464 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1958 
who died in 1861, was the composer of the “Pocahontas Waltz” for 
piano and is said to have been the first to use Indian themes in larger 
orchestral works. The heroine of the big song hit of 1844, “The Blue 
Juniata,” was an Indian girl, “Bright Alforata.” 
Actually, it is at this vernacular level that the backwash of the 
frontier is most clearly discernible in American music of the 19th 
century. ‘This was due to the role the Indian played in the subject 
matter of folk songs. In one group of songs, the Indian appears 
“merely as an incidental personality” and the attitudes toward him 
are vague. Inasecond group, however, negative attitudes are sharply 
defined since many songs in this class are long narrative ballads which 
depict actual frontier conflicts. Folksongs about historic events, 
“including songs about dramatic episodes in the relationships of 
Indians and White, have been sung regularly since the earliest days 
of colonization and have faithfully reflected changing relationships 
between the two culture groups at least down to the present century 
when modern techniques for the commercialization of popular songs 
may have beclouded the issue.” A third category of songs reflects 
a positive attitude toward the Indian varying “from vague references 
to good Indians or Indians with heroic qualities, to songs and ballads 
exclusively about romanticized Indians, who are admired for their 
stamina and other heroic qualities.” ?° An anonymous, undated ex- 
ample of America’s folk painting, depicting the rescue of John Smith, 
belongs to this earlier period.2*. The same motif was subsequently as 
popular in prints as it was in fiction, drama, poetry, and music. 
However, in the midst of all this romanticizing of the Indian, a 
trend toward greater realism developed, particularly in painting. 
Here and there in colonial times there had been some realistic paintings 
of the Indians; for example, the masterly portraits of Lenape chiefs 
painted in 1735 by Gustavus Hesselius (1682-1755). But about 1821, 
many of the western chiefs who came to Washington on business with 
the Government sat for their portraits. <A collection of these became 
the nucleus of the famous “Indian Gallery.” The magnificent re- 
production of 120 of these portraits in a folio edition of 3 volumes 
(McKenny and Hall, “History of the Indian Tribes of North America, 
1836-44”) gave the eastern public an opportunity to see what con- 
temporary Indians looked like. On the other hand, artists themselves 
began to go west (Seymour, Rindisbacher, Lewis, Catlin, Miller, Kast- 
man, Stanley, Kane, Bodmer, Kurz), so that greatly enriched images 
of the natives, the kind of life they led, and the grandeur of the 
country they inhabited soon became more widely known to those 
living far removed from the contemporary frontier. It was the author 
0 Austin E. Fife and Francesca Redden, The pseudo-Indian folksongs of the Anglo- 
American and French-Canadian, Journ. Amer. Folklore, vol. 57, pp. 241, 394, 1954. 
21 “American Folk Art. The Art of the Common Man in America, 1750-1900.” Mus. Mod. 
Art Publ. No. 19, 1932. 
