Jessica Crabtree

“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

The first time I saw a glimpse of Disney-Touchstone’s 2004 Hidalgo, the thing that stopped me in my tracks was the gorgeous paint pony that gives the film its name. Since I’m hard to displease with a movie about horses – and since, as I later learned, the film has a strong Native theme – I made it a point to see the whole thing.

Hidalgo is a quasi-historical production about Frank Hopkins, a Wild West rider who takes his mustang on a treacherous race through the Arabian desert. At face value, it’s fun and attractive and more of a family flick than a plausible historical epic. But once you’ve seen it (and the epilogue explaining that the whole thing was a true story) your first thought is to find out more about this amazing guy who used his outstanding feats on horseback as a catalyst for one of the greatest efforts of wild mustang preservation.

Aside from the mustang outreach, the film’s other attraction was its roots in Plains Indian culture. Hopkins isn’t just a cowboy; he’s a born-and raised Lakota struggling to come to terms with his mixed white heritage, serving as an army scout and finding himself involved in the fateful events at Wounded Knee. By movie’s end he is able to reconcile his purpose in life by embracing his Indian heritage and working to preserve the horse lifestyle.

It’s obvious to any objective viewer that the story line is a little far-fetched, slightly on the feel-good side of reality. The reinvented cowboy figure sanctified by his Indian heritage, making it more politically correct for a modern audience; damsels in distress (an Arabian princess, no less); a journey of self-discovery and redemption, and the impossible victory of the underdog in a typical Disney-ish fashion.

Add to this the faux pas of having a half-Lakota portrayed by a blond Nordic (you probably already know my feelings about Indians played by non-Indians), and some really deplorable geography (Damascus is nowhere near the sea, and a 3,000 mile race would take a rider far out of the range of the film’s setting). But that’s my more abrasive approach. You’d really have to see it to get that it really works. It’s good in a genuine, almost-but-not-really-believable sort of way.

The Hopkins Controversy

But back to my investigation. Unbeknownst to me, the movie had already stirred up a long-standing, long-winded debate about this marvelous legend of a man, Frank Hopkins. “Camp A” lauded Hopkins’s accomplishments as a champion endurance racer, and his landmark efforts of preserving the mustang and traditional Lakota knowledge of horsemanship. “Camp B” called him a hopeless huckster, and Hidalgo merely the cheap and devious sequel to his colossal fraud. Some of these even purport that he may never have ridden a horse in his life, and the whole legend was the pipe dream of a thwarted wannabe cowboy. Oddly enough, this time, the cry of stretched or embellished facts was not aimed directly at Hollywood.

I was interested in what first provoked such a vociferous debate. It seems that if Hopkins were half the man he was claimed to be – and did half the things he was claimed to have had accomplished – he should literally be the most famous man on earth. Excuse my ignorance but I had never heard of him before I saw the movie. Apparently, the historical record is none too familiar with him either. A quick read of his biography and you can easily sympathize with Hidalgo’s detractors:

“As well as spurring his mustang to victory in (to be exact) 452 endurance races around the globe, Frank Hopkins also has an impressive list of other achievements. He claimed to be the most famous dispatch rider in the West, an associate of Buffalo Bill Cody and one of the “cowboys” from the Congress of Rough Riders of the World performing in Buffalo Bill’s internationally famed Wild West Show. He says he was Chief Crazy Horse’s protégé, put on a two-hour equestrian performance before Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle and helped famed plainsman Buffalo Jones capture and tame the first buffalo.
 
Hopkins also said he served with the Pinkerton detective agency, was a secret agent of the US government during World War I, a guide in the Grand Canyon for big game hunters including novelist Zane Grey, and once charged up San Juan hill with Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders. All this, of course, was in addition to mentoring Billy the Kid.”
 
“Hidalgo: A Film or Flimflam?” by Peter Harrigan, Arab News

Please give me a break. Either he suffered from borderline personality disorder, senility, or the world’s worst midlife crisis – or someone was seriously messing with this man’s memoirs.

