Jessica Crabtree

It’s finished! This is my first half-length portrait; normally I opt for a closer head and shoulders view. The original photo, as I mentioned earlier, was an old black and white taken around 1870 (public domain). As far as I can determine no one has been able to identify the photographer. However it is known that the subject’s name was Rabbit Tail and he was one of the Shoshone scouts serving in the US army under Captain Patrick Ray.

Incidentally, there is an oil painting by Joseph Henry Sharp of a Shoshone of that name, leaving many to speculate whether it is actually the same individual. The painting dates to a period when the young Rabbit Tail would have been a middle-aged man. Based on the comparison, I see some similarities, maybe even enough to make the two relatives, but I’m not convinced they’re one and the same.

Shoshone, 14×24 original pastel on suede. (click for larger view)

About the Shoshone

The Shoshone people were originally part of a very large extended family of nomadic peoples in what is today the American West. Their traditional territories centered in the arid Great Basin region, where they migrated seasonally hunting wild game and harvesting wild foods. Each of their main bands identified themselves after the staple food they followed.

Migratory bands of Shoshone were among the first Native Americans encountered by European fur traders and adventurers who ventured West in the early 1800s. Perhaps the most famous Shoshone individual of all is Sacagawea, the young woman who worked as a guide and translator for the Lewis & Clark expedition in 1804-1806.

Charles Banks Wilson (born 1918) is an Oklahoma artist famed for his Native American portraits, historical commissions, and mural art. He started drawing at an early age and received training at the Chicago Art Institute, quickly finding work as an apprentice illustrator.

His most popular works are the official commissioned portraits of Oklahoma legends such as Will Rogers and Jim Thorpe, part of the collection of the Oklahoma Capitol. One of the first pieces to earn him wide acclaim was his 1941 lithograph Freedom’s Warrior, modeled after a Comanche code talker, and later re-created as an oil painting.

Wilson’s exhibit page at the University of Arkansas, Celebrating Native America, says:

Images such as “Cherokee Matriarch,” “Katie ‘Osage’ Cheyenne,” and “Osage Orator” reveal Native Americans caught in the transition between native and white America. Wilson says this transition “was not a popular theme in anyone’s opinion” because “Americans wanted the Indian to remain a nostalgic keepsake, committed forever to chasing the buffalo across the boundless prairies.”

Wilson admits he was a bit baffled when people asked him “why I was making social comments.” He says simply, “I was just painting what my eyes saw.”

“Search for the Purebloods”

His most ambitious project was a catalog of portrait drawings of pure-blooded Native Americans. The resulting odyssey spanned fifty years of work and portrayals of over a hundred individuals, many of whom were the last individuals of their nation to have non-mixed heritage.

Wilson’s close attention to accuracy and solid, intuitive technique – combined with his good nature – earned him a strong rapport with his subjects, who willingly modeled for his portraits. In return, he promised never to sell their likenesses and instead donated the finished original collection to the Gilcrease Museum. The published edition, Search for the Native American Purebloods, was released by the University of Oklahoma Press in 1983.

Wilson was the subject of a public television documentary released in 2006 interviewing the artist and highlighting his major career achievements. (Watch an excerpt here.)

He has exhibited his work in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Museum, and received countless prestigious awards for his art, historical research, and educational & cultural contributions.

University of Arkansas: Charles Banks Wilson’s Celebrating Native America Exhibit

Charles Banks Wilson exhibit at the Will Rogers Museum

Q: What was the first Indian reservation?

A: The most common answer is the Lenape reservation at Indian Mills, established by the New Jersey colonial assembly in 1758. However, the history of reservations in the colonies goes back much earlier, predating the Lenape reserve by at least a century.

Pamunkey-Mattaponi Reservation
(Virginia, 1658)

The first colonial record of an Indian reservation comes from the Virginia colony, where in 1658 – a hundred years before New Jersey’s Lenape reservation was formed – the Virginia General Assembly voted on a land reserve for the Pamunkey and Mattaponi tribes. These were among the most powerful members of the region’s Powhatan Confederacy (of Pocahontas fame).

