americans — shows us specific stereotypes that shaped and were shaped by the way society thought about these groups. What media examples can you think of from modern life that present similar kinds of social stereotypes? What media have the most influence, and how might they be used for positive change?

    Smarthistory images for teaching and learning:

    Francis Guy, Winter Scene in Brooklyn (detail), 1820Francis Guy, Winter Scene in Brooklyn (detail), 1820Francis Guy, Winter Scene in Brooklyn (detail), 1820Francis Guy, Winter Scene in Brooklyn (detail), 1820Francis Guy, Winter Scene in Brooklyn (detail), 1820Francis Guy, Winter Scene in Brooklyn (detail), 1820Francis Guy, Winter Scene in Brooklyn (detail), 1820Francis Guy, Winter Scene in Brooklyn (detail), 1820Francis Guy, Winter Scene in Brooklyn (detail), 1820Francis Guy, Winter Scene in Brooklyn (detail), 1820Francis Guy, Winter Scene in Brooklyn (detail), 1820Francis Guy, Winter Scene in Brooklyn (detail), 1820Francis Guy, Winter Scene in Brooklyn (detail), 1820Francis Guy, Winter Scene in Brooklyn (detail), 1820

    Figure \(\PageIndex{59}\): More Smarthistory images…

    1826
    Hicks’ The Peaceable Kingdom as Pennsylvania parable

    In his Peaceable Kingdom series of over 60 images, Hicks depicts a visionary scene of peace on earth that extends back to include William Penn and the founding of Pennsylvania.

    The Peaceable Kingdom as Penn’s parable

    What does William Penn have to do with a little boy and a lion?

    by and

    Video \(\PageIndex{5}\): Edward Hicks, The Peaceable Kingdom, 1826, oil on canvas, 83.5 x 106 cm (Philadelphia Museum of Art). Speakers: Barbara Bassett, Philadelphia Museum of Art and Dr. Beth Harris

    Test your knowledge with a quiz

    START

    Key points

    • William Penn was granted land by King Charles II in 1682 to found a colony in present-day Pennsylvania. As a Quaker, he had been persecuted in England, so Penn’s goal was to create a place of religious tolerance and peaceful co-existence. Philadelphia quickly became a community of many different peoples and faiths.
    • Led by his religious convictions, William Penn sought to deal fairly with the Lenape people who lived in the region. When he added land to the colonial settlement, he compensated the Lenape. However, his son, Thomas Penn, later unfairly claimed more land than agreed on in the terms of the 1737 Walking Treaty.
    • Edward Hicks was both a preacher and painter. According to his Quaker principles, fine art was frowned upon as a luxury, so Hicks specialized in utilitarian sign paintings and gave away works like Peaceable Kingdom. His style reflects this commercial influence, drawing heavily from graphic arts and lettering to create scenes that were easily understandable. He combined this with references from popular art (including a widely circulated biblical illustration) and fine art (specifically here, a painting by Benjamin West).
    • In his Peaceable Kingdom series of over 60 images, Hicks depicts a visionary scene of peace on earth that extends back to include William Penn and the founding of Pennsylvania.

    More to think about

    Compare Hicks’s work to Benjamin West’s painting of _William Penn’s Treaty with the Indians when he founded the Province of Pennsylvania in North America_ as primary source documents about the historical founding of Pennsylvania. What ideas are reinforced through each artist’s perspective? What is left out? What questions might remain about these historical events?

    Smarthistory images for teaching and learning:

    Hicks, The Peaceable Kingdom, detailHicks, The Peaceable Kingdom, detailHicks, The Peaceable Kingdom seen in galleryHicks, The Peaceable Kingdom, detailHicks, The Peaceable Kingdom, detailHicks, The Peaceable Kingdom, detailHicks, The Peaceable Kingdom, detailHicks, The Peaceable Kingdom, detailHicks, The Peaceable Kingdom, detailHicks, The Peaceable Kingdom, detailHicks, The Peaceable Kingdom, detailHicks, The Peaceable Kingdom seen in galleryHicks, The Peaceable Kingdom, detailHicks, The Peaceable Kingdom, detail

    Figure \(\PageIndex{60}\): More Smarthistory images…

    1845
    Dignity in the face of injustice: The White Cloud, Head Chief of the Iowas

    This dignified portrait of a Native leader belies the cruel treatment he endured at the time of its painting.

