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Monticello and the ‘Indian Hall’
Figure 01: Monticello Entry Foyer
Written for “Questions in Architectural History”
Fall 2018, Columbia GSAPP
Critic: Reinhold Martin, Caitlin Blanchfield
Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello is an exemplar in plantation architecture. Stately, colonial, and definitively American, it represented a new architecture for his vision of a new nation. However, upon arrival, the first thing that guests encounter is an entry foyer filled with a curated collection of Native American artifacts. The arrangement of this collection in Jefferson’s “Indian Hall”1 was deliberate and is as revealing to Jefferson’s thoughts on the Native American people as the nature of the artifacts that he chose to exhibit. By reading the space “both thematically and formally… the visual language used by Jefferson” can be examined to draw conclusions on how Jefferson chose to frame ‘The Wild West’ to the rest of the world and “give shape to his own culture”2 after the Louisiana Purchase. The ‘Indian Hall’ at Monticello, and the specific arrangement of the artifacts within, is the spatial realization of the Native American’s ‘potential civilization’ in the mind of the ‘enlightened’ white American combined with Thomas Jefferson’s fascination with the exotic and vision for the potential united future of America.
To understand Jefferson’s ‘Indian Hall’ one must first draw context from the European tradition of ‘Kunst-und Underkammer’, “a collection of fine art and marvelous or wonder-provoking objects”,3 popular in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Translated to ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’, these collections curated by the European aristocracy were often eclectic, bringing together objects from science, nature, and art to demonstrate the Renaissance man’s natural fascination with the outside world and desire for further enlightenment. Knowing Jefferson’s affinity for the culture of the elite, especially of Europe, it is no surprise that he adopted the program for the front entry of his personal home. Viewing the idea of the ‘Indian Hall’ through the lens of Thomas Jefferson and his early fascination with “the culture of the North American Indian”,4 the collecting of these artifacts signified imperialism but with a strong motive of discovery and wonder. The exotic materials displayed explicitly celebrated encounters with the New World, and the ‘Indian Hall’ became an early typology of a public museum dedicated to physical records of the New World’s indigenous culture.
Jefferson’s view of the Native American people and culture is layered, but was ultimately open-minded for his time. Rebuking the view of the native inhabitants of the “New World” as “feeble, hairless, mentally challenged, and characterized by small organs of generation”5 dictated by the writings of the Frenchman Mons. Buffon, Jefferson explicitly states that the indigenous people are “barbaric” but “formed in mind as well as in body, on the same module with the Homo sapiens Europaeus”.6 He is suggesting that even though the Native Americans are equal to the white man in terms of their intellect and physicality, they are still not on the same level as the white man in terms of their civility and potential. Although Jefferson’s suggestion of the capability of Native Americans to be subject to “improvement”7 with the assistance of the white man and move progressively toward ‘civilization’ is imperialistic, his political and land expansion strategies were peaceful and committed to forming alliances with the indigenous tribes through diplomacy. In his instructions to Lewis before exploring the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson requested he observe “their language, traditions, monuments; their ordinary occupations”8 and demonstrate their commitment to alliance through the trade of material goods. This realization that the source of artifacts in the foyer of Monticello were a result of diplomatic exchanges in social contexts rather than anthropological or imperial collection is Jefferson’s attempt to demonstrate to visitors the diversity of the world outside Virginia, place himself and Monticello within the context of the outside world, and to frame the Louisiana Purchase as a harmonious union of the Euro-American colonists and indigenous people with great potential and knowledge of a land full of ‘foreign’ resources.
The arrangement of the collection itself was deliberate and symbolic of the opening of relations between western tribes and the new American republic. Although the original artifacts have been lost, historical consