2.1.3. The European's Indian
As American Indian soldiers engaged in the Great War were to fight alongside French and British soldiers, against German soldiers, it is interesting to know what idea of the Indian the French, English, and German soldiers had. As Europe is made up of different countries and cultures, it might be as risky to refer to a general "European" idea of the Indian as to speak about Indians in general. Both termsEuropean and Indianare abstractions that represent a wide variety of realities. However, my concern in this aspect of my study is with stereotypesand they are essentially simple, erasing differences to create a highly caricatured image of reality. In this sense, the basic difference between European countries and the United States is that the American Indians did not live on European national lands and thus Europeans could project their ideas, images, stereotypes more freely on a reality that did not concern them directly.
European Popular Literature: Context and the Example of Karl May
Richard H. Cracroft, in an article on "The European Writer and the American West," commented that a close "examination of the literature of European nations reveals that most of these nations have a long-standing Wild West literary tradition which rivals and in some ways exceeds that of the United States."75 Traveling accounts of European voyagers having visited North America began as soon as the 17th century but they were not read by many people. They are nonetheless interesting because they were later used by more popular authors to document their fictions.
In Europe, François-René de Chateaubriand, who had read Joseph-François Lafitau and visited the United States in 1791,76 introduced the romantic Indian with three novelsAtala (1801), René (1802), and Les Natchez (1826). The numerous editions and translations of these books in European countries77 contributed to popularizing the Noble Savage image already evoked by Rousseau in the 18th century, which was "often employed rhetorically to criticize and satirize European societies."78 Chateaubriand's books even inspired artists such as Eugène Delacroix who made a painted version of Les Natchez, exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1835.79 Then James Fenimore Cooper became as popular in Europe as in the United States. The Pioneers was published in 1823 in the U.S. as well as in France and England.80 Both Chateaubriand and Cooper would have an immense influence on the shaping of the 19th-century image of the Indian for popular authors who also used travel accounts to give some substance to their tales.
It would take very long to study all the 19th-century authors of the different European countries who focused their works on the American West and on the American Indians. Rudolf Muss in Norway wrote more than 500 accounts of Indian fights. Gabriel Ferry, Paul Duplessis, and mainly Gustave Aimard, invented tales about Apaches, buffaloes, scalpings, etc., that fascinated the French public in the second part of the 19th century. Gustave Aimard, called the "French Fenimore Cooper," drew his imagination from twenty years spent in North and South America.81 The testimony of French journalist V. Forbin, writing an article on Curtis and the "last Redskins" in 1909 is revealing concerning the reading of French people. Curtis's photographs, he wrote
make us relive the exciting hours of our childhood when we devoured the tales of Fenimore Cooper and Gustave Aimard, when we lived the life of the prairie alongside Black Eagle, Lynx Eye, and other heroes of the implacable guerillas of the Far West.82
British authors George Frederick Ruxton, Captain Frederick Marryat, Robert M. Ballantyne, G.A. Henty, and best-known Captain Mayne Reid were more inspired by the Buffalo Bill Wild West Shows than by Fenimore Cooper. Mayne Reid wrote many novels for Beadle, featuring "lovely, wooden heroines and noble, static heroes," whose typically "American" desire was to have a cup of tea in the midst of the desert. Of all European countries, Germany was the one that seemed most fascinated by the myth of the West, giving birth to several authors who flooded the market with their novels. Their names were Charles Sealsfield, Friedrich Armand Strubberg, Friedrich Gerstäcker, or Balduin Möllhausen. The most well known and successful of them all was Karl May.83
Karl May first visited the United
States in 1908, four years before his death and some forty years
after he had begun writing about the two heroic comrades Winnetou,
the Apache, and Old Shatterhand, the German, whose first name
was Karl and whose profession was writer.84
Karl May was raised in a poverty-stricken weaver family in Silesia.
