The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia Lewis

by Harry Henderson

  [27] Daniel Wilson, “The Artistic Faculty in Aboriginal Races,” in Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada (Montreal, Dawson Bros., 1886), III 65-117. Richard Rhodes, University of California, Berkeley, to author July 12, 2010, translated the name. See also St. Regis Mohawk Tribe: Tribal History, accessed May 14, 2010, http://www.srmt-nsn.gov/his.htm; E. M. Ruttenber, Footprints of the Red Men. Indian Geographical Names (n.p.: New York State Historical Association, 1906), 189-190; Thomas K. Donnalley, Handbook of Tribal Names of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, Pa., 1908), 8. There is more on Edmonia’s Indian names in the Epilogue.

  [28] New York, State Education Dept., op. cit.

  [29] Joseph Mitchell, “Mohawks in High Steel,” New Yorker, Sept. 17, 1949, 38-53; Devine, Historic Caughnawaga, 379.

  [30] Franklin Benjamin Hough, A History of St. Lawrence and Franklin Counties, New York (Albany: Little & Co., 1853), 167-168; Devine, Historic Caughnawaga, 388-389; Encyclopedia of the Haudenosaunee (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Co., 2000), 13.

  [31] Whitney to Sarah Whitney, Dec. 12, 1869, Whitney MSS. We found no accounts of other visits to her aunts. See also Elizabeth McKinsey, Niagara Falls. Icon of the American Sublime (Cambridge, Engl.: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 127; Mark Twain, “Niagara,” in Sketches New and Old (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1903), 58-67.

  [32] For example, Lawrence Labree, Rebels and Tories; or, The Blood of the Mohawk! (New York: DeWitt and Davenport, 1851), 93-94, etc.

  [33] Tuckerman, Book, 603-604. See also Bullard, “Edmonia Lewis;” Gay, “Edmonia Lewis;” Henry Robertson Sandbach, Diary, Feb. 8, 1872, (Powys County Archives, M/D/SAND/1/19) quoted in National Museums Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery, Bust of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, accessed Mar. 22, 2010, http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/collections/foreign/longfellow_edmonia_lewis.asp; Clarkson, T., letter to the editor, Boston (MA) Daily Globe, Oct. 2, 1883.

  [34] See also Donald B. Smith, Sacred Feathers: The Reverend Peter Jones (Kahkewaquonaby) and the Mississauga Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987), 207, the New Credit Chippewa group resolved to exclude colored persons in 1844, the year of Edmonia’s birth.

  [35] Sampson, “Doing the Centennial.”

  [36] Longfellow, Life, II, 248: “Work at “Manabozho;” or, as I think I shall call it, “Hiawatha,” — that being another name for the same personage.” Cf. H. R. Schoolcraft, The Myth of Hiawatha and Other Oral Legends (Philadelphia: Lippincott & co., 1856), 13.

  [37] Oberlin Evangelist, “Commencement Exercises,” Sept. 11, 1861, 151, quoted in Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000, Oberlin, Document 17, accessed July 21, 2010, http://womhist.alexanderstreet.com/oberlin/doc17.htm.

  [38] Child, “Edmonia Lewis.” See also Miller, An Illustrated History, 374-376.

  [39] Official documents being lost, the contemporary record of the incident, which took place Jan. 27, 1862, and its aftermath came mainly via news coverage and a diary: Cleveland (OH) Plain Dealer, “Mysterious Affair at Oberlin,” Feb. 11, 1862, “Oberlin Poisoning Case,” Feb. 25, 1862, and “Oberlin Poisoning Case Again,” Mar. 3, 1862; LCN, “Trial in Prospect,” Feb. 19, 1862, “Poisoning Affair,” Mar. 5; Cleveland (OH) Morning Leader, “Oberlin Poisoning Case,” Mar. 3, 1862; Fannie Maria White [Mrs. James Bailey], diary, Jan. 31, 1862, Oberlin College Archives. See also Langston, Virginia Plantation, 171-180; Blodgett, “John Mercer Langston” and “Spiced Wine.”

  [40] Cf. Boston (MA) Commonwealth, quoted in NASS, “Prejudice at Oberlin College!” June 11, 1864.

