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

Dore was a French illustrator whose engravings of famous literature have become so pervasive, they are almost inseparable from the works they depict. For generations they were the benchmark in capturing the grandeur and mystery of epics, religious writings, poetry and even fairy tales. The dark, expansive, highly detailed look of his engravings is instantly recognizable.

He was extremely prolific, producing sometimes hundreds of illustrations per work – but his skill and imaginative style was remarkably consistent. His most famous works include the complete illustrated edition of the 1866 English Bible; Don Quixote, The Idylls of the King, and the epics of Milton and Dante; and an anthology of fairy tales.

He also published a famous collection of caricatures.

Wikipedia: Gustave Dore

WikiPaintings: Gustave Dore

Yet another contender for the title of the original Thanksgiving. English settlers from Berkeley, England arriving in Virginia in 1619 (yes, that’s the year before the Pilgrim’s Plymouth landing) made this date a commemoration of gratitude for their safe arrival in the New World.

Unlike its famous counterpart, this Thanksgiving was clearly intended to be carried on in the future, as evidenced by the original proclamation in the Berkeley colony’s charter:

“Wee ordaine that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned for plantacon in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.”

This celebration is still honored today at the prestigious Berkeley Plantation.

Of course, this occasion is already predated by the little-known “St. Augustine Thanksgiving” shared in Florida by the Spanish and Native Americans – aptly enough, in the first permanent European settlement in the New World. (That one took place a whopping 56 years before its traditional 1621 counterpart.) But it is probably the earliest such celebration by English colonists in America.

See more: Countdown: 10 Things About Thanksgiving

Berkeley Plantation – Official Website

Berkeley House was built on the plantation later, in 1726. Photo from the National Park Service website, courtesy of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

Hogarth was born to a lower-class London family. At the beginning of his art career, he started out as an engraver’s apprentice, but became more independent as the demand for his prints rose. This enabled him to marry his art teacher’s daughter and live comfortably, honing his skills as a painter and satirist and becoming well-established as a portrait painter by the 1730′s. His portrait of the actor David Garrick in his role as Richard III sold for the highest price of any English portrait up to that time.

Below: My favorite Hogarth pieces are the serious, sensitive portraits such as the “Servants” above and the tantalizing, enigmatic Shrimp Girl.

Most of Hogarth’s work reveals his voice as a social commentator. He is best known for his “morality serials” depicting the vices and social ills plaguing populous urban England, and the sham of upper-class manners. Series such as “The Rake’s Progress,” “The Harlot’s Progress,” and “Marriage a la Mode” were published in installments and quickly became wildly popular. The rampant pirating of his pieces, and similar experiences of his colleagues, prompted him to lobby Parliament for the creation of the Engraver’s Copyright Act, which was passed in 1735.

Left: Another portrait of Garrick, this time in a more informal setting with his wife.

Hogarth’s drastic rise in social status never seemed to hamper the strong sense of ethics and civic responsibility reflected in his art. He used his means to found an art school, which was a precursor to famous Royal Academy. And he and his wife, unable to have a family of their own, fostered foundling children. His popularity, and the respect he enjoyed from his peers and his public, is portrayed in the epitaph Garrick wrote upon Hogarth’s death in 1764:

“Farewell great Painter of Mankind
Who reach’d the noblest point of Art
Whose pictur’d Morals charm the Mind
And through the Eye correct the Heart.

If Genius fire thee, Reader, stay,
If Nature touch thee, drop a Tear:
If neither move thee, turn away,
For Hogarth’s honour’d dust lies here.”

Wikipedia: William Hogarth

WikiGallery: Online Collection of Hogarth’s Prints and Paintings

Above: “Father Prays”

Terpning is one of the outstanding and preeminent artists of Western and Native American culture. His style is recognizably masterful and effortless – a true gift to art, accounting for the almost endless list of awards and recognitions he has received over the years.