    The White Cloud, Head Chief of the Iowas

    This portrait of a native leader belies the cruel treatment he endured.

    by

    George Catlin, The White Cloud, Head Chief of the Iowas, 1844-45, oil on canvas, 71 x 58 cm (National Gallery of Art, Washington)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{61}\): 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)

    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.

    Benita Eisler, The Red Man’s Bones: George Catlin, Artist and Showman (New York: W.W. Norton, 2013), p. 328

    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 American Indians by Catlin, was exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1846 (the Salon was the official exhibition of the Academy of Fine Arts in France). They stunned and titillated bourgeois Parisians with the spectacle and strangeness of the vast American wilderness and its “noble savages.”

    Vanishing heroes

    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)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{62}\): 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 Indian chiefs in profile as dignified and as stately as Roman statues.

    But rhapsodizing over the Indian’s innate nobility was easy to do in the face of his near extinction. By the mid-nineteenth century the popular image of the terrifying Indian 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 Indians across the country fell due to diseases, forced relocation, and poverty. By 1750, the American Indian 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.[1]

    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 Indian chief and his family were touring Europe as part of P.T. Barnum’s traveling circus from 1843 to 1845. The dancing Indians were a featured act in Barnum’s “Greatest Show on Earth” which 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)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{63}\): William Fisk, George Catlin, 1849, oil on canvas. 62.5 x 52.5″ (National Portrait Gallery, Washington)

    By 1844, George Catlin was already something of a celebrity in America and in Europe with his Indian 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 Indian 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. Indian 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 Indians 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 Indians in his employ is the opposite of Catlin’s portrayal of The White Cloud, which brings out this man’s inherent grace and dignity.

    Traditional dress

    Face painting and 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, D.C.)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{64}\): Face painting and 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, D.C.)

    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. 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, D.C.)

    Figure \(\PageIndex{65}\): 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, D.C.)

    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 Indian chiefs galvanized the imagination of a generation of European writers such as George Sand, Charles Baudelaire, and J.M. Barrie, whose Indians in Peter Pan are derived in part from Catlin’s portraits. Yet underneath the images of plumed warriors and braves 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.”[2]

    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 Indian 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.”[3] The Indian, to Catlin, represented a beautiful, primordial aspect of America endangered in the face of industrialization and westward expansion.

    George Catlin’s paintings of the American Indians 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.”[4] Catlin’s paintings and illustrations, free of sanctimony or fabrication, show us the Indian not as a 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.

    1. Encyclopedia of American Indian History. Ed. Bruce Johansen. (ABC-CLIO, 2007), p. 115

    2. George Catlin, Episodes from “Life among the Indians” and “Last Rambles,” (New York: Dover Publications: 1997) p. 73

    3. Robert Hughes, American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America (New York: Knopf, 1999)

    4. Bryan J. Wolf. “How the West Was Hung, Or, When I Hear the Word ‘Culture’ I Take Out My Checkbook: The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820-1920,” American Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Sep., 1992), p. 423

    Go deeper

    This painting at the National Gallery of Art

    George Catlin and his Indian Gallery from the Smithsonian American Art Museum

    Biography of the artist from the Smithsonian American Art Museum

    Charles Bird King, Young Omahaw, War Eagle, Little Missouri, and Pawnees at the museum

    Susanna Reich, Painting the Wild Frontier: The Art and Adventures of George Catlin, (New York: Clarion), p. 77

    An Eye for Art: Focusing on Great Artists and Their Work. National Gallery of Art, (Chicago Review Press: 2013), p. 40

    Smarthistory images for teaching and learning:

    George Catlin, The White Cloud, Head Chief of the Iowas (detail of headdress), 1844-45George Catlin, The White Cloud, Head Chief of the Iowas, 1844-45George Catlin, The White Cloud, Head Chief of the Iowas (detail of face), 1844-45George Catlin, The White Cloud, Head Chief of the Iowas (detail of bearclaw necklace), 1844-45

    Figure \(\PageIndex{66}\): More Smarthistory images…


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