THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION li!i!!!!!!!!!!! QUARTER LY Volume XVII, Number. 3 I. I. I' 'l 'l , ', AMERICAN INDIANS IN 19TH-CENTURY NEW ORLEANS JULY 20 - OCTOBER 16 AMERICAN INDIANS IN 19TH-CENTURY NEW ORLEANS JULY 20-0CTOBER 16 he Collection's latest exhibition, a ing Louisiana Indians and began to con­ of people, who are rapidly passing away look at Indians in the New sider how these images compared to the from the face of the earth." About those Orleans area during the 19th cen­ realities oflndian life in the last century. Indians still living in the southeastern tury,T captures through pictures and Most people are generally familiar United States, however, the American A words the ways artists and writers depict­ with how American Indians were por­ artist confessed that he had "little to say, at ed those American Indians still living in trayed in 19th-century popular and liter- present, that could interest you. The sum I close proximity to white total that can be learned or society after many years of seen of them ... is, that they contact and conflict. are to be pitied." Catlin Many images of Indians wrote these words in refer- during the 19th century are ence to a sketch that he made found in lithographs, draw­ of an Indian family fishing ings, and photographs in the on Santa Rosa Island, Collection's holdings. Some near Pensacola. of this visual material is A commonly held commonly reproduced in point of view was to think local histories, pictorial col­ of Indian communities as lections, scholarly books, pitiful remnants of once and museum exhibitions, nobler tribes, and many suggesting to the viewer that were convinced that Indians this culturally heterogeneous would vanish from America city included Native unless transplanted to a dis­ Americans among its occu­ Vue d'une Rue du Faubourg Marigny, N[ouve]lle Orleans by Felix Achille de Beaupoil, tant place. Perceived as Marquis de Saint Aulaire, lithographed by P. Langlume, ca. 1821 (19372.2). The Marigny pants. An Indian family demoralized and disabled plantation house is in the background, with an Indian family in the foreground. crosses a street in New by the influences of white Orleans's Faubourg Marigny and another ary culture. An idealized image of society, these groups came to represent stands beside the Mississippi River in lith­ Indians as "children of the forest" had why American Indians needed to be ographs dating from the 1820s by Felix long served European notions about the removed from their homelands. In 1831 , Achille de Beaupoil, Marquis de Saint freedom and innocence of natural man. for example, the Commissioner of Aulaire. The Choctaw women at the By the 19th century, the "noble savage" Indian Affairs justified the government's French Market in post-Civil War maga­ held a romantic place in American arts removal policy with this summary zine illustrations by Alfred Waud and and letters, where it was assumed that of southern and eastern Indians: Charles Upham convey the impression of American Indians could not survive the "Gradually diminishing in numbers and the fleeting and exotic presence oflndians onslaught of civilization. Many observers deteriorating in condition; incapable of on the margins of urban society. lamented the destruction and displace­ coping with the superior intelligence of When John Lawrence, director of ment of Native American societies, bur the white man, ready to fall into the museum programs at the Collection, nonetheless accepted their fate as prede­ vices, but unapt to appropriate the bene­ asked me to serve as guest curator of the termined and necessary. Writers and fits of the social state, the increasing tide Indian exhibition, I began not only to artists perceived their own role to be that of white population threatened soon to compile an extensive list of the of capturing Indians in a natural state - engulf them, and finally to cause their Collection's images bu.t also to search in before they inevitably, but tragically, total extinction." ~ other places for additional glimpses of vanished. George Catlin traveled west in American Indians living around New American Indians in 19th-century 1832 to produce "a literal and graphic Orleans and in other parts of Louisiana I Louisiana. To my surprise, I found a delineation of the living manners, cus­ were categorized by Secretary of War John large array of scenes and portraits featur- toms, and character of an interesting race C. Calhoun in 1825 as "remnants of 2 Indian Encampment, Louisiana by Franrois Bernard, oil on canvas, ca. 1860 (1992.129.5) tribes." This marginalization of their consisted mainly of Houmas in shadows cast by those observers who status is visually reflected in 19th-century Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes, took some notice of their presence. images of Louisiana Indians found in the Alabamas and Coushattas in the parish of Nostalgic images in print and art Collection. At the time of the Louisiana Calcasieu, the Tunica-Biloxis in Avoyelles lamenting