Terpning was born and raised in the Midwest. He pursued art early on but did not study professionally until returning from military service. He worked as an apprentice illustrator and eventually became a freelance artist, illustrating for major publications like Time Magazine & Reader’s Digest, and producing iconic movie posters.

Left: One of my favorites – “Three Generations”

In the 70′s he decided to pursue a passion for Western history & culture that was sparked during his early travels in the West. The depiction of Plains Indian life, and the culture of the West, has become the real signature of his work, making him one of today’s most collected Western artists. It is remarkable to have such a legend still among us. Happy birthday Howard!

Wikipedia: Howard Terpning

Howard Terpning Western Art at the Greenwich Workshop

Portfolio Slideshow – Nearly a hundred of Terpning’s best-known pieces

Mills (born 1938) was raised on the Pine Ridge reservation. He trained as an athlete from an early age, later garnering many awards and earning sports scholarships that put him through college. He became a cross-country track star before graduating and joining the US Marines.

His record and training qualified him to compete for both the 10,000 meter and marathon events in the ’64 Tokyo Olympics, where his 24:4:4 win in the 10k was one of the great upsets in the history of the games. He was inducted into the US Olympic Hall of Fame in 1984.

Today, Mills is the spokesperson for Running Strong, an outreach organization for Native youth.

Wikipedia: Billy Mills

Running Strong for American Indian Youth – Official Website

Image: “Catching up with Billy Mills,” Sports Illustrated

The Walking Purchase Treaty – part of what may well be the most bizarre land-grab scheme in history – was based on a deed dating to the 1680′s. Supposedly signed by the Lenape Indians and Pennsylvania’s Quaker founders, it granted the colonists a parcel of land ambiguously measured from the Delaware-Lehigh river junction as far west as a man could travel on foot in a day and a half.

It is not clear whether this deed even existed, and Pennsylvania’s colonial government suddenly decided to collect – or whether it was just another fraudulent pretext for a land grab. Anyway it is a twisted irony of history that the very sons of William Penn, who was such a conscientious ally of the Lenape, should use their standing to such rapacious advantage.

Fully intending to honor their ancestors’ agreement, several Lenape chiefs met in Philadelphia in September to sign a treaty confirming the cession, including Lapowinsa (also Lappawinsoe) and Tishcohan. But the true face of the deal became apparent when the governor of Pennsylvania authorized settlers to clear a road for three hired runners to perform the role of the proverbial “man on foot” for the official survey.

The 36-hour dash undertaken by the runners was so intense that only one finished the course; but the 70 miles he covered created boundaries that amassed over a million acres for the colony.

For the next two decades, Lenape representatives appealed the so-called “Walking Purchase Treaty,” but eventually were forced westward alongside an influx of other displaced peoples. In the 1830s, most Lenape were relocated to Oklahoma as part of the mass removals collectively known as the “Trail of Tears.”

Both Lapowinsa and Tishcohan were depicted by the Swedish painter Gustavus Hesselius around the time of the Walking Purchase Treaty. These early portraits are distinctive for their attentive detail, and almost personal manner. They are rare glimpses of the Native people of this period. (Click for larger view)

Image: ExplorePAHistory.com (Credit: Courtesy of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Atwater Kent Museum of Philadelphia)

Read more:

The Walking Purchase – A really good blog post on the background of the Walking Treaty, the Lenape nation, and several significant figures of the period

The Delaware Walking Treaty – Philadelphia History

Wikipedia: Walking Purchase

Lenape archives at ExplorePAHistory.com

Delaware Nation Website

September 4, 1893: Birth of fictional character “Peter Rabbit”

Since his conception in a letter to a little boy in Victorian England, Peter Rabbit has become the signature creation of English artist and naturalist Beatrix Potter. He became the first patented character after Potter licensed the production of a trademarked plush toy in 1903.

When Peter Rabbit was first published in 1902 by Frederick Warne & Co., Potter designed every aspect of the book, from the illustrations to the covers and bindings. In the 1930′s her stories were re-issued using this first publication as a template. The Warne centenary edition in 2002 took this effort up a notch by completely restoring and remastering the copy film to reflect the original format, resulting in the most authentic rendition to date.

