Introduction

1The years following the publication of the ground-breaking book The New Golden Land: European Images of America (Honour, 1975), witnessed a mounting interest in Western depictions of Indigenous Americans. For decades, scholars examined the ways in which these representations spanned from idyllic to disparaging, if not altogether fantastic (Chiappelli et al., 1976; Berkhofer, 1978; Colin, 1989; Mason, 1990; Jara and Spadaccini, 1992; Gidley, 2000; Pratt, 2006; Fitz, 2012; Carocci, 2013). By contrast, the few references to images of foreigners by Native North Americans only appeared in books aimed at the wider public (Lips, 1937; Burland, 1969). To date, this topic has only been addressed in a short article (Anthes, 2001), two unpublished theses (Bergseth, 2008, Ellis, 2011), and a special issue of the journal ab-Original edited by Canadian First Nations scholar Gerald McMaster with Julia Lum, and Kaitlin McCormick (2018).

2The polyvocality of image-making in the context of the colonial encounter is emerging against the background provided by a re-evaluation of Indigenous voices in the production of knowledge variably addressed by Native North American scholars over the last few decades (Hester and Cheney, 2001; Doxtater, 2004; Wilson, 2004; Lonetree, 2012). The application of Indigenous epistemologies to all areas of cultural production is beginning to establish new parameters for a more nuanced understanding of colonialism and its encounters, and for a more balanced interpretation of the visual records made by Native North Americans of their Others. This is the objective of this study. A new examination of this iconographic corpus invites the adoption of local and Indigenous perspectives missing in the global study of the visual arts already decried by several scholars almost twenty years ago (Elkins, 2007). In an attempt at recovering Indigenous agency in the pictorial dispositions explored in what follows, the present study contributes to an ongoing interest in Indigenous North American perspectives on the colonial experience. It addresses issues of history and art that are germane to our interpretation of representations, and the role played by visual culture in non-literate societies more in general (Schwartz, 1994; Clarke and Frederick, 2006; May et al., 2010; Leibsohn and Peterson, 2012; Taçon, 2018; Challis and Sinclair-Thomson, 2022).

3In aligning itself to this framework, the following study analyses different material from the Great Plains of North America. This region’s heterogeneous inventory of representations is slowly revealing the complexities inherent in the production of visual expressions in the context of the colonial exchange, alongside other Native North American traditions (Leibsohn, 2015; Turpin and Eling Jr., 2016; Carocci, 2017). Despite the richness a vast archive, Indigenous perceptions of colonists have not yet been incorporated in any substantial measure in the existing compendia of Native North American art (Feest, 1992; Berlo and Phillips, 1998; Penney, 2004). The present research seeks to complement this literature with an analysis that takes seriously Indigenous ways of seeing. It aims to paint a rather different picture of Native North Americans’ diverse expressive forms by examining some of the ways in which images constructed meaning starting from what people knew or believed to be true.

4Overall, the iconographic corpus produced by Indigenous North Americans about their foreigners is rather conspicuous. It includes both bi- and three-dimensional expressions, and it is found in most North America’s figurative traditions. They are rarer in regions that developed abstract expressions, for example African and European figures depicted in the largely geometric textile arts from Florida (Feder, 1982, colour plate 58: fig 240).

5These differences invite to ask what prompted some societies to expand their visual lexicon by including elements external to their conventional repertoire. Considering the conditions that enabled this expressive process in some parts of Indigenous North America, we addressed observation as a culturally determined activity (Leibsohn and Peterson, 2012). In this article I maintain that the integration of foreigners in the visual language of certain cultures is linked to the changing role of images in society, and the ever-evolving perceptions of human agency in historical time. Visual depictions of humans and their actions produced by peoples from the Great Plains will help me formulate this argument as an expansion of ethnologist John Ewers’ largely descriptive account of this subject (Ewers, 1979).

6Native groups historically occupying the grasslands extending from south Canada to Texas developed a very rich visual culture. Anthropomorphic imagery was used to record facts, communicate messages, and connect various social actors across ontological registers (Barry, 1991; Berlo, 2000; Graber, 2014; Carocci, 2017). In minor measure, Plains peoples, including the Métis (mixed Indigenous and French communities), also produced small-size sculptures, mostly carved on pipe stems, or as part of ritual kits (Ewers, 1986). The articulation of Plains visual systems across media, and the complexities of their social functions are particularly suited to explore the premises upon which representation of Westerners were created, while offering an opportunity to examine such depictions from a Native perspective.