A 1677 treaty between the English throne and the representatives of the Pamunkey and Mattaponi recognized their rights as autonomous nations. The reservation survived the transition of the American Revolution and has remained a continuously sovereign entity to this day.

Mashantucket Pequot Reservation
(Connecticut, 1666)

Another example of the earliest reservations originated just a few years later, further north in New England. There, in the aftermath of the devastating Pequot War, the Connecticut colonial assembly set aside a land reserve for the Mashantucket Pequot.

Like the Pamunkey-Mattaponi nation of Virginia, the Pequot reservation still exists today, but only narrowly escaped being dissolved on several occasions. King Philip’s War in 1680 pitted American colonists against an alliance of Wampanoag, Narraganset, and other Indian nations of New England, and nearly resulted in the extermination of several peoples, including the Pequot. In the ensuing centuries, the reservation area dwindled from 3,000 to 200 acres, and was nearly liquidated until the surviving Mashantucket band underwent a cultural revival in the 1970s.

Back to the Indian Mills Reservation
(New Jersey, 1758)

In the mid-1700s, the Lenni-Lenape people (also known as the Delaware) had lost access to most of their traditional grounds and petitioned for a land reserve on which to form a small autonomous community. Known as Brothertown, or Brotherton, it was organized largely under Christian missionary efforts and became an amalgam of members from various nations, including Pequots, Narragansets, and Mohegans, who associated on the basis of their common religious practices.

The reservation was formally dissolved in 1801, but by that time they had reorganized on land donated by the Oneida Nation of New York. Eventually they were forced to move again, resettling in Wisconsin along with much of the Oneida Nation during the Indian Removals of the 1830s. (continue reading…)

(Click for larger view)

My latest pastel is about halfway finished. Next I’ll be working on the armbands and hands, and finishing his leather vest. After that, some detail work and a few finishing touches and I’ll consider it done.

A quick trick I learned for imitating metallic objects, like the silver-studded border on his vest:
use a plain white colored pencil.

Colored pencils are terrible on suede, but they come in very handy for this one purpose. I use them wherever I need to indicate points of light or very small areas of brilliant white. It’s so much easier than trying to achieve this with chalks. The best part is that the combination of textures works very well – the pencil won’t smear on the suede, so I can cover it with chalk and it still shows up well. Besides, I like the effect.

More to come…

Ely Parker, or Ha-sa-no-an-da (“Leading Name”), was born in the Seneca Nation in 1828. Through his mother he was descended from prominent Iroquois leaders such as Red Jacket and Handsome Lake. He showed promising aptitude for learning and attended American boarding schools, later graduating from college with a degree in engineering. He distinguished himself early in life by strong administrative and diplomatic skills, and already he had begun to forge important associations with individuals who would later play crucial roles in his career.

-Career

After graduating, Parker worked at a law office, but was refused admission to the bar because he was not a legal citizen (Indians were not granted US citizenship until 1924). Later he used his college training to obtain work as a civil engineer; his resume included major construction projects in the Great Lakes region and maintenance of the Erie Canal.

At the outbreak of the Civil War he enlisted in the Union army as an engineer, but was refused because of his race. He brought his case before a friend – future general U.S. Grant – who interceded on his behalf. Parker was later appointed Grant’s adjutant, served as his personal secretary under the rank of lieutenant colonel, and was eventually promoted to Brigadier General. He was the highest-ranking Native American in the Union Army.

It was Parker who wrote the final draft of the Confederate terms of surrender that were served at the Appomattox courthouse. (It is also interesting to note that on the opposing side, it was another Native American – Cherokee chief Stand Watie – who was the last Confederate general to surrender.) At the surrender at Appomattox, General Lee is said to have remarked, “I am glad to see one real American here” – to which Parker replied, “We are all Americans, sir.” It was this kind of open-minded and forward-thinking mentality that marked Parker’s entire career.

-Indian Affairs

As one of the ten chiefs of the Seneca nation (a post which he had held since 1851), Parker served as a cultural liaison between the US and his Seneca people. After the Civil War he continued to distinguish himself through his efforts as a diplomat and translator, becoming an attaché for the Office of Indian Affairs.