Right: The original “Peter Rabbit” letter written to Noel Moore dated September 3, 1893 (Image: The World of Beatrix Potter)

About Beatrix Potter

Beatrix Potter was born in 1866 to a well-off English family. From a young age she had an exceptionally agile mind which the conventions of Victorian culture were slow to accommodate. Though shy and reserved, her girlhood journals show her to have been an imaginative and talented budding artist and a shrewd social critic.

Photo: Children’s Classics.com.au – Biography of Beatrix Potter

Her passion for wildlife was evident early in life, from the small animals she and her brother kept (later to become models for some of her characters) to her growing interest in the natural sciences and conservation.

Her Tale of Peter Rabbit – written, like Lewis Carroll’sAlice in Wonderland, for the entertainment of a small child – spawned a series of watercolor-illustrated animal tales that quickly became established children’s classics. By the end of the first year’s publication alone, 28,000 copies were in circulation.

The stellar success of her illustrated books offered Potter some independence in the face of social restriction and family expectations. It enabled her to buy property in England’s beautiful Lake District, where her ‘Hill Top Farm’ became a thriving operation and is today a national historic site. She became one of the country’s most respected figures in sheep-raising and land management and conservation.

Her life was recently the subject of the 2006 film Miss Potter, earning actress Renee Zellweger a Golden Globe nomination for her portrayal of the artist.

Links

The World of Beatrix Potter – The ‘official’ website of Peter Rabbit & friends; plus detailed material on Potter’s work and legacy

The Beatrix Potter Society of the UK

More than just Bunnies: The Legacy of Beatrix Potter

Wikipedia: Peter Rabbit

Wikipedia: Beatrix Potter

David was born to a privileged family of Parisian architects during the height of France’s ancien regime. He was expected to follow this profession, but his early education quickly revealed a strong proclivity for art and a heady temperament – both of which would define the course of his adult life.

His first art teacher was an old-school artist of the Rococo style who recognized David’s strong Classical sympathies and sent him to a colleague, Joseph-Marie Vien, who became David’s long-time mentor. Under his tutelage, David attended the Royal Academy (part of what is today the Louvre). In 1774, after several failed attempts, he won the prestigious Prix de Rome, and later traveled to Italy with Vien where he immersed himself in Classical art forms and early Renaissance painting.

Upon returning to Paris five years later, he was finally admitted membership to Royal Academy, and was also granted residence at the Louvre by royal appointment. Despite all these honors he was impatient for greater recognition and frustrated by what he felt was discrimination against his age. His problematic attitude did not endear him to his superiors and his brash, ardent and sometimes narcissistic nature meant inevitable collisions with his peers and his patrons. But his position offered him both means and security and the 1780s found him a man in his forties with a family, a comfortable living, an expanding student roll, and a growing reputation.

Left: Portrait of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and his Wife (1788)

Lavoisier was a brilliant French scientist who was executed during the Reign of Terror on minor charges, partly through the influence of Marat (the same Marat whose death David later portrayed so iconically). Fellow scientist Lagrange said, “It took them only an instant to cut off his head, but France may not produce another such head in a century.”

David’s appetite for the heroic and grandiose, however, was about to be filled, and he was soon swept up in the radical changes erupting throughout France. His quest for the Neoclassical ideal – austere, noble, self-sacrificing – found a new outlet on the stage of the French Revolution.

David and other Neoclassicists felt they could elevate the artistic plane of their society by reviving the order and refinement of Greco-Roman civilization, uplifting humanity to a new level of honor, nobility, and reason. They saw the Revolution as the opportunity, and art as the catalyst.

This worldview is exemplified by paintings of the period, such as The Oath of the Horatii (1784) and The Death of Socrates (1787), which glorify their Classical subjects and project their values and virtues onto the revolutionary cause. But they also illustrate how easily the line between public expression and propaganda can become blurred.

