Jessica Crabtree

“…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…)

My latest finished painting (click for larger image), now available on my Gallery.

Acoma, 18×24 pastel on suede matboard.
The original photo was taken in 1905 by Edward Curtis.

About the Acoma

The Acoma people, who call themselves “Haaku,” are one of nearly two dozen Pueblo communities in northern New Mexico. Their pueblo, known as “Sky City,” is built on top of a mesa where for centuries the only access was a single staircase carved by hand out of the sheer sandstone walls. Thanks in part to this defensive position, Acoma is possibly the oldest continuously inhabited constructed settlement in North America.

From its remote perch on the steep white plateau, the Acoma pueblo has witnessed the rise and fall of the Aztec and Maya empires (its trading partners in ancient times), the incursions of Spanish conquistadors, and the American conquest of the Southwest. Today, the Acoma still live in their ancestral fortress, where they continue to practice traditional arts, ceremonies, and farming.

More on Acoma history:

Acoma Sky City

Pueblo of Acoma

June 25, 1876: Battle of Little Big Horn

There’s not much about this event that hasn’t been said – both true and not so true. It has been studied more extensively, and become more entrenched in popular culture, than possibly any other encounter between Indians and US forces. Maybe that’s because it involved so many influential figures – General Custer, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse – or maybe because it was so shocking to Americans when it occurred that it was instantly and permanently seared into the public memory. Whatever the reasons, our understanding of the conflict and the events surrounding it have changed dramatically through time. The technologies of forensic archaeology and ballistics have reconstructed the course of events on the Greasy Grass, from the movements on the field to weapons used and the nature of the combat.

Perhaps the biggest change in perception is the shift in bias. The role of the US military, and of Custer in particular, is no longer so glorified as it once was, and the Indians not so vilified. We’ve come to understand how the hunger for gold in the forbidden Black Hills motivated the Custer Expedition of 1876. And with more Native accounts coming to light – and being heard – our understanding of the events on the ground has become more objective and comprehensive.

These changes are relatively recent, however. For most of the 20th century, discussing the legitimacy of US Indian policies was strictly taboo – and so was challenging the objectivity of “official” accounts. (continue reading…)

It’s finished! My latest portrait, Zuni, 14×14 pastel on suede.

Now I can add the signature and it will be ready for my Gallery. You can see the painting in various stages by clicking the “Latest” tag below, or “Sneak Peek” on the menu.

This portrait is based on a 1903 photograph from the Edward Curtis collection. A huge portion of this work is dedicated to images of the Southwest, particularly the Pueblo regions where this man is from. (continue reading…)

My latest portrait, Apache, 12×16 pastel on suede.

The portrait is based on a 1906 photograph by Edward Curtis entitled “Tsahizn Tseh.”

The Apache people, along with their close relatives the Navajo, call themselves “Dine,” meaning “the people.” These nations are part of an extended group of closely related nations and bands who once inhabited large areas of the Western Plains. When they reached the deserts of the Southwest in the 1500s, the Navajo gradually adopted a farming lifestyle similar to the region’s Pueblo peoples, while the Apache continued their traditional nomadic ways. Their fierce independence and their incredible knowledge of desert survival have made them legendary.

October 5, 1877: Surrender of Chief Joseph and his band of Nez Perce

The Nez Perce, fearing military reprisals after skirmishes with white settlers, abandoned their reservation and fled 1,000 miles through four states in the blustery cold of a Northwestern fall. More than a quarter of them – mostly women and children – died before they reached the Canadian border. Their pursuit by the US army and their subsequent exile from their beloved homeland in the Wallowa Valley is among the most tragic episodes in American history.

“The name of Chief Joseph is better known than that of any other Northwestern Indian. To him popular opinion has given the credit of conducting a remarkable strategic movement from Idaho to northern Montana in the flight of the Nez Perce in 1877. The unfortunate effort to retain what was rightly their own makes an unparalleled story in the annals of the Indians’ resistance to the greed of the whites.”

Edward Curtis, “The North American Indian”

Click here to read more about the grueling trek of the Nez Perce and the events behind Chief Joseph’s legendary “I will fight no more” speech.

Chief Joseph: in Nez Perce, Hinmuuttu-yalatlat "Thunder Rolling Down the Mountains" (Photo: Edward Curtis, 1903)

Caught on Camera

Edward Curtis’s photographic collection The North American Indian has been arguably the most comprehensive and influential Native-themed work of the last century. If you can recall seeing old black and white or sepia-toned photos of Indians, chances are they were part of the Curtis collection.

The enormous scope of his thirty-year project attempted to document the lives of Native Americans all over the western half of the continent at a time when these Indian nations were in transition to the restrictions of life on reservation. In the eyes of most people living around the turn of the 20th century, Native Americans were considered a vanishing race and their ways of life a lost cause. The cultures of the West, and especially of the Great Plains, came to typify all Native American heritage, largely because the final period of their traditional lifestyle coincided with the advent of mass media.

It can be easy to forget that there were no cameras in the days when (continue reading…)

Who was Edward Curtis?

Edward Sheriff Curtis was born in 1868 in Wisconsin. His family moved to Minnesota and later the West coast. As a teenager he became an apprentice photographer and eventually opened his own studio in Seattle. He made his first Native American photograph in 1895 – a portrait of Princess Angeline, daughter of Chief Seattle. Around the turn of the century he and his camera accompanied several research expeditions on local tribal lands and through the Plains, Southwest, and Alaska. This launched his life-long interest in documenting Native American heritage.

In 1906 J.P.Morgan commissioned Curtis to produce a 20-volume photographic series on the Native Americans of the West. The series, entitled The North American Indian, was to contain 1,500 original photographic prints, and was slated for completion in 5 years. The first volume was published the following year, with a preface by President Theodore Roosevelt – but it was to be another 25 years before the project finally saw completion.

Curtis traveled extensively throughout the country west of the Mississippi River, taking over 40,000 photographs of Native Americans, documenting biographies, cultural practices, and traditional narratives, and even making recordings of speech and songs in Native languages.

Unfortunately, Curtis lost his studio and much of his original work in a nasty divorce settlement that was drawn out for years. He ultimately sold the rights to the entire project to J.P.Morgan’s son. The final volume of The North American Indian was published in 1930, but the majority of Curtis’s work landed in obscurity and changed hands several times over the next 50 years, with much of it being lost or destroyed. Curtis died in 1952 at the age of 84.

Next: The Curtis Collection