Lowering the curtain on the Currier & Ives Darktown Prints

I own a business which sells images of the past. Many of them are decorative or interesting in their own right, but to me one of the most important things about the old prints we sell is that they are historic artifacts. That is, they are evidence from our past, bringing their stories to the present. They tell us not only about the things they show, but also about what was of interest to the public at the time—-or at least what their publishers thought would be of interest—-and they tell us how the public at the time saw its world.

Past public attitudes are not always ones we agree with, nor even condone, but I have long argued that it is a mistake to ignore or trash historic artifacts that reflect beliefs we do not agree with. As George Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” That is, it is crucial for us to learn about our past so that we can try to correct where we have gone wrong. For that reason, even abhorrent historic artifacts should be preserved and studied.

Our modus operandi has always been, that even if I did not agree with what a particular print depicted, we would offer it for sale so that someone interested in it—-hopefully for historic reasons—-could have access to it. On that basis, though I abhor the social implications of the Currier & Ives Darktown prints, I have felt it appropriate to have my shop offer them for sale. I no longer feel that to be the case.

So, what are the Currier & Ives Darktown prints? They are a series of prints which America’s most successful popular printmaker made from the late 1870s into the 1890s, showing supposedly humorous episodes in Darktown, a segregated community of black Americans. Darktown prints showcased a full array of negative stereotypes of the former slaves who moved north after the Civil War. Portrayed as mentally slow, physically grotesque, and morally oblivious, African Americans were shown as comically inept in their attempts to “play-act” at being white.

Horrifyingly, these prints were among the most popular of all Currier & Ives prints, with one image supposedly selling as many as 73,000 copies. Why that was so and what it means are things worth trying to understand, and there have been institutions and scholars who have approached the Darktown series in this way. I think that is important for our understanding of our past and also of our present to look at these issues.

This then raises the question of why I have decided we would no longer sell the Darktown prints. Certainly, to simply sell such a print is not to advocate for its racist message; we have sold them for many years despite the fact that I think what they show is terrible. As it happens, almost all of the Darktown prints we have sold have been to academic institutions or to African American collectors. Still, I now believe we should not be selling them at all.

The current national reexamination of our society’s racial inequities has made me rethink how we should treat these prints. I have come to believe that even if one does not present them as something one believes, racist images like these should not be presented to the public, except in a clearly restricted historic/educational venue. To have images like these out in public-—on display in a shop, at a show or on the internet—-creates a social environment which is detrimental to universal racial equality.

The point is that it is not what you mean by selling the prints, it is what they show and how that adds to the negative experience that African Americans have in our society. This is very similar to the issue of the display of Confederate statues in the South, and as I believe those statues should be taken out of public spaces, so too I believe the Darktown prints should be removed from public display. Every image that is out in public showing how in the past Blacks were thought of as inferior adds to the background noise insidiously whispering that they are not equal today. Their display, even if not meant this way, reminds both Blacks and Whites that in the not too distant past it was the social norm that the latter considered themselves to be superior to the former. This, in effect, becomes part of the systemic message of racial inequality that still permeates our country.

We need to effect many changes to bring about true racial equality in our country, both as a society and as individuals, and I think no longer selling or displaying the Darktown prints is something we can do to help, albeit in a small way. On that basis, we are donating all of our current inventory of Darktown prints to scholarly institutions, taking the images out of the general public environment and relegating them to the vaults of historic institutions. This is surely just a small step toward racial equality, but hopefully it is one of many such small steps our society will now be making.

Fort Wicked

With the growing emigration of white Americans from “the States” to the Rocky Mountains and beyond in the 1860s, the Plains Indians found their traditional way of life fading. Not only did the emigrants eat up local resources, and kill many buffaloes, but the U.S. government began a systematic attempt to limit the Native Americans to limited reservations. Frustration led to sporadic Indian raids on emigrant trains and settlements, culminating in a number of “massacres” in the summer of 1864.

This prompted Colorado territorial governor, John Evens, to demand that all “peaceful” Indians to report to a number of military posts. Despite this, a peaceable group of Cheyenne was turned away from Fort yon and told to camp near Sand Creek, just to the north, where they would supposedly be safe. Unfortunately, Colonel John M. Chivington, commander of the First Colorado Regimen, believed he needed to “teach the Indians a lesson they would not forget, and he attacked the peaceful Indian camp, killing every man, woman and child possible, with some 150 Native Americans losing their lives in the notorious “Sand Creek Massacre.”

This naturally spurred more Indian braves to seek reprisal, with a number of raids along the Platte River emigrant route, to the east and west of Julesburg. . Beginning in early 1865, bands of Arapahoe, Cheyenne and Lakota warriors attacked nearly every ranch and station along the route and destroyed the telegraph line connecting Denver with the East. The settlers along the way did why they could, but many died or were captured, and their ranches burned to the ground.