I am not about to get embroiled in the convoluted debate over whether Hopkins was the world’s greatest endurance racer, or which episodes of his exploits are plausible and which are merely spin; there’s far too much literature on the subject for me to add more (and almost nothing about the man is not in question, starting with his date of birth!) But the material points here are 1) what’s the best evidence for and against the legend of Frank Hopkins, and 2) what to make of Hidalgo the movie?

Supporters vs. skeptics (continue reading…)

PBS Independent Lens: “Reel Injun” – On the Trail of the Hollywood Indian

Watch Reel Injun – Trailer on PBS. See more from INDEPENDENT LENS.

PBS Independent Lens: “We Still Live Here”

A film about the modern-day Wampanoag people and the resurrection of the Wampanoag language. Members talk about living with their nation’s past and dealing with their popular image as “the Thanksgiving Indians” or “the Pilgrim’s Indians.”

You can watch the complete episode online through Thanksgiving (Thursday the 24th) at PBS Video.

(See also: We Shall Remain: After the Mayflower)

The Pocahontas Paradox: A Cautionary Tale for Educators
From Journal of Navajo Education, Fall/Winter 1996/97
Cornel Pewewardy, Ph.D. (Kiowa/Comanche)

An exhaustive writing about Native stereotyping in film and particularly its effects on Native youth.

Below: Heroine or hazard? Legend or liability?

(You can find the editorial version of this post under the title “Reframing Columbus Day” on Worldpress.org, an online magazine for independent journalism.)

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Recently I posted about research positing a link between peoples of the Na-Dene/Athabaskan family (e.g. Navajo, Apache, Tlingit) and Central Asian refugees of Genghis Khan’s conquests. The connection, based on physical, cultural & religious similarities and linguistic and genetic evidence, has been proposed for decades but is only now being verified by concrete evidence.

The implications of such a realization are staggering – but no more than those of other recent discoveries challenging our conceptions of the early Americas.

In time for Columbus Day this year I thought it would be appropriate to note a few of the major convulsions in the established historical record that highlight the fact that the “era of Columbus” is now over. It’s already firmly established that Columbus didn’t discover America; and the illusion that the Americas existed in a bubble of cultural isolation is being shattered with every new finding of global interchange. But beyond that, it’s time to observe this ideological regime change by questioning whether Columbus is really so important after all – and what that means in the context of America’s colonial and imperialist legacy.

1: Norse Colonies & the First Native American in Europe

The presence of Scandinavians in North America before Columbus is well-established. At present they lay title to being the first Europeans to set foot on American soil. But one of the major revelations of the past year was the evidence of the earliest Native Americans in a European country – not as chattel transported via the English and Spanish slave trades, or even as diplomatic attaches to European monarchs – but as part of the saga of Norse exploration along the Atlantic seaboard.

The ill-fated Norse colony of L’anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, dating to the 11th century, may have shared less than ideal relations with their Beothuk neighbors, according to extant records; but their association may have been closer than those records indicate. It remained for DNA science to reveal that many present-day Icelanders carry the genes of Newfoundland’s extinct indigenous populations, indicating that this Norse emigration was, at least on one occasion, a two-way street. This discovery marks a milestone in our understanding of early European involvement in North America and raises numerous questions about the nature and extent of the interaction between these groups.

2: Polynesian Trade with the Pacific Coast

There is a growing body of evidence that Polynesian sailors reached the Americas long before the 15th century, setting up an exchange that left clues on both sides of the Pacific. The Polynesians are an optimal candidate in the search for pre-Columbian contact, because they had both the technology and the motive to reach the Americas.

The prime evidence:

• Chickens – Ancient remains of chickens found on the coast of Chile predate the arrival of domesticated breeds introduced by European colonists. There were no chickens indigenous to the Americas; they are native to southeast Asia where they were first domesticated and later brought as far east as the Pacific islands. Obviously their presence in Chile could not be explained as a simple case of migratory spread. The carbon dating of the chicken bones gave them a tentative age of 600 years, right around the peak of the Polynesian’s Pacific expansion.