True to his impetuous nature, David became embroiled in politics – as a member of the Jacobin Club and a friend of Robespierre, voting for the king’s execution in 1792 and even turning his influence against the Royal Academy (possibly out of frustration in not receiving all the benefits he felt he deserved). He organized public spectacles: festivals, processions, and carefully orchestrated unveilings of politically charged paintings, intended to stir or sway popular sentiment.

The limelight was intense but short-lived. As revolutionary fervor escalated out of control and the Reign of Terror began, internal power struggles undermined Jacobin leadership and David himself only narrowly escaped being executed alongside Robespierre. He landed in prison where he painted his famous self-portrait. This brush with danger was enough to satisfy even David’s thirst for the heroic.

“This is Civilisation” presented by art critic Matthew Collings – This excerpt gives a visual tour of The Oath of the Horatii – austere, paternalistic, typically Roman. The episode examines the careers of both David and Spanish painter Goya to contrast their evaluation of human nature.

As the Age of Reason ushered in an intellectual quantum leap in Europe, an era of revolution followed hard on its heels, unleashing ages’ worth of emotional and ideological constraints. David’s portrayal of man in this brave new world emphasized the idealistic and noble – while Goya’s art portended its darker side. David’s sweeping generalizations of humanity and the glorified image of his Classical models resulted in works of art that are psychologically involved to a perilous degree.

Ironically, there is possibly no better illustration of Goya’s message than David’s own French Revolution, and even David’s career itself. The noble aspirations of ‘the people’ led to the overthrow of a despotic regime, only to descend into a brutal, hedonistic bloodbath afterwards. And likewise David’s own thirst for change, justice, and individuality spiraled into radical acts driven by manipulation and revenge that he later came to regret.

This section examines David’s masterpiece Death of Marat:

Maybe it was the encounter with his own mortality, or maturity brought on with age, or the shock of such extreme social upheavals – or maybe all of the above. Whatever the cause, from this phase on David seems to have re-evaluated his own motives and actions and even contemplated the crushing irony and contradiction of the movement he supported so strongly.

The revolution detested the despotism of the French kings but craved the rigid, stoic sense of structure and discipline they admired in the Greeks and Romans. They detested the softness and lavishness of their society, but omitted to notice how the corruption of the civilizations they idolized degraded into the same kind of opulent depravity. The Neoclassicists, and the Revolutionaries in particular, were eager to exchange their society’s outdated version of the ancient past for one that better suited their ends. But by idealizing it they made the same error in failing to learn from its mistakes. In their quest for a new reality, they would have done well to take into account Goya’s prophetic observations of human nature’s darker potential.

In any case it was a changed David who was released to a changed France, under a new regime with the ascent of Napoleon. France’s self-appointed new leader recognized both the skill and the political potential of David’s work, and promptly made him the official artist of the empire. Consequently, many of David’s grandest and most famous pieces portray Napoleon or his family members.

The Coronation of Napoleon (1807)
Louvre Interactive: A Closer Look at “The Consecration of Napoleon”

After the Bourbon restoration in 1814, the king offered him amnesty but David left the country and set up his studio in Belgium, where he worked until his death in a street accident in 1825. The extensive span of his career left an immediate and permanent mark on both French and Belgian art, especially through the influence of pupils such as Ingres. While the Neoclassical movement was soon swept aside in the current of the Romantic Age, the pristine idealism of David’s works vividly represents one of the most crucial turning points of Western culture, and still looms as large as ever.

Portrait of Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes (1817) – A beautifully realistic and very down-to-earth examples from David’s later works

Images: Wikimedia Commons

Wikipedia: Jacques Louis David

“The Legacy of Jacques-Louis David” Thematic Essay from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

Jacques-Louis David: Empire to Exile (WEB EXHIBIT)

“This is Civilisation” Episode Guide and complete online video from YouTube

Eddie Little Sky was born Edsel Wallace Little on the Pine Ridge Reservation (Oglala) in South Dakota. After serving in the Navy in the Pacific theater of World War II, he returned to civilian life as a rodeo and stunt rider, hoping a performance career would make him a living off the rez. When the impressed Audie Murphy watched one of his shows, he encouraged Little to audition for the screen.