One ranch owner, Holon Godfrey, decided to defend his home, located between today’s Sterling and Fort Morgan, as best he could. His ranch included a tower with portholes and he dug a well inside his defenses. In January 1865, Godfrey was raided, supposedly by about 200 Indians, but with the help of a visitor, his wife and children, he was able to repel the attack. As a result, the Indians called Godfrey “Old Wicked,” a name he liked enough to christen his ranch “Fort Wicked.” This secure post, about the only remaining settlement along the Platte River route, became a regular stop for the stage lines.

The following year, Harper’s Weekly, the leading American illustrated newspaper of the day, sent a party of report on the on-going Pike’s Peak gold rush. James F. Goodkins was the artist with this party and on October 13, 1866, Harper’s published a multi-panel print showing scenes from his experiences. The print included two views of Denver, a few scenes from Goodkins’ trip across the plains, and two fanciful illustrations of Indian attacks.

Also included was a small view of “Fort Wicked,” showing its fortified walls, the protected well, and a sign reading: “Fort Wicked. Kept by H. Godfrey. Groceries.” This print is a wonderful example of how the prints from the illustrated newspapers of the nineteenth century can provide us with first-hand images of aspect of our past not documented in any other way.

John Reps on American Bird's Eye Views

I just wrote about the excellent exhibit on Fowler's bird's-eye-views of Pennsylvania towns which is at the State Museum of Pennsylvania (as well as on line). One thing which I didn't mention was the excellent slide-show presentation on the general subject of American bird's-eye-views put together for the exhibit by John Reps.

John Reps is the dean of scholars on this topic. His classic Views and Viewmakers of Urban America is the "bible" on the subject, not only because of Reps amazing listing of thousands of these views, but also because of his insightful text on the views and their makers. Well, John added to this story in a very interesting slide show which can be seen on the internet. It talks about how the prints were made and includes some fascinating images that I have never seen. Anyone interested in this topic should take a look!

Musings on Selling Confederate Prints

We have recently acquired a couple of important historical prints with a Confederate theme: a portrait of Robert E. Lee and an image of a Confederate encampment. Both of these are rare, significant images, the type of prints I have always been proud to handle. However, the recent controversy related to the statues of Confederate “heroes” has given me pause to consider just how pleased I should be to be selling such prints.

Personally, I believe that the statues of Confederate figures should be removed from general public display, where they are presented as glorifications of a cause essentially based on the preservation of slavery, and put into places where they would be presented instead as historic artifacts to be understood as part of our history. That is, where they will be objects which we can learn from rather than glory in.
So, how does this belief relate to my shop selling Confederate prints to the general public? After considerable thought, I believe that it is fine to sell the images, even though they do, in their own way, present aspects or individuals of the Confederacy in a positive light.

To decide this, I looked at what I consider to be the main arguments for removing the Confederate statues from prominent public display.

• The Confederacy was based on the belief of white supremacy, with the aim of maintaining slavery, and this should not be honored by our society or members of our society.
• The statues are sanitized symbols of a horrible part of our nation’s history and to place them in an honored, public space ignores the evil which the Confederacy embodied.
• While the Confederacy is a part of our nation’s history and we should not try to “erase history,” the statues are a glorification of this loathsome part of that history, not simply a recognition of its existence.
• In almost all cases, the statues were created and erected specifically to venerate the Confederacy and to promote its concept of white supremacy. The majority were built not just after the Civil War—when most monuments related to the war were memorials to individuals—but between the 1890s and the 1950s, erected specifically in response to Reconstruction and the Civil Rights movement.

So, how do these arguments apply or not apply to prints of the Confederacy? There are many prints which present a negative view of the Confederacy, and these are not at issue. The prints which are at issue are those which present aspects or figures of the Confederacy in a positive light.

Most of these prints have their genesis in the notion of “The Lost Cause of the Confederacy.” This was a conception, which appeared soon after the war, based on a wishful reimagining of the history of the Civil War in order to vindicate the actions of the Confederacy and restore some sense of pride to Southerners. The “Lost Cause” model presented the Confederate cause as a heroic one, where overwhelming odds led to the defeat of a noble South. The war was presented as a struggle to maintain the Southern way of life, which was more Christian and civilized than the greedy Northern life-style.

Part of the “Lost Cause” idea was a denial of the significance and horror of slavery. Slavery was not supposed to be central to the Confederate cause, and it was often presented as a relatively benign institution. The prints issued as part of the “Lost Cause” idea were published not as a reaction against civil rights and equality of the races, but rather an avoidance of those issues totally in an attempt to reestablish a sense of pride in a culture which had suffered abject defeat.