His father, concerned for the future of his son at a time when
weaving had fallen victim to the Industrial Revolution, encouraged
him to readto read anything he could find. As poor-quality
suspense stories were the cheapest books available, that is what
Karl May mostly read.85 After having secured
a low-level teaching position, Karl May began having trouble with
the law, first for not having returned a borrowed watch on time
which resulted in his being sentenced for unauthorized use of
another's property. Later, his talent for putting himself in another's
skin brought him to impersonate a policeman and resulted in his
conviction for assuming a false identity.86
In all May spent eight years in prison and both the opportunity
he found there to study in the library and the necessity to find
a mental release from his situation prompted him to start writing
about the wide open spaces of the Wild West and the freedom of
the adventuresome German writer there whose best friend was the
Apache Winnetou.87
Since Old Shatterhand acknowledges in one of his adventures that he had read The Last of the Mohicans and other Leatherstocking Tales, we can assume his creator had done so as well.88 Karl May also found his information in atlases, geographical and ethnological journals, and encyclopedias.89 In the same way as he had earlier assumed a false identity, Karl May did not hesitate to infuse the reality he was writing about with his own imaginary world. Says the text on the jacket of a 1977 American translation of Winnetou: "For him the 'real' place of action is never any prairie, desert, or forest but the collective unconscious of his readers."90 May's heroes drew on archetypes of Germanic culture and had little to do with true Native American cultures. Winnetou is noble because he combines the highest aspects of otherwise "decadent" Indian cultures to the natural adoption of the romantic and Christian traits of Karl May's own vision of German civilization. As he is dying, the Apache Winnetou asks some settlers to sing an Ave Maria for him, and his death is sanctified by his quiet conversion to Christianity.91
Karl May's novels quickly became
immensely popular in Germany and Central Europe, which led the
author to write profusely: of the seventy volumes he published,
half took place in the American West.92 His
romantic adventure stories were avidly read by a public trying
to escape the alienation of a capitalist and industrial society,
which had strayed from nature, and from pure sentiments.93
Albert Einstein himself acknowledged the influence Karl May had
on his life: "My whole adolescence stood under his sign.
Indeed, even today he had been dear to me in many a desperate
hour."94 It is no exaggeration to say
that for the countless German-speaking people raised on Karl May's
books, a good Indian was a Mescalero Apachefierce, noble,
brave, stoical, just, and invincible. At the same time, May's
Indians were not universally like Winnetou: the "bad"
ones lacked his nobility and intelligence and were ferocious and
merciless, like May's Sioux Indians for example.95
Imported Exoticism: Newspaper Articles and Ethnological Exhibitions in France
As shown previously, the Wild West Shows were immensely popular in Europe and enabled thousands of people to see for themselves what an Indian looked like. Yet, this was entertainment and even if the European spectators believed the Shows to be a reflection of historical realities, they knew through newspaper articles that the days of invincible Plains Indian warriors were past. Ethnological exhibitions, having the support of the scientific world, also claimed to offer a realistic image of the Indian.
Representative articles from
the French weekly newspaper L'Illustration were chosen
for a compilation for the years 1843-1944. Though I have not checked
all the original issues between 1843 and 1944, it seems quite
likely that the compilation published all articles dealing with
American Indians through this period.96 The
six articles apparently drew their information from American newspapersthus
suffering from the latter's bias in favor of the American government.
In any case, they provided French readers with up-to-date information
on the news from Indian country and, at least for three articles
written in 1868 by René de Semallé, did not hesitate
to criticize the cruel attitude of some American settlers, recalling
that the Indians were no more cruel and just as noble as the knights
of the Middle Ages. The last article of the period, dated April
1909, accompanied photographs from Edward S. Curtis and echoed
the romantic yet powerless laments for a "vanishing race,"
qualifying Curtis' photographic undertaking as "a magnificent
work, a true monument raised in the commemoration of a race which
tomorrow will be no more than a memory."97
Newspaper articles transmitted stereotypes along with approximate and simplified information. For example, an article entitled "A Dying Race" ("Une race qui meurt") was published in the illustrated supplement of Le Petit Journal on March 12, 1905.98 It evoked the misery of life on the reservationshunger, epidemics, alcoholism, but devoted more attention to the military extermination of the Indians. According to this article, the Iroquois no longer existed. The journalist also embedded the stereotype of the Indian as a warrior when he wrote that very few of the Indians had kept their old warrior traditions. The article was especially devoted to the Apache, some of them having been called Tonto99 by the Spanish for their stupidity! Yet, as is specified in an article on Apaches two years later in the same journal,100 the term Apache in France at the turn of the century was used to design a rascal ("mauvais garçon"). Last but not least, the cover page illustration for the 1905 article, meant to represent the massacre of Apaches in the Sonora desert, featured typical Plains Indian warriors against a background of tipis; the back page illustration for the 1907 article on the Apache revolt meant to represent this revolt also features Plains Indians warriors against the same kind of background.
