Page 85 - Confronting Race Women and Indians on the Frontier, 1815 - 1915

F R O N T I E R P H I L OSOP HY: EUROPEAN DISCOURSE

-- On the Indian " O ther" --

The image of Native Americans f a red even worse than that of west­
ern women. For one thing, a wealth of traditions influenced the ways
in which Europeans interpreted American Indians. From the time of
Columbus, literary and other conventions of the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance shaped European thinking regarding Indians. From Greek
gods to Judaic heroes to Christian saints, Europeans applied them all.
On the other side were f o lktales of savage hordes, barbarians, and can­
nibals. The result was a split persona-the Noble Savage and the
Ignoble Savage. lID
For another thing, because Europeans viewed Indians as different
and even outrageous in their dress, customs, and culture, they consumed
any f o rm of media concerning Indians. From the 1570S to the early nine­
teenth century, artists depicted American Indians largely as f a ntasy
figures whose primitive nudity was only partially disguised by fe athered
ornaments. Presented as simple and pure people, these stylized American
Indians reflected Renaissance traditions by taking on, in most drawings
and paintings, the proportions and classical lines of Greek and Roman
figures. III By the late eighteenth century, artists such as Benjamin W e st
refined the use of these neoclassical, didactic Indian figures in paintings
commemorating historical events. II2
By the early nineteenth century, European artists began to reflect
the Romantic view of the world, and the image of the American fr on­
tier changed accordingly. Soon, Romanticism ran amuck in the work of
European artists who f o und it impossible to divorce themselves fr om
European dreams and fe ars in their representations of western Indians.
Such painters as Goya, Girodet, Delacroix, and Dore fr equently repre­
sented Indians as personifications of the American e st, as well as roman­
W
tic heroes. 1I3 Although these artists had never seen the western f r ontier,
they believed themselves qualified to purvey its image to Europeans who
were anxious f o r a confirmation of their own preconceptions. Swiss artist
Karl Bodmer, a member of German explorer Prince Maximilian's 1833
expedition to the W e st, was one of the f e w European artists who
attempted to bring ethnic accuracy and anthropological clarity to his

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