A great example of the “Lost Cause” concept is William D Washington’s image of the “Burial of Latane.” This painting, and the print based on it, show the burial of Captain William Latane, who was killed while on a raid with J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry. In the image of Latane’s burial there is a stark absence of any men; the burial party is composed solely of women, children and “faithful” slaves, celebrating both the devotion of Southern women and their bond with the slaves. This print was issued in 1868 and would have hung in many Southern homes, allowing the population there to retain some sense of pride in their history and culture.

The print of the Confederate encampment by Conrad Wise Chapman had a similar role. Chapman, a sergeant in the Confederate army, made many sketches of his experiences in the war, including one upon which this print was based. It clearly expresses aspects of the “Lost Cause” concept, with the proud Southern soldiers going around with bare feet, while several blacks are shown happily at leisure, even while the soldiers cook or otherwise work, a highly unlikely state of affairs.
One can look at these prints not as glorifications of slavery and white supremacy, as are the statues, but rather as unfortunate attempts at Southern self-respect. The claim has been made that this is the case also for the statues, but that just is not true. A look at the history of their erection makes it clear that the original intent of the statues was to glorify the Confederacy and promote its defense of white supremacy.

However, I do not think that the original intent is the essential difference between the statues and the prints. That, I think, lies instead in the way the present impact of the prints, compared to the present impact of the statues. I do not think that all, or even most, of the citizens in the communities where the statues now stand would endorse white supremacy, but given their history and their prominent locations, where they loom over public spaces, these statues silently yet expressively make a statement that can and is read by members of those communities as an endorsement of that abhorrent position.
The prints, in contrast, are almost exclusively used in a private or an academic setting, where the reasons for their display can be understood benignly, and where there is no similar deleterious public impact like that of the statues. Now I am sure that there were instances where Confederate images were put on display in a court house or other public location, where they were intended to have an impact similar to the statues. If such a situation exists today, for instance with a portrait of a proud General Lee hanging in a court house, I think that is a situation which does mirror that of the statutes and the portrait should be removed.

However, most of the uses of Confederate prints are in private homes, collections, or in museums and libraries, where they do not have a general public impact. If a Confederate statue is placed in a similar setting, for instance if someone has a statue of Lee in a private home, perhaps because an ancestor fought under the general, I would argue that there is nothing wrong with that. Indeed, I think having the statues on display in a historic setting, say in a museum, is important, for it would be a mistake to ignore our history, and it is important to understand our past in all its complexity.

I would like to say that owning Confederate images is ok as long as one’s intent is “pure,” that is, as long as one is not intending to promote the odious aims of the Confederacy, but instead where one is treating the images as artifacts, part of the multifaceted fabric of our history. However, it is an impossible and probably incoherent to try to judge the intent of a buyer (though if I knew that a potential buyer was intending to use a print to promote white supremacy I would not sell it to that person).

In the end, however, I think the original and current use of prints is quite different than the original intent and current effect of the statutes, and I do think that they are important artifact of our past (the statues too are important artifacts of our past, just ones that should not hold places of public honor), so it is ok for our shop to be selling them.

Presidential Prints

January 20th, 2017 is a somber day, when the United States inaugurates its 58th president, Donald J. Trump. Whatever your political outlook, this is an important event, placing a new occupant in to what is often called the most powerful office in the world. Mr. Trump will enter into a small brotherhood (still) of individuals, the membership of which has ranged from those who rose to the occasion to reach greatness, and those whose tenure has blessedly passed. It is helpful to look at this mixed cast of characters to put Trump’s inauguration into perspective.

One of the great things about antique historical prints is that they give us a unique view of how people in the past viewed their own time. Prints reflected the opinions of their makers, but as they were usually produced with the intent of either influencing public opinion or at least making money by fitting the public’s opinions enough to sell well, they also often reflect popular attitudes towards their subjects. This is, naturally, very true of prints of American presidents.

Historic prints of American presidents are quite interesting. They started, of course, with prints of George Washington. Washington was almost universally respected as a moral and military figure right from the beginning, so most contemporary portraits show him in a noble pose.

Sacred to the Memory of Washington
When Washington died, the nation mourned deeply and contemporary prints were issued showing the sorrow of the country,

Apotheosis of Washington
and others showed Washington rising to heaven to his place of immortality.

Middleton portrait of Lincoln
After his assassination, Abraham Lincoln achieved a similar heroic place in the nation’s heart, which led to the production of many, many noble portraits of Lincoln which hung in thousands of homes around the country. A good example of this are the portraits of Lincoln issued by E.C. Middleton, about which I wrote in an earlier blog.