7The evidence examined here will reveal that the representation of foreigners by Indigenous artists was not an artistic activity, it should rather be understood through creative processes that go beyond the concerns of their European equivalents for which images illustrated textual descriptions, collected visual information for scientific purposes, or enriched artistic repertoires with new subjects, and themes.

8A focus on Plains’ Indigenous visual culture is not meant to overemphasise the ocularcentrism implicit in visual studies. Rather, it addresses instances in which ‘the visual’ takes precedence over other perceptual faculties. Before the contact with Europeans, the act of seeing was complemented by behavioural cues, auditory, and other perceptions, occasionally more important than sight in making sense of reality and experience. New forms of visuality appeared after the contact with European colonists. Detail-rich portraiture replaced precolonial impressionistic figurations, traditionally more preoccupied with conveying behaviour and action than appearances and physiognomic accuracy (Carocci, 2017). Such changes make us reflect on how shifting cultural parameters periodically reformulate ways of observing and describing the world through visual means among societies based on oral traditions.

Native North American Representations of their Others

9Indigenous North American representation of foreigners that came to their lands start with the earliest known artifacts depicting Europeans from the Arctic. Inuit groups from Greenland, and Eastern Canada offer the first glimpses into their perceptions of the Norse (or perhaps Basque?) in delicate figurines among which that of a priest, and a male portrait probably made between the 13^th and the 16^th c. (Sabo and Sabo, 1978; Gulløv and Jensen, 1983; McGhee, 1984). Inuit representations of Russian and other foreigners, continued through the 19^th c. with incisions on bone and ivory, paintings on wood, and even a model of a European ship (Rousselot and Grahammer, 2005; Canadian Museum of History, 2024). Rock and portable arts made between the 17^th and the 19^th c. recorded Southern Plains nomadic groups’ encounters with Spanish and Mexicans soldiers and missionaries (Kirkland, 1937, 1967; Wayland, 1972; Robertson, 1973; Jett, 1981; Turpin, 1988; King, 2000; Marcos-Marín, 2013; Turpin and Eling Jr., 2016; Hays-Gilpin and Gilpin, 2018). By the 19^th c., Eastern artists turned their earlier impressionistic antler cut-outs, and rock art depicting French, English, and probably Dutch, colonists into forms of portraiture adopted from Western models, whether as autodidacts or academically trained (Buick, 1995; Sturtevant, 2006; Polack, 2013; Hill, 2012, 2018). Noteworthy are also representations of Europeans and crosses found on beaded belts called wampum. Considered to be historical documents, they performed crucial diplomatic roles in treaty making, peace agreements, and other exchanges (Speck, 1925, but also Bergseth, 2008). From the 19^th c. onwards, representations of Westerners, Russians, and Chinese appear among the Northwest Coast peoples, whose sculptural proficiency produced statues, masks, and effigies in wood, and argillite (Mullins and Paynter, 2000; Menut, 2010; Bunn-Marcuse and Collison, 2018; McCormick, 2018; Davy, 2023). By contrast to European artists who used art and illustrations for propaganda, documentation, or study, Indigenous artists depicted Europeans as records of their relationships with colonists, priests, and soldiers (Brugge, 1983:492, Fig 2.; Turpin, 1989). Furthermore, they are documents that reveal how Indigenous artistic responses to historical predicaments were directed by forces internal to their visual grammars and underlying logics, as will be discussed below.

10Several studies mention Western influence on Indigenous visual cultures of the Plains (Ewers, 1957; Rodee, 1965; Petersen, 1971; Feder, 1986; Nagy, 1993; Szabo, 2007; McCoy, 2001; Brownstone, 2014). Comparative material focuses on new technologies and materials, changes in thematic choice, or academic art training (Hutchinson, 2001; Leibsohn, 2015). Relatively less is known of Native North Americans’ input in art production about/for Europeans and colonists in comparison to other parts of the Americas (Bailey, 2005; Gisbert, 2016; Frassani, 2022; Mason, 2022; Schmidt Dias, 2022). The only exceptions are a few studies on Indigenous labour and creativity in the religious art of North America’s Spanish missions (Harwood Phillips, 1976; Pelzel, 1976; Fontana, 1996; Neuerburg, 1997; Verduzco Arguelles and Rodríguez Tapia, 2018). For other regions, research is scant, but the Great Plains provides rare clues about mutual artistic borrowings, and innovations in their visual cultures.

