George Caitlan

Living amongst the Indians of the American Plains, the painter George Caitlan captured the traditions and cultures of many different tribeswith his brush. Caitlan realized that Native American life was a vanishing one, and chose to immortalize it on canvas. It is because of him, that much of the rich culture of the Plains Tribes has been preserved today.




Caitlan was able to capture the danger and beauty of the buffalo hunt, as well as the many different methods for this activity.




Despite Caitlan's symphathetic veiw of Indians, he still could not see them through any other lens than that of the typical ethnocentric one that most White Europeans looked upon aboriginal Americans with. Like other Europeans, Caitlan stigmitized and immortalized the diabolic savage that Indians were so often characterized as.

American Progress

John L. O'Sullivan coins the phrase "Manifest Destiny" in the following 1845 editorial in which he commended the addition of Texas into the Union and hopefully looked further west to California as a site for future expansion.

This is an excerpt from "Annexation," printed in O'Sullivan's The United States Magazine and Democratic Review17 (July 1845): 5-10

[1] It is time now for opposition to the Annexation of Texas to cease . . . . It is time for the
common duty of Patriotism to the Country to succeed;—or if this claim will not be recognized, it
is at least time for common sense to acquiesce with decent grace in the inevitable and
irrevocable.
[2] Texas is now ours. Already, before these words are written, her Convention has
undoubtedly ratified the acceptance, by her Congress, of our proffered invitation into the Union.
. . . . It is time then that all should cease to treat her as alien . . .
[3] Why, were other reasoning wanting, in favor of now elevating this question of the reception
of Texas into the Union, out of the lower region of our past party dissensions, up to its proper
level of a high and broad nationality, it surely is to be found, found abundantly, in the manner in
which other nations have undertaken to intrude themselves into it, between us and the proper
parties to the case, in a spirit of hostile interference against us, for the avowed object of thwarting
our policy and hampering our power, limiting our greatness and checking the fulfillment of our
manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of
our yearly multiplying millions. This we have seen done by England, our old rival and enemy;
and by France, strangely coupled with her against us, under the influence of the Anglicism
strongly tinging the policy of her present prime minister, Guizot. . . .
[4] It is wholly untrue, and unjust to ourselves, the pretence that the Annexation has been a
measure of spoliation, unrightful and unrighteous—of military conquest under forms of peace
and law—of territorial aggrandizement at the expense of justice due by a double sanctity to the
weak. . . . The independence of Texas was complete and absolute. It was an independence, not
only in fact but of right. . . .

Extreme Others

Cartoon Caption:
"I am happy to inform you that, in spite both of blandishments and threats, used in profusion by the agents of the government of the United States, the Indian ations within the confederacy have remained firm in their loyalty and steadfast in the observance of their treaty engagements with this government."

The violent images in this cartoon reflect the Dakota War (or Great Sioux Uprising) of August-September 1862, and, combined with the caption, implicate the Confederacy for having such brutal allies. Here, the ferocious Indians are Confederate agents who attack and prepare to scalp and kill men, women, and children on the Minnesota frontier. As is usually the case with cartoons featuring American Indians, the reality was less one-sided and more complex.

"Chief Joseph"

Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt
(1840-1904)

" I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. Looking Glass is dead. Toohoolhoolzote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say, "Yes" or "No." He who led the young men [Olikut] is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are -- perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever."