Existing comment:
In all your intercourse with the natives, treat them in the most friendly and conciliatory manner which their own conduct will admit…
-- Jefferson to Lewis & Clark, 1803
Panel 18, 1956
President Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter on January 18, 1803, giving instructions for the Corps of Discovery expedition led by Captain Meriwether Lewis and Second Lieutenant William Clark. He urged the two Americans to engage in respectful relations with the Native people they would meet throughout their journey. Lawrence chose to depict Lemhi Shoshone translator Sacajawea, robed in red, in a moment of her own discovery. Here she realizes she is standing face to face, eye to eye, with her brother Shoshone Chief Cameahwait, dressed in blue, and from whom she had long been separated and enslaved since childhood by a warring nation. Lawrence celebrated this tender reunion by forging a heart shape at the center of the composition.
In Lawrence's Time:
The above illustration was published in one of Jacob Lawrence's sources. The caption declares "Historic Homecoming," which describes the reunion between Sacajawea and the Lemhi Shoshone people. However, the scene is romanticized as a landscape painting, emphasizing America's westward expansion into Native-occupied land as an idealistic subject. |