11Research on two rare colonial paintings known as Segesser I and Segesser II suggests that Indigenous Plains artists may have authored parts of these artworks, which recorded a violent clash between Spanish, French and their Native American allies in 1720 (Hotz, 1970; Chávez, 1990; Bilgri, 2012; 84, 98). Visual cues indicate that they translated what they observed and knew into new forms of figuration. Notable are the detailed depictions of local plants, and body decorations portrayed with unmatched detail. Battle nudity, the use of war-bundles, armour, or the distinction between shield typologies, by far exceed the level of accuracy achieved by any European of the time in depicting Native customs and attire. Comparable examples from the same period such as ‘The Destruction of the Saint Sabá Mission in the Province of Texas…’ by José de Páez (1727-1780), show rather approximate representations of Southern Plains warriors that stand in stark contrast with the Segesser hides’ ethnographic precision (White, 2000). The possibility that Plains artists may have produced some portions of these paintings, if proven, would turn them into a rare form of Indigenous visual ethnography, and an example of Native American influence on colonial art rarely acknowledged for this region. Perhaps, more intriguingly, such a case could show how Indigenous North American artists integrated their visual languages with those of European newcomers since the early 18^th c.

12Spanish and French were among the first Europeans to enter the Great Plains from the South, and the North and East respectively. The largest influx of English-speaking colonists in the region post-dates the momentous Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-1806, recorded in the late 19^th c. in the Lakota Cloud Shield winter count, one of the pictorial calendars that marked each year with an icon associated with the year’s most memorable event (Greene and Thornton, 2007: 142). The most abundant bi-dimensional depictions of Europeans in Indigenous Plains’ visual cultures are found etched, painted, scratched, or incised on the rocks of New Mexico, Texas, Nuevo Leon, and Coahuila. These areas were historically inhabited or visited by nomadic peoples such as Comanche, Apache, Kiowa, Jumano, Tonkawa, and south of the Rio Grande, by smaller nations collectively known as Coahuiltecans (Kirkland, 1937, 1967; Keyser and Klassen, 2001; Turpin, 1988, 1989, 2002; Marcos-Marín, 2013; Turpin and Eling Jr., 2016). Some of these portrayals are in the style known as the Biographic Tradition (1700-1900 C.E. ca), which replaced the preceding Ceremonial Tradition (prehistory to 1750 C.E. ca) (Keyser and Klassen, 2001). The large inventory of images related to the arrival of the Europeans on the Plains mostly includes images of horsemen, cattle, ranchers, carriages, priests, soldiers, crosses, and churches. Similar themes also appear in the rock art of the Rocky Mountains, and South Dakota’s Black Hills historically occupied by the Blackfoot confederacy, the Crow, the Lakota, and Cheyenne nations, among others (Keyser and Klassen, 2001; Sundstrom, 2004).

13Pictures appearing in this corpus are schematic and impressionistic. They do not indicate location and disregard realistic proportions. Anthropomorphs lack facial physiognomy and depth and are rendered in an overall economy of lines. Only essential elements are graphically outlined to convey characters’ identities. If Europeans are recognised by hats, Crow warriors feature their typical stiff pompadour, Pawnee are depicted with upturned moccasins, and Omaha with shaved head and a braid, to name a few. The individuality of the figures appears in the late Biographic Tradition, when a warrior’s identity become central to the retelling of his martial deeds on images painted on muslin, or paper (Keyser, 1996; Greene, 2004).

14Colonists were also depicted in three-dimensions. Native and Métis artists executed their portraits carved on pipe bowls in soft stone, or wood. These were either gifts to benefactors made as past time among disabled artists and retired warriors, or records of specific events, such as the growth of mix-descent enclaves such as the Métis, or episodes of a person’s life (Ewers, 1979: 423-424; 1986: 49). These representations clearly fit within a regime of visuality determined by the desire and necessity to record extraordinary individual experiences through memorial expressions.

