Petyr Botti-Anderson Paper
Petyr Botti-Anderson, “Ethnographic Responsibility in Western Art,” BOZetto, Vol. 7 (Autumn 2019): 5-11.
Is all ethnographic art inherently racist? The white supremacist history of ethnographic art must be part of academic inquiry into the works of Anglo-American artists who sought to depict non-white cultures. Historical depictions of Native Americans and the collection of artifacts call into question whether Anglo-American artists had an ethical regard for the cultures they represented.[1] Painters such as George Catlin seem at odds with the Wild West Show, but both should be part of the same conversation about ethics and ethnography. The depiction of Native Americans through art and historic preservation influenced how the surviving tribes would be viewed and treated by their captors. In contrast with preservationism, the method of ethical reporting represents movement in the direction of a socially progressive society. Images created by preservationism primarily benefit captor culture, whereas an ethical approach to ethnography fosters cross-cultural exchange.
The preservationist school of ethnographic American artists was founded by Charles Wilson Peale when he established his museum. Using glass cases, combining extinct animals with Native American artifacts, and charging admission for a spectacle, he created the prototype for how American artists would treat the Native American subject.[2] One of the most well-known proponents of this preservationist philosophy was George Catlin, who sought to document indigenous populations before they disappeared.[3] Native Plains populations were less affected by displacement prior to the construction of railroads; they were at a peak of cultural diversity and development at the time of the Indian Wars.[4] By the time tourists reached the Wild West, the remaining “cowboys and Indians” were found in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.[5] The artistic production of the show and the countless cartoons and posters that it produced are part of a reenactment that aggressively uses and alters the imagery from the host culture. Little-known artist Joseph Sheuerle brought ethnography closer to something that might be considered socially ethical. Analysis of Sheuerle’s sympathetic approach furthers existing scholarship because he rejected the notion of Native Americans as an extinct race and instead asserted that different cultures must try and exist together within the same country.
Charles Willson Peale and His Museum
Interested in preserving images of revolutionaries and extinct animals like mastodons, artist-entrepreneur Charles Willson Peale is known for creating the modern museum. Peale was an important influential figure in the history of Western art, especially through his friendship with Thomas Jefferson and indirect participation in Western expeditions.[6] He was an American founder in the tradition of Benjamin Franklin, and thus his art school was connected to a natural history museum. Peale began ethnographic study of Native Americans as part of his scientific interest in the West. He joined preservationist methods for animal, plant, and geological specimens with the artifacts of the Native tribes. This proto-preservationist ethnography creates a substitute for the real landscape in the form of a museum. The result for the subject population was that “the West is not a place, but rather an ideology, one to which Native Americans do not subscribe.”[7] For Peale, the Native was a living artifact, a sample of culture that can stand in for the real thing. He recognized the Native American subject as part of the “wonders of expansionism,” necessitating incorporation into his Linnaeus-based organization system. Preservation ethnography was responding to the loss of self-governing tribes, more concerned about the moments of the past than the survivors of the present.
