relativist conceptions of “nobility,” “civilization” and “barbarity” in a sideways attack on the European
fashion for wigs that would appeal to a metropolitan public sensitized to colonial issues and ambiguities:
If an European, when he has cut off his beard, and put false hair on his head, or bound up his own
natural hair in regular hard knots, as unlike nature as he can possibly make it; and after having
rendered them immoveable by the help of the fat of hogs, has covered the whole with flour, laid on by
a machine with the utmost regularity; if, when thus attired he issues forth, and meets a Cherokee Indian,
who has bestowed as much time at his toilet, and laid on with equal care and attention his yellow and
red oker on particular parts of his forehead or cheeks, as he judges most becoming; whoever of these
two despises the other for attention to the fashion of his country, which ever feels himself provoked to
laugh, is the barbarian.
(Reynolds, 1975 [1797], 137)In fact, the “other” (American Indian) peoples in question here displayed in the early and middle decades
of the eighteenth century an unexpected agency and activism in colonial negotiations, since they were
anxious to establish benefits, including protection, in response to European (specifically British and
French) competition to “claim” their valuable resources of farmland and trading routes. American Indian
delegations in 1710, 1734 and 1762 to the British royal court presented the occasion for formal
commemorative portraits. The 1710 portrait series “Four Indian Kings” by Jan Verelst (b. 1648; still
active 1719) shows representatives of the Iroquois and Algonquian nations. These portraits combine the
conventional poses, gentlemanly bearing and classical dress of European grand portraiture with
stereotypical allusions to the noble savage, backgrounds of exotic vegetation, fierce fighting skills
(signified by weaponry), and features read as “native,” such as tinted skin colors, ornaments and
hairstyles (Pratt, 2003, 66–67; Truettner, 2010, 34–39; note the togalike garment in Figure 3.10). It has
been suggested that such hybrid exotic–western representations defused the threat that more truthful
representations might have posed to western viewers by presenting visual continuities with the classical
tradition (Pratt, 2003, 60–67; Fordham, 2007, 104–110). Poor European knowledge of American Indian
languages and culture led to serious misunderstandings and inaccuracies with regard to the traditions and
dress of specific tribes, as did widespread western tendency to confuse American Indians with
inhabitants of the East and West Indies, and even Africa (Berlo and Phillips, 1998; Pratt, 2003, 72;
Wheeler, 2003, 38, 54). The visiting “Kings” were turned into fairground attractions as they could earn
money by exhibiting themselves in public, a practice satirized by Hogarth in his The Times I (Dabydeen,
1985, 124–125). American Indians tired of European diplomacy later in the century, as it began to
jeopardize their local tribal negotiations and loyalties, and as they experienced armed conflict and
disease brought by occupying imperial forces (Pratt, 1998, 135–149).