Hats, Beards, and Buttons

15Representations of Europeans made by Plains artists on rock, hide, and cotton since the 18^th century mostly depict men due to the nature of diplomatic or military interactions. European women are rarely depicted. One example was recorded at the now destroyed rock art site Castle Canyon in Texas, where a row of individuals wearing hats appears above a line of figures wearing A-line dresses (Kirkland, 1967: 105, plate 65). This convention was later used to signify women in winter counts (Howard, 1960; Greene and Thornton, 2007). Representations of men too are consistent across media and regions. Like other ethnicities, Europeans were associated with unique elements such as hats. They had an almost universal resonance because they were perceived to be one of European men’s most distinctive characteristic from the Northwest Coast to the Eastern seaboard (Wray, 1963; Wayland, 1972; Campbell, 1978; Williamson and Veilleux, 2005; Menut, 2010).

16Despite linguistic differences there are some commonalities in Plains peoples’ perceptions of European foreigners. In the early phases of contact, European material culture was universally categorised as exotic, unusual, if not altogether numinous, therefore desirable (Ewers, 1979; White, 1994; Sabo III, 1995). The frequency with which it appears in representations of Europeans, while signifying their identity, also reveals acute observation of social differences among individual of the same ethnicity.

17Among Plains peoples, special accoutrements could turn a mediocre warrior into a valiant hero in virtue of the spiritual power attributed to certain materials, or rare objects worn on the person (Carocci, 2012). Equally, European hats, beards, buttons, boots, heeled shoes, weapons, uniforms, and epaulettes made them special to Indigenous artists. Representing these accoutrements signified the power they conferred to anyone wearing them. Western observers may interpret these representations as forms of naturalism, but Indigenous depictions of accessories of European clothing followed instead a culturally-specific logic. Accustomed to military ranking systems in which certain items of regalia distinguished warriors’ various levels of accomplishment and spiritual endorsement, Plains artists focused their attention on what they perceived to be Europeans status markers, the presence or absence of which placed individuals into distinct classes of people. An example of this is the Vaquero Shelter, probably dating to the mid-18^th c., where a European man in military uniform is portrayed near a church alongside two non-descript horsemen handling ropes. The larger, frontally displayed figure wears a hat and boots, and sports an open jacket trimmed with epaulettes that reveals a buttoned vest or a shirt. In his right hand, he holds a pipe (see figure 1).

18The Indigenous artist made a distinction between the authority-wielding character and people perceived to be of lesser rank, which from an Indigenous perspective translated into people with no spiritual power. The scene’s main protagonist is depicted frontally, in the ‘iconic’ mode derived from the Ceremonial Tradition. Its style differs from that of the Biographic Tradition where figures are simply sketched (Klassen, 1998: 44-46). In the case of Vaquero Shelter, the ‘iconic’ figure is integrated in what can be interpreted as a self-contained narrative scene. Considering that in the Great Plains the iconic mode was originally used to have spiritual or numinous connotations, the juxtaposition of iconic and narrative modes indicates that the vignette was made at a moment of transition between two distinctive styles, the older Ceremonial Tradition in which frontal figures conveyed with full iconographic vigour spiritual content, and the later Biographic Tradition in which profile imagery is preponderant in the narrative mode that depicts scenes from a person’s life. We ought to remember that Ceremonial Tradition’s iconic figures displayed with remarkable detail the signs of their other-worldly sanction through symbols on warrior shields, banners, and other insignia. Consequently, the analogy between a European bedecked in all his finery and a valiant warrior displaying the signs of his supernatural endorsement made sense to an Indigenous audience, which saw in such marks of distinction the visualization of his power and relative social status in comparison to figures that lacked these accoutrements (Keyser and Klassen, 2001: 191-221; Keyser and Kaiser, 2014).

19Plains artists also used rhetorical strategies such as synecdoche, which succinctly conveyed to Indigenous viewers a message or content. Foreigners may be visually announced by the objects they used, or that indexed their presence, for example a handshake, a flag, a log cabin, or a cart. Iconic, narrative, and symbolic forms clearly had different purposes and aims. The function of synecdoche was memorial, in that it recorded events for future reference. The process of recalling information based on visual prompts was consistent and coherent through time, geographical areas, and media. Iconographic homogeneity in rock art, winter counts, biographical narratives, and sculptures afforded immediate intelligibility across linguistic divides.