In the late 19th century, European anthropology was merely natural history applied to the human species and consisted in gathering extensive collections of information on the different racesskin samples, moulds of the faces, measurements of the size of the cranium, photographs, etc.101 Photography proved very useful in organizing different human beings into classes and types and was later copied by the police administration with their "Rogues' Gallery ID photographs."102 All these experiences interested a very restricted number of scientific persons but the new ideas began to make their way into the public arena after ethnological exhibitions became the latest fashion.
The "Jardin d'Acclimatation" was created in the 1860s in Paris and had the mission of showing to the public "all the animal species (...) newly introduced in France and which might seem of interest by their utility or appeal."103 The first human "species" to be exhibited were some Nubians in 1877, and this continued until 1890 with Eskimos, Gauchos, Fuegians, Ceylonese, Kalmucks, Galibis Caribes, Araucanians, Omaha Indians, Hottentots, Laps, and Somalis. The "specimens" were usually exhibited in their traditional dwellingswhich spared hotel faressafely protected from the public's curiosity by wire fences. The exhibitions were accompanied by newspaper articles in popular pseudo-scientific newspapers like La Nature, Science et Nature, La Science illustrée, or La Science populaire.104 They were quite similar to the anthropological exhibitions displayed during International Fairs of which we will speak later and merely confirmed the spectators' faith in the marvels of their own civilization.
The only United States American Indians on exhibit at the Jardin d'Acclimatation were the Omaha, in 1883, and the record of their passage comes from the pictures taken by the Prince Roland Bonaparte, who was a proponent of the latest tendencies of anthropology. These Omaha were led by "Fumée Jaune" and entertained the public with dancing and singing.105 An article published on the occasion of their passage in Science et Nature gives a historical background on the Omahas, explaining how degenerate the "specimens" exhibited in Paris were as compared to their once "slim and elegant forms," and explaining that their objects and their art were of no interest.106
If the ethnological exhibitions of the Jardin d'Acclimatation were kindred in spirit to the Wild West Shows, they received the backing of the scientific community and thus provided the public with another image than that of the noble warrior. The Omaha of 1883 provided live evidence for articles published in popular newspapers about the survival of a dying race.
The culmination of stereotyping American Indians is to actually incarnate the stereotype. This is what happened in the Improved Order of Red Men, an organization which dated back to the early 19th century in the United States. Local branches of the Improved order were "tribes, " each "tribe" having its Sachem, Senior Sagamore, Junior Sagamore, Prophet, Keeper of Wampum, etc. The Order had its calendar of "moons" and "suns." Ladies were known as the "Daughters of Pocahontas." According to a national leader of the organization, the Order numbered half a million members in 1915. Last but not least, American Indians were excluded from the organization.107
One of the many results of the presence of the Indian in popular culture was also to induce its more innocent memberschildrento act out the stereotypes in their play. This would later be highly developed and systematized in the Boy Scout movement. Robert Stephenson Smith Baden-Powell launched this movement in the years just preceding the Great War so it could have had but little effect on the soldiers. Moreover, even though Baden-Powell was partly influenced by F.C. Burnham, a famous American scout with whom he worked in 1896 in South Africa, he drew most of his ideas from his own experience as an officer of the British Army in India and particularly in Africa where he served with native troops.108
2.2. The Vanishing, the Scientific, and the Official Indian in the United States
The son of a Minnesota pioneer farmer and minister, Edward Sheriff Curtis began his career as a photographer in Saint-Louis at age 18, and opened his first studio in Seattle in 1893. He rapidly won recognition as a good photographer by taking pictures of the well-to-do families of Seattle. After having rescued a group of scientists lost on Mount Rainier, Curtis was rewarded by being chosen as the official photographer of a scientific expedition in Alaska financed by E.H. Harriman. With the expedition was George Bird Grinnell who took a liking for Curtis and invited him the next summer to visit the Blackfeet in Montana. Curtis was very impressed by the huge camps gathered for a Sun Dance, so much so that ten days later, he went to visit the Hopi in Arizona. By then he had decided to make "a photographic history of the American Indian."109
