University of Cincinnati Digital Press Highlights the Vibrant Art of Rare, Historic Pieces of Americana

The nation is planning for the bicentennial of the event that defined the nation's westward expansion -- the Lewis and Clark expedition. Through their journals, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark's adventures have become legendary. But they missed documenting the visual history of the expedition. Because there was no artist with the explorers, there are no images of the landscapes they saw or people they encountered, with the exception of some sketches in their journals. It's this rare visual history of the West that the University of Cincinnati Digital Press (UCDP) will bring to scholars and collectors around the world.

The UCDP's newest publication, McKenney & Hall's History of the Indian Tribes of North America: The First Issue, is now available in a three-disk CD-ROM set with the special CUrator software platform developed by the UCDP. It has images and a database with maps, text and an extensive bibliography. The CUrator software integrates all three disks, so researchers, teachers and collectors can link between them and other UCDP publications. The cost of the publication is $499.

According to UCDP assistant director and editor-in chief Alice Cornell, McKenney and Hall is one of the world's earliest and most extensive collections of Native American portraits. In some instances, the publication holds the only known portrait of a vanished people. Cornell adds it's the only record of the important works of Charles Bird King and other artists, because the original portraits perished in a devastating fire at the Smithsonian in 1865.

Thomas Loraine McKenney was appointed by President James Madison as Commissioner of Indian Affairs under the U.S. War Department in 1824, serving first as Superintendent of Indian Trade from 1816-1820. McKenney, an avid collector, commissioned the portraits of the American Indians. James Hall, a lawyer who served in the War of 1812 and at one time had lived in Cincinnati, provided the text for McKenney's collection. The majority of the portraits were actually painted by Charles Bird King between 1822 and 1842, documenting the faces of 143 Native Americans who visited Washington, D.C over that time period.

"At that time, the country was not capable of handling Indian uprisings, so one of the reasons the Indians would be brought to Washington was to impress them with the power of the 'Great White Father,'" explains Cornell. "So, these visits were primarily aimed at keeping peace in the West."

Cornell says the Native Americans would wear their very best. In many portraits, they're displaying prized gifts from white explorers who would travel through the West. Coin-like necklaces, called presidential peace medals, would be made of silver, brass or bronze, with the most precious medals reserved for the high-ranking chiefs. Cornell says the peace medals were a long tradition and were also given away by the English as tokens of friendship. Lewis and Clark would also award such medals on their expedition. (Cornell has a replica of the Lewis and Clark presidential peace medal, with a photograph of then-president Thomas Jefferson on one side and a crossed peace pipe and tomahawk on the other).

One of the works featured in the CD-ROM set, No-Way-Ke-Sug-Ga (He Who Strikes Two at Once), an Otoe Indian painted in 1837, wears his Grizzly claw necklace with his presidential peace medal. The claw necklace exemplified his mightiness, because, as Cornell explains, the Grizzly bear was notoriously dangerous and hard to kill. No-Way-Ke-Sug-Ga's bright red plume on his headdress is a deer roach, framed by a finger-woven headband ornamented with trade beads.

Chon Mon I Case (Prairie Wolf), an Otto half-chief, wears a fiery red headdress made of horsehair and ornamented with shaved bison horns. He too wears a presidential peace medal, a Grizzly claw necklace and trade silver armbands.
"In the biographical sketch which accompanies the portrait, James Hall reported that Chon-Mon-I-Case was a warrior who rose to become chief through merit, and that he recounted his deeds in 1819 during a dance performed before members of the Stephen Long Expedition to the Rocky Mountains," says Cornell. "Later in life, he killed his brother after a fight, in which the latter bit off the end of his nose."

The UCDP signature photo of the collection, Ne-Sou-A-Quoit (Bear in the Forks of a Tree), a Fox Chief, was considered by Hall to be a man of courtesy and integrity. He didn't smoke or drink, but he did have seven wives. "The detailed portrayal of attire and penetrating gaze of the subject makes this a memorable portrait," says Cornell. The portrait was painted in 1837.

Pet-A-Le-Shar-Ro was a Pawnee brave who was a member of one of the first delegations to be painted by King. On his visit to Washington, he was presented with a special silver medal in honor of rescuing a woman who was going to be sacrificed in an Indian ceremony. Cornell says Pet-A-Le-Shar-Ro's medal was recovered in Howard County, Nebraska in 1833 and is now in the collections of the Nebraska Historical Society.

The faces and the stories of these and other Native Americans are becoming better known through the mission of the University of Cincinnati Digital Press. By publishing these rare collections of Western Americana using CUrator software, scholars no longer have to travel to the few places where these special collections are stored, such as UC's Archives and Rare Books Department. Furthermore, the software with its multiple displays, electronic indexing and multiple searching strategies, provides analytic tools for research that don't exist in the original publications.

McKenney & Hall's History of the Indian Tribes of North America: The First Issue is the third publication of the UCDP, following James Otto Lewis' Aboriginal Portfolio: The Complete Edition (2000) and George Catlin: The Printed Works (1998, revised, 2000).

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