PICTURING AMERICAN INDIANS

Natives and Images in Newspapers, 1865-1876

 

William E. Huntzicker

 

The tension between text and images could hardly appear more stark than the display on a page in Harper’s Weekly in September 1876. Under a dramatic illustration and a small heading “ATTACKED BY INDIANS,” the 566-word article preaches about the “Indian Problem” starting with the first settlement in North America by “fugitives from Old-World persecution” through the recent defeat of the U.S. 7th Cavalry at the Little Bighorn in distant Montana Territory. At first, the article is sympathetic to the people who lived here first, but the illustration recreates the stereotype of a family of settlers attacked by aggressive Indians. Nevertheless, the article concludes that the native inhabitants are doomed to extinction.^[i]