Little Sky (as he later adopted for his screen name) became one of the first Indian actors to play Native roles on tv. Up until then Indians – even in leading roles – were played almost exclusively by white actors and very few Indians ever appeared on screen. His prolific filmography eventually included dozens of movies and almost every popular western series of the 50′s and 60′s – making him, if not a household name, at least a familiar face in homes across the country.

Today he is best remembered for his role as a Sioux chief in the major 1970 film “A Man Called Horse.”

His career was a significant milestone in the public portrayal of Native Americans. The presence of an Indian actor representing Indians on screen gave some authenticity to their overwhelmingly stereotyped persona. Along with other pioneers in the field, such as Jay Silverheels, he helped opened the door for other aspiring Native actors and actresses.

His wife Dawn, also Lakota, was an actress who occasionally appeared alongside him in films.

Eddie retired in the 1970′s and worked as a tribal parks & recreation administrator back at his home in South Dakota. He died in 1997.

Wikipedia: Eddie Little Sky

The Mayans believe that the world has existed in successive stages, with the current Great Cycle beginning on this date in 3114 BC. Each “Long Count” consists of 13 periods called baktuns. The present Long Count lasts up to December 21, 2012, and the next cycle effectively begins at that date with the start of the 14th baktun – in other words, the first baktun of the next Long Count.

Read more in my post about the Mayan calendar, the Mesoamerican Long Count, and the 2012 doomsday (or not):

August 11: Beginning of the Mayan Long Count

The Long Walk was part of a removal program similar to the Trail of Tears. Beginning in January, 1864, Navajo people from across Arizona were led by army troops and Western legend Kit Carson on a forced march to the Bosque Redondo internment camp in New Mexico. An area nearly 40 square miles, originally intended to support around 5,000 people, it came to host nearly twice that number as the removals continued.

The relocation project was a fiasco; the area’s bad water and impossible terrain made disease and hunger rampant. In addition, the confinement of Navajo together with Apache and Kiowa led to conflict. The ordeal eventually claimed the lives of thousands of Navajo people.

Courtesy of the State Records Center and Archives. Frank McNitt Papers, Serial #5514; photo #5702. “Navajos under guard at Fort Sumner,” ca. 1864 (New Mexico Office of the State Historian)

US and Navajo leaders signed a treaty on June 1, 1868 which granted the right of return for the Navajo expatriates and formed the nucleus of the modern-day Navajo reservation. On June 18, the diverse bands of the Navajo diaspora began their trek back to their ancestral homelands in the Four Corners region of the Southwest, known to them as “Dine-tah.”

The Navajo are among the few Indian nations to have regained possession of their traditional territory. Their land holdings have expanded to what is today the largest Indian reservation in the US.

New Mexico History – The Long Walk

Legends of America – The Navajo Long Walk to the Bosque Redondo

Production interviews from the KUED documentary The Long Walk: Tears of the Navajo

NPR Story: The Navajo Nation’s Own ‘Trail of Tears’

Wikipedia: Long Walk of the Navajo

Wikipedia: Bosque Redondo

“Painting is but another word for feeling” – John Constable

Constable found himself wedged between two artistic worlds – the formal, elaborate Classical style that relished the ancient and remote; and the new Romantic school that sought to sublimate nature into something at once mystical and intimately personal. Both groups found Constable’s work hopelessly domestic and mundane. While Constable’s paintings betray his admiration for the technique and skill of the old masters, they also showed a definite Impressionistic flair; but the provincial flavor of his work did not endear him to the Romantics either, who expected a more idealized approach.

Somewhere between the two camps was forged a fusion of tradition and innovation that made Constable perhaps Britain’s greatest landscape artist.