Peale also displayed a keen interest in using imagery for spectacle. He directed his biracial slave, Moses Williams, to dress up with a Native American headdress and ride a horse around town to promote his Mastodon exhibit. The idea would take off over half a century later with Wild West shows. Williams is also credited for cutting out silhouettes of facial profiles of museum patrons under Peale’s supervision. These silhouettes were given as gifts or sold as a cheap alternative to painted portraits.[8] Besides the actual art school created by Peale, there existed a society of ethnographers motivated by finding differences between Native American and European-style culture. They believed that superficial facial qualities might separate savagery from civility ‘[referring] to the contemporary pseudoscience of phrenology, which was based on the belief that neural anatomy was expressed in the shape of the skull—in its curves, planes, and bumps—and that the deviation of these measurements from a norm could give insight into an individual’s or an entire ethnic or entire racial group’s level of intelligence or even their criminal propensity.”[9] Racially motivated hypotheses were pursued by ethnographers interested in studying the inhabitants of the Plains. Peale was able to engage with the Lewis and Clark Expedition through his relationship with Thomas Jefferson and other scientists. They required that Meriwether Lewis create an ethnographic profile of Native tribes by describing or drawing their physical qualities. Several unique silhouettes were also made at the Peale Museum of tribal members visiting Thomas Jefferson. The images were compared to portraits of Anglo-American sitters and given to Meriwether Lewis to help him decide on categorical differences in facial features.[10]
George Catlin’s Indian Gallery
Following in Peale’s footsteps, artist George Catlin took certain liberties when documenting Native Americans. Catlin’s importance as an ethnographer is recognized through the widespread impact of his Indian Gallery, and the belief in a vanishing culture. The consequences of Catlin’s dehumanizing preservationist display indicate that this form of documentarian ethnography is passively destructive. Catlin sought the West through his association with William Clark, the other half of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Catlin focused on field-specific ethnographic phenomena and “usually completed his portraits in a studio back in the East, but only after he had made careful notions as to the costumes, hairstyles, body-paint, and weapons or totems carried by each of his subjects, for Catlin had come to realize that his mission was more that of the ethnographer than of the artist.”[11] With the understanding that the Native culture was about to vanish, Catlin meant for his mass depiction of Native Americans to serve as a the lasting image of that culture. Through his method of preserving culture, Catlin reduced individuals to tribal types and symbols.
Although the idea of a dying race was important to the purpose behind Catlin’s ethnography, he was very much involved with living Native Americans throughout his projects. The conquest of the American West was significant for artists interested in ethnography because the rate of cultural change was rapid. The shock of this event partly inspired Catlin to travel to the West for he considered the remaining Native Americans to be doomed. Although he lived near or among certain tribes, the artist distanced himself from knowing the specifics of the events he would sketch.[12] As a sort of aloof observer, Catlin understood that the consumer of his material was interested more in the imagery than the backstory. Catlin tended to view his Native subjects as specimens for study, which required taking a less ethical ethnological stance. Because he treated his subjects as an artifact of history, “beginning in 1843, Catlin toured Britain and the Continent with three troupes of Indians. His first delegation consisted of nine Ojibwas from Canada... they added novelty to Catlin's Indian Gallery once the initial flurry of interest in his work died down...”[13] As a preservationist ethnographer, Catlin was able to dehumanize the Native American to the point of a living exhibit specimen. His performers are similar to the later Wild West actors, drawing crowds for the less exciting and more ponderous paintings. Performers were used to add interest to an exhibit that features symbols more than specifics of culture. The reality of Native American individuals illustrates how this ethnography falls short of social responsibility.
Another more acute effect of Catlin’s reporting from the field was a social exchange that altered the Native subject. The artist repeatedly visited the Mandan to paint portraits/rituals and during these visits he traded art for artifact. One Mandan painter, Four Bears, appeared to abandon a linear abstract style after watching artists Catlin and Karl Bodmer paint in an academic European mode. In a sense, Native and white artists were creating a cross-cultural exchange in which both cultures gained modes of representation.[14] Although the Mandan would largely be decimated by smallpox soon after, these evidences of exchange indicate that ethno-reporting in the field has the potential for ethical exchange between subject and recorder. This kind of transaction is necessary for the coexistence of cultures, which is ignored by preservationism. Documentarian preservationist ethnography attempts to do both by using encounters in the field to create a “snapshot” of history. George Catlin’s passive collecting methods compile visual information about Native culture while offering little in the way of social dynamics or religious complexity. Catlin makes up for the shortfalls of preservationism with his reporting in the field, a move that allows for ethical trade of goods and information between artist and sitter. Ultimately, he was most influential in reducing Native Americans to symbols and types, a substitute for the living culture that faced extinction. Catlin’s ethnography collected placeholders for Native culture through innovative reporting methods and created an exaggerated display of natural history for Anglo-American and European viewership.
