Catlin's Lament: Indians, Manifest Destiny, and the Ethics of Nature

George Catlin And Jacksonian Democracy

During his presidency, Andrew Jackson formulated a plan for the removal of many of the American Indian Tribes residing east of the Mississippi River. The plan was controversial at the time and remains so. Removal was poorly planned and poorly implemented resulting in illness and loss of life to many Indians. The Removal was part of Jacksonian Democracy, in the sense that it was designed to free lands for public settlement and create opportunity for personal and economic freedom for many Americans.

Settlement led to despoliation of nature, pollution, the extinction of species such as the buffalo and passenger pigeon, the ravaging of forests, among other environmental destruction. For Hausdoerffer, the much-vaunted Jacksonian Democracy also led to an expansion of slavery and to the economic exploitation of women.

During the Jacksonian Era, the American painter George Catlin ((1796 -- 1872) travelled West from St. Louis in a series of five trips between 1830 -- 1836. Catlin visited over 40 Indian tribes and painted a lengthy series of portraits and scenes of nature designed to capture the dignity of Indian people, the value of their culture, and the beauty of the western landscape. Following the completion of his western trips, Catlin made many unsuccessful attempts to sell his paintings, called his "Indian Gallery" to the Federal government. Catlin visited Europe and wrote a good deal about his travels to the West and about his thoughts on Indians and nature. Catlin's "Indian Gallery" is now owned by the Smithsonian. I have had the privilege of seeing and reflecting on it many times in Washington, D.C.

In his book "Catlin's Lament: Indians, Manifest Destiny, and the Ethics of Nature", (2009) John Hausdoerffer explores difficult questions regarding Catlin's attitude towards the Indian subjects he painted and towards American expansionism. Hausdoerffer is director of environmental studies at Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado. Hausdoerffer offers a portrayal of a deeply divided Catlin. On the one hand, Hausdoerffer finds that Catlin devoted his life to protesting the devastation of the Indians and the destruction of their environment. On the other hand, Hausdoerffer also concludes that Catlin shared many of the basic assumptions of Jacksonian Democracy about the "inevitability" of Indian removal and about the great value of American expansionism and economic growth. This conflict limited Catlin's achievement and vision. For Hausdoerffer, Catlin tended to work from the paradigm case of a museum. Catlin wanted to preserve the memory and dignity of Indian culture and the beauty of the West in his paintings. But with the expansion of the United States he did not see them as part of the ongoing, organic life of the nation.

Hauddoerffer expands upon his understanding of Catlin in five short chapters describing important stages in the painter's life. Although his book is ponderously written on the whole, Hausdoerffer summarizes his consideration of Catlin in wonderfully evocative headings. Thus "Catlin's Epiphany" describes Catlin's decision as a young man to forsake his career as a lawyer and follow the life of an artist. After several years as a portrait painter, Catlin's "Ephiphany" was his realization that his life work lay in travelling west and recording Indian life in portraits. Hausdoerffer gives good background on Catlin's career as a portrait painter and on the influence upon him of the Peale Museum, a pioneering collection of natural history, in Philadelphia.

In "Catlin's Gaze" Hausdoerffer describes the painter's six years of travel among the western tribes. In the pivotal chapter, "Catlin's Lament", Hausdoerffer offers illuminating comparisons between Catlin and other naturalists, including Bartram, Audubon, and Thoreau. He discusses Catlin's famous paintings of Chief Black Hawk and Chief Osceola. Catlin "laments" because he understands the value of Indian culture but feels himself powerless to do anything to preserve it due to the onrush of Jacksonianism and removal. He preserves his Indian subjects in portraits -- as museum pieces and "ghosts" rather than as the embodiment of a living way of life.

In "Catlin's Tragedy", Hausdoerffer describes the years Catlin spent in Europe as a lecturer and as a showman, the founder of the first Wild West Show. During this time, Catlin brought Indians to Europe who performed for crowds. Many of these Indians died, to Catlin's sorrow. Unlike some other students of Catlin, Hausdoerffer does not find Catlin guilty of exploitation in his European ventures. Rather, he finds Catlin pursuing the same divided attitude towards the Indians that he had shown in the United States. In the final chapter of the book, "Catlin's Fetish", Hausdoerffer tries to summarize his portrayal of Catlin by claiming that Catlin's attitude was based, whether consciously or not, on a commodification of "nature". Following his experiences with the Peale Museum, Catlin tended to objectify nature and Indian cultures rather than as considering them as ongoing living systems with a future.

I thought there was much of value in Hausdoerffer's study. Most importantly, he treats Catlin seriously as a person worth knowing. His basic insight, that Catlin was divided and ambivalent in his attitudes, seems to me unremarkable and correct. Hausdoerffer's book offers good interpretations of some of Catlin's more famous paintings. The discussions setting Catlin's work in the context of other early American painters and writers and of American popular culture are also good and valuable.

The difficulties with the book consist of its frequently turgid writing style. In addition, Hausdoerffer is throughout severely critical, if not of Catlin himself, of contemporaries who, Hausdoerffer believes, are all too ready to repeat Catlin's lament by selling short environmental and Native American values in the pursuit of profit. He describes his book, highly obscurely, as an "ethics of nature". An overly polemical tone and unsupported and questionable ideological assumptions of Hausdoerffer's own mar what is otherwise a worthwhile study of an important American painter and writer.

Robin Friedman