“the picture ………showed a shack with a splintered door and broken windows………
A small boy sat out in front, bloated belly, dull eyes, dirt streaked face, playing with the severed foreleg of a deer. A pile of cans, garbage heaped against a fence – McLaughlin could almost hear the flies buzzing, catch the stench.” (page 5)
This is a fine novel written with a factual context which adds to its fascination. I was drawn to it by the title, knowing that some native Americans referred to photographers as “Shadow Catchers” because they insisted on standing between their subject and the sun.
Fergus chooses to set his work against the background of the Rodman Wanamaker expedition of 1913 which was led by Joseph Dixon : the self styled “ Expedition of Citizenship to the North American Indian”. The entourage travelled round the United States in a luxury private railcar, which Fergus includes as an illustration opposite the first page of his excellent book. He weaves his tale around such ‘real’ characters as Dixon and James McLaughlin, onetime agent at the Standing Rock Reservation when Sitting Bull was murdered and who now worked for the Indian Affairs Bureau.
The expedition brought news of “a mammoth Indian memorial that Mr Wanamaker plans to build in New York……. a colossal statue of the American Indian. A bow and arrow in his lowered left hand will show that he is through with war…………while his uplifted right hand ……will present the universal peace sign of the red man. Thus the Indian will give in bronze a perpetual welcome to the nations of the world, just as he welcomed the white man when he first came to this shore.” (page 10).
We are given an intriguing view of the interaction of the incredulous native Americans through the eyes of a stenographer, employed to record the proceedings for posterity. We are privy, thanks to Fergus’s imagination to the daily functioning of the expedition, as ill conceived as the patronising creation of a mammoth fictitious native American’s head carved in Black Hills rock allegedly celebrating Crazy Horse and offered as a ludicrous antidote to the similar monstrosity at Mount Rushmore.
The impact of the publicity of the expedition is sullied by the Washington Dispatch publishing anonymous “candid” photographs “without artistic merit and injurious to (the) Indian Bureau”( page 7) which expose more of the reality of reservation life:
“the picture ………showed a shack with a splintered door and broken windows………
A small boy sat out in front, bloated belly, dull eyes, dirt streaked face, playing with the severed foreleg of a deer. A pile of cans, garbage heaped against a fence – McLaughlin could almost hear the flies buzzing, catch the stench.” (page 5)
The collection of photographs which illustrate this book is worthy of study in itself. Signing the Declaration of Allegiance (page 184) gives great insight into the history of the American West, as does Boys being taught to sweep at the Riverside Indian School in Oklahoma (page 40): useful skills so they may integrate and take their place in the new Americans' society. Hopis hiding from the camera exposes the lack of sensitivity of the photographer, thereby representing a much wider perspective of the new Americans as a whole.
The wonder is that this original and instructive book has not been the basis for a film, although it is perhaps unrealistic to expect a Rodman Wanamaker to put up the cash to represent a view of his nineteenth century forebears which might be perceived as unpatriotic. Ken Loach, where are you?