In fact it was not in England but in France that his work had both the best reception and the strongest influence – a ironic twist considering that Constable never traveled outside of England. His professional career suffered because his accomplishments were so slow to gain recognition in his own country. But the impact he had on early French Romanticism, and the later Impressionist movement, is obvious in the works of Millet and other painters of the Barbizon school, who successfully combined naturalism with realism.

Left: Self-Portrait (1804) courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery (Source: Britannica Online)

Constable was born the son of a merchant in Suffolk, England, and later credited the beautiful countryside of southern England where he was raised as his main artistic impetus. Like many great artists, he was originally intended to follow his father’s trade, but his first exposure to fine art led him to pursue serious study – and fortunately his family consented.

The Hay Wain (1821) is easily one of the most recognizable English paintings. But when it was first exhibited at the Royal Academy, no one would buy it. At the pivotal Paris Salon Exhibition in 1824, it won ardent acclaim – and a gold medal from the French king!

The oil on canvas (originally titled Landscape: Noon) is one of the so-called “six-footers,” and depicts a mill belonging to Constable’s father and the cottage of a local farmer. It illustrates the artist’s need to incorporate the human elements of his environment.

Early on he made a small income through portrait commissions, but his marked inclination as a landscape painter quickly became clear. He spent countless hours painting plein air and studying the seasonal subtleties of the English meadowlands, waterways, and landmarks. He thrived on the hustle and bustle of the small farming communities that became the life-blood of his paintings. Many of the sketches he created during this early period became the groundwork for later paintings in watercolor and oil.

Above: A cloud study in oil from one of Constable’s “skying” excursions; below, a portrait of an elm.

His marriage in 1816 provided some financial security and also great happiness, both demonstrated by the dramatic surge of emotional depth in his artwork. But these joys were short-lived – his wife died young, leaving the distraught artist alone to raise their large family. These troubles were compounded by money problems, brought on by unwise business ventures. An unsuccessful investment into an engraving collection left him on the verge of bankruptcy.

Following the writer’s adage, “Write what you know,” Constable concentrated all his efforts into portraying the environs of rural England as he knew and loved it. Golding Constable’s Flower Garden shows a tranquil scene from his childhood home.

For the rest of his life Constable struggled to gain professional recognition and remained largely dependent on patronage. In 1829 he was elected to the Royal Academy, where for several years he became influential as a lecturer. He emphasized to his students the importance of a scientific approach to landscape painting. He held his position at the Academy for only a few years until his death in 1837 at the age of 60.

Malvern Hall (1809)

Images: Wikipedia Commons

Wikipedia: John Constable

Metropolitan Museum of Art – John Constable

John Constable: The Complete Works

Jay Silverheels was born Harold Smith in Canada on the Six Nations Indian Reserve. His father was a Mohawk chief who had served in World War I. At the time, the Iroquois – like most First Nations people in Canada and their counterparts in the United States – were not considered citizens.

As a young man, Silverheels was incredibly athletic and quickly rose to the status of lacrosse & boxing champion. He came to the US to pursue an athletic career off-rez and soon caught Hollywood’s eye, landing him his first roles as a stuntman and movie extra.

At the time very few Indians were involved in the media spotlight; they almost never received leading roles of any kind and were often overlooked for Native roles in favor of white actors. When Silverheels entered the movie business, Native casting was dominated by actors such as “Iron-Eyes Cody” (an Italian who was billed as an Indian) or by any spray-tanned performer who could be passed off as Indian. It was common practice for white actors with a make-up job to play the lead role of an Indian, while Indians like Silverheels were relegated to being stuntmen or nameless extras with no lines.

Whether the motive was a dependence on big-name actors, or racism, or a need to portray Indians in an artificial and contrived way, this kind of industry provided difficult competition for aspiring Native actors.

Perhaps it was an attempt to create a more “photogenic” Native identity that Silverheels took on his more Indian-sounding screen name in 1945. Originally his nickname on the lacrosse court, “Silverheels” was admittedly more Indian than “Harry Smith.”