Curtis' endeavor was ambitious. Like Catlin he had a project and like him he could have said: "Nothing short of the loss of my life shall prevent me from visiting their country, and of becoming their historian"110. He received the encouragements of Theodore Roosevelt, the financial support of J. Pierpont Morgan, and the appreciation of the scientific community. With this serious backing, Curtis resumed his field work in 1906. In the years that followed, he would visit 80 tribes, take 40,000 photographs, make 10,000 tapes, and write thousands of words. All this information was gathered and published in the form of 20 expensive volumes, which appeared one by one, over a number of years, giving an eternal and mythical image of the North American Indian.111
The photograph Curtis chose to be lead off in The North American Indian was called "The Vanishing Race," representing Navajo horse riders fading away into an unclear horizon.112 This was to be the tone of his work: the testimony of a dying race. For this reason, Curtis did not hesitate to ask the American Indians he photographed to dress as they used to, and to pose in typical settings. If an image of the Indian was to be recorded for future generations who would not have the chance to see him, it had to be a glorified Indiannot an Indian living on rations, wearing clothing issued by the government, and whose children were in the White men's schools.113 Curtis followed the same reasoning in 1912 when he travelled with a "picture-opera"a mixture of still and moving pictures projected with comments and musicthat was supposed to provide funds for The North American Indian. The show was called The Vanishing Race and subtitled "A poetic story never before told, of the intimate tribal life and esoteric rites of the North American Indians." In 1913-1914, Curtis filmed the Kwakiutl of British Columbia, which resulted in a ethno-romantic movie called In the Land of the Head Hunterslater rebaptised In the Land of the War Canoespresented in New York in the autumn of 1914 but rapidly disappearing from the screens.114
Prompted by their compassion for the dying Indian, Joseph Kossuth Dixon, a photographer from Pennsylvania, and Rodman Wanamaker, the heir of the Philadelphia department store empire, combined the zeal of the one with the money of the other to organize three "crusades" aimed at recording what was still alive of Indian culture. Their efforts took place between 1908 and 1914 and were carried out much in the tradition of Catlin and Curtis.115
The first two expeditions of 1908 and 1909 went to the Valley of the Little Big Horn in Montana and from each of them Dixon brought back thousands of pictures of American Indians and a movie, Hiawatha. Some of the pictures were assembled into a book, The Vanishing Race. The commercial success of both the book and the movie were further contributions towards establishing the stereotype of the Sioux warrior as the symbol of all the Indian cultures of North America.116
In 1909, Wanamaker suggested to Dixon the idea of an Indian memorial. It was to be the equivalent of the Statue of Liberty, only bigger: a bronze statue of an Indian with hand upraised in the Indian peace sign. It would be located at the mouth of New York harbor at Staten Island, the first thing boat passengers would see upon entering the harbor. This was a truly monumental project that was approved and given a budget by Congress in December 8, 1911.117 The groundbreaking ceremony took place in February 1913. If the name of the monument was not clear enoughthe Indian Memorial, the playing of an "Indian Requiem," composed for the occasion by Dr. Irving J. Morgan, illustrated straightforwardly that the whole thing was to be a tribute to a defunct race. To complete the ceremony, the 32 Indian chiefs present signed an oath of allegiance to the United States of America on parchment.118 Said Rodman Wanamaker of the memorial:
Here, under the blessing of God, on the shores of our beloved country, where the red man first gave welcome to the white man, this Memorial will stand in eternal bronze, in memory of a noble, though vanishing race, and a token to all the world of the one and indivisible citizenship of these United States.119
However, before the monument could be built, the moral and material commotion of the Great War intervened, the project slipped into oblivion and the Indian Memorial would never materialize to stand and to overshadow the Statue of Liberty.