  [41] NYDG, July 10, 1873. Cf. HELBAA.

  NOTES FOR BOOK ONE – Boston. 1. EAST IN 1863

  [42] In February, 1863, the College denied permission for Edmonia to register for the spring term, according to Clara Hale to Dear Folks at Home, Feb. 26, 1863, Clara Hale file, Oberlin College Archives. See also LCN, “Mary Lewis had another,” Feb. 25, Elyria, May 6, 1863; Mary Edmonia Lewis file, Oberlin College Archives. Records of courses taken spring 1861 and of two winter courses of a possible four remain (1859-60 and 1861-62).

  [43] Charles Grandison Finney, perhaps the most popular preacher of his day, was a forerunner of Billy Sunday and Billy Graham.

  [44] Marcia Goldberg, “A Drawing by Edmonia Lewis,” American Art Journal 9 (1977): 104; Marcia Goldberg and W. E. Bigglestone, “A Wedding Gift of 1862,” Oberlin Alumni Magazine, Jan.-Feb. 1977, 20; J. V. Turano, “More Information on Edmonia Lewis’ Drawing,” American Art Journal 10 (1978): 112. See also Miller, An Illustrated History, 374-376.

  [45] Frederick Douglass, editorial, “Miss Edmonia Lewis.” Douglass recalled meeting Edmonia Lewis in the spring of 1863, “conversing most earnestly and encouraging [her], then a student at Oberlin, with regard to art. She exhibited some signs of talent in drawing and painting, and had evinced such enthusiasm for the Art which adorns and ennobles that, from a kindred artistic love, we were led to advise her to seek the East and by study prepare herself for work and further study abroad.”

  [46] Fletcher, History, II, 718.

  [47] We have not identified Edmonia’s model, but we found a nearly identical drawing captioned “Urania, antique statue in the Vatican” in Blackie’s Modern Cyclopedia (1899) at Look and Learn Picture Library, accessed May 3, 2012, http://www.lookandlearn.com/history-images/M089050/Urania-Antique-Statue-in-the-Vatican. The drawing seems to reflect Urania Ludovisi Altemps, accessed May 3, 2012, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Urania_Ludovisi_Altemps_Inv8579.jpg.

  [48] NYT, Dec. 29, 1878. See also Carleton, Literary and Artistic.

  [49] SFC, Aug. 26, 1873.

  NOTES FOR 2. EPIPHANY

  [50] The building, which opened in 1865, is located at 45 School Street and is now called “the Old City Hall.”

  [51] SFC, Aug. 26, 1873. Versions of Edmonia’s encounter with the Benjamin Franklin statue also appear in Wreford, “Lady Artists in Rome;” Elizabeth P. Peabody [hereafter “Peabody”], ChReg [1869], quoted in Hanaford, Women of the Century, 264-266; HELBAA; Pickle, On the Wing, “Edmonia Lewis—An Episode;” Bullard, “Edmonia Lewis;” NYDG, July 10, 1873; Gay, “Edmonia Lewis;” Faithfull, Three Visits, 293-94.

  [52] Darren Bonaparte, “The History of the St. Regis Catholic Church,” Wampum Chronicles, accessed Mar. 10, 2010, http://www.wampumchronicles.com/catholicchurch.html. See also. Franklin Benjamin Hough, A History of St. Lawrence and Franklin Counties, New York (Albany: Little & Co., 1853), Chap. II. The Saint Francis Xavier mission, built in 1720, was rebuilt around 1845 with statues of St. Francis Xavier, Ignatius of Loyola, Our Lady, etc.

  [53] Sources for Brackett’s course with Edmonia include Child, letter to the editor, BL, Feb. 19, 1864; Whitney to Adeline M. Manning, Aug. 9, 1864, Payne MSS, 511-512; Child, “Edmonia Lewis;” HELBAA; Bullard, “Edmonia Lewis;” NYDG, July 10, 1873; and Gay, “Edmonia Lewis.” NYT, Sept. 25, 1879; and Boston (MA) Daily Traveller, Nov. 17, 1880.

