"The 'Indian' in European Art: A Reflection of the Minds of Men" by
Sarah AugustineA midst the Age of Discovery, both the European mentality and the prevailing attitude toward the indigenous peoples of North America is reflected through art. The image of the Indians, primarily in fine art, was "a faithful index of the way white society in large thought about them" (Hughes 175).
The European mind, upon setting foot on new earth, during the fifteenth century was a product of a closed society. The Roman Catholic Church held strict control over knowledge and learning, limiting any investigation of the unknown, especially in the realm of the natural world (Sales 75-76).
Christopher Columbus never actually say mainland, but it is possible that Spanish mariners saw a glimpse of Florida's coast as early as 1499 (Hughes 5) did. Nevertheless, when Christopher Columbus went about naming and possessing new lands for the Spanish throne, he was a classic by-product of this rigid mentality. After naming San Salvador, Columbus turns his attention toward the "naked people" on the beach:
"They ought to be good servants and of good intelligence [ingenio]. . . I believe
that they would easily be made Christians, because it seemed to me that they had
no religion. Our Lord pleasing, I will carry off six of them at my departure to
Your Highnesses, in order that they may learn to speak" (Sales 96-97).Columbus does not regard these people with any integrity, he sees them as part of nature and, therefore, under the dominion of man. His words also demonstrate a common view, of Indians as benevolent and child-like, held by European during earlier encounters (Hughes 175).
Juan Pance de Leon was the first recorded arrival on mainland in 1513. He was searching for slaves and gold, not the mythical Fountain of Youth. However, the Spanish (including Columbus) didn't bring artists on these military ventures, so their early encounters aren't captured in paintings or engravings (Hughes 5).
Jacques Le Moyne created the earliest surviving paintings of Indians. Le Moyne was a cartographer from Dieppe, travelling with French Huguenots. The Huguenots were Protestant followers of John Calvin (Hughes 5). In 1564, they formed a settlement forty miles north of St. Augustine with the hope of forever leaving behind warfare and religious persecution (Parry 2). In one very stylized painting (figure 1) by Le Moyne, Rene de Laudonniere, the leader of the expedition, is standing in a cloud of "lily-white" Indians (Hughes 6).
The settlement did not last long. In 1565 the Spanish attacked and killed most of the colonists in the Protestant outpost (Hughes 6). La Moyne managed a slim escape with his watercolors at his side (Parry 2).
John White was an Englishman who served as the governor of the mysterious Roanoke Island in Virginia (Parry 15.) He was also an artist with a more attentive eye for truth and detail, which is demonstrated in the painting of a solitary figure called The Flyer (Figure 2). The watercolors by White, completed between 1585 and 1587, range in subject from birds, fish, reptiles, and insects to settlements, costumes, and occupational practices of the Indian people. His work is anthropologically much more accurate than the work of Le Moyne (Parry 16).
Le Moyne and White were the primary artists in Theodore de Bry's ten part series called America (Parry 7). De Bry was a Protestant himself, and made great effort to depict the Spanish as monsters and the Indians as cannibalistic savages (Hughes 11). La Leyendra Negra or The Black Legend (Figure 3) is classic example of this propaganda. This black and white piece shows a Spanish ship with bodies of native captives dangling from its mast (Hughes 7).
The artwork produced by Le Moyne and De Bry did further injustice to the Indian peoples because they lumped the physical appearance of Indian subjects into one image. Elwood Parry describes this Indian prototype as having "Michelangesque attention to musculature" (Parry 10). They were clearly not interested in giving any one Indian distinguishing features in order to detract from any trace of humanity that might seep into the artwork. Both De Bry's and Le Moyne's prototypical Indian were used and reused whenever it was necessary to produce the likeness of a native (Parry 11). This was even obvious when holding two of De Bry's creations side-by-side (Figures 4 and 5).
Individual portraits of Indians did not exist before the year 1600 (Parry 18). The practical explanation was that a successful European painter was not about to journey across the Atlantic. However, in the late 1500's, a few Indians from the New World were presented to and genuinely honored as guests of the royal courts. Wanchese and Manteo were among the privileged when they traveled to England in 1584, yet no attempts were made to record the event in picture (Parry 20).
In the spring of 1616, Sir Thomas Dale needed to aid his struggling Virginia colony, so he brought ten to twelve Indians to London. Among the group was Pocahontas (it was discovered that her real name was Matowaka), a real, live "Indian princess". (She was considered a princess because her father was Powhatan, the native "Emperour" of Virginia.) Eventually Pocahontas was converted to Christianity and given the baptismal name of Rebecca. She then married John Rolfe on April 8, 1614. Her assimilation into European culture did not end with marriage. In fact, she even learned to wear conventional attire. Simon van de Passe did an engraving of her at the age of 21 (Figure 6). In this portrait, Pocahontas is lacking almost any feature unique to her Indian culture. The only hints were her defined cheekbones and a feather fan she clasped in her hand (Parry 8). Perry made a very poignant observation of the transition from Matowaka to Rebecca Rolfe when he wrote:
"In strictly human terms, therefore, no more appropriate or convincing images of the taming of the American forests could be imagined then the arrival of Rebecca Rolfe in England" (Perry 8).
The European mind, in this case English, as it were, seemed initially determined to recreate every Indian into the likeness of white-men. When the Indians resisted blindly embracing an entirely new identity that come with disowning the culture they were born into, suddenly the sentiment changed. The Indians were no longer benign, rather they became "imps of Satan" (Hughes 175). This gave cause to create even more disturbing and inaccurate depictions of Indians as brutal and wild.
The first sign of human depiction of Indians in artwork was by Gustavus Hesselius, a Swedish artist, in the late 1700's. He painted a portrait of Indian with a human face. Hesselius gave Lapowinsa (Figure 7) the face he was born with, and not a prototypical look (Holtz 167). In art, this one moment of realization for the Indians took over two hundred years. Think about it.
Works Cited
Hughes, Robert. American Vision: The Epic History of Art in America. New York: Alred A. Knopf, 1997.
Mendelowitz, Daniel. A History of American Art. Chicago: Holtz, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc., 1960.
Parry, Elwood. The Image of the Indians and the Black man in American Art, 1590-1900. New York: George Braziller, 1974.
Sales, Kirkpatrick. The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy. New York: Plume Books, 1990.