His first major movie role was 1948′s Key Largo, the Bogart and Bacall classic also featuring another Native great of Hollywood, Rodd Redwing.

The following year he made his debut in his most famous role as Tonto, the Lone Ranger’s sidekick. The series made history by making an Indian actor a household name; but in the process a generation of Americans were raised with the image of Indians as nodding, grunting sidekicks.

While he continued to star in the low-budget Westerns that were so prolific in the 40′s and 50′s, he was discontented with the availability of good work opportunities for Native actors and the typecasting of Indians on-screen. He later went on to found the Indian Actors Workshop, a project to which he devoted enormous amounts of time and resources. It still operates today.

In 1963 he was inducted into the Screen Actors Hall of Fame, but it was a hollow triumph; the social constraints of the day had limited his achievements in film to a dubious legacy that ran counter to his advocacy efforts off-screen. In addition, racial issues and activism were coming to the forefront in America, and the kind of roles that made him famous also made him an effigy of outdated thinking for a new generation to attack.

Regardless of the controversy surrounding his career, he is still widely recognized as an important television pioneer. His persistence and talent paved the way for a new class of Native actors and actresses, causing many to wonder what he might have achieved had he lived under different circumstances, in another era of film. Jay Silverheels died in 1980 at his ranch in California. He continues to receive posthumous awards for his accomplishments.

Wikipedia: Jay Silverheels

Haudensosaunee Confederacy – Notable People

Jay Silverheels’ “Tonto spoof” on the Johnny Carson Show (1969)

In the middle of the 18th century, France and England were the world’s biggest imperial powers, with massive holdings in North America. When they entered this ultimate contest for supremacy, it meant major repercussions for their Indian allies, who were already facing the onslaughts of colonization.

History Channel: May 15, This Day in History

Top Pick: “The War that Made America” docudrama, hosted by Graham Greene (read more…)

War for Empire – official website for the 250-Year Commemoration of the French & Indian War

See all posts tagged with the topic “French and Indian War”

Audubon could aptly be called the “Bird Man of the Early American Frontier.” Born in Haiti, raised in France, and devoted to his adopted American homeland, he became a world-famous icon of the wilderness. His natural sketches comprise perhaps the world’s greatest illustrated volume.

Audubon was born Jean Rabin, the illegitimate son of a naval officer and plantation owner in the French Caribbean. He was reared in France from his early years after his father took him to live with his stepmother in Nantes. When she formally adopted the elder Audubon’s children in 1794, young Jean received the name Jean Jaques Fougere Audubon (which he later anglicized upon coming to the US).

As a young man he was charming, inquisitive, athletic, with strong interests both in the arts and the natural world. His father encouraged these pursuits but also intended him to become a sailor. Young Audubon was prone to seasickness and had little aptitude for math or navigation; and when faced with the military draft upon the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars, his father helped him immigrate to the US covertly, where he had arranged a joint venture in the hopes of launching his son’s business career.

John James Audubon, as he was now known, aged 18, settled in Pennsylvania and promptly fell in love with the American wilderness. The place held many attractions for him: the vigorous frontier life appealed to his sense of adventure; he formed many important relationships, including that with his future wife; and above all he was overwhelmed by the lush natural beauty of his new home, prompting his childhood fascination with birds and other animals to grow into a naturalist’s passion.

He made painstaking observations of the region’s bird life and carried out detailed studies to learn about their behaviors. Among these experiments were some of the earliest documented uses of bird-banding. He became an expert in taxidermy and amassed a huge collection of specimens.

On a trip to Philadelphia, he visited Charles Willson Peale’s museum of natural history and determined to make a visual record of his own natural studies.

After a series of business enterprises and partnerships came to naught, he finally moved to the Kentucky frontier with his new wife, more determined than ever to procure a living through his wildlife art. He thrived on the rugged life of a woodsman and the new-found kinship he shared with the frontier settlers, and particularly the region’s Native Americans. Immersed in the same world that produced the larger-than-life personas of Daniel Boone and Johnny Appleseed, with a rigorous regime of traveling, hunting, and painting, his character and his work began to assume an identity that was uniquely reflective of his environment.

