Cultural Nationalism, Westward Expansion and the Production of Imperial Landscape: George Catlin’s Native American West

Abstract

In this paper I approach artist George Catlin’s landscape paintings and descriptions of 1830s Native America as a constituent component of an ambivalent imperialist iconography that depicted American westward expansion and Indian policy during the first half of the nineteenth century. Drawing upon iconological theory, I explore the multiple and often conflicting meanings encoded in Catlin’s work to show how his descriptions and images of the northern plains asserted his vision of the western landscape as Indian country, projecting a naturalistic, ‘scientific’ and purportedly authentic view of what was perceived as a rapidly fading scene. Although he claimed for his art an authenticity and naturalism drawn directly from nature, Catlin was profoundly influenced by a set of artistic and literary conventions propounded by those arguing for a distinctive national culture. Indeed, the American landscape and the Indian were symbols linking textually and aesthetically the natural environment and its aboriginal people to romantic notions of morality, exceptionality, and a national racial heritage. But while celebrating and promoting the Indian subject, nationalists painted a spectral picture of the Indians’ future complicit with Jacksonian policy designed to rid eastern lands of Native Americans. Catlin’s landscape paintings and descriptions problematically reproduced this irreconcilable tension in early nineteenth-century cultural nationalism and ultimately contributed to an imperial discourse on the Native American West: one that in Catlin’s works ambivalently contained its own critique, questioning the effects of westward expansion and Indian policy.

Imagining Alaska: Local and Translocal Engagements with Place

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The Contours of Political Transformation and Conservation Areas in Southern Africa

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“…The use of state land for protected areas also served to extend the state's sovereignty, its authority over products of nature and the rules by which those products could be accessed. In some cases, the establishment of protected areas formed part of the nation‐building exercise (Carruthers 1995; John 2001; Nash 1982). The earlier trust in the state as an important and powerful institution for the protection of nature became questionable, mainly as a result of some of the negative consequences of state policies and legislation on the physical environment as a whole.…”

Props and the performance of ethnographic realism in George Catlin's Indian Gallery: Fabrications in hide, paint, and text

“…Scholars across disciplines have extensively studied Catlin's representations and frequently called their reliability into question (Datta, 2018;Dippie, 1990;Ewers, 1956Ewers, , 1979Gurney and Thau Heyman, 2002;Halpin, 1965;Horton, 2016;John, 2001;Krebs, 1990;Matthews, 1892;Pratt and Troccoli, 2013;Truettner, 1979). 9 Catlin's precarious financial circumstances and lack of patronage are often referenced in this context as influencing, for instance, the pace at which he produced his works, the subsequent lack of attention to details, the increasing spectacularizing of his show, or the status of his material culture collection (Bank, 1999, 45-47;Dippie, 1990, 98-110;Holm, 1992;Truettner, 1979, 53).…”