Currier & Ives of Washington & Lincoln
One way that printmakers showed Lincoln’s character as one of the “great” presidents was to associate him with the clearly “great” George Washington. Currier & Ives issued this fun print showing the two presidents shaking hands,

while other prints depicted Washington welcoming Lincoln to heaven.

Family Monument of Our Country
By being inaugurated into the nation’s top office, each president achieves at least the status of membership in this august body and this is shown in the many prints which show all the presidents together. The importance of these men (still) was often emphasized by a prominent depiction of the noble Washington, standing, as it were, at the head of this fellowship.


It will be interesting to see how our newest president will be treated by contemporary prints and those in the future...

Life portraits of important Native American leaders

For many important American leaders of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, there was a ready market for quality, life portrait prints. The American public wanted to know what their Presidents, Congressmen, and military figures looked like, so for almost any such figure of note there were quality engraved or lithographed portraits made. Few such portraits, however, were made of important Native American leaders. There just wasn’t a big market looking for a picture of these individuals during their life-times and so not a huge incentive for printmakers to produce quality portraits.

One exception were the portraits done for Thomas McKenney’s History of the Indian Tribes of North America. For this work, 118 portrait prints, based on life-time portraits, were produced in lithography and issued between 1836 and 1844. Thomas McKenney, head of the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs for many years, was a champion of American Indians and fought throughout his tenure to preserve something of their culture, which he recognized as an integral part of the history of the United States.

McKenney took office in 1816 and shortly thereafter began to plan an archive which would house Indian memorabilia. In the winter of 1821-22, a large delegation of Indians including representatives of Pawnee, Sauk, Fox, Menominee, Miami, Sioux, and Chippewa tribes came to Washington to see President Monroe. McKenney took advantage of this opportune time to record their likenesses, commissioning Charles Bird King to paint their portraits. To these, more paintings were added in the years following, many done in the field. This yielded an impressive gallery of Indian portraiture which became the centerpiece of the War Department collection of Indian culture and history. In 1830, McKenney was dismissed by President Jackson and began to plan for the publication of a portfolio of prints of these portraits. Working with James Hall, he added text, making the project a true collaboration.

The results of years of struggle, McKenney’s folio was completed in 1836, after four years of printing. Although he was acutely aware that he was preserving a chapter in history, McKenney could not have known that, had he not undertaken this project, no record at all would remain: in 1865, a fire at the Smithsonian destroyed almost all the original paintings from which the lithographs were drawn. The prints, however, do survive, providing us with rare examples of life-portraits of 118 Native Americans, including a number of the most important Indian figures in American history.

Red Jacket

Red Jacket was a Seneca chief and orator who negotiated with the government of the United States after the American Revolution. The Iroquois had sided with the British during the war, so the government insisted that they give up much of their lands in New York. Red Jacket was instrumental in saving what he could of their lands, as determined by the Treaty of Canadaigua in 1794. Prior to the treaty, in 1792, Red Jacket had visited the then U.S. capital, Philadelphia, where Washington presented him with a “peace medal” which was engraved with an image of Washington shaking hands with Red Jacket. This print, after a portrait by Charles Bird King, shows Red Jacket proudly wearing this medal.

Black Hawk

Black Hawk was a war leader of the Sauk tribe in the mid-west. He fought against the U.S. during the War of 1812, hoping to drive white settlers out of Sauk territory. Much of that territory had been granted to the U.S. by some tribal leaders at the Treaty of St. Louis in 1804, but many of the Sauk and related Fox Indians contested the legitimacy of that treaty, so a group led by Black Hawk tried to reoccupy tribal lands in Illinois during the “Black Hawk War” of 1832. Captured by the U.S. military, Black Hawk ended up on a “tour” of the east coast, including a visit to Washington where this portrait was painted.

William McIntosh

McIntosh was a controversial Creek chief who supported the U.S. efforts to get the Creeks to give up their lands in Georgia. The son of a Scotsman and a Creek woman, he was raised by the Creeks, but was comfortable also in white Georgia society. His involvement in the controversial Treaty of Indian Springs of 1825 led to a sentence of death by the Creek Nation Council, which was carried out in 1825. This print, after another Charles Bird King portrait, shows McIntosh in his Scottish finery.

Sequoyah

Not a chief or warrior, Sequoyah was still one of the most influential Native Americans of the nineteenth century. A Cherokee blacksmith and silversmith, Sequoyah regularly had contact with whites and he saw how important their ability to write was. He decided to invent a way to write the Cherokee language, inventing the Cherokee syllabary from scratch. It took a while to convince his tribe, but by 1825 the Cherokee Nation adopted his writing system. This portrait after Charles Bird King shows Sequoyah with his alphabet. It was painted in 1828 when he visited Washington and he is shown wearing his peace medal.

