Slide Sets

The visual impact of America and its native inhabitants on Europeans was immense and is well-documented. Hundreds of European visitors and permanent settlers left literary and pictorial impressions of the New World and its peoples, images that entered deeply into European culture and consciousness and which remained there, for better or worse, for centuries.

The same process of impression and description existed on the other side. American Indians, too, sought to describe, and perhaps explain to themselves in familiar terms, the strange White newcomers and their ways. However, trying to see Europeans as Indians first saw them presents many difficulties. The first is the lack of an Indian written language. No purely literary descriptions could be made, and when vivid and well-remembered oral descriptions were offered, they were given to Europeans (missionaries, traders, officials, farmers) who inevitably recorded them in European tongues according to European interests and sensibilities. In these circumstances, even the most careful listener/recorder could not help but distort in some way the essence of what was being said or lose the nuances of feeling and description that lay within the narration.

But while Indians had no written language (at least as understood by Europeans) they did have a rich pictographic tradition. Moreover, it did not merely describe in the sense of accurate rendering of images, but it also conveyed some sense of feeling and emotion about the object or person being recorded. It is these images, Indian-made and not filtered through European modes of expression, style, or media, which may be used to give a purely Indian view of the strangers in their lands.

In looking at Indian images of Europeans, especially first impressions, several iconographic impressions are immediately apparent and in fact occur again and again. Clearly, it is these things that most struck Indians as peculiar to and about Whites. These "White signifiers" are weapons (especially guns), hats, and boats. None of these was utterly new to Indians; after all, they had weapons (though not firearms), had boats (though not the large ships of Europeans) and often adorned and/or covered their heads (though not with the European-style hat). In short, it was the oddness of the object and not its utter novelty that identified the European to the Indian, both pictorially and culturally.

The slides included in this set illustrate how these themes and images predominated, and persisted, in Indian attempts to portray and perhaps understand the newcomers and their ways.

The first slide is taken from one of the most remarkable of all Indian pictographic records, the Walam Olum, or "Red Score." It was made by the Leni Lenape (called "Delawares" by the Whites) an important Algonkian-speaking group originally occupying modern Ohio and Pennsylvania. The Walam Olum was drawn on a fan-fold series of sheets and drawn in standardized Algonkian pictographs, and presented the officially-remembered history and cosmology of the tribe.

(In its standard and widely-understood iconographic system, the pictographs were functionally related to Chinese ideographic characters, in that each symbol carried a set meaning that could be understood by many peoples, even if they did not share a common spoken language.)

The section shown here has been translated, with each line of English interpreting each pictograph. The final pictograph, numbered "184," is the standard sign for Europeans throughout the Walam Olum-a large ship. The size and height of European vessels greatly impressed Indians, especially on first sight. The length and the towering masts of the ships are clearly shown in the image.

There could be variation of this picture. For instance, No. 184 shows two lines sticking out horizontally from the mast of the ship, which may represent guns; hence the translation of this image which suggests the power of the Whites, "their large ships went easily, wherever they pleased." Other similar symbols in the Walam Olum, if simply signifying "Whites" and not commenting on their power or abilities, do not include the presumed guns.

The ship, therefore, did not merely designate "European." In addition, it represented to Indians an important part of White culture and White power, and was seen as an integral part of the White identity.

The second slide forcefully illustrates the most important, revolutionary, and dangerous impression that Europeans made on Indians, their possession of firearms. While guns as such were not often used to ideographically designate Europeans, it was rare that the latter were not shown with guns (or with their equally remarkable "long knives," i.e., swords or sabers).

In this slide, a European is shown hunting a bear with a gun. The picture was drawn entirely by an Indian despite the later English words added to the scene, and comes from an Algonkian-speaking area in the Northeast. Besides the gun, note the small curved object hanging from the shooter, which probably represents a powder-horn. The large curved object might represent a blanket-roll, a sword (though it is highly unlikely that an early settler out hunting would carry a sword) or perhaps a second gun.

Indians quickly acquired guns from the Whites and became highly proficient in their use. Nevertheless, the gun both as reality and as symbol remained a European artifact and designator in the Indian mind.

Indians used many media to record their impressions of Europeans. Besides oral recounting and pictographic representation, Indian carved objects were used to show (and inadvertently demonstrate the impact of) Europeans and their odd habits. These objects were often humble, everyday household or personal items—practical rather than decorative. Yet even in these the White presence and character could be recorded.

This slide is of an Indian comb, probably from the modern Southeastern United States. A practical, personal object, its handle nevertheless has been skillfully carved to represent a European as the Indian saw him in his unique and characteristic essentials. The European carries a gun, of course. In addition, the White Man is dressed in baggy trousers, jacket, and wears a hat. All of these are typical of Europeans and originally alien to Indian notions of proper or practical dress.