  NOTES FOR 3. BRACKETT

  [54] (Sara Jane Clarke Lippincott), Greenwood Leaves: A Collection of Sketches and Letters, “by Grace Greenwood” (Boston: Ticknor, Read, and Fields, 1852), 286-288. See also Joy F. Kasson, Marble Queens and Captives. Women in Nineteenth-Century Sculpture (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1990), 128-130; Charlotte Cushman [hereafter “Cushman”], Her Letters, 71; Leach, Bright Particular Star, 244-258 (chap. 21). Greenwood accompanied Cushman and others to Rome in 1852. After returning to the U. S., she married Philadelphia publisher, Leander K. Lippincott (?-1896) in 1853.

  [55] Jarves, Art Thoughts, 319.

  [56] NYDG, July 10, 1873. See also Bullard, “Edmonia Lewis.” Edmonia found lodging with Alfred G. and Edwin F. Howard and their families in a four-story brick house at 40 Poplar St. in Boston’s fashionable old West End. According to the 1865 Massachusetts census, their household accounted for one third of the very few colored people in the old fifth ward. City directories, etc., noted Alfred and Edwin Howard were barbers and caterers. See also Pauline E. Hopkins, Famous Women of the Negr
o Race: “Educators,” Colored American Magazine, July 1902, 206-214, which notes the Howard family was politically active and friendly with Garrison and others.

  [57] Under the pen name Horace Bender, Greenough wrote essays against abolition, supporting slave owners’ claims of happy slaves.

  NOTES FOR 4. EDMONIA’S BROTHER

  [58] Child, “Edmonia Lewis;” Leeson, History of Montana, 1141; Miller, An Illustrated History, 374-376; Bozeman (MT) Courier, Apr. 6, 1896, Nicholas Francis Cooke, Satan in Society, by a Physician (Cincinnati: Vent, 1871): 354- 355. Leeson and Miller indicate her brother went to Europe after 1862, returning to San Francisco in 1864 in time to meet her in Boston.

  [59] BosD (1865) put Edmonia at studio no. 89, between Miss E. M. Carpenter, painter of flowers (in no. 88) and printer Wm. J. Gradon sharing with photographers Henry Thatcher and Augustus Marshall (in no. 90).

  [60] Leeson, History of Montana, 1141. The phrase, “where she graduated,” is not included in the later Miller, An Illustrated History, 374-376.

  NOTES FOR 5. STUDYING ART

  [61] Child, “Edmonia Lewis.” See also Child, letter to the editor, BL, Feb. 19, 1864.

  [62] Bannister occupied 85 Studio Building according to BosD (1865). Cf. Bearden and Henderson, A History, 40-51, 484-485; Juanita Marie Holland, The Life and Work of Edward Mitchell Bannister (New York: Kenkeleba House, 1992).

  NOTES FOR 7. THE BLACK SUBJECTS OF JOHN ROGERS AND ANNE WHITNEY

  [63] Payne MSS, 571-2; Nelson, The Color of Stone, 129.

  [64] Elizabeth Bartol posed for Whitney’s Africa Awakening.

  [65] Whitney studied with Henry Kirke Brown.

  NOTES FOR 8. A PRELUDE TO GLORY

  [66] Whittier is quoted in Child, Letters, 240-241.

  NOTES FOR 9. A SUMMER DEATH

  [67] Whittier, quoted in Child, Letters, 240.

  [68] Child, letter to the editor, BL, Feb. 19, 1864; Child, “Edmonia Lewis.” Cf. Child to Sarah Shaw, Apr. 8, 1866, Child MSS 64/1717: “Her medallion of John Brown … copied from a bust, is better than any of her medallions.”

  [69] BL, Nov. 20, 1863: “Miss L, a young and promising colored artist of this city, has just completed a very creditable medallion likeness of J[ohn] B[rown] copies of which may be obtained at the Anti-Slavery office, 221 Washington Street. Price $1.50 Give the artist what she deserves—patronage. Call as for room in the Studio Building. Tremont Street.”

  NOTES FOR 10. THE TREMONT TEMPLE INTERVIEW – 1864

  [70] John Greenleaf Whittier, introduction to Letters, by L. M. Child, xiv.