(National Geographic: Polynesians – And Their Chickens – Arrived in Americas Before Columbus)

• Sweet potatoes – As part of the Columbian Exchange, many of the New World’s important native foodcrops – including maize, potatoes, and cacao – were transported to Europe, Asia, and Africa where they became fundamental commodities. One of these crops, the sweet potato, has been cultivated for more than 5,000 years by peoples in Central and South America, where it first originated. Apart from direct human introduction, it is difficult to account for sweet potato cultivation by the Polynesians dating back more than a millennia. (Sweet potatoes propagate through tubers or plant cuttings, not by seeds that can be windblown or spread by birds.) It is even more difficult to explain how they came to be called by almost identical names in both regions.

There are even deeper connections on the horizon. Many researchers point to linguistic similarities and parallels in artifacts found in the Polynesia Pacific (including Easter Island) and in America’s Pacific coast cultures. Such suggestions of an information and technology exchange may be circumstantial at best. But there is considerable support rising from other fronts, not the least of which is recent DNA research confirming the exchange of much more than just trade goods.

3: Tibetan origins of Athabaskans

(continue reading…)

Angel de Cora is not exactly a household name, but her story is as fascinating as it is little-known. A Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) with French ancestry, DeCora became the most influential Native American artist of the early 20th century.

She was born in 1871 and grew up during a time of great turmoil and upheaval for Native people. She attended the Hampton Institute, one of the era’s famous Indian boarding schools, where like many other Indian children she faced the twin hardships of separation from family and the systematic indoctrination of a deeply racist policy.

Her remarkable academic and artistic achievements earned her a ticket to advanced art training in Philadelphia and Boston under some of the country’s most renowned instructors. She absorbed multiple styles and incorporated them into a unique illustrating signature.

Right: Illustration from the book “The Middle Five” (Image: AngelDeCora.com)

Angel was reluctant to part with her heritage and stood out by making her skills a catalyst for expressing her people’s culture and experience in a modern context. By being such a “media maverick” she defied common stereotypes about Indians (and about women) and became a trend-setter in the field of Native American art. She was a conundrum to a public eager to categorize Indians into two classes: the backward, recalcitrant outsiders who needed to be assimilated into white society, or the romanticized “children of nature,” the noble savages of a lost age.

She illustrated her own stories as well as books by Zitkala Sa and Elaine Goodale Eastman. Her husband William ‘Lone Star’ Dietz, a Hampton alumnus, was also an artist and together they collaborated on many projects.

Some of her most important contributions were made during her appointment as an art teacher at the Carlisle Indian School, where she often pushed the boundaries of traditional teaching methods, using art to help her students rediscover rather than suppress their roots.

Left: DeCora and her husband William Dietz (Image: AngelDeCora.com)

She acted as a kind of cultural liaison with several government agencies and was constantly bombarded by the prejudice and incompetence of the cumbersome bureaucracy. She often traveled to Indian communities throughout the Midwest gathering ethnographic information, not only to reinforce her teaching skills but to contribute to a permanent artistic record of Indian cultures. In this role she was a major force in bringing Native arts and crafts into the public spotlight.

She died in 1919 at the age of 47. Few of her original works survive, but reproductions in books and magazines such as the popular Harper’s offer a rich glimpse of her versatile techniques, from the intricate realist detail of her early pieces, to the strong tonal style of her late works.

Left: Illustration from the novel “Yellow Star” (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Angel DeCora: American Artist and Educator – Sarah McAnulty (a very good biography of DeCora)

Wikipedia: Angel de Cora

The portrayal of Native Americans in the arts and media is fraught with controversy and contradiction. It’s a disputed territory where art, stereotype, politics, and propaganda intersect. It’s hard to think of another artistic genre where the subject can so easily be glorified and demeaned at the same time. And because of the checkered past of the modern Native American experience, sometimes the line between the two can be disturbingly fine.

In a post I did a couple of months ago I wrote about Edward Curtis and the “smiling Indian” controversy. My question was, how much responsibility did early 20th century photographers have in manufacturing stereotypes of Native Americans – in particular the image of the “stoic” Indian – and how did that influence popular opinion through the mass-media later in the century?

The reason the works of early photographers have come under such scrutiny is because their pieces became the groundwork for the way media would approach Native Americans for the next century. The popular appeal of Native Americans as a cultural symbol was much the same around the turn of the 20th century as it is today. It was customary to portray them with the usual templates – the noble, stoic warrior race; the romanticized breed of nature’s children; the “vanishing kind”; and so on.