The Great Northern Railway’s Images of Native Americans
Just after the American Civil War, America had finally graduated from being a “new and improved” version of Europe into a distinct isolationist Empire. One railway company explained “there could, of course, be but one outcome. The Indians were subdued and retired to reservations some of which now skirt the Great Northern right-of-way for many miles in Dakota and Montana.”[15] The raw beauty of Western landscape became a revenue generator when connected to the rising tourist class of the East. Artists and designers were employed by the Great Northern Railway to create a massive marketing campaign that was interested in the ethnography of the Native Americans. “See America First” was touted as a chance to see Native Americans in their authentic setting. In reality the actors (Glacier Park and the Blackfeet tribe) were part of a constructed fantasy version of the West. The Blackfeet had been dislodged from former lands by the railway and the park in order to manufacture tourism.
Early visitors to Glacier Park saw the “emergence of a coterie of recognized performers who maintained 'camps' near several lodges, performed ‘traditional’ dances and ceremonies for visitors to the park, and generally rubbed shoulders with hotel guests.”[16] The display of culture was performed and seemingly initiated by the Blackfeet, a sort of showing the white audience what they want to see. Railways and National Parks were concerned with preserving the authenticity of the West, and this included a “real-looking” native inhabitant. The reality of the reservation life and government suppression of traditional language and clothing meant that tourist operations needed reenactors to keep the feeling of the West alive. One element that separates this form of ethnography used for aggressive display is the capital benefit to the actor at the expense of stereotyping of their culture. The Native performers of the Great Northern seem freer than the “living exhibits” of Catlin’s travelling Indian Gallery, but the goal of the railway was to suppress a conquered nation while preserving a typological image of the Native. Artists working for Great Northern had access to living Native Americans and would pick and choose or arrange their subject to increase the marketing potential. Using the traditions of previous preservationist ethnographer-artists, designers filled postcards and booklets with images that often fit the events of the past more accurately than the practices of the present.
The Great Northern Railway acted as a distinct ethnographic interpreter in the tradition of finding basic “types” amongst Native populations, synthesizing the type to an advertisable figure, and using the combined poster and reenactment display to make financial gains. Artists were aggressive in that they posed the subject rather than passively observed decisions or free will of the sitter. As a capitalist and political entity, the images produced by the railway “are part of an economically motivated romanticization of the situation and reality of native Americans' lives. As such, all these images were carefully posed and created to support a narrative for potential and actual visitors to Glacier National Park.”[17]
William Cody’s Wild West Show
The flamboyant showmanship and obvious racial typography of the Wild West show makes William Cody seem less like an ethical ethnographer and more of an exploitative gimmick. Like other ethnographic artists, “Buffalo Bill” used the tactics of preservationism to portray Native Americans based on their corresponding symbols and rituals. It is established that the Wild West Show was “a major contribution to the stereotyping of the American Indian and the romanticizing of the American West in the popular imagination,” but this complex form of artistic ethnography introduced social responsibility that had previously been absent from preservation ethnography.[18] After Native Americans were confined to reservations, the wild herds of bison thinned, and the open lands subject to development. Buffalo Bill saw an opportunity to recreate the dramatic events of the old West for an audience that missed their chance to experience the “real thing.” The main narrative of the Wild West Show was based on reenacting historical events such as the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Custer’s Last Stand, and battles with Plains Indians.[19] From its inception, the Wild West Show was rooted in natural history, ethnography, and a tradition of retelling tales from eyewitness survivors. The Native American characters in the show were played by the survivors of the Indian Wars, recreating a simplified and dramatic version of history alongside white actors and one of the few remaining bison herds.
This reenactment is less aggressive than the tourism of the railroads because the ethnographic attitude is not about animalizing the Native American within natural history, and instead romanticizes the Plains Indian as a social counterpart to white intrusion in the West. Instead of situating Native Americans within a museum's “hall of animals,” they were placed in the same space as cowboys in a combined Western history. Catlin’s fears were partially realized in the aftermath of Native American decimation on the Plains, and the Wild West Show responded to the duality of a cultural epoch lost to history and the enduring remnants of that culture. During the height of Cody’s success in the 1880s, “the real frontier was coming to a close, Eastern cities were filling up with native-born Americans and European immigrants who were wholly unfamiliar with the unique American frontier experience.”[20] The Wild West Show had a stand-in effect for American understanding of Native American Culture, and the typography of Plains Indians meant that only Cody’s version of the West would be remembered. Often this showman’s vision was the foundation for stereotypes and broad generalizations about culture.