  [71] Child, letter to the editor, BL, Feb. 19, 1864; Child to William Lloyd Garrison, Feb. 27, 1864, Child MSS 58/1538; Child, “Edmonia Lewis.” See also Child’s earlier letters that mention Edmonia: to William Lloyd Garrison, Feb. 8, 1864, Child MSS 57/1532; and to Eliza Scudder, Feb. 8, 1864, Child MSS 57/1533.

  [72] Child to Francis Shaw, Sept. 5, 1852, in Selected Letters, 265. Karcher, The First Woman, 412-413.

  [73] Child to Mrs. Mason, Dec. 17, 1859, in Letters, 123-137. BL published the exchange; the American Anti-Slavery Society reprinted 300,000 copies in pamphlet form.

  [74] Child, “Edmonia Lewis.”

  [75] Child, letter to the editor, BL, Feb. 19, 1864.

  [76] BL, Ad, “Medallion of John Brown,” Jan. 29, Feb 12, 19, 26, Mar. 4, 11, 20, Apr. 28, 1864.

  NOTES FOR 11. MRS. CHILD

  [77] Sherwood, Hosmer, 160, 230; Child, letter to the editor, BDET, Feb. 2, 1865; 19th & 20th Century European Sculpture, Nov. 13, 2007, lot 59, London: Sotheby’s. Zenobia was a warrior queen of what is modern day Syria. She had proclaimed herself ruler of most of Arabia and Egypt before falling to Roman armies around 270 AD.

  [78] Child, “Harriet E. Hosmer.”

  [79] Hosmer portrayed Zenobia dethroned and paraded through Rome, a slave in gold chains.

  [80] Culkin, Hosmer, 62-63, 69-77, 83, 95, 103-4, 108-109, etc.

  [81] William Wetmore Story [hereafter “Story”] to J. R. Lowell, Dec. 30, 1855, quoted in James, William Wetmore Story, I, 297-308. cf. Jarves, The Art Idea, 173-181.

  [82] Karcher, The First Woman, 297, 314, 366, 412-413, 520, 596-598. See also 525-526 for an analysis that found racial, sexual, and class paternalism in Child’s fictional African-American characters.

  [83] Child to Eliza Scudder, Feb. 8, 1864, Child MSS 57/1533.

  [84] Child to Robert Folger Wallcutt, Aug. 16, 1864, Child MSS 59/1502.

  [85] Child, “A Chat.” See also Child, letter to the editor, BL, Feb. 19, 1864: “Whether she will prove to have any portion of creative genius time will show.” See also Child, “Edmonia Lewis:” “Whether she has merely great imitative talent, or is endowed with that creative power, which we call genius, time alone can determine.”

  [86] Hawthorne, The Marble Faun, chap. 15.

  [87] Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Poems (1850), I, 354.

  NOTES FOR 12. EDMONIA REVEALED

  [88] Child to Sarah Shaw, Nov. 3, 1864, Selected Letters, 446-447; to Sarah Shaw, Apr. 8, 1866 Apr. 8, 1866; to Sarah Shaw, [Aug.? 1870], Child MSS 74/1958.

  [89] Whitney to Adeline M. Manning, Aug. 9, 1864, Payne MSS, 511-512.

  NOTES FOR 13. ANIMUS AND ANIMA

  [90] Child, “Edmonia Lewis.”

  [91] Child, “A Chat.”

  [92] Child to Sarah Shaw, Nov. 3, 1864, in Selected Letters, 446-447; Child, “A Chat.”

  [93] Child, “A Chat.”

  [94] James, William Wetmore Story, II, 162-163. See also Kathryn Greenthal, “Augustus Saint-Gaudens and the Shaw Memorial,” in Hope & Glory. Essays on the Legacy of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, edited by M. H. Blatt, et al. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 116-129.

  [95] Child to Sarah Shaw, 1876, in Letters, 240-241.

  [96] BDET, Nov. 11, 1864.

  [97] Child to Sarah Shaw, Apr. 8, 1866, Child MSS 64/1717. Wreford, “A Negro Sculptress.” Robert G. Shaw’s sister, Susanna (Mrs. Robert Bowne Minturn), lived near her mother on Staten Island. Her father-in-law, Robert Minturn, was the first president of the Union League Club of New York.