Granted, the period around turn of that century might well have been the worst time to be an Indian. Tribal lands (and sovereignty) had been wrested away in shocking proportions; resistance movements had been brutally crushed one by one; Indian children were being forcibly re-educated under the residential school system; Native languages and religions were outlawed and the very existence of many Native lifestyles was in question. In this setting it is partly understandable why so many people would be interested in projecting that idea that Indians were about to disappear altogether.

But as we know today, Indians did not disappear. Their perennial humor, ingenuity, and fortitude have helped carry them through the horrors of colonialism and the reservation system. And while their ways of living have changed and adapted, they have been largely successful in reclaiming their cultural identity. Part of that is by actively challenging and confronting false or misconstrued representations of their history and heritage.

It’s not only the Indians who are concerned with this kind of integrity. Artists, and those seeking to be well-informed about art, bear the responsibility of seeing works of historical or cultural significance in a critical way. When evaluating such pieces, one asks what the photographer or artist is trying to communicate when they represent their model in a certain way – what are they saying, both intentionally and unintentionally, about their concept of the subject? What is the overall tone of the portrait? Is the apparel authentic? This is where details such as a mere facial expression can become such a hotly disputed topic.

Case Study: Gertrude Kasebier

On the subject I thought it would be interesting to compare the work of a near-contemporary of Edward Curtis – Gertrude Kasebier, an American photographer who made Indians a major part of her portfolio. While she did not combine the extensive ethnographic travels that made Curtis’ work so significant, it was obviously an unusual subject for a female photographer of her day. She compiled a striking photographic collection – some documentary, others very personal and intense – that essentially showed how the Native American fit into her world.

Bio

Kasebier was born Gertrude Stanton in 1852 and grew up alternately in the environments of the industrialized East and the frontier West, giving her an early taste of both worlds. An unhappy marriage led her to seek a creative outlet in photography, and in her late thirties she began formal study in the US and abroad. Counter to all decorum, she began to establish herself professionally, and by the 1890′s she was operating out of her own studio and was in demand for lectures and commissions.

Kasebier’s first foray into Native American portraiture came when Buffalo Bill’s “Wild West Show” visited New York. Like many artists, she was drawn to the expressiveness in the faces of the Indians she saw. She began by photographing the Lakota performers and later expanded to documentary work during a brief tour with the show. While the project comprised a relatively small portion of her output, it resulted in some of her finest and best-known pieces.

Above right: Gertrude Kasebier, c1900 (Wikimedia Commons)

During the pinnacle of her career, Kasebier was considered one of the elite of modern photographers, complete with a distinguished clientele – and scathing professional rivalries. Her strong business sense – and certainly her ambition – not only preserved her career but made her a role model for many enterprising young women of the new century. She was a leading figure of the emerging pictoralist movement. By the 1920′s, an elderly woman past 70, she retired and dismantled her studio. She died in 1934, leaving her collection in the hands of her daughter, who followed in her footsteps.

Kasebier’s Indians

So what makes Kasebier’s Indian portraits different from those of her contemporaries such as Curtis or Rinehart? Also, what bearing did the fact that she was a woman trying to make a career in a male-dominated society have on her portfolio?

Some of Kasebier’s portrait pieces appear to represent Indians in what to our modern sensibilities seems the most detached, iconic, and predictable way.

Take this one for instance: a person who sees it is likely to think, “That’s the quintessential Indian chief.” Complete with the feather headdress, he could have been the model for a college sports mascot – which is exactly why pictures like it are such a problem for people today who recognize the “stoic Indian” stereotype and the false connotations that go along with it. So often there are underlying ideologies that are implied, like the elephant in the room, that once accepted become part of a passive stereotype – like the myth of the vanishing race.

Above: Whirling Horse, an Indian Chief (Library of Congress)

But my argument is that it’s not necessarily the fault of the artist if the subject he/she presents has a double-life as a pop icon. It isn’t equitable to accuse the photographer of contributing to a harmful stereotype without at least examining both the method and the motive behind the work. Certainly Kasebier’s pieces bear a closer look.

