Neither proslavery Southerners nor antislavery Northerners were much concerned about the Native Americans who inhabited the western lands they coveted. But Seth Eastman (1808–1875), who graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1829 and began a long career in the U.S. Army, recorded sympathetically the lives he encountered. While stationed at Fort Snelling in present-day Minnesota, he began observing the local Indians and learning their languages. (He also married Wakanin ajin win, the fifteen-year-old daughter of a Dakota chief, whom he left behind when he was transferred.) He began to paint scenes of the everyday lives of Indians—marriage customs, the gathering of wild rice, and games. Because he was a military officer, he spent more time in the field than any other artist. And because his duties were often light, he was prolific, producing hundreds of carefully done paintings.

In Ball Playing among the Sioux Indians, Eastman captures Sioux playing an early version of lacrosse. Eastman’s second wife, Virginia-born Mary Henderson Eastman, who was also a student of Indian cultures, said that the object of the game was “to get the ball (a piece of baked clay covered with deer skin) beyond a certain line.” She added, “This is rough play, limbs are often broken and lives lost.” Eastman captures the speed and the danger of the game. Some men have their sticks raised; others have been knocked to the ground. Yet it is clearly a game, not warfare (although rough games like this certainly helped prepare young men for war). Most of the sticks are on the ground, going for the ball.Spectators—men and women—enjoy the action from a nearby hillside. Eastman sets the game in the majestic West—green grass, open fields, craggy mountains, and a glorious cloud-filled sky. It adds up to a painting that is both beautiful and painstakingly accurate.

As an artist, Eastman was a realist, painting Indian life as he saw it lived. He was a meticulous craftsman, owing perhaps to his training in topographical drawing (map making) at West Point. Unlike artists who sought to thrill stay-at-home whites with glimpses of savage ways or to move them to admiration through romanticized portraits, Eastman sought to record as closely as he could the customs of the Chippewa, Winnebago, and Sioux that he had come to know.

SOURCE: Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., USA/The Bridgeman Art Library.

Questions for Analysis

Connect to the Big Idea

Would Ball Playing among the Sioux Indians have challenged or confirmed most Americans’ view of Native Americans, and why?