He was a powerful proponent of Indian’s rights in a time when few people were willing to speak on their behalf. He used his unique influence in politics to address the pressing issues arising with the white migration and settlement of the Plains. In his Report on Indian Affairs released in 1867, he opened with this bleak and forthright assessment:

“…as the hardy pioneer and adventurous miner advanced into the inhospitable regions occupied by the Indians, in search of the precious metals, they found no rights possessed by the Indians that they were bound to respect. The faith of treaties solemnly entered into were totally disregarded, and Indian territory wantonly violated. If any tribe remonstrated against the violation of their natural and treaty rights, members of the tribe were inhumanely shot down and the whole treated as mere dogs. Retaliation generally followed, and bloody Indian wars have been the consequence, costing many lives…”

In 1869 he was appointed Commissioner of Indian Affairs – the first Native American to hold the post (and the first Native American to hold any cabinet-level government office). Despite his efforts for reform, his advice went largely unheeded, and after two years he resigned from the post. He became increasingly disillusioned and even disgusted with American policies towards Native Americans. (continue reading…)

NAPT (Native American Public Telecommunications) is releasing a new documentary on the Choctaw code operators or World War I – the first Native Americans to employ their language as a code for the US military. The debut is set for premier in October. See the NAPT site for more details:

Native American Public Telecommunications: Choctaw Code Talkers film

View the trailer here:

Although the Choctaw units of the first World War were the original “code talkers,” their work was highly covert and today is often overlooked in favor of the more famous Navajo code talkers of World War II. In reality dozens of Indian nations and other indigenous peoples participated in these secret language programs, contributing vastly to the Allied efforts in both wars.

Click here for more on the Code Talkers

Visit my Links page for more great Native documentaries like We Shall Remain and March Point.

Here’s the first look at my newest portrait, Shoshone, 14×24 pastel on suede. Click to enlarge.

My reference photo is an old black and white of a young Shoshone scout, taken in the 1870′s. More on that later…

Indian Country Today: Uneasy in US, Iroquois believe survival’s at stake
By Samantha Gross, Associated Press Writer

This is an extensive and thorough news story by a writer for the Associated Press, detailing the history behind the recent passport scuffle for the Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team, and the sovereignty issues facing the Haudenosaunee. Highly recommended reading.

August 11, 3,114 BC: Beginning of the Long Count in the Mayan calendar

It seems everyone knows that the Mayan calendar is supposed to end in 2012. But the day it begins doesn’t get quite so much publicity.

Actually, both terms are something of a misnomer – the Mayan calendar doesn’t end, and doesn’t begin. The Western idea of time is quite linear compared with many of the world’s other systems of time keeping, which like the Mayan calendar move in a circle.

The Mayan calendar, or more properly the Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar, was used in various forms throughout Central America, including by the Aztec. Its unique counting system is based on 20 and 18, rather than 10 or 60, making it a challenge for many scholars to decipher.

WebExhibits: Calendars Through the Ages THE MAYAN CALENDAR

But even the term “calendar” itself is a little misleading, because what lay persons are actually referring to is a specific unit in this system known as the Long Count – a recurring period of approximately 5,125 years. It’s the current “great cycle” that ends in 2012 – not the calendar.

Each great cycle in the Long Count contains 13 baktuns, just as a year in our calendar contains 12 months. The winter solstice of 2012 will mark the end of this Long Count’s 13th baktun, and the beginning of the 14th. According to the Mayan calendar, that means we’ll be entering a new great cycle.

Why 5,125 years?

The Maya standardized the units of time for their calendar sometime in the 2nd century, when the early classical Mayan empire was at its height, in order to reflect the “revised history” of the empire, its creation, and its ruling dynasties. In other words, it was history in retrospect, because in the Mayan worldview, the cosmos revolved around their empire. They incorporated their vast knowledge of astronomy to bolster this worldview.