the misfortune of American Purchase, approximately 5,000 American and Rapides parishes, Chitimachas in St. Indians tended to obscure the ways that Indians inhabited the Orleans Territory, Mary, St. Martin, and St. Landry parishes, the people themselves managed to sur­ soon to become the state of Louisiana. and several Choctaw communities in the vive, almost dismissing from considera­ These Houmas, Tunicas, Chitimachas, parishes of St. Tammany, East Baton tion how they dealt with the constraints Atakapas, Opelousas, Biloxis, Apalaches, Rouge, Rapides, La Salle, and Sabine. and prejudices suffered on the margins Alibamons, Pascagoulas, Choctaws, and The survival of these American of plantation society and how they cre­ Caddos had already tragically declined in Indian communities throughout the atively adapted cultural traditions to population since early European contact. 19th century, in the face of tremendous changing circumstances. A valuable step But by the middle of the 19th century adversity and prejudice, actually chal­ toward recovering the agency and voice they diminished even further to fewer lenged the dominant narrative that of Louisiana Indians is to highlight how than 1,500, largely because the Caddo insisted on the inevitability of their dis­ they became the silent and passive fig­ nation and a sizable number of Choctaws appearance. The "vanishing Indian," in ures that we see on paper. Within an were relocated outside the state's bound­ other words, refused to vanish from imagery that derided or pitied Indians aries. By 1910 only about 800 Indians Louisiana. The responsibility of histori­ facing extinction, we might even find were counted in Louisiana. Although ans thus becomes one of rescuing the clues to the resourcefulness and resis­ probably undercounted by census takers, real experience of Louisiana Indians in tance that would carry them into the the Indian population of Louisiana then the 19th century from the romantic 20th century. 3 The exhibition brings together from The poetry of Father Adrien­ several different collections a number of Emmanuel Rouquette romanticized original sketches, drawings, paintings, pho­ Indian life in an imaginary wilderness, but tographs, and relevant artifacts. In 1830 this New Orleanian's intimate familiarity French naturalist Charles Alexandre with Choctaws from the north shore of Lesueur sketched groups of Indians camp­ Lake Pontchartrain also produced some ing along the Mississippi River and playing informative descriptions of Louisiana a ball game in New Orleans. He also pro­ Indian life during the 19th century. "They duced portraits of several different live in log cabins neat and substantially Choctaws in the city as well as in other river built," Rouquette reported in 1882, but towns. These images are on loan from the Daniel Usner, guest curator "have palmetto lodges" on their seasonal Museum d'Histoire Naturelle in Le Havre. stories, and reminiscences will provide a hunting and gathering trips. For a tradi­ Also during the 1830s, Karl Bodmer paint­ fuller context for the pictorial images. tional ceremony held once or twice a year ed portraits of individual Choctaws and Observing the New Orleans French Market at Bayou Lacombe, Choctaws traveled scenes of Indians in their riverside camps in 1851, Fredrika Bremer noticed that "little from as far away as Biloxi and wore "a and on city streets, reproducing in rich Indian girls were seated on the ground, peculiar costume made up of calico of the detail the clothing and demeanor of the wrapped in their blankets, with their seri­ most showy colors." Indians who still frequented New Orleans. ous, uniform, stiff countenances, and The exhibition will examine how These works, held at the Joslyn Art downcast eyes riveted upon an outspread residents and visitors depicted American Museum in Omaha, will be shown in color cloth before them, on which were laid out Indians in 19th-century Louisiana - as facsimile. Larger paintings include Franc;:ois wild roots and herbs which they had figures in a romantic landscape, victims Bernard's Indian Encampment, Louisiana brought hither for sale. Behind them, and of civilization, or subjects of anthropolo­ from the Historic New Orleans Collection, outside the market-place, Indian boys were gy. But it will also suggest how a new Alfred Boisseau's Louisiana Indians Walking shooting with bows and arrows to induce look at such a variety of sketches, draw­ Along a Bayou from the New Orleans young white gentlemen to purchase their ings, paintings, and photographs can Museum of Art, and Alphonse Gamotis's toy-weapons." George Castellanos remem­ help us learn about the persistence of Indian Village on the Shores of Lake bered seeing Indians-"fragments of this American Indians in the Deep South. Pontchartrain from the Ogden Collection. erratic race" as he called them-in the rural Romance and Reality is on view in the The exhibition will also feature illustrations parishes of south Louisiana as well as in the Williams Gallery through October 16.