Interestingly, the groundbreaking ceremony was directly followed by Dixon's third tripthe "Expedition of Citizenship"as if it were not enough to acknowledge the physical death of the Indian. Dixon's undertaking was in perfect harmony with the reform spirit of the times, and particularly with the policy promoted by the newly-created Society of American Indians that had put citizenship on its program since its creation in 1911 and on its platform since 1912.120 Dixon thus covered more than 20,000 miles with the American flag, stopping at each reservation where he played a speech of President Woodrow Wilson on a Thomas Edison recording machine and where he asked the leaders of the tribes to sign a "Declaration of Allegiance to the Government of the United States by the North American Indian."121 But Dixon's campaign for Indian citizenship stands in sharp contrast to the successful post-WWI efforts where the romantic image of the Indian would be replaced byor sometimes only coexist witha more "humanitarian" concern for people who had to survive no matter what had happened to them in the past.
Lewis Henry Morgan, famous for his League of Ho-dé-no-sau-nee, Iroquois (1851), is considered as the first American anthropologist and his ideas much inspired the first members of the Bureau of American Ethnology (B.A.E.), founded in 1879. Morgan, as well as John Wesley Powell, the first director of the B.A.E., believed in evolutionism and thought that everything had to be done to "civilize" the Indian. By the same token, everything had to be done to record "primitive" life before it was too late. The members of the B.A.E. and their assimilationist theories exercised a very strong influence on Indian policy, mainly because their views corresponded to those "in the air."122
In 1896, German physicist Franz Boas became a professor at Columbia University in New York City and, though he agreed with B.A.E. people on the urgency of recording "primitive" life, he had a totally different concept of culture. For him, each culture was internally coherent and there was no such thing as a scale of progress on which each culture had its place. Boas and his cultural pluralism inspired men like Clark Wissler, Alfred L. Kroeber, and Robert H. Lowie. Yet the B.A.E. was powerful and would not leave any public space for these revolutionary ideas, at least not until the years just preceding the Great War. As can be seen in the example of International Fairs, the public was certainly more acquainted with the ideas of the B.A.E. than with those of Boas.123
From 1876 to 1915, four major World's Fairs took place in the United Statesthe Philadelphia Centennial in 1876, the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Saint Louis in 1904, and the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1915. Visited by millions of people, these fairs were intended to show the United States under its best colors, to its own citizens and foreigners alike. Frederick E. Hoxie, in A Final Promise, made a very interesting analysis of the International Fair's Indian and I used it as a major source.124
The year Custer fought his Last Stand in 1876 was also the year of the Philadelphia Centennial, visited by 9 million people. There was a display of traditional Indian culture, as well as pictures of Indian schools showing evidence of the Indians' progress toward civilization. The public would have to wait for the 1893 Columbian Exposition to see live Indians, however. There, an exhibit organized by Frederick Putnam of the Peabody Museum displayed Indians as an exotic race and was echoed in this by the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show playing in the same city. Another exhibit by Commissioner of Indian Affairs Thomas Jefferson Morgan displayed a school, arguing for the possibility of assimilation. The fair was visited by 27 million people.125
In 1904, at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Saint Louis, the "primitive" exhibition was the largest one of the fair, produced by the department of anthropology of the Exposition. It featured "primitive" people from all over the world displayed in their traditional habitat and scattered on a hill on the top of which was a school full of American Indian children. The organizers could not have found a more obvious metaphor for the evolutionist and assimilationist theories of the time: the United States' indigenous peoples were on the top of the hill, leading the rise toward civilization.126
In 1915, at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, the Indian human being had vanished. There was no trace of the exotic or didactic displays of the past, only the statue of an exhausted mounted Plains Indian"The End of the Trail" by James Earle Fraser, the same artist who had designed the 5-cent coin in 1904. The Fair officials, by awarding a gold medal to Fraser for his sculpture, and the public, by immensely appreciating it, were officially acknowledging the death of the real Indian.127
Conclusion Chap. III. Portraying the Indian
The image of the Indian is a strong one, deeply embedded in the collective unconscious of Americans, but also in the minds of Europeans. By 1917, in the United States, this image had become more "docile" and positive than in the past, when American Indians were still a danger on the frontier. Yet, whether in dime novels, Wild West Shows, in the first movies, on postcards, in the photographs of Edward Curtis or in the mind of anthropologists, this image retained much of the elements of the past. The Indian, part of a "vanishing race," was basically a Plains Indian warriorthe one popularized in newspaper articles, shows, books, etc., of the turn of the century.