Many people have noticed that several ancient calendars begin close the same period – the Chinese, Hindu, and the biblical Hebrew calendar, among others. The end of the 3rd millennium BC also witnessed the start of construction on timekeeping monuments such as Stonehenge. This time in history marked a period immediately following dramatic environmental changes that turned the page on civilizations across the world. Apparently these changes were so significant that in some cases they marked that starting point of these early civilizations’ record of time.

The difference with the Mayan calendar, as with the Hindu, is that it does not begin with its current cycle; it actually records time much, much further back. And when one cycle ends it simply starts a new one, just as we would turn a century or a millennium. This misunderstanding is the partly the basis of the popular “Mayan doomsday hypothesis,” despite the fact that it doesn’t “end” in 2012 at all – it simply starts a new cycle of baktuns.

Apocalypse Soon? What the Maya calendar really tells us about 2012 and the end of time
by Anthony Aveni Archaeology.com

National Geographic: 2012 Countdown to Armageddon

Tulane University: The Sky is Not Falling

Wikipedia: 2012 Phenomenon

Even so, the 2012 Mayan doomsday prophecy is a popular topic these days, from old-fashioned diner gossip to New Age gurus to street prophets in the Bronx ranting about the end of the world.

Many people expect a planetary alignment within our solar system to work like some kind of cosmic combination lock, unleashing a wave of “higher energy” that will usher in a new era of existence (although, as historical and astronomical records can easily attest, planets line up all the time with no discernable effect on the earth — that is, outside of the hype generated by astrologers and wannabe mystics).

Yet others foresee in the Mayan calendar a dire prediction of a massive solar burst that will occur that fateful Christmas week, crippling our global infrastructure and invoking worldwide chaos.

But thinking that the start of a new cycle in the ancient Mayan calendar on December 21, 2012 means the end of our world is about as logical as a modern person dreading the Ides of March because the Roman Empire fell.

NatGeo Special Feature: Maya Rise and Fall
Saga of a civilization in three parts: The rise, the monumental splendor, and the collapse.

“…The Earth does not belong to man; man belongs to Earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself…”

- Chief Seattle

The famous oration by Chief Seattle is believed to have been made in 1854; the venue was supposedly a public meeting called by the governor in Seattle, Washington to discuss the transfer of native lands to the whites. There, the chief of the local Suquamish and Duwamish tribes stood up to deliver his eloquent final word on the massive changeover taking place in his world.

It’s been touted as one of the most compelling environmental messages ever spoken, a moving plea from an Indian watching his culture and his natural homeland disappear. Millions of copies have sold across the world; it’s been used throughout the media, from radio to movies to books (including an appearance in an Al Gore book). But a closer look may reveal a disappointing past to this iconic bestseller.

The speech with many faces

There are several versions of the speech in circulation, so obviously they can’t all be right. And each is littered with subtle anachronisms and other textual flaws that raise red flags about their authenticity.

The most popular (and most quoted) version was written by Texas professor Ted Perry as part of a screenplay for a 1972 film called “Home.” It was this version that soon became a war-cry for environmentalists – and the one that contains the biggest gaffs.

Buffalo and iron horses?

“…I’ve seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie, left by the white man who shot them from a passing train. I am a savage and I do not understand how the smoking iron horse can be more important than the buffalo that we kill only to stay alive…”

Readers will notice that Chief Seattle speaks of the “iron horse” or railroad. The first railroad in Washington was built by the Cascades Railroad Company in 1858 – several years after Chief Seattle supposedly delivered his speech. The Transcontinental Railroad wasn’t completed until 1869.

Above all, the “lament over the buffalo” is a dead giveaway. Chief Seattle lived in the Pacific Northwest – not the Great Plains – and never traveled beyond his homeland. We all know there are no buffalo anywhere near the Puget Sound. But I doubt it would have been as effective if the chief was quoted mourning over a diminishing seafood population. That just wouldn’t sell.

This reminds me of the scene in the movie Smoke Signals where Victor tries to teach his friend Thomas the “stoic” Indian look:

Victor: You gotta look mean or people won’t respect you. White people will run all over you if you don’t look mean. You gotta look like a warrior! You gotta look like you just came back from killing a buffalo!