Buffalo Bill hired various artists and printmakers to coordinate poster campaigns. He treated many of the men that he paid as friends, and his easy-going style masked a shrewdness that was able to manage the complexities of poster-printing and procuring the political support that allowed him to hire Native performers. This support began to wane as the public response to reservation policies became more complicated. Cody almost prematurely lost his show after “Indian rights advocates wanted to hold Cody accountable for the fact that several members of the Wild West cast had gotten sick and died while abroad.”[21] The argument was that using Native American workers was irresponsible and took advantage of their desperation for the sake of profit. Through his extreme exaggeration of Native American culture, Cody created a stereotypical image within his show, further popularized by his marketing campaigns. Although he damaged the reputation and image of Native people, Buffalo Bill took at least one significant step towards a more ethical interaction between the ethnographer and the living culture. Despite his reputation as exploiting Native Americans, his friendship with Sitting Bull and relationship with the Sioux are evidence of caring for surviving cultures. Upon his death, the Oglala Sioux collectively stated that all should “know that the Oglalas found in Buffalo Bill a warm and lasting friend; that [their] hearts [were] sad from the heavy burden of his passing.”[22]
Joseph Sheuerle’s Enthological Work
Documenting culture in the field was a method used by the preservationist Catlin and the reenactor Cody; however, it is the sympathetic reporter that makes this an ethical practice. Artist Joseph Sheuerle was such a reporter and deserves attention for pioneering the new form of sympathetic ethnography during a time when preservationist ethnography was the main focus of artists. This painter has remained obscure because he “never sought recognition for himself, always shunned publicity, and apparently kept most of his collection of Indian portraits to himself.”[23] Joseph Sheuerle worked for both the Wild West Show and Northern Railroad as a cartoonist/graphic designer. With the creation of the iconic mountain goat logo for the railway, the artist began a series of trips between the East and West for work and to meet the performers of Buffalo Bill’s exhibitions. Before acting as an ethical ethno-reporter, Sheuerle was part of the stereotyping ethnographic tradition in his capacity as an employee of the Great Northern Railway Company (which “praised [his] cartoons and used some as advertisements for Glacier National Park after it opened in 1910”).[24] The railway president believed that humor, applied to the exaggerated typographies of Native Americans, would help connect the content of the West to the potential Eastern tourist. Sheuerle caricatured both Native and white subjects; however, the ethnological contribution of the artist is through the interplay between the front and back of his portraits.
Sheuerle met several famous Native warriors and chiefs through his professional associations, and such interactions inspired him to travel to various reservations to paint portraits, meet extended family, and observe living conditions. The artist painted Native subjects in situ, and on the back of the media wrote about how or when the portrait was painted, a personal experience on-site, or a remarkable observation. These notes were often illustrated with a humorous cartoon; however, the caricature is specific to the individual (as opposed to a railway cartoon which is generalized). For example, a sitter who aspired to become a famous boxer was drawn as a cartoon boxer who shadowboxed in a mirror. The portrait on the front side reveals almost nothing about the sitter as a person, whereas the back side of the illustration has a text that explains the rowdiness, desires, and ego of the young man.[25] The caricatures on the portrait backsides are unique because they are not the subject of the artwork. Instead, these drawings are ethnographic research.