20Linguistic diversity promoted the development of trade and sign languages that could be understood by several groups (Farnell, 2009). Not surprisingly, as in the case of the sign ‘hat’, gestural icons corresponded to pictograms (Ewers, 1979: 413). The association between sign language and pictograms suggests that clarity was needed to reach the widest range of possible audiences (Mallery, 1893: 637-649; Fowles and Artenberry, 2013). Images and symbols could be interpreted by visually literate viewers from different regions, in addition to being historical records for the peoples that made them (Turpin, 2002).

21That the Vaquero Shelter European holds a pipe may be significant, especially if it was of local manufacture. Indigenous pipe/calumet ceremonies integrated Europeans into Native socio-cosmological systems. As prized symbols of peace, they also ensured safe passage through Indigenous territories (Sabo III, 1992). Indigenous observers understood the carrier’s friendly nature through its representation. As such the icon was not literal. It encompassed both denotative and connotative values for it was more than a depiction of a physical object, it conveyed a full message intelligible to visually competent viewers sharing the same cultural assumptions.

22By the mid-19^th century, a tendency toward naturalism replaced the shorthand style both in bi- and three-dimensional modes. The increasing relevance of the individual in history was translated into the depiction of the world’s outer forms through naturalistic details once used in the Ceremonial Tradition to indicate a person’s power (Carocci, 2017). Even pictorial calendars’ imagery got similarly enriched to extent that if in early winter count a simple figure with a hat may suffice to denote ‘European’, later versions replaced the same image with a naturalistic portrait. This is the case of the 1879 copy of Cloud Shield’s picture for the year 1799-1800, when the first European came to trade and live with the Dakota (see figure 2.). He is remembered as a fair man, which in some versions of this year is depicted wearing a hat while making the sign gesture for ‘good’ (Corbusier, 1886: 134; Greene and Thornton, 2007: 126, 128-129). In Cloud Shield’s version we see a European man in profile wearing a wide-brimmed hat, a shirt, and a buttoned waistcoat. The artist included realistic eyebrows, eyes, and a beard that stand out against the plainer old icons for ‘White man’. The abundance of visual information included to describe this person turned generic imagery into individualised portraiture.

23Whereas Biographic rock art and winter count pictograms were largely aimed at communal consumption and public display, effigies of Europeans/Westerners carved on pipe bowls were intimate objects that sealed relationships between two individuals (Ewers, 1979; 1986: 87-91). That deeply personal presents took the form of pipes can be explained not only through the cultural significance they had in building, maintaining, and renewing relationships, but because sculpture most efficiently reproduced the iconic mode in its full symbolic efficacy, and visual impact.

Final Reflections

24Changes in Plains peoples’ visual depictions of Europeans show how their perceptions and representations of reality mutated since the 18^th c. The coexistence of iconic and narrative modes in single scenes, like in the Vaquero Canyon, provides a window into how Indigenous peoples experienced cosmological time and human agency in history. Here different classes of Europeans are coded through modes of execution: the main figure is represented frontally in a naturalistic style reminiscent of the Ceremonial Tradition, the other two are non-descript characters whose schematic rendition conform to the Biographic genre, confirming the relative importance of the character displayed in full iconic detail.

25The convergence of two mutually exclusive styles signals an osmosis between cosmological and historical dimensions respectively embodied in iconic and narrative modes. The placement of iconic figures in the realm of human action, and narrational forms in the domain of the sacred announces a new phase of Indigenous representational strategies, one in which both modes are synthesized in distinct scenes to convey elaborate messages. Picture writing and rock art from this moment on not only describe an event but provide nuanced connotations that render iconographic interpretations increasingly more complex.

26Though the Biographic narrative style is associated with a ‘historical concept of the world’ (Klassen, 1998: 46), Indigenous artists employed the realism associated with the iconic mode of the Ceremonial Tradition to mark distinctive characters’ levels of importance. In this style naturalistic details announced figures’ spiritual endowment visualised through their powerful accoutrements. In the new visual regime defined by the merging of two styles, realistically rendered characters indicate their social relevance and the importance of the event of which they are part. This process can be appreciated in the execution of portrait-like representations of specific individuals on gift-pipes.