Besides clothing and a weapon, the European is seen accompanied by a dog; he may in fact be a hunter. While Indians had dogs long before Whites came to the Americas, the use of trained dogs for hunting, companionship, and even warfare, was a striking characteristic of Europeans. Thus, this simple object graphically illustrates how European arms, clothes and animal-keeping appeared to Indians; it also shows, indeed, how even the humblest of objects can be used to discover the thoughts and feelings of people, "artists" or not. On the Indian side, further, this comb shows the degree of skill and appreciation of esthetic to be found even in the most ordinary things.

The sheer variety of Europeans and their ways never ceased to impress Indians, even after long acquaintance with White Men. Yet all of this variety still appeared to serve one purpose—allowing Europeans (and later, Americans) to dominate Indians and their lands.

This aspect of White power and the way it was recorded in Indian consciousness is illustrated in Slide 4. It is a picture of a decorated skin made about 1820 by a Chippewa from modern Wisconsin, which recorded a meeting between Chippewa and American representatives for the purpose of making a treaty; note the council-fires, a common motif showing that negotiations are underway.

In the illustration, which was drawn entirely by an Indian and in Indian style, Roman numeral I (the numerals were added later by Americans who received a copy of the Indian account) shows an American officer, typically wearing a hat and brandishing a saber. Number II represents the officer's aide, shown carrying a book, another typical trait of Whites. Number III, interestingly, shows a geologist carrying a hammer; the White obsession with investigating nature, and the existence of specialists to do this, apparently struck the Indians as quite odd.

Numbers V and VI are two attachés, shown with what are apparently pens. The White desire to record everything in writing impressed the Indians, who relied on memory even more than on pictographic records to keep their history. Numbers VII and VIII are two Chippewa chiefs, apparently those who were negotiating with the White officer.

Numbers IX and X represent, for the Indians, the heart and reality of the situation. The first is a group of eight soldiers and the second their weapons. Note how carefully the Indian recorder has gotten down the visual and military essence-all the soldiers and officials wear hats, and the guns all are equipped with bayonets, another form of the "long knives."

Thus, several centuries after the earliest Indian-White contacts, Indians' views and symbolizations of Whites had not changed at all: Whites wore hats, they carried guns, they had long knives, they were interested in the land.

The final two slides show another aspect of White culture frequently recorded in purely Indian images. Both of these, in different ways, illustrate forts, the physical reality as well as symbol of the spreading White power. Indians had had fortifications too, often not significantly different in layout and construction from White fortified towns or camps. But the use of the fort as a base for establishing and then spreading White authority and land-ownership struck the Indians forcefully.

Slide 5 is of an Indian map drawn up about 1752 among the Delaware Indians, and interpreted by the Delaware sub-chief White Eyes. Among the many symbols on the map, four stand out and illustrate the impression that White forts made on Indians; number 8 on the map represents small fortifications built on the shore of Lake Erie; number 9 is Fort Detroit; numbers 10 and 11 represent Fort Pitt and the nearby town, at the forks of the Ohio, Allegheny and Monongahela rivers. For numbers 9 and 10 especially, note how the Indian artist/mapmaker has accurately rendered the square-with-bastions nature of European fortifications. To the Indians, Europeans did not just build forts; they built them in a specific style which was unmistakable and understood by any Indian group.

Slide 6 is another and later representation of the same thing, again drawn solely by an Indian in Indian style. The draftsman is illustrating a council of peace, held about 1820, between American forces and a group of Dakota Sioux. The differences between the two sides could not be more clear; the Indians' hair is shown (they do not wear hats) and they live in tepees during the council. The Americans, however, have built a fort. The palisade nature of the fort is clearly shown, as is its characteristic flag which is obviously the American Stars and Stripes. The figure representing the American side is also symbolically typical-he is wearing a hat and brandishing a sword.

As these slides show, it is possible to discover among Indian visual artifacts their impressions of the strangers and settlers in their midst. It is not always necessary to filter the Indian view of Whites through the latter's words or art. Further, it is remarkable how consistent the Indian representation of White was. For over 200 years, in what is now the United States, the Indian saw and symbolized the White in the same way: guns and swords, hats and pants, tools and books. Across most of North America, White Men made the same continuing impression on the original inhabitants, who in turn recorded these impressions in striking and meaningful pictorial symbols.

1. From George Brotherston, Image of the New World. London: Thames & Hudson, 1979. p. 53.
2. From Rainer Vollmar, Indianish Karten Nordamerikas. Berlin: D. Reimer, 1981. p. 46.
3. From James Axtell, After Columbus. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. p. 138.
4. From R. Vollmar, p. 111.
5. From R. Vollmar, p. 65.
6. From R. Vollmar, p. 113.