Victor: What! You want to look like you just came back from catching a fish? This ain’t “Dances With Salmon” you know!

This illustrates how much the stereotype of the Plains Indians has permeated the white view of Native Americans. In the perception of many people, Indians = vast herds of buffalo roaming the prairie, wild ponies running through the wind, and tepees silhouetted against the sunset. One image becomes a mass-scale stereotype of all Indians, everywhere. Then, out of sight, out of mind: no more buffalo, no more tepees = no more Indians – thus the “vanishing race.” Cut and dry, two-dimensional thinking.

This is the kind of thinking that is projected all through the Chief Seattle speech. And it’s perhaps one of the biggest indicators that it’s nothing more than a fake – well-intentioned, perhaps, but still a fake.

A troubled history (continue reading…)

July 26, 1796: Birth of painter George Catlin

George Catlin was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, into the large family of a Revolutionary War veteran. His mother’s and grandmother’s accounts of their experiences as Indian captives may have sparked his early fascination with Native Americans that later became a lifelong passion. As a young man he abandoned a law career to accompany expeditions researching and documenting indigenous peoples throughout North and South America.

During the 1830s, he traveled extensively through the Midwest and the Great Plains, where he spent weeks and months at a time among the Indian nations of the Mississippi and Missouri river valleys – becoming one of the first Europeans to do so. The notes and drawings he compiled during this tour formed the basis of his collection of documentary paintings, which he later published in a two-volume work entitled Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians. He amassed a huge collection of artifacts and kept a detailed record of the customs and appearances of the Native American peoples he encountered. His total output consisted of more than 600 original paintings and over 700 drawings and sketches, making him one of the premier painters of Native Americana.

Catlin attempted unsuccessfully to sell his portfolio to the United States government as a public historical exhibit; eventually he sold his original works to a private collector. He spent much of his later career traveling, writing memoirs, and marketing his work in European tours. He died in New Jersey in 1872; his works were later donated to the Smithsonian Museum.

About His Work

George Catlin is certainly not a painter who became famous solely on account of his artistic skills. In technical terms, his works range from mediocre to downright primitive, as some critics have labeled it. What drove his career was an almost obsessive desire to portray Native Americans from across the continent in the most original setting possible.

Like Edward Curtis, he felt compelled to portray the appearance and customs of peoples whom he felt were a “vanishing race.” In some cases, this proved to be fateful; for example, his extensive work among the Mandan barely preceded a smallpox epidemic that reduced their number to a mere handful. As a result, Catlin’s depictions of the Mandan are valuable today because no artist after him was able to produce such a successful pictorial record of them.

Above: The White Cloud, Head Chief of the Iowas; Below: Mandan Buffalo Dance

There is much controversy over the duplicity in Catlin’s portrayals of Indians. On one hand, his genuine appreciation of Native Americans fueled his eagerness to preserve their cultural record; on the other, he stooped to using white models in Indian apparel for some paintings, and staging performing acts similar to later wild west shows as part of his marketing scheme. Both of these contributed to spreading and reinforcing damaging stereotypes that are still prevalent today.

Right: Sha-kó-ka (“Mint”), a Mandan girl (1832)

The fact remains that his personal mentality in regards to American Indians was far ahead of his time. Whatever his motives in promoting his own work, and his means for marketing it, his profound respect for the cultures he encountered was remarkable, and would have still been uncommon a generation or more ahead of his time.

His confidence in the character of Indian society as a whole was boundless. “The very use of the word savage, as it is applied in its general sense, I am inclined to believe is an abuse of the word, and the people to whom it is applied,” Catlin asserted. Towards the end of his career, he remarked, “No Indian ever betrayed me, struck me with a blow, or stole from me a shilling’s worth of my property.” And this at a time when Indians were still perceived largely as inferior humans predisposed toward aggression and brutality. (continue reading…)

Something remarkable is happening in Indian country; Tribes whose lands were once taken from them are setting an example for how to restore the environment.

A must-see showcase of Native American communities across North America that are using their traditional understanding of ecology to restore and protect natural habitats. Photography by Jack Dykinga.

View this feature: NatGeo Photography – Native Lands