King James BibleHe found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. DEUTERONOMY 32:10
St. John the Baptist Goes into the WildernessGIOVANNI DI PAOLO 1454
Temptation of St. Anthony
ST. JOHN IN THE WILDERNESS by Leonardo DaVinci
JESUS IN THE WILDERNESS
From WILDERNESS & THE AMERICAN MIND, by Roderick Nash
For the Puritans, of course, the wilderness was metaphor as well as actuality. On the frontier, the two meanings enforced each other, multiplying horrors.17th Century writing is permeated with the idea of wild country as the environ-ment of evil. Just as the Old Testament scribes represented the wilderness as the cursed land where satyrs and lesser demons roamed, the early settlers agreed with Michael Wiggelsworth that on the eve of settlement, the New Worldwas A waster and howling wilderness/ Where none inhabited/ But hellish fiendsand brutish men/ That Devils worshipped. The idea of a pagan continent hauntedthe Puritan imagination . . . . Cotton Mather believed . . . Satan had seduced the first Indian inhabitants for the purpose of making a stronghold . . . . As self-styled agents of God, the Puritans conceived their mission as breaking the powerof evil. (36)
WATSON AND THE SHARKJohn Singleton Copley 1771
Manifest Destiny
YOUNG LADIES TAKEN CAPTIVE BY SAVAGES
AMERICAN TEXTBOOK ART
Savages—snake dance
EARLY AMERICAN CONFLICT
Fake INDIAN SURRENDER SCENEMiama leader Little Turtle surrendering to Anthony Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, but no such scene ever occurred.
MANIFEST DESTINYTHE PROMISED LAND. 1821-1873 William S. Jewett
KINDRED SPIRITAsher Durand 1849
THE NOBLE SAVAGEBenjamin West.
NOBLE SAVAGE
END OF THE TRAIL
Sumi painting SHRIMP
Mountain scroll
Sumi TREES
Wanderer