Elaine O’Brien 1
Art 108 Study Questions
Old World, New World: The Encounter of Cultures on the American Frontier
Frances Pohl
The Buckskin Jacket and the Parker Pen
1. What juxtaposition noted by Levi-Strauss and Curtis must we pay attention to? Why?
2. Was the conquest of the indigenous peoples of North America complete?
3. Did Native American and Euro-American visual cultures influence each other?
4. In 19th Century U.S. did popular and fine art exist in separate spheres?
5. Why is it important to consider the effect of venue and audience on the meaning of an
image?
The Myth of the Frontier
6. When did Frederick Jackson Turner articulate the major elements of the frontier myth?
7. What are those elements of the myth that marked the American spirit for Turner?
8. How is the frontier myth evident in today’s newspapers?
9. What did the “Indian Queen” of the Americas signify to Europeans? What were her
attributes?
10. Describe the iconography of Augustin Dupre’s Diplomatic Medal (1790)
11. Compare Dupre’s Medal to the engraving of “America” from The Four Continents.
12. How does Vanderlyn’s painting The Death of Jane McCrea stereotype Indian men and
European women colonists?
13. What is the message of Emmanuel Leutze’s Westward Ho!? How is it conveyed,
specifically? For what location was the work intended? Who commissioned it?
14. What figures are represented in the border, roundels, and medallions of Westward Ho!?
Charles Bird King and George Catlin
15. Why did European men dress like Indians?
16. Why did King and Catlin devote their life’s work to representing the American Indians?
Who commissioned them?
17. With what artist did King study and where?
18. How many portraits of Native Americans did he paint? Where did he paint them? What
official purpose did the portraits serve?
19. Who is the subject of King’s Young Omahaw, War Eagle, Little Missouri, and Pawnees?
How have the subjects’ facial type been interpreted? Why would King represent the
Indian leaders the way he did?
20. What clues to the visual language of Native Americans does King’s painting offer?
21. What was the Indian Removal Bill? When? Which President? What happened? How
was it rationalized by the Euro-Americans?
22. Where did George Catlin make his paintings? How long did he travel? How many trips?
How many paintings and drawings?
23. Why did he want to paint Native American life?
24. What is “imperialist nostalgia” and how can it be seen in Catlin’s project?
25. How and where did Catlin show his art?
26. What disease almost completely wiped out the Mandan after Catlin had represented them
and their lifestyle? What was Catlin’s father’s response to the tragedy?
27. Why was Catlin’s “Indian Gallery” a success in Europe? What are the qualities and the
ideological origins of the “noble savage”?
Elaine O’Brien 2
Art 108 Study Questions
28. What is the subtext (underlying meanings) of Catlin’s frontispiece to his Letters and
Notes?
Alternative Representations: Photography and Ledger Art
29. Compare John Easterly’s photograph of Keokuk with Catlin’s portrait of Clermont, First
Chief of the Tribe, 1834
30. What messages are conveyed by Theodore Davis for the January 16, 1869 issue of
Harper’s Weekly? Who read Harper’s Weekly?
31. What group of Native Americans was imprisoned at Fort Marion in St. Augustine Florida
in 1875? Why were they held and how long?
32. What kind of drawings did the Fort Marion prisoners make? What were the subjects?
33. Where did the name “ledger art” come from? What medium preceded it?
34. Who bought the ledger paintings and drawings?
35. Compare Cohoe’s representation, Fort Marion Prisoners Dancing for Tourists with
Theodore Davis’s Harper’s sketch of dancing Indians. Who was the audience for both
images? What accounts for the difference in the representations?
36. How does Pohl interpret Cohoe’s Prisoners Dancing and Wo-Haw’s Reading Class at
Fort Marion as partly resistant to assimilation by European culture?
37. What two solutions to the “Indian problem” were considered in the late 19th century?
38. When was the last battle between Native Americans and the U.S. military?
39. What is the subtext of Benjamin Johnston’s photograph, Class in American History,
(1899-1900)? Where was this photograph displayed and in what context?
40. How does Pohl want us to read the images of the American frontier?