The gap between the reality of American Indian life retraced in the two first chaptersAmerican Indians fighting alongside the American Army and the state of Indian affairs in the decades preceding the Great Warand the image of American Indians in the collective unconscious is striking.
On the one hand, there are people who tried to adapt their lives the best they could to the devastating effects of American colonization, fighting either against or with American troops depending on which side would best fit their traditional patterns and allow them to save their lives and cultures from annihilation. These people, once subjugated by the United States, had to adapt to depressing life on reservations, to accept the loss of their land, and to undergo intensive assimilation. On the other hand, there is the dual stereotyped image of an Indian, either noble and peaceful, or savage and warrior-like. This image, while evolving in form throughout the centuries of contact, remained basically the same.
By 1917, having undergone over three decades of forced assimilation and having a tradition of serving with the American Army, many American Indians were ready to go overseas "as crusaders of democracy and civilization."128 By 1917, in the wartime patriotic frenzy, the stereotype of the Indian warrior was rapidly revived to describe American Indian soldiers, but also, contradictorily, to symbolize the very Americanness of United States intervention in Europe.
1. Richard H. Cracroft. "World Westerns: The European Writer and the American West." In A Literary History of the American West. Fort Worth, Texas: Christian University Press, 1987 (1977), p.159.
76. Sylvie Péharpré. "Lettres indiennes." ("Indians in French Literature"). In Sur le Sentier de la Découverte: Rencontres franco-indiennes du XVIe au XXe siècle. (Crossing Paths: French-Indian Encounters, XVIth to XXth century). Bilingual (French/English) edition. Ed. Véronique Wiesinger, Musée National de la Coopération franco-américaine, Château de Blérancourt. Paris: Réunion des Musées nationaux, 1992, p.145 (English version).
77. Richard H. Cracroft, op. cit., p.160.
78. Michel Castro. Interpreting the Indian: 20th-Century Poets and the Native American. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983, p.xvi.
79. Sylvie Péharpré. "Les Indiens des Salons parisiens." ("The Indians of Paris Salons"). In Sur le Sentier de la Découverte: Rencontres franco-indiennes du XVIe au XXe siècle. (Crossing Paths: French-Indian Encounters, XVIth to XXth century). Bilingual (French/English) edition. Ed. Véronique Wiesinger, Musée National de la Coopération franco-américaine, Château de Blérancourt. Paris: Réunion des Musées nationaux, 1992, p.150 (English version).
80. Richard H. Cracroft., op. cit., p.160.
82. "[Les compositions de Curtis] nous font revivre les heures passionantes de notre enfance, quand nous dévorions les récits de Fenimore Cooper et de Gustave Aimard, quand nous vivions la vie de la prairie aux côtés d'Aigle-Noir, d'il-de-Lynx et autres héros des implacables guérillas du Far-West." V. Forbin. "Les derniers Peaux-Rouges." In Les Grands Dossiers de L'Illustration: Les Etats-Unis d'Amérique, 1843-1944. Paris: SEFAG/L'Illustration, 1987, p.136.
83. Richard H. Cracroft, op. cit., pp.170-72.
84. Katja H. May. "German Stereotypes of Native Americans in Context of Karl May and Indianertümelei." In Victorian Brand Indian Brand: The White Shadow on the Native Image. Ed. Naila Clerici. Torino, Italy: Il Segnalibro, 1993, pp.82-83. Charles May. Les Pirates du rail. French translation from German original. Paris: Flammarion, 1948, pp. 15, 51.
85. Katja H. May, op. cit., pp.80-81.
86. Christian Heermann. Der Mann, der Old Shatterhand war. Eine Karl-May-Biographie. Berlin: Verlag der Nation, 1988, pp.71-84.