Osage in a Strange Land

This portrait of an Osage woman named Mohongo was issued in the McKenney & Hall History of the Indian Tribes of North America (1837-44). It shows her holding her two year old daughter, who is playing with a Presidential medal with the profile of Andrew Jackson. One of 117 portraits of Native Americans included in this important volume, it portrays an individual whose adventures leading up to her portrait being painted are among the most interesting of any of the Indians included in the volume.

Beginning with Columbus and continuing thereafter on a regular basis, Native Americans were shipped off to Europe, often unwillingly, as objects of curiosity. Europeans, even into modern times, have been fascinated by the colorful and out-of-the-ordinary cultures and appearance of American Indians, and there have always been those who took advantage of this by bringing these “exotics” across the Atlantic for their own purposes. The Indians have been displayed, examined, interviewed, put on stage and otherwise used by others for hundreds of years.

The Osage were a tribe which had originated along the Ohio River, but had moved westward to the Great Plains by the mid-17th century. They became the dominant power in the region by the 18th century and soon developed trade and diplomatic contacts with the French, who were most impressed by their appearance, fierceness and dignity.

In 1723, Étienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont established Fort Orleans on the Missouri River, the first European post on that river. In 1725 he took a group of their chiefs, including one Osage, to Paris to show them the power and glory of France. The “sauvages” proved a great novelty and generated huge interest throughout France. They were feted, dined, went to the opera, and were given gold-trimmed coats and cock hats and other gaudies. Their visit was a popular success and the Indians seemed equally impressed, stories of their trip passing down over the years after their return.

The Osage maintained their relations with the French in subsequent years, doing extensive trade with René Auguste Chouteau of St. Louis. In the 1820s, the Osage became acquainted with a friend of Chouteau’s, David Delaunay. This led, in 1827, to the Osage being taken to France by Delaunay for an eventful and not so successful, two year visit. About this trip there is a fair bit of graphic illustration and documentary information, but there is much about the Osage’s visit to Europe in 1827 which remains unclear.

The main problem is that there are two conflicting sources of information. One consists of a number of pamphlets which were published in France during the Osage’s visit. The original source of the story told in these pamphlets was likely Delaunay himself and they present a generally positive report. The other source is the biography of Mohongo, one of the Osage travelers, that appeared in the McKenney & Hall History of the Indian Tribes of North America. That account takes a much dimmer view on the whole episode.

According to the French pamphlet accounts, the Osage instigated the idea of visiting France on their own, inspired by the stories they heard of the earlier visit of 1725. According to the pamphlets, initially 25 Osage planned to make the trip and spent four years raising money for it. Eventually the number dropped to 12 and then a boat full of furs, which they were planning to sell in St. Louis, overturned and they lost everything. They supposedly then met David Delaunay in St. Louis and he agreed to take a small party with him to France.

This is not the story as told by McKenney & Hall. There it was Delaunay’s idea to take the Osage to France in order to profit by exhibiting them in various venues; “decoyed from the boarders of Missouri, by an adventurer, whose intention was to exhibit them in Europe for the purpose of gain.” Supposedly they were impressed with Delaunay’s wearing an American uniform and they were further persuaded by Paul Loise, a Frenchmen who had been appointed by Meriwether Lewis in 1808 as Osage interpreter.

Whatever the case, in 1827, a small party set out for France from St. Louis. It included Delaunay, Loise, M. Tesson, another Frenchmen, and six Osage. These consisted of Little Chief, Washingsabba (or Black Spirit), Marcharthitahtoongah (or Big Soldier), Minckchatahooh, and two women. These Mohongo, also known as Sacred Sun, and Gretomih, or Hawk Women. The status of these women is unclear, for Mohongo is said to be the wife of Little Chief or possibly Black Spirit, and Hawk Woman is said to be Little Hawk’s wife or cousin.

This group arrived in France on July 27, 1827. The handsome and exotic Osage brought the romantic American West to life in France and thousands swarmed the docks to see them. They attended the theater in Havre, where they were the object of great curiosity, and the throng was so intrusive that during the intermission they left and returned to their hotel. They later moved on to Rouen, where they attended an opera performance, which seemed to go better than their first visit to a theater. It was at the Rouen opera that an artist drew their picture, an image which subsequently appeared in prints published in France and Germany, feeding the immense public fascination with the wild Indians.