In 1812 he traveled to Philadelphia and finally acquired American citizenship, only to return home to find years’ worth of drawings destroyed by scavenging rodents. His work was further hampered by the financial depression that rocked the early American republic in the Panic of 1819, which left him and his young family virtually bankrupt and landed him in debtor’s jail. Barely able to eke out a living, he set off as an itinerant artist on a tour through the Deep South; during these difficult times his wife became the main breadwinner by teaching on plantations.

By the early 1820s Audubon had been able to reconstruct his lost collection of bird paintings to an even higher standard, and his natural studies in the South had offered a wealth of inspiration for his new volume. Another trip to Philadelphia in 1824 led to promising contacts – lessons from artist Thomas Sully and recommendations from Charles Bonaparte. Within two years he traveled to England, where he exhibited over 300 of his original works. He became an overnight sensation with his European audience, and immediately set out to start publishing his collection.

With production costs around the modern equivalent of $2 million, the first release of Birds of America was to feature copper plate engravings and hand-colored, life-sized prints produced by a specially employed team of artists and craftsmen. Among its subscribers were many members of the royalty and nobility of England and France.

Audubon’s celebrity status as buckskin-clad hunter and frontiersman did not overshadow his considerable artistic skills, or his scientific prowess – neither of which was lost on his European peers. He was made an honorary member of the Royal Society of London (only the second American so named after Ben Franklin); the Royal Society of Edinburgh; and the Linnaean Society (named for Linnaeus, the famous taxonomist). He was widely invited to lecture on natural science and gave demonstrations on his taxidermy methods which employed wire frames to recreate more life-like poses. One of these events was attended by a fascinated Charles Darwin, then a young student in Edinburgh.

After an extended stay, Audubon finally returned to his family in the US in 1829. Over the following years he continued to make business trips abroad, as well as natural expeditions through vast stretches of North America.

Right: An 1826 oil portrait of Audubon by artist John Syme; it now hangs in the White House

In 1842 he published a new & expanded edition of Birds of America (after having issues with the previous publication & the quality of the copyists’ workmanship). He also embarked on a new project, a work on mammals entitled The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, which was left unfinished and later completed by his sons and a close associate. He died in 1851 on the estate he bought for his family near New York’s Hudson River, today the location of the Audubon Park.

Although he had hoped to leave his family materially secure, all but 80 of the copper plates used for the printing of Birds of America were later sold by Audubon’s struggling widow and melted down for scrap. The 435 original watercolor studies she sold to the New York Historical Society.

Wikipedia: John James Audubon

Wikipedia: Audubon’s Birds of America

Audubon Society “John James Audubon – The American Woodsman: Our Namesake and Inspiration;” plus Audubon’s Birds of America online

University of Pittsburgh: Audubon’s Birds of America – complete digitized collection

PBS American Masters: John James Audubon – essay, gallery & timeline

BrainyQuote.com – Audubon quotations

Parker was the first Indian to hold this position; in fact he was the first Indian to hold any cabinet-level government office. His achievements in several fields – engineering, military, and diplomatic – mark major milestones in the history of modern American Indians.

More on Ely Parker’s life and career in this post

Mary Jemison was one of numerous white settlers whose stories of captivity among the Indians became legendary.

The daughter of Scots-Irish immigrants living in what is today central Pennsylvania, she was captured by the Shawnee during a border dispute in which most of her family was killed. She was traded to the Seneca Iroquois and adopted into a family as part of a custom which enabled the replacement lost loved ones, or at least income provided through ransom. Mary eventually married into the Seneca and although offered redemption chose to remain with her adoptive people, becoming known by future settlers in the region as the “White Woman of the Genessee.”

Wikipedia: Mary Jemison

About.com Women’s History: Mary’s Jemison’s Captivity Narrative

Explore Pennsylvania History: Mary Jemison