87. Katja H. May, op. cit., pp.81-82.
88. Charles May, op. cit., p.17.
89. Richard H. Cracroft, op. cit., p.164.
90. Karl May. Winnetou. Volumes 1 &2. English translation from German original. New York: The Seabury Press, 1977.
92. Richard H. Cracroft, op. cit., p.164.
93. Katja H. May, op. cit., p.79.
94. Quoted on the back jacket of Karl May, op. cit.
95. Here is the way Karl May describes Vupa-Umugi, a Comanche chief: "La cruauté de Vupa-Umugi était renommé. Elle s'exerçait non seulement contre les Blancs, mais aussi contre ses propres congénères. Respecté pour sa valeur guerrière, Vupa-Umugi n'était pas aimé." Charles May. Main-Sûre l'infaillible. French translation from German original. France: Flammarion, 1964, p.65.
96. Les Grands Dossiers de L'Illustration: Les Etats-Unis d'Amérique, 1843-1944. Paris: SEFAG/L'Illustration, 1987. October 17, 1868, pp.95-96: "Massacre de femmes et enfants de la tribu des Sioux dans le territoire d'Idaho (Etats-Unis)." December 19, 1868/January 29, 1869/February 6, 1869, pp.97-101, 102, 103: René de Semallé, "Les Indiens des Etats-Unis," a fully documented article in which the author refuses to say that the Indians are vanishing and suggests the creation of an Indian state on the model of Switzerland under the leadership of Ely S. Parker, future Commissioner of Indian Affairs. November 4, 1876: "Etats-Unis: la Guerre des Sioux," interestingly, this short article reports on a June 16, 1876 Battle of the Rosebud as a victory for the federal troops. All other mentions of the Battle of the Rosebud I found indicated that it took place on June 17 and that it had been a harsh defeat for the troops of Gen. George Crook (George Hyde. Red Cloud's Folk: A History of the Oglala Sioux Indians. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, pp.263-65). Moreover, the article did not say a word of the June 26 Little Big Horn Battle, Custer's famous Last Stand (Ibid., pp.266-74). December 1890, pp.123-24: "La Révolte des Indiens Sioux," this article was reporting on the beginnings of a "little war," and featured an etching of the Ghost Dance at Pine Ridge. April 17, 1909, pp.136-42: V. Forbin, "Les derniers Peaux-Rouges," this article was entirely illustrated by Curtis's beautiful but nostalgic photographs, underlying the pessimistic tone of the text.
97. "[Une] oeuvre grandiose, véritable monument élevé à la mémoire d'une race qui ne sera plus demain qu'un souvenir."
98. Le Petit Journal (Supplément illustré). 16:747. March 12, 1905, pp.81-82 (cover page and first page).
99. This was long before the famous celluloid heroes, descendants of Old Shatterhand and Winnetou: the Lone Ranger (Quien-no-sabe) and his faithful Indian friend.
100. Le Petit Journal (Supplément illustré). 18:870. July 21, 1907, pp.226-32. (first page and back cover).
101. In 1885, anthropology was a department of the French Museum of Natural History and Armand de Quatrefages de Bréau, the founder of this department, gave a definition of anthropology: "L'anthropologie est la science des hommes, comme la zoologie est la science des animaux, comme la botanique est la science des végétaux (...) ces deux sciences doivent lui servir de guide." Quoted by Florence Pizzorni Itié. "Roland Bonaparte (1858-1924)." In "Peaux-Rouges," Autour de la collection du prince Roland Bonaparte. Ed. Benoît Coutancier. Thonon-les-Bains: l'Albaron/Photothèque du Musée de l'Homme, 1992, p.18.
102. Christian Barthe. "Les Omaha de Bonaparte." In "Peaux-Rouges," Autour de la collection du prince Roland Bonaparte. Ed. Benoît Coutancier. Thonon-les-Bains: l'Albaron/Photothèque du Musée de l'Homme, 1992, pp.66-67.
103. "toutes les espèces animales qui/... seraient nouvellement introduites en France et paraîtraient dignes d'intérât par leur utilité ou leur agrément." Benoît Coutancier. "Découvrir l'Autre au Jardin d'Acclimatation." In "Peaux-Rouges," Autour de la collection du prince Roland Bonaparte. Ed. Benoît Coutancier. Thonon-les-Bains: l'Albaron/Photothèque du Musée de l'Homme, 1992, p.35.
