Indians Illustrated: The Image of Native Americans in the Pictorial Press (The History of Media and Communication) - Softcover

Coward, John M

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252081714 ISBN 13: 9780252081712

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2016

Synopsis

After 1850, Americans swarmed to take in a raft of new illustrated journals and papers. Engravings and drawings of "buckskinned braves" and "Indian princesses" proved an immensely popular attraction for consumers of publications like Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper and Harper's Weekly . In Indians Illustrated , John M. Coward charts a social and cultural history of Native American illustrations--romantic, violent, racist, peaceful, and otherwise--in the heyday of the American pictorial press. These woodblock engravings and ink drawings placed Native Americans into categories that drew from venerable "good" Indian and "bad" Indian stereotypes already threaded through the culture. Coward's examples show how the genre cemented white ideas about how Indians should look and behave--ideas that diminished Native Americans' cultural values and political influence. His powerful analysis of themes and visual tropes unlocks the racial codes and visual cues that whites used to represent--and marginalize--native cultures already engaged in a twilight struggle against inexorable westward expansion.

About this title

Book Description

Sketching the form and figure of how whites came to see and understand Native Americans

About the Author

John M. Coward is an associate professor of communication at the University of Tulsa. He is the author of The Newspaper Indian: Native American Identity in the Press, 1820 “90 .

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0252081714
• ISBN 13: 9780252081712
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 240