Custer's Last Stand and American Indian myths

Ireland and the American Indians

By Juliana Adelman
Every once in a while the historian experiences a series of coincidences which makes her take a second look at something and maybe file it under ‘interesting lead to pursue in future’. While reading through the minute books of the Dublin Zoological Society I came across a tantilizing reference to the visitation of a tribe of American Indians to the gardens in the 1840s. I assumed it was another example of the distasteful nineteenth-century practice of human displays: public exhibitions of ‘savages’ from all continents were popular attractions and sometimes they were placed alongside animal exhibits. Soon after, I came across an article on the visiting Indians in a Dublin newspaper. The coverage surprised me. There was certainly an element of condescension and titilation, but the Indians were treated as a mixture of visiting foreign dignitaries and actors. Far from the seedy sideshow in native flesh that I had imagined. The tribe was described as making a visit to the zoological gardens, rather than being on display there, and all the gate receipts for the day were donated to them. Hmmm, so much for a historian’s assumptions.
I didn’t think much more of it until a few months later I was reading William Cronon’s book Nature’s metropolis: Chicago and the great west (heartily recommended). Cronon referred repeatedly to George Catlin’s doomed campaigns to save both American Indian tribes and buffalo habitats in the west. Catlin, one of America’s early environmental campaigners, documented the demise of the buffalo in the face of expanding American cattle grazing. Catlin sounded familiar. A quick search in the National Library’s online catalogue revealed the presence of one of Catlin’s pamphlets advertising his American Indian show in London. The penny dropped.
On a summer visit to Washington DC I took the opportunity to visit the Smithsonian Institution’s American Indian museum. There, in the midst of an impressive series of galleries, were George Catlin’s paintings of Indians. Among them were some of the very same people who had visited Dublin. The above image is of Chief White Cloud who was certainly on parts of the tour, but I cannot find confirmation of his being in Dublin. The paintings are worth a visit to the museum on their own. They are beautiful formal portraits, their subjects posed in the style of any nineteenth-century gentleman or woman. I am sure they are stylized, but they are clearly paintings of individual people executed by someone who knew them.
Catlin visited Ireland in May of 1843, where he delivered a series of lectures in the Rotunda (yes, same as the hospital). Admission was a relatively pricy 2s/1s and the lectures included ‘tableux vivants’ of the Indians themselves, dressed in costume and performing traditional dances and songs. They seem to have spent time in Britain both before and after their tour of Ireland. In December of 1843, the Indians were introduced to Queen Victoria. The Indians met with a very enthusiastic reception most places that they went and, according to Catlin, very much enjoyed their adventure (particularly the discovery of champagne).
Catlin was certainly no saint and his European tour with the American Indians did no harm to his career as a writer and painter. His book on this tour is well worth a read, even just for the section on Dublin. Catlin’s principle book on the ‘manners and customs’ of the Indians whom he travelled amongst reads something like a natural history. Catlin’s view of the Indians, while more sympathetic than most, leaned towards the ‘noble savage’. Although he called the Indians his friends, he referred to them in the contemporary paternalistic language as savages and simpletons.


http://puesoccurrences.com/2010/11/04/ireland-and-the-american-indians/

Survivors of the remaining seven companies of the 7th Cavalry asserted that the Indians were equipped with repeating rifles and mentioned Winchesters as often as not. Major Marcus Reno claimed: 'The Indians had Winchester rifles and the column made a large target for them and they were pumping bullets into it.' Although some white survivors claimed to be heavily outgunned, Private Charles Windolph of Company H was probably closest to the truth when he estimated that half the warriors carried bows and arrows, one-quarter of them carried a variety of old muzzleloaders and single-shot rifles, and one-quarter carried modern repeaters.

http://www.historynet.com/battle-of-little-bighorn-were-the-weapons-the-deciding-factor.htm

blatantrereg wrote: »

Interesting thread. "We need to attack them because they have repeating rifles" "We need to attack them because they have weapons of mass destruction." Maybe?
I bet they were terrorising people anyway.
"They" being the people where the gold/oil is, of course.

Nuke1973 wrote: »

General Custer ?? He was a lieutenant colonel in the 7th cavalry when he died. Although he had briefly been a breveted major general in the civil war but the rank was basically a temporary field commission.

goose2005 wrote: »

The native culture was mostly wiped out by European diseases, and if the British hadn't conquered and colonised it, it would have become part of the Spanish Empire - it would be interesting to see how the world would work if all of America was Latin America.

tac foley wrote: »

My Master Chief Warrant Officer was a full-blood Blackfoot whose family moved up into Canada so that they could all join the Canadian Army and fight the Germans. Some got decorated doing so, and all came home again.