104. Benoît Coutancier, op. cit., pp.35-40. The late 19th century is not far. In April 1994, the "Safari Parc" near Nantes in France was illegally employing a group of people from the Ivory Coast, two of them being under 18 years old. They were playing music and dancing, in the replica of a Senoufo village where they were accommodated and fed, without authorization to leave the park. A lump sum of money was to be given to the leader of the troupe at the end of their seven-month stay. Nicolas de la Casinière. "Les Ivoiriens du Safari Parc, nourris, logés mais pas payés." Libération. April 21, 1994, p.35.
105. Benoît Coutancier. "'Fumée Jaune' et ses compagnons." In "Peaux-Rouges," Autour de la collection du prince Roland Bonaparte. Ed. Benoît Coutancier. Thonon-les-Bains: l'Albaron/Photothèque du Musée de l'Homme, 1992, pp.50-61.
106. Ernest-Théodore Hamy. "Les Peaux-Rouges, Indiens Omaha au Jardin d'Acclimatation." Science et Nature, n°1, December 1, 1883. In "Peaux-Rouges," Autour de la collection du prince Roland Bonaparte. Ed. Benoît Coutancier. Thonon-les-Bains: l'Albaron/Photothèque du Musée de l'Homme, 1992, pp.116-20.
107. Hazel W. Hertzberg. The Search for an American Indian Identity: Modern Pan-Indian Movements. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1971, pp.215-16, note 11 p.336.
108. E.E. Reynolds. Baden-Powell. Neuchâtel, Switzerland: Delachaux &Niestlé S.A., 1946.
109. Florence Curtis Graybill &Victor Boesen. L'Amérique indienne de Edward S. Curtis. French translation from English original. Paris: Terre Indienne/Albin Michel, 1992, pp.19-24.
110. George Catlin. North American Indians. Edited and with an introduction by Peter Matthiessen. New York: Penguin Books, 1989, p.2.
111. Florence Curtis Graybill &Victor Boesen, op. cit., pp.24-33.
113. Serge Bramly. Introduction to Edward S. Curtis. Paris: Centre National de la Photographie, 1990, n.p.
114. Marie Mauzé. "Document ethnographique et uvre de fiction: "In the Land of the War Canoes d'Edward Sheriff Curtis." In Les Indiens et le Cinéma : des Indiens d'Hollywood au Cinéma des Indiens. Eds. Gilles Laprévotte et al. Amiens: Trois Cailloux, 1989, pp.35-40.
115. All information on Dixon and Wanamaker are taken from two articles, unless otherwise mentioned: Russel Lawrence Barsh. "An American Heart of Darkness: The 1913 Expedition for American Indian Citizenship." Great Plains Quarterly 13 (Spring 1993), pp.91-115 and Paula Richardson Fleming &Judith Luskey. "The Wanamaker Expeditions." The North American Indians in Early Photographs. London, England: Phaidon Press, 1992 (1986), pp.216-217. As indicated by its title, the first article is quite critical of Dixon whereas the second one emphasizes the artistic side of these undertakings.
116. Crawford R. Buell. Introduction to Dr. Joseph K. Dixon, op. cit.
119. Ibid., p.xvi. "Concept," by Rodman Wanamaker.
120. Hazel W. Hertzberg. The Search for an American Indian Identity: Modern Pan-Indian Movements. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1971, pp.68, 80.
121. Russel Lawrence Barsh, op. cit., pp.91-115.
122. Frederick E. Hoxie. A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880-1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989 (1984), pp.16-22.
125. Ibid., pp.86-90. William H. Truettner. "Science and Sentiment: Indian Images at the Turn of the Century." In Art in New Mexico, 1900-1945: Paths to Taos and Santa Fe. Charles C. Eldredge, Julie Schimmel, &William H. Truettner. New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1986, p.26.
126. Frederick E. Hoxie, op. cit., pp.90-93.
127. Ibid., pp.93-94. William H. Truettner, op. cit., p.26.
128. Report of Commissioner of Indian Affairs Cato Sells. September 30, 1918. In The American Indian and the United States: A Documentary History. Vol. II. Ed. Wilcomb E. Washburn. New York: Random House, 1973, pp.879.
