ABSTRACT
The early nation conceived of Indians as figures of the past to shape the nation’s emerging urban culture and to justify national expansion. The associations of Indians with antiquities examined in the chapter persisted well into the nineteenth-century as tribal representatives continued to visit the nation’s seats of power. The early national metropolis framed the transformation of Native Americans into figures of the past and organized whites’ perceptions of history, nature, and race. Indians figure prominently in the imagery of ruins that marks the emergence of early national culture. The museum’s representational qualities become particularly charged in documents that describe tribal leaders’ visits to the site. Peale develops the leaflet’s destructive anecdote through images of a species’ disappearance, and he designates a Shawnee speaker to accentuate the mammoth’s prehistoric mystery. Commingling ruins, Indian revenge, and the possible fate of “our magnificent cities,” Clinton’s imaginative flight grows directly out of early national beliefs about the potential destruction lodged within civilization.