27Some Europeans heads carved in these objects feature the typical hat associated with Westerners. Yet, specific historical persons encountered by the maker are distinguished by unique combinations of details. The introduction of naturalism in the realm of historical representations such as portrait pipes, turned standardised icons into visual descriptions based on direct observation. These portraits continued to share with pictography some superficial traits simplified in the depiction of buttons, beards, or shirts, and importantly, they reveal how visual culture manifested different relationships with time and memorialisation.

28Starting from the second part of the 18^th c. Plains artists begin delegating to visual representations what once was mostly oral and performative memorialisation. Recursive repetition of simple pictograms triggered the memory of certain events, like in the winter counts. By contrast, naturalism allowed the visualisation of individuals encountered at some point in time by specific artists. After this period, the recursive becomes more distinctively episodic. This latter mode emphasises an event’s uniqueness, which underlines that a certain event is unrepeatable.

29In former representations spiritual power was emphasised over the description of facts. Later on, the representation of mundane experiences was prioritised over supernatural endowment, spiritual endorsement, and other-than human agency. However, with the introduction of the iconic mode into the visual narration of historical events, Indigenous artists injected some of the uniqueness attributed to the numinous in the context of real-life through innovative representational strategies. The exceptionality of each encounter, was visually conveyed through specific combinations of traits constructed into individual characters, like in the portrait pipes, the Vaquero Canyon man, and the first man who came to trade with the Dakota.

30Not all the sitters portrayed by Indigenous artists are known, but all of them reveal an attention to detail derived from observation. Their individuality is conveyed by the signs that give them an irreplaceable place in history, in the realm of phenomenal experiences. The beards, hats, and moustaches of each figure make them unique, recovering the uncanny that Indigenous observers recognised in mimetic realism, as recorded in the diaries of early European artists such as George Catlin and Karl Bodmer (Catlin, 1973, Vol. 1: 106-107; Thomas and Ronnefeldt, 1976: 132).

31Many Native North American groups incorporated in their visual lexicon the arrival of foreigners, and in particular Europeans and their merchandise by adapting existing representational languages that could accommodate the exceptional experience of colonialism. In the cases examined here, the detectable stylistic variations that characterise subsequent phases of these encounters are not only a sign of artistic changes, but a reflection on the place that images have in the process of archiving experience and memory among peoples without writing.

32Plains Indigenous groups had a long and established tradition that used visual representations to reflect on human action in relation to the numinous, and on relationships with other humans and the historical events they are part of. Stylistic considerations made in the essay were integral to a diachronic understanding of cultural attitudes to representation and what it stands for. As demonstrated, changes announced by the adoption of new visual strategies that merged iconic and narrative modes enabled Plains artists to make sense of contingent historical developments through a distinctly Indigenous perspective. When not influenced by European conventions, like in the case of the Segesser hides, the introduction of mimetic realism in both bi- and three-dimensional representations seen through the examples discussed above, affirmed the distinctiveness of individual persons or unique events. The level of detail noticeable in these representations, in addition to being proof of remarkable observation skills, demonstrates a growing awareness of the place of human action in the deployment of historical facts. Yet even a shift toward the visual representation of mundane happenings retained a sense of the numinous, once co-terminus with the depiction of figures in iconic mode. This was an autochthonous invention that Plains artists employed to manifest what was unique, powerful, and extraordinary through a naturalistic depiction of details from the observation of tangible reality. The realisation that this mode of expression could be put to different uses sealed its success starting from the mid-18^th c. when the first experiments with mimetic realism in the context of narrative forms generated new synergies between styles once kept separate. This allowed Plains artists/observers to convey complex messages through imagery, at once records of historical facts and multi-layered forms of communication in which denotative and connotative aspects coexisted, as shown in the case of the pipe held by the bedecked man at Vaquero Canyon. There, a simple depiction of an object associated with an identifiable individual, whose name we lost, communicated peaceful intentions, social status, power, and perhaps spiritual endowment. Intangible and tangible registers of reality could be manifested through detailed images, which would have been immediately intelligible to Indigenous viewers. Though some of the meanings embedded in these representational forms may be irretrievable, further analyses of this vast iconographic inventory may reveal new interpretative avenues, hermeneutic processes, and meanings that contemporary observers still find obscure.