The Osage continued on to Paris and continued to be a huge hit. Delaunay placed advertisements of their appearances at the theater or other events and attendance was tremendous. Supposedly the only competing attraction in Paris at the time was the arrival of a giraffe at the Jardin du Roi. Delauney organized a Fête Extraordinaire, again charging a fee, where there was a balloon assent (in which Little Chief went up) and Indian dances by the Osage. More prints were made, and vendors sold Indian dolls, work bags with pictures of the Osage embroidered on them, bronze Osage paperweights, and even Indian figures made of spiced bread. The high point of their trip—at least from the French viewpoint—was an audience with King Charles X at St. Cloud on August 21st.

Eventually, though, interest faded and soon the unhappy Osage were wandering around Europe as Delaunay tried to revive the inflow of receipts and perhaps also to avoid creditor. In the winter of 1828-29, Delaunay was jailed for debt; at that time either in jail or just on the lam, Delaunay disappeared from their lives. In January 1829, a newspaper in January reported that “The Osage abandoned at at Fribourg, Breslau, by their conductor have been brought here [Munich] by a friend of humanity; they find themselves in the greatest destitution, suffering from hunger...”

To add to their travails, Mohongo had given birth to one or two daughters about six months after arriving in France. If she had twins, it seems that she gave up one of the children for adoption to a wealthy Belgian woman, for by the winter of 1829, she had only one daughter with her.

In financial straits and left in a strange land, the Osage eventually made it back to France, where they did find help in their desire to return to their American home. They had split into two groups, one of which connected with Bishop William DuBourg, who had got to know the Osage when he resided in St. Louis from 1818 to 1823. The bishop was able to get this group back to the United States via Bordeaux.

The other group received help by money being raised for their passage by a subscription supported by none-other than the Marquis de Lafayette, who supposedly gave them medals with his likeness on them. This group sailed back from Havre to Norfolk in late 1829. It was then that Thomas McKenney heard of the return of the Osage and brought them to Washington before sending them back to St. Louis; it was during this visit that Mohongo’s portrait was painted by Charles Bird King.

Not all the Osage made it back to America, for either two or three died of small pox on the trip back. The survivors did return to their tribal lands, where the History of the Indian Tribes of North America reports that “although they suffered much from the treachery of one of our race…they were indebted to the white man for many acts of kindness and sympathy during their novel and adventurous journey.” (Vol. I, p. 22)

In 1833, Mohongo and Little Chief were seen in 1833 on the Neosho River, and also that year Little Chief was at the treaty conference at Fort Gibson. Big Soldier lived until 1844 and he would proudly show off his Lafayette medal. French tourist Victor Tixier met him in 1840, saying that he was a minor chief of great pomposity, but Big Soldier was befriended by John Mix Stanley, who painted his picture in 1843, the year before he died.

False portraits of U.S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant was probably, after Abraham Lincoln, the most often portrayed Civil War figure in prints of the time. Grant began the war as an obscure Union officer in the western theater, but his victory at Fort Donelson, February 15-16, 1862, brought Grant to the consciousness of the American public, the beginning of a hero status which would reach full flower with the fall of Vicksburg.

It seems appropriate to do a posting today, the 150th anniversary of the capture of Fort Donelson, about the interesting history of some early portrait prints of Grant.


At the beginning of the war, Grant wore his beard in a long, wild manner. A photograph, taken in October 1861 in Cairo, Illinois, shows this shaggy image, Grant depicted in his colonel’s uniform complete with ostrich feathers in his cap. After his first action at Belmont, Grant’s wife, Julia, joined him in camp and was horrified by his wild and wooly appearance. She told him in no uncertain terms that she “did not like the length of his beard,” so Grant forthwith had it clipped close to preserve marital harmony.

Grant’s victories at Forts Henry and Donelson, followed by Shiloh, led to a great curiosity on the part of the American public as to what this new Union hero looked like. The only image available of the general at this time was the photograph taken in Cairo, so this long-bearded Grant appeared in many prints of the time, even though by then he was close-shaved.

To add to this confusion, there was a photograph taken about the same time in Cairo that somewhat looked like Grant. This image is said to be of a beef contractor named William Grant, who resembled U.S. Grant, at least in his hirsute appearance. Either through actual misunderstanding or intentionally, this non-U.S. Grant photograph was used as the basis for a number of prints of the general, appearing both in the illustrated newspapers of the day and also in engravings.

Indeed, most of the first printed portraits of Grant were based on this erroneous image, including a cover illustration in Harper’s Weekly on March 8, 1862 and a steel engraving dated March 22, 1862, both issued shortly after the capture of Fort Donelson.


Eventually, new photographs of the close-shaved general appeared and these then were used as the basis of later prints. Still, for much of the early part of the war, the public's notion of what Grant looked like was based on this erroneous image Indeed, Harper’s Weekly continued to use this mistaken image to as late as 1864. Supposedly, Grant's officers found this amusing, but no record mentions what William Grant thought of his undeserved fame.

