Audience Given by the Trustees of Georgia to a Delegation of Creek Indians

Audience Given by the Trustees of Georgia to a Delegation of Creek Indians
ArtistWilliam Verelst
Year1735 (1735)
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions123.19 cm × 155.893 cm (48.50 in × 61.375 in)
LocationWinterthur Museum, Garden and Library, Winterthur, Delaware, US

Audience Given by the Trustees of Georgia to a Delegation of Creek Indians is an oil-on-canvas group portrait created by English painter William Verelst (1704–1752). It was painted in London in 1734 or 1735. A bequest from Henry Francis du Pont, the painting is held in the permanent collection of the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library. The painting depicts a Creek Yamacraw delegation, including Tomochichi, meeting with the governing body of the English Province of Georgia.[1]

Background[edit]

In February 1733, James Oglethorpe and a group of one hundred British colonists arrived at the mouth of the Savannah River, where Tomochichi had led a band of two hundred Creek followers (which became the Yamacraw band) to settle in the late 1720s, far from their ancestral lands in the Chattahoochee River basin. Tomochichi and Oglethorpe quickly established friendly relations that culminated in a treaty of friendship and trade, enabling the British to form the new colony of Georgia. Tomochichi also played an important role in negotiating alliances between Lower Creek communities and the British.[2][3][4]

In 1734, a Yamacraw delegation accompanied Oglethorpe to London to meet with the Trustees for the Establishment of the Colony of Georgia in America and other English dignitaries. Oglethorpe hoped that the Indians' presence would attract greater investments to the colony. During a four-month visit, the delegates met with King George II and Queen Caroline on August 1 and with Georgia's trustees on September 11 before sailing for home in late October. Verelst painted a group portrait of this meeting between the delegates and trustees.[5] The portrait was likely painted from sketches in the months after the visit. Verelst also painted a separate portrait of Tomochichi and his heir.[6]

Description[edit]

In this painting, the English trustees of Georgia Colony meet with a delegation of Creek Indians of the Yamacraw band at the trustees' headquarters in Whitehall. Twenty-four English trustees, wearing the powdered wigs and tailcoats of English gentry, gather on a slightly elevated area on the left side of the image, signifying the formality of the occasion and assumed superiority to their guests. The nine Indian delegates stand on the floor to the right and wear traditional attire of deerskin moccasins and robes, braided hair, and feathered or beaded accessories. Senauki, Tomochichi's wife and the sole woman in the group, wears a pink English-style jacket and petticoats. A black bear cub and a bald eagle[7] are intended as gifts from the Indians that also signify their perceived quality of wildness. Tomochichi, his robe draped over one shoulder, extends an open hand, palm upward, signifying frankness and amity. [5][8]

The youth with dark skin, positioned near the center of the painting and clasping the hand of one of the English trustees, is dressed in English formal wear. Mistaken as a "black attendant" by at least one scholar,[9] he is Tooanahowi, the fifteen-year-old heir-designate of Tomochichi. Contemporaries described Tooanahowi as the chief's nephew, but he was actually Senauki's grandson (traditional Creek society was matrilineal). The youth received English schooling, delivered speeches in English during the expedition, and later fought alongside the British in the War of Jenkins' Ear.[5][8]

The scene is set inside a Late Baroque building with high stone walls, marble-tiled floor, heavy draperies, and brass chandelier with a window giving a view of Westminster Abbey.[5][8]

Analysis[edit]

The painting is also known as the Common Council of Georgia receiving the Indian Chiefs.[9] Commissioned by Georgia's trustees, it hung in the trustees' offices in London until the trustees dissolved after Georgia became a royal colony in 1752. Anthony Ashley Cooper, 4th Earl of Shaftesbury, acquired the portrait, which stayed in the Cooper family until it was purchased by Henry Francis du Pont circa 1930. The ninth earl presented a copy, painted by Edmund Dyer in 1826, to the State of Georgia in 1926.[10][4]

Author Donald N. Yates argued that most of the Indian delegates were Cherokees rather than Creeks, including Cherokee leader Attakullakulla.[10] Yates walked back these claims in 2020 after reviewing a high-resolution image from the Winterthur Museum. The Indians' names appear in a cartouche, part of the painting's original frame.[11]

The painting inspired the design of a towering and nearly nude statue of Tomochichi erected in Atlanta in 2022. Historians and members of the Muscogee Nation criticized the statute as historically inaccurate and its source material as "propaganda" intended to portray Native Americans as "weak and uncivilized."[12]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Audience Given by the Trustees of Georgia to a Delegation of Creek Indians". Winterthur Museum Collection. Archived from the original on 2023-01-10. Retrieved 2023-01-10.
  2. ^ "Tomochichi - Travels to Great Britain". Georgia Historical Society. 10 October 2017. Archived from the original on 2022-11-19. Retrieved 2023-01-10.
  3. ^ Parmelee, Deena L. (2010). Creek Diplomacy in an Imperial Atlantic World (PhD dissertation). Durham: University of New Hampshire. pp. 26–29.
  4. ^ a b Richardson, Edgar P. (1986). American Paintings and Related Pictures in the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum. Charlottesville: Published for the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum by the University Press of Virginia. p. 124. ISBN 978-0-8139-1098-7.
  5. ^ a b c d Sweet, Julie Anne (2002). "Bearing Feathers of the Eagle: Tomochichi's Trip to England". Georgia Historical Quarterly. 86 (3): 349–352. ISSN 0016-8297. JSTOR 40584568.
  6. ^ Sweet, Julie Anne (2008). "Will the Real Tomochichi Please Come Forward?". American Indian Quarterly. 32 (2): 141–177. doi:10.1353/aiq.2008.0023. ISSN 0095-182X. JSTOR 30114262. S2CID 154961004.
  7. ^ Lapham, Heather A.; Waselkov, Gregory A. (2020). Bears: Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Perspectives in Native Eastern North America. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. pp. 20–22. doi:10.2307/j.ctvx06xv6.6. ISBN 9781683401384. JSTOR j.ctvx06xv6. S2CID 214276946.
  8. ^ a b c Sweet, Julie Anne (2015). "Tooanahowi: The Maturation of the Next Yamacraw Leader". Native South. 8 (1): 89–111. doi:10.1353/nso.2015.0003. ISSN 2152-4025. S2CID 160826166.
  9. ^ a b Pratt, Stephanie (1998). "Reynolds' 'King of the Cherokees' and Other Mistaken Identities in the Portraiture of Native American Delegations, 1710-1762". Oxford Art Journal. 21 (2): 138. doi:10.1093/oxartj/21.2.133. ISSN 0142-6540. JSTOR 1360618.
  10. ^ a b Yates, Donald N. (2014). Old World Roots of the Cherokee: How DNA, Ancient Alphabets and Religion Explain the Origins of America's Largest Indian Nation. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. pp. 98–105. ISBN 978-0-7864-9125-4.
  11. ^ Yates, Donald (2020-09-03). "Calling All Cherokees". DNA Consultants. Archived from the original on 2022-08-18. Retrieved 2023-01-10.
  12. ^ Warren, Michael (2022-02-07). "Muscogee Dismayed by Nearly Naked Statue of Georgia Ancestor". Associated Press. Archived from the original on 2022-05-16. Retrieved 2023-01-10.

External links[edit]

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