The Bonnin Photographs

Many of the portraits, like her photographs of the musician Zitkala Sa (aka Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) would have been considered quite avant-garde in her day, both in the way the model is presented and the kind of statement it makes to the viewer.

The strong pictoralist styling creates a close, evocative mood, while the depiction of Bonnin in both Indian and white garb actively challenged prevailing stereotypes about assimilation. Kasebier presents her as a woman and an artist foremost, with her ethnicity taking second place. She seems uniquely qualified to have photographed Bonnin; maybe it took a fellow woman and artist to appreciate these qualities.

(College of Staten Island Library “Images of Zitkala Sa“)

The thing that struck me the most about Kasebier’s Indians is how frequently they are shown smiling – even laughing – relative to the total number of portraits. Just imagine if “smiling Indians” made up as large a proportion of Curtis’ portfolio (although there are quite a few they are obscure by comparison).

Joseph Black Fox (Library of Congress)

Charging Thunder, American Indian (Library of Congress)

This one below is my favorite (as a matter of fact it is part of the banner of my website). One wonders what was making William (left) smile and Luke (on the right) have to hold in a laugh? Was Kasebier in on the joke? (Library of Congress)

(Click to enlarge)

If we are to judge what is reflected in these portraits, Kasebier’s Lakota subjects must have felt quite at ease. With the photography taking place in a quiet studio setting, rather than the indignity of the performance stage, and the subjects actively participating in the portrait process, it’s no wonder she was able to capture such a palpable human essence.

Fortunately, Kasebier’s Indian pictures also include a balanced variety of gender and age combination, so while portraits of adult men still predominate in the collection, women and children of various age groups also receive ample attention.

Samuel American Horse and his wife – A sensitive and rather domestic portrait. Note the wedding ring on her hand. (Library of Congress)

Mary Lone Bear (Smithsonian)

One of the most poignant and emotionally haunting portraits, Charles American Horse in his Wild West Show costume. (Library of Congress)

The point Kasebier seems to make with this photo is, “What a way to grow up” – a young person whose nation was invaded and resettled, and as if to add insult to injury, made into a public exhibition. It serves as an example of how the collection does a good job of portraying individual humanity, but not at the price of ignoring stark reality.

Summary

Based on the recommendation of these facts, Kasebier’s work stands quite favorably as both a historic record and an artistic product.

A few key observations of what defines Kasebier’s portraits:

• Approach

  Kasebier’s approach was completely different from Curtis’s – in fact almost opposite – in that her portraits are deeply personal and introspective. But while they are intimate in nature, they avoid melodrama. It would have been all too easy to lapse into a sorrowful, elegiac “vanishing breed” tone. They do not politicize the Indians or cast them as ethnographic objects.

• Authenticity

  Kasebier’s portraits are refreshingly honest and un-contrived. She never used artificial poses, apparel or props to achieve a more “photogenic” result at the expense of authenticity. In fact she often portrayed her models without their signature regalia, so as not to detract focus from the individual. Frequently the subjects chose their own costumes and posed in the way that seemed most natural to them. This difference gives Kasebier’s pictures a more dynamic and spontaneous, less “picture book” quality.

• Motive

  Kasebier’s Indian project was a purely personal and artistic one; while she stood to make a considerable profit off of the pieces, she never offered any of them for sale, and only produced prints for a select few individuals.

• Human connection

  Finally and (in my opinion) most importantly, Kasebier didn’t just take pictures of these people – she built a rapport with them, and in some cases, became a close friend. In this light, one wonders whether she felt more than a passing kinship with them; both experienced the constraints of a society that denied them their identity. Both experienced the personal rewards that resulted from this mutual understanding and respect – and that’s ultimately the biggest take-away from the end result of this unique collaboration.

Links

Smithsonian Institute: Gertrude Kasebier Collection Images

Library of Congress: Prints & Photographs Division – Results for Gertrude Kasebier

Wikipedia: Gertrude Kasebier

Smithsonian Research: “Portraits offer intimate look at Wild West performers” (If you don’t mind the missing html symbols then this is a pretty good article)

Edward Curtis and the Myth of the Vanishing Race

Related Posts

Edward Curtis and The Curtis Collection

Edward Curtis and Smiling Indians