By Kasey McGhee, ’17
After English colonists landed in Virginia in the 1600s, they established a social divide based on skin color. The Europeans regarded African slaves and Indians as a barbaric other. However, as time progressed and laws evolved, Virginians came to classify Africans and Indians differently. In his Notes on the State of Virginia,Thomas Jefferson, I compared the two groups in 1785, noting that Indians were superior to Africans because of inherent characteristics stemming from their race. This belief led to Indian slaves being freed while African slavery was further justified. The myth of “the noble savage” was popularized and apparent in mass culture by the early nineteenth century.. In order to preserve the image of the noble savage, many notable artists such as George Catlin and James Westhall Ford painted portraits of Native Americans. One of the subjects of Ford’s paintings was Black Hawk, a Native American and member of the Sauk nation, who gained fame in the 1830s after leading a charge against the United States to preserve land originally belonging to Native American tribes in the Midwest Black Hawk was born in 1767 and throughout his life he proved to be a fierce warrior. His finesse in battle earned him the right among the Sauk people to paint his face and wear feathers. He soon became a trusted leader in war,. fighing on the side of the British in the War of 1812. In 1804, several Sauk and Meskwaki chiefs signed a treaty with the United States government, relinquishing tribal lands in the Midwest, much of modern-day Illinois, in exchange for goods and an annuity paid to the tribes. When the land in question began to be settled by white pioneers, some of the tribespeople moved west, but Black Hawk and his followers refused to leave. He led approximately one thousand people from Iowa to Illinois with the intention to take back the land. A war bearing his name ensued after the Governor of Illinois called out the militia, and U.S. troops came to aid. Early on the Native Americans were successful in holding off the U.S. troops but after aid from the British and other tribes did not come through, Black Hawk’s forces weakened, and they retreated. The remaining Native Americans were massacred in the last battle of the war. Black Hawk escaped but was captured by American troops along with his son and his advisor, Whirling Thunder and The Prophet.
They spent the winter of 1832 imprisoned in St. Louis. Chained and degraded, the Sauk warriors were then brought to the nation’s capitol, where in a private meeting with Andrew Jackson, the president underlined Black Hawk’s status as a prisoner of war . After speaking with President Jackson, Black Hawk was brought to Richmond where he stayed several days in the Eagle Hotel. Black Hawk, the Prophet and Whirling Thunder were then moved to Fort Monroe near Jamestown, where Captains John Smith and Christopher Newport landed upon their arrival to Virginia. No contemporaries commented on the fitting irony of Native American prisoners being returned the one of the first sites of European encounter and colonizations. Reports did claim the men were well liked by the commander of the Fort who left them roam the fort freely as opposed to keeping them in their cells. While Black Hawk and his two comrades were in Richmond and Fort Monroe many visitors came, eager to see the men.
The painting above by James Westhall Ford features the three men, Black Hawk in the middle. Ford’s painting is intriguing, because he painted Black Hawk in the English-style suit Jackson mandated he wear and painted the other men draped in beige cloth. He painted the red paint or tattoos on the face of Black Hawk’s son to his right and painted the earrings outlining both of their ears. Despite the motivation for Ford to include these details when other artists were known to edit their subjects, this suggests a desire to expose or showcase features that set these men apart as Native American. The darker background Ford chose blends in somewhat with the dark blue European-style suit Black Hawk is wearing. The gold buttons and white shirt stand out against the swath of dark blue. The dark background has no detail except a slight gradient, starting at its lightest point in the right corner of the painting, getting darker as the viewer’s eye moves left. This lack of detail allows the viewer to focus on the subjects and also suggests they are indoors. The setting potentially being indoors is easily understood because of Black Hawk’s dress. The darker background and its suggestion of an indoor setting is confining and likely because the painting was done while Black Hawk was interned in Richmond. This is also in contrast with many other portraits of Native Americans painted at this time. George Catlin’s works typically featured backgrounds that look like blue sky and clouds, placing their subjects in an outdoor setting. The three men are even also confined by the frame which shows the men from the chest up. Their figures overlap which further suggests a constraint in movement. In this painting, Ford has captured the confinement of Black Hawk, his son, Whirling Thunder and his advisor, while keeping details that maintain their identity as Native American.
As colonies gained power, the English enslaved many Native Americans and sold them in the Caribbean slave trade. The remaining Natives blended in with the African slaves as the plantation economy took hold. As colonial laws developed and society became more complex, Native American enslavement was eventually outlawed, pushing Africans down to the lowest point of the judicial and economic hierarchy. This classification was dependent upon a comparison of one race to the other. By 1785, Jefferson gave power to this claim by praising Native Americans and comparing them to Africans. He lauded their cultural achievements and noted that while Africans had been exposed to literature and the arts they had failed to produce any cultural artifacts of their own. Jefferson argued that the enslavement of Native Americans was an “inhuman practice” of the past, reflecting the beliefs of many intellectuals of the era. Native American resistance to relocation was soon seen as an admirable commitment to liberty and their “primitive” culture was compared by Jefferson to ancient Europe, which he viewed as a precursor to his own civilization. These beliefs permeated the American ideal and in many ways still influence white American perceptions of Native Americans in the present .
What has happened to Native Americans from the early seventeenth century to the present day is an intricate, multi-faceted social narrative,. Unexpected instances arise in the study of Native American oppression and misrepresentation, Black Hawk serving as an example of this. The disconnect between government feeling toward Black Hawk and his representation in popular culture is unexpected because even though Jackson attempted to portray him as a traitor, the public incorrectly hailed him a chief, despite never officially being given that title by his tribe. At some points Native Americans were vilified for their resistance to US troops in wars against them, while Native American participants in “Wild West” shows of the later nineteenth century were received with wonder. After his release, Black Hawk gained somewhat of a celebrity status which also allowed him a platform from which to speak. Reports about the numbers of people who came to see him on his tour of the East coast were published in newspapers from Georgia to New York. Years after his imprisonment, Black Hawk dictated an autobiography to a translator called The Life of Black Hawk. Although the authenticity of this volume is being questioned by contemporary historians, it was quite popular in the mid-nineteenth century.. Another inconsistency arises with Black Hawk’s interactions with George Catlin, who painted a portrait of Black Hawk when he was imprisoned at Fort Monroe. Catlin gained fame from his portraits of Native American leaders in order to capture images of a “disappearing race.” However, in 1837 Black Hawk attended George Catlin’s gallery opening in New York City which included Catlin’s portrait of him. Catlin’s motivation was to preserve something that was close to extinction, but Black Hawk, a member of the race presumably disappearing, was in attendance.
Today, it seems to be a fairly new concept to consider the existence of Native American populations in discussions of cultural appropriation. The story of Black Hawk can inform contemporary conversations, reminding us of the long history of, misrepresentation and commercialization of Native American identity..
Further reading
Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
Anthony F.C. Wallace, Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Nicholas A. Brown, Re-collecting Black Hawk: landscape, memory, and power in the American Midwest. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015.