From Pantheon to Indian Gallery

Art and Sovereignty on the Early Nineteenth-Century Cultural Frontier

Bibliographic Data

ID5845773
AuthorsElizabeth Hutchinson (0000-0002-3374-5469, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume47
Issue2
Pages313-337
Publication date2013-04-17
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of American Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8758 • E-ISSN: 1469-5154
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s002187581300008x
OpenAlexW1993110690
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited21

Between 1821 and 1842, Charles Bird King painted a series of portraits of Native American diplomats for Thomas L. McKenney, founding Superintendent of Indian Affairs. These pictures were hung in a gallery in McKenney's office in the War Department in Washington, DC, and were later copied by lithographers for inclusion in McKenney and James Hall's History of the Indian Tribes of the United States (1836-44). Significantly, the production and circulation of these portraits straddles a period of tremendous change in the diplomatic interactions between the United States and Native tribes. This essay analyzes a selection of these images for their complex messages about the sovereignty of Indian people and their appropriate interactions with European American culture. Paying particular attention to pictures of leaders of southern nations, including the Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole, I discuss the sitters' strategies of self-fashioning within the context of long-standing cultural exchange in the region. In addition, I offer a reading of the meaning of the Indian gallery as a whole that challenges the conventional wisdom that it is an archive produced exclusively to impose US control on the subjects included, arguing instead for the inclusion of portrait-making within this history of interaction

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Cherokee · Context (archaeology · Frontier · Period (music · Political science · Politics · Portrait · Sovereignty · Historical Studies of British Isles · History · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights · Latin American history and culture · Law

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