  [98] Child to Sarah Shaw, Nov. 3, 1864, in Selected Letters, 446-447. See also Child, letter to the editor, NASS quoted in BL, Nov. 18, 1864.

  [99] Child, “Edmonia Lewis.” Flag bearer William Harvey Carney won the Medal of Honor for his bravery.

  [100] Nelson, The Color of Stone, 170-171.

  [101] BDET, Nov. 11, 1864:

  Among the thousand objects of interest at the Fair is one which we hope will not be overlooked. It is a bust of the hero Col. Robert G. Shaw by Miss Edmonia Lewis of the Studio Building. Miss Lewis is a young colored woman of African and Indian descent, who was educated at Oberlin College. She has been modeling for about a year in this city and undertook to make this likeness of one whom she had never seen, out of grateful feeling ‘for what he had done for her race.’ Col. Shaw’s family consider it an excellent likeness and have had it photographed by Mr. Marshall, allowing the artist to sell copies for her own benefit. We are sure that many will be thankful to possess a touching and beautiful memorial of one of the ablest in our long list of brave and truthful souls who have gone thus early to their reward.

  Days later, BDET, Nov. 14, 1864: “The bust of Col. Shaw … is not exhibited at the National Fair, as stated in Friday’s Transcript. The moulds not being finished, from which the casts are to be taken, ordered by Col. Shaw’s family and others. On the 20th instant, it will be placed at the rooms of Messrs. Williams and Everett for public inspection;” Child to Sarah Shaw, Nov. 3, 1864, in Selected Letters, 446-447, noted she visited the fair the same afternoon she first saw the Shaw bust in Edmonia’s studio, in Mid-October.

  [102] John Greenleaf Whittier to Child, Nov. 15, 1864, quoted in Letters (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), III, 81-82: “I saw the bust of Col. Shaw that thee spoke to me of at the colored fair. It struck me as very excellent. I am not perhaps a judge of such matters, but it seems to me that it is a suc
cess.”

  [103] Leeson, History of Montana, 1141.

  [104] BL, Jan. 20, 1865.

  [105] Anna C. L. Q. Waterston, Verses (Boston: Printed by J. Wilson and Son, 1863), 193.

  [106] Anna C. L. Q. Waterston, “Edmonia Lewis,” by A. Q. W. (broadside, n. d., reprinted BL, Dec. 16, 1864, NASS, Dec. 24, 1864). Edmonia inspired other poets, including Eva Carter Buckner, “What Constitutes a Negro!” in Negro Trail Blazers of California, edited by Delilah Leontium Beasley (Los Angeles, CA, 1919), 269-270; Yusef Komunyakaa, “Hagar’s Daughter,” 1064-1067, in “Séance,” Callaloo 24.4 (2001): 1061-1079; Vivian Shipley, “The Statue, ‘The Death of Cleopatra,’ Speaks to Me in The National Museum of American Art,” 71-79, in All of Your Messages Have Been Erased (Hammond, La.: Louisiana Literature Press, 2010); and plays for children, “Dark Cowgirls and Prairie Queens,” Written and directed by Linda Parris-Bailey; Cf. Anita Gates, Theater Review; “Untamable Spirits Wrangle With the Wild West,” NYT, Nov. 12, 1997. For a description of Eileen Tenney’s multimedia exploration of diversity using Edmonia’s story and her brother’s home in Bozeman MT, see also Priscilla Lund, “Children Understanding Diversity in Their Community: ‘Are We Home Yet?’” Visual Arts Research 20, No. 2(40) (Fall 1994), 69-77.

  [107] Child, “A Chat.”

  [108] Child to Sarah Shaw, Nov. 3, 1864, in Selected Letters, 446-447.

  [109] Child to Sarah Shaw, Apr. 8, 1866, Child MSS 64/1717.

  NOTES FOR 14. CRISIS 1864 to 1865

  [110] Whitney to Adeline M Manning, Jan. 27, 1865, Payne MSS, 541; Child, “Edmonia Lewis.”