Jessica Crabtree

My latest commission – precious little Scarlett was born January 10. The drawing is 8×10 done in 2H & 2B graphite with a tortillion (blending stump). Click the photo to enlarge.

February 2, 1830: Seth Eastman is stationed at Fort Snelling, Minnesota

Seth Eastman (born 1808) was a West Point graduate who worked as an illustrator and mapmaker in the army. His first assignment to Fort Snelling – one of the army’s most important posts on what was then the edge of the frontier – marked the start of a life-long journey that resulted in an outstanding pictorial record of the Dakota people.

Eastman’s tours at Fort Snelling gave him a special advantage as an artist. Working as an embedded journalist with the army, he served as a military liaison with the Dakota (or Santee), learning their language and customs, and staying with them for extended periods, giving him valuable experience that he channeled into hundreds of sketches and small paintings.

During his first stay, he married Wakanin ajin win (“Stands Sacred”) the daughter of a Santee chief, and had a daughter named Winona. According to the custom of the day, however, such a marriage was not legally binding for an American male – and when he was reassigned nearly two years later, this “unofficial union” was dissolved. From then on he had no further association with his Indian family.

(His daughter Winona later took the name Mary Nancy Eastman and was the mother of another famous Eastman, Ohiyesa – also known as Charles Eastman. A writer, teacher, and advocate, he became the first Native American medical doctor.)

When Eastman later married into a prominent Virginia family, his wife Mary accompanied him to various military posts – including a second tour at Fort Snelling that lasted seven years – and wrote stories about Dakota life for which Eastman provided illustrations.

In 1847, Congress commissioned Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s series Indian Tribes of the United States, a large-scale illustrated series similar to the landmark
McKenney-Hall & King work of a generation earlier. Eastman immediately petitioned for the job of illustrating the work, but was at first denied. Eventually, through the influence of his wife and friends, he won a furlough to concentrate on the artwork. The project was five years in the making and ultimately consisted of 6 volumes and nearly 300 detailed illustrations.

The success of the work led to other government commissions, many of which now hang in the nation’s capitol. While his paintings have long been recognized for their historic value, they were not always accepted without controversy, because they were so objective in portraying Dakota people and their customs at a time dominated by a strong negative bias, even open hostility against them. For the most part he portrayed the traditional village life of Minnesota’s farming communities, and not the more familiar – and more romanticized – nomadic horse culture of the Plains. Eastman’s documentary accuracy, and his thorough and detailed precision, make his portfolio such a monumental achievement.

Before his death in 1875, Eastman would have been witness to the wars and forced removals that opened Minnesota to American expansion and systematically dismantled the Dakota lifestyle he had spent so many years documenting. Ironically, his own grandson Charles was among the community of relocated Dakota who fled first to Canada, then to North Dakota; there he attended mission schools, later to graduate from the best colleges in the East. Like his grandfather, Charles also married an accomplished woman with a deep interest in making a written record of Native American cultures. As a certified medical doctor, he was assigned to the Pine Ridge reservation where he was a first responder following Wounded Knee.

It is a paradox that these two men, despite their close relation and their individual influence in giving the world a glimpse of Dakota culture, were alienated by convention on two opposing sides.

More on the Eastman family:

Seth Eastman: Painting the Dakota – companion website for the PBS docudrama (excellent resource!)

Wikipedia: Seth and Mary Eastman

PBS “History Detectives” Episode: Investigating Eastman’s pieces A researcher determines an uncovered Eastman painting to be a forgery – but in the process explores some of the ironies about Eastman’s career and relationship to the Dakota. He also meets with a descendent of Eastman’s Dakota marriage.

Historic Fort Snelling – Seth Eastman

Minnesota Historical Society: Seth Eastman Exhibit

See also:

“Ohiyesa” – Charles Eastman

This Day in History: Charles Bird King

From the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

“Whether the noble Indian is shedding a tear for a 1960s’ environmental public service commercial or being saved by the great white hope Captain John Smith in the recent Disney movie Pocahontas, hints of self-pity and romanticism continue to haunt American Indians in film. While Hollywood no longer portrays American Indians as painted and uncivilized savages, waving tomahawks and scalping the innocent European settlers, contemporary movies maintain the stoic `Indian’ image smothered with sentimentality…”

Read the entire article from Cultural Survival

Booming Out: Mohawk Ironworkers Build New York – Smithsonian Exhibition surveys six generations of Mohawk men and women who helped build New York City

The documentary To Brooklyn and Back tells the little-known stories of the artisans who played an important role in developing the infrastructure of the world’s most famous skyline. Hundreds of Mohawks left the reservations beginning in the early 1900s looking for work in the growing metropolis; taking a leap in the dark, some came with their families, establishing neighborhoods that still bear their name. Kahnawake Mohawk filmmaker Reaghan Tarbell traces her own family history in one of these communities.

PBS Documentary “To Brooklyn and Back: A Mohawk Journey”

Indian Country Today: Documentary Traces Brooklyn’s Mohawk Ironworkers

Image: Katja Esson – Skydancer

Skydancer: A Film by Katja Esson

Beginning with the St. Lawrence Bridge near the Canada border, built in the 1880s, Mohawk emigres first established a reputation in construction. As more Kahnawake crews joined the burgeoning steelworking industry, employers were impressed with their determined work ethic and remarkable coordination and balance – and they quickly became renowned as some of the country’s finest metal builders. The Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the World Trade Centers, and even the San Francisco State Bridge are all on the impressive list of projects to which they have contributed substantial effort.

The Straight Dope: Why do so many Native Americans work on skyscrapers”

Today, metalworking and construction are almost a family business among Mohawks – they work all over the nation wherever skyscrapers and steel frames go up; many still live in the New York boroughs where their ancestors first “boomed out.”

David Noble: The Mohawk Ironworker Series

From Language Among the Skywalkers by Mushkeg Media

My latest sketch: mostly soft charcoal, some graphite. The original photo was taken by Edward Curtis – and yes, she is smiling!

Click for larger view

See also: Edward Curtis and Smiling Indians

One of my favorite horse portraits. From Wallcoo.net

If you liked this page on Le Brun’s Expressions, then you will probably be interested in the caricature studies of French painter and draftsman Louis-Leopold Boilly.

“Thirty-six Faces of Expression”

Image: World Historical Comics

You can see the color version here, but personally I prefer the black and white reproduction (I believe the print was made by Dore, aptly enough). ArtMight.com: 36 Expressions

Boilly (1761-1845) was rough contemporary of Jacques-Louis David. He was a gifted portraitist and a specialist in genre painting of the French bourgeoisie.