Early 1900s America was rife with racial and economic segregation, something the artist was familiar with when he was sharing the space with Native Americans. When staying at a hotel on a reservation, Sheuerle invited a Native man he was painting to share dinner, “but the hotel would have no Indians at the guest table covered with pristine linen. They had three tables in all. No. 1 was for guests (linen covered); No. 2 was for agency employees (cotton checkered tablecloth); and No. 3 was for Indians (oilcloth)…[he] sat down with [his] invited Indian guests at the corner of table No. 3.”[26] In this style of sympathetic reporting, the ethnographer attempts to join the subject culture where they sit both physically and metaphorically. For the artist, the authentic situation involved the intruding ethnographer creating a comfortable space for the subject to immerse Sheuerle in their culture, a reporting observer transformed into a participating documentarian. The elements of first-hand accounting, responding to the needs and values of Native culture, and approaching ethnography with social ethics contribute to the sympathetic reporting of Joseph Sheuerle.
[1] Martyn Hammersley, “Ethnography: Problems and Prospects,” Journal of Ethnography and Education, 1 (2006): 3-14.
[2] Charles Coleman Sellers, Mr. Peale’s Museum: Charles Willson Peale and the First Popular Museum of Natural Science and Art, (New York: Norton, 1980), 49-87.
[3] William H. Goetzmann, The West of the imagination, George Catlin: Saving the memory of a vanishing race, 2nd ed. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), 18-26.
[4] Robert H. Lowie, “Indians of the Plains,” in Anthropological Handbook 1 (New York: American Museum of Natural History, 1954), 145-151.
[5] Scott Rank, “Native Americans and American Popular Culture, 1885-1930: The Wild West Show,” Salem Media 2000-2019,www.historyonthenet.com (2012).
[6] Goetzmann, “The West of the imagination,” 5-14.
[7] Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, A Cutter of Profiles, Interesting Characters by the Lines of Their Faces (Princeton: Princeton University Press, Washington, D.C.: National Portrait Gallery, 2018), 1-3.
[8] Marc Rothenberg, The History of Science in the United States: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland Publishing, 2001), 451.
[9] Shaw, A Cutter of Profiles, 3.
[10] Goetzmann, The West of the Imagination, 27-32.
[11] Gareth E. John, “Cultural Nationalism, Westward Expansion and the Production of Imperial Landscape: George Catlin's Native American West” Ecumene, Vol. 8, No. 2 (2000): 175-203.
[12] Uncredited, “Synopsis; Nine Ojibbeway Indians in London by George Catlin,” Sid Richardson Museum sidrichardsonmuseum.org (2019).
[13] John C. Ewers, “Early white influence upon Plains Indian painting-George Catlin and Carl Bodmer among the Mandan, 1832-34,” Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 134, No. 7 (1957): 7-10.
[14] Roland Reed, “Summary of 7 photographs and 10 photographic prints, Images of Piegan Blackfeet Indians at Glacier National Park, Montana,” Special Collections, 1912-1915, University of Washington Libraries.
[15] James Willard Schultz, Blackfeet tales of Glacier National Park (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1916).
[16] Reed, “Summary of 7 photographs and 10 photographic prints.”
[17] Rank, “Native Americans and American Popular Culture.”
[18] Louis S. Warren, Buffalo Bill's America: William Cody and the Wild West Show” (Toronto: Random House Publishing, 2005) 256-282.
[19] Rank, “Native Americans and American Popular Culture.”
[20] L.G. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians 1883-1933 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 73–79.
[21] Sarah J. Blackstone, The Business of Being Buffalo Bill: Selected Letters of William F. Cody, 1879-1917 (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1988), 30-32.
[22] Uncredited, “Exhibit on Joseph Sheuerle,” Montana Historical Society Museum Collections, 2019.
[23] William H. Gerdts, Joseph Sheuerle and His Indian Gallery (Cincinnati: Cincinnati Art Galleries, 2000), 1-3.
[24] Thornton I. and Margo Boileau, “Joe Scheuerle: Modest Man with Friendly Palette,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 21, No. 4 (1971): 39–43.
[25] Boileau, “Joe Scheuerle: Modest Man,” 50-58.
[26] Jennifer Bottomly-O’looney, “Sitting Proud: The Indian Portraits of Joseph Scheuerle,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Vol. 58, No. 3 (2008): 64-72.