PAUL KANE WAS HERE!

In the 1840’s when Western Canada was still dominated by the Hudson’s Bay company, still included the Pacific Northwest, and was called “Rupert’s Land,” Paul Kane (1810-1871) managed to talk the top Hudson’s Bay people into letting him use the company’s resources (forts and travel routes) so he could make portraits of the indigenous people there. A tall red-headed Irishman whose father had been a soldier in the old country and became a spirits dealer in York (which later became Toronto), he was of the right spirit and constitution to fit into the rough company of French voyageurs and Brit factors and was frankly in love with “aboriginals.”

To put him into perspective, he was inspired to make this exploration in part by Catlin’s (1796-1875) massive work accumulating the same kind of portraits and historical landscapes. He may or may not have known about Swiss Karl Bodmer (1809-1893) who had traveled up the the Missouri River in 1833 and 1834 with German prince Maximilian. Lewis and Clark had crossed the continent in 1804-1806. The natural trio of Catlin, Bodmer and Kane are not known so well by the popular public, but in their on-site sketches they recorded vital images of the people and places that no one back East would see until photography developed, as it were. Of the three, Kane kept the closest journal notes (complete with the usual creative spelling), which in 1859 he developed into “Wanderings of an Artist Among the Indians of North America Among the Indians of North America from Canada to Vancouver's Island and Oregon through the Hudson's Bay Company's Territory and Back Again.” “Paul Kane's Frontier Including Wanderings of an Artist” by Kane, Paul and J. Russell Harper is available from the Amon Carter Museum (published 1971) in Austin, TX. Also “Wanderings of an Artist” is on Google books. I just bought a copy for $15 from Edmonton Goodwill through Abebooks.com.

Like everyone else, Kane collected a lot of material objects, partly as markers of experiences and partly for reference when he got back to the studio. His practice was to accumulate a lot of field notes in watercolor and then, back in Toronto, to develop them into formal oil paintings. I was delighted to discover that Netflix would deliver a Canadian documentary about Kane called “The Art of Paul Kane: Visions from the Wilderness,” even more delighted to see Hugh Dempsey, often a visitor to Browning from Calgary, was in it and most delighted to hear that Tantoo Cardinale was the narrator. (I’m a BIG Tantoo fan, but she usually plays people who barely speak English.) The disc is only 45 minutes long, so I watched it twice and might watch it some more. There is a second disc in my queue that I think shows more of the art. The disc I’ve already watched is visually rich as well as exploring the concept of contrasting Kane’s direct, personal watercolor field notes with his culturally-bound studio oils, which are quite different. The same is probably true of Catlin and Bodmer.

Kane was in the West at the time of the Whitman Massacre, had visited the mission there, but was not close to the mission at the time of the incident. Facts were “slid” a little to make him more involved and to make his portraits of the miscreants look more evil and scary. On the other hand, he often made his “savages” look a little more European and mild than they are in the sketches. Always he was concerned to preserve accurately the accoutrements and equipment of the people, right down to an apparatus for spinning dog fur into yarn, so detailed it is easily reproduced.

Both white and indigenous people (each category including descendants of Kane and the aboriginals themselves), react and comment on this schism, which is in so many parts of our knowledge of the world. (This blog has previously mentioned the split between theology as it is done in learned circles and the same material watered down or even distorted to suit the prejudices of congregations.) But the actual art remains unchanged. It’s only our ways of seeing and understanding them that change.

In Kane’s lifetime he had acquired a patron who helped him greatly. This young Toronto man who had inherited a fortune got along well with Kane in spite of the difference in their social graces. (Kane was pretty rough but his wife was quite refined.) Perhaps the patron, like many others, enjoyed the second-hand contact with adventures on the frontier. But Kane himself, longing to return to those years, evidently fell prey to alcohol and probably died of cirrhosis of the liver. Shielding his reputation by keeping him sequestered led to a reputation as a recluse. He left his wife in difficult circumstances but their children were able to help.

This is almost the archetype of the Western artist: intrepid, rough-hewn, loved by many, helped by the wealthy, and finally brought down by human frailty. Not many leave this valuable a legacy and, of course, it’s close to impossible now to find a people untouched by modern media and industrial intrusion. The dark side of that is indigenous people who dress according to what the popular media shows and the bright side is that we have access to Kane’s work through the same media.

Even though much of his art is about Blackfeet, it is nearly unknown on the American side. Canadians claim him because the greater body of the Blackfoot Confederacy is on the north side of the line. And yet, when it came time for Canada to step up to the plate and keep Kane’s art in his home nation, it escaped to Texas where people recognized what it meant and had the bucks to write a check for a bargain. The “hundred oils” commissioned by Kane’s patron remain in Toronto and can be exhibited with the sketches for comparison.

Of the three -- Catlin, Bodmer, Kane -- it is Kane who feels closest to me. His main subjects -- Blackfeet and Chinook -- have been part of my life since my fourth grade teacher was Mildred Colbert, a major tribal leader. But I haven’t really spent time with Kane's images. I’m eager for his book to come south across the arbitrary lines between nations, between peoples, between now and the past, between popular knowledge and scholarly research.