Geography lecture 11

• Iroquois Warrior


  Depicted in Benjamin West's 1771 drawing of the death of General Wolfe
• West says the Indian as the noble savage of the new world but the scene is completely fictitious
• The Indian is an Iroquois who were allies of the French not the British
• In 1900 there were about 127,000 officially designated Indians in Canada, most lived on isolated reserves
• There was a general belief that they were disappearing due to disease, alcohol abuse, and economic hardship
• Images were based on a small number of artists, photographers and writers
• Paul Kane


  Grew up in Toronto, studied art in London
• In 1843 Kane met American Artist George Catlin who had drawn over 600 paintings of American Indians
• In 1846 Kane traveled by canoe to Winnipeg where he witnessed a metis buffalo hunt
• Kane proceeded to Norway House where he stayed for a month before continuing up the Saskatchewan River with Hudson Bay Company traders to Edmonton, then on to Vancouver
• Kane felt that the HBC had the Improvement of the Indians as in their best interests but argued that free traitors who wanted short-term gain were destroying the source of that wealth in part by selling alcohol to the Indians
• Kane speaking of the Flathead people: '"they always covered their face with their hands when they looked at my portraitures the same way they did when looking at the Dead"'
• In 1847 Kane spent summer touring Vancouver Island, then returned to Edmonton where he stayed until the spring for Brigade moved East, reaching Sault Ste. Marie in the fall and taking a steamer back to Toronto
• Kane's 500 sketches were accepted as very lifelike and authentic when they went on display and were quickly sold, but many had false backgrounds, added clothes and artifacts foreign to the Indians in the paintings
• One painting of an Assiniboine buffalo hunt was actually a copy of an Italian painting of Moors chasing a bull for sport
• The length of contact with any indigenous group influences the knowledge that the artist or writer has of them, and Kane's work is a reflection of this limited contact and his desire to produce a salable object
• Between 1907 and 1975 Hollywood Studios produced 575 movies about Canada (not documentaries), which constituted the main images that both Canadians and the world had about the country and its people
• The Hollywood American Indian

  For many people their image of the indigenous population comes from the movies
• Canadian Indians dress the same as American Indians, all Indians from BC to Quebec dress the same
• Rose Marie (1954) (1936)

  • Both films had a dance scene with a mix of Sioux medicine man with black horns, a giant totem pole, Aztec style women, medicine man with giant beaks, women with papoose on back
• The instant indian kit

  • A wig (braided hair)
  • A War Bonnet or headband
  • Buckskin leggings
  • Matching vest (optional)
  • Moccasins
• Clifford Wilson, editor of the Beaver magazine, was an advisor on the movie Hudson's Bay and told them that hairstyles could be extremely varied, but the response was "it's so much easier to buy 50 or 100 wigs all of the same pattern"
• Headband


  Was used in wild west shows and later movies to keep the wigs on, most movie Indians were in fact Mexicans
• The headband was adopted by modern Aboriginal youth in the misbelief that they were traditional
• In real life, bonnets would have made concealment impossible, but they were used for special occasions after they noticed that French officers usually wore hats with feathers
• Lord Tweedsmuir, Governor General of Canada


  • People got him to dress up like an Indian – unexpected
• Indian women


  Almost always small gentle creatures who rescue a white man only to have him go off and marry a white woman
• Chief Thundercloud was one of the few real aboriginals to get a part in a Hollywood movie, note the western shirt he is wearing
• Canadian Indians began using Firearms shortly after the arrival of Europeans yet the movies always show them with tomahawks and bows and arrows
• According to Chief Dan George, Indians held their bow and arrow horizontally, not vertically like European archers of the Middle Ages
• Movies stopped telling stories about individuals and lumped all Indians into bands, the young would follow a disgruntled Brave and do bad things against the advice of the older chief, thus the film was not seen as anti-Indian
• Hollywood fell in love with the name "Blackfoot" and had them all over Canada even named towns after them, they were always vicious and were like attacking settlers and setting fire to everything
• In reality, the Blackfoot were one of the first to sign a treaty and refuse to join the rebellion of 1885, they did not burn anybody at the stake, attack any wagon trains, mounties, or settlers homes
• Wagon trains were all but non-existent in Canada and there is no record of even one being attacked by Indians, yet Hollywood made two movies showing attacks on the CPR Railway
• In reality, the Indians were bought off with free passage on the trains
• Two movies depict a Sitting Bull and his Sioux as entering Canada with the intent of Burning It to the Ground, when in reality he was seeking peace and protection from the American Army and lived peacefully in Canada and was killed when he returned to the US
• This 1953 movie shows the mountie in his birch bark canoe — when everybody else was using fiberglass and outboard motors
• Metis

  Simply called "half breeds" they were portrayed in over 60 movies as the troublemakers— coveting defenseless white women, selling bad whiskey to the Indians and blaming others for their crimes
• It was the movies that turn the word "metis" into a politically incorrect term
• The Stereotype was taken from the pages of 19th century dime novels, they were all half French never Anglo-Saxon, they did not have Gatling guns during the 1885 Rebellion