John Dare Howland

As part of my "western art" education, I have been reading up on a number of the artists who produced first-hand images of the trans-Mississippi region in the nineteenth century. I have recently come across the artist "Jack" Howland, who had a fascinating history.

John Dare Howland (1843-1914) was born in Zanesville, OH, leaving home at age fourteen to move to the West. There he hooked up to travel on one of the American Fur Company boats traveling up the Missouri to Fort Pierre. During this trip he he went on buffalo hunts and became a great favorite of the Sioux, especially as he made drawings for them on buffalo skins and their tepees.

He subsequently traveled to Fort Laramie, Wyoming, where he is believed to have painted some Indian portraits, then in 1858 to Colorado for the Pike’s Peak gold rush. He was unsuccessful as a gold seeker and it is said that he became so destitute "that he often had to earn a few pennies for food by dancing a jig for the entertainment-starved miners." Howland then briefly turned to trapping, but this too proved unprofitable.

This was all done by the age of 16(!), at which age he joined the First Colorado Cavalry and then was later active in the Indian Wars, eventually reaching the post of Captain of Scouts. He used his saved earnings to traveled to Paris to study painting, but returned to serve from 1867 to 1869 as Secretary to the Indian Peace Commission between the US and the Plains Indian tribes.

He returned briefly to Paris, but ended up settling in Denver, where he founded the short-lived Denver Art Club in 1886. He designed the Civil War monument at the Colorado State Capitol and became well known in particular for his paintings of buffalo.

He is said to have produced a number of drawings that were published in both Harper's Weekly and Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper but so far I have been able to track down only one of these, a drawing he made when involved with the Indian Peace Commmission.

The 1860s saw many Indian attacks on EuroAmericans moving through and into the Great Plains. In an attempt to resolve this conflict, the United States set up a Indian Peace Commission which set out in the autumn of 1867 to treat with a number of Plains Indian tribes, including the Kiowa, Comanche, Plains Apache, Cheyenne and Arapaho. They met at a sacred Indian site, Medicine Creek Lodge, and signed treaties which obliged the tribes to move to the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) in exchange for annual payments.

It was this Peace Commission for which Howland served as secretary and he made a number of drawings, two of which appeared in the print above from Harper’s Weekly, November 16, 1867. This is an excellent example of how the images in illustrated newspapers provide such an immediate and first-hand depiction on many of the events and personalities in the American West during the nineteenth century.

Disaster prints

There are basically two types of commercial prints, "job order prints" and "speculative prints." [click here for discussion of the difference between commercial and 'fine art' prints] The staple for most commercial printmakers were job order prints. These were prints where a customer hired the printmaker to produce a specific type of print for a particular need. This included such items as advertisements, menus, tickets, checks, billheads, labels, plans, circulars and many other prints of an ephemeral nature. Other commissioned prints included individual and group portraits and views of buildings or landscapes, ordered by private customers or civic and commercial organizations.

In some cases, printmakers would create non-commissioned prints in hopes that these would find a market and repay the investment of funds and time by the printmaker. Here the printmaker hoped that his sense of what people wanted to buy, and his skill in producing an appealing print, would lead to sales. Sometimes these would be generic prints with a timeless appeal, prints of landscapes, pretty ladies, flowers, birds, animals and the like. More often, though, speculative prints were topical, relating to a political event, military battle, or other event that would spur interest in a topic such that people would want to acquire a print illustrating that event. Disasters, of course, were just such events and it is fairly common that following some tragedy, a print would be created and put out on the market almost immediately in hopes that the printmaker could benefit from the calamity.

This was especially common in the nineteenth century, when lithography allowed a printmaker to very quickly create a colorful image of good size in large numbers and at a reasonable price, thus potentially realizing a significant windfall from sales of the print. Many of the disasters of the nineteenth century were followed almost immediately by the appearance of separately-issued, speculative prints showing the catastrophe in bright colors, often by more than one printmaker.

The most famous of these disaster prints is a broadside print by Nathaniel Currier. On January 13, 1840, the passenger steamer Lexington on its way from New York to Stonington, Connecticut, burned in Long Island sound. There were only four survivors from among the 150 passengers and crew members. This spectacular catastrophe was disastrous for many, but proved a boon for a young New York lithographer named Nathaniel Currier. The news of this tragedy reached New York two days later, and the next day the New York Sun came out with a broadside about the disaster which included a lithographed image of the ship in flames. The sensation caused by the burning of the Lexington continued for weeks, spurred on by the repeated reissuing of updated versions of this broadside.

One week after the first publication, a new, more accurate lithographed image appeared on the broadside, this one attributed to artist W.K. Hewitt and lithographed by Nathaniel Currier. With its correct nighttime imagery, giving it a much more dramatic appearance, this broadside kept interest in the tragedy alive. In the days before photography and television, the combination of fast reportage and a dramatic lithographed image made this Sun Extra a big success. The popularity of the broadside inspired Nathaniel Currier to take over its publication after the Sun stopped its involvement, and he issued another three versions thereafter. According to Harry T. Peters, the popularity of his Lexington lithograph is what firmly established Nathaniel Currier as a financial and popular success, and allowed him to build his firm (later Currier & Ives) into the dominant American printmaking company.

Currier's was not the only "rush print" made of the burning of the Lexington and an anonymous printmaker issued the print above, an unusual and unattributed lithograph of the same scene. The title is similar to the Currier print, but the image is quite different. It was undoubtedly issued within a short time of the event and was aimed at the market created by the public fascination with this famous disaster.

The burning of the Lexington was not the only marine disaster Currier documented, as shown by the print above entitled "Awful Explosion of the ‘Peace-Maker’ on board the U.S. Steam Frigate, Princeton, on Wednesday, 28th. Feby. 1844," just one of a number of this sort of print by Currier.

And it wasn't just popular printmakers like Currier who issued marine disaster prints. On March 6, 1860, the Alfred Thomas exploded on the Delaware River at Easton, PA. The Alfred Thomas was a small passenger steamship built to run on the Delaware River between Belvidere, New Jersey and Port Jervis, New York, a distance of about 60 miles. The ship, constructed at Easton, was completed and after some trials was declared ready for its maiden voyage. On Tuesday morning, March 6th, the Alfred Thomas set off from Easton, filled with an official party of about 100 passengers and watched by many spectators along the shore. After a number of stops, as the ship set off, the boiler suddenly erupted in a huge explosion, throwing the passengers far into the air and totally wrecking the boat. A print drawn by Philadelphia artist James Queen issued shortly thereafter shows that explosion and it was said to have been based on a "Sketch from Nature." The quality of this print is significantly better than the typical popular print, but it still has enough dramatic tragedy to appeal to a wide audience.

The most common type of disaster in the nineteenth century were the fires that raged through many American cities. These fires were usually followed by the appearance of speculative prints which were sold not just in the city in question, but around the country. One of the earliest documented by a lithographic rush print was the great fire in Pittsburgh on April 10th, 1845. Nathaniel Currier once again took advantage of this tragedy to sell a sensational print of the “Great Conflagration At Pittsburgh PA.” The large mountain in the background is totally out of place, but otherwise the print is fairly accurate, likely based on a first-hand drawing.

Another New York publisher, James Baillie, also came out with his own print of the same scene, this with an even more Alp-like mountain in the background. Still the scene is rather accurate, based on a painting by local artist William Coventry Wall. The extent of the fire, the way it is burning on the bridge, and the foreground landscape all come from a painting by Wall which he produced immediately after the fire.

Wall was himself involved in the production of a rather better quality print of the fire, based on his own drawings. This was a three part print which included an image of the city before the fire, and two images showing the ruins of the city. While this print is beautifully made, is larger than the Currier and Baillie prints, and is directly based on first-hand renderings, it is quite a bit scarcer than the other two. Likely not that many were sold as the public was more interested in the drama and color of the scenes showing the fire, rather than the images of the depressing aftermath.

Probably the most famous city fire of the nineteenth century was the great fire in Chicago of 1871. Currier & Ives, of course, produced a number of images of this fire, including the one above. In order to rush this image to the market, they seem to have taken a stock bird's-eye view of Chicago and simply added a lot of flames. This print is a good example of why prints can be used as historical documentation only with great care, for not only are the flames not in the right place in the city, but they are clearly blowing to the south, while in fact the wind that day was blowing north.

Disaster prints continued to appear throughout the nineteenth century, including late in the century when the prints were usually produced by chromolithography. Kurz & Allison, a Chicago publisher, produced a very dramatic print of the Johnston Flood of May 31, 1889. Even into the early twentieth century, printmakers produced similar disaster prints, like Carl Beck chromolithograph of the great fire in San Francisco following the great earthquake of April 18, 1906 (shown below). The scene is a bird’s-eye view of the conflagration in the evening of the first day, from above the foot of Market Street. The fire, showing burning in the downtown area and on Nob Hill, had a length of over five miles.

These prints range from the crude to the sophisticated, and from the accurate to the made-up, but they are all interesting in documenting the lives of our ancestors and their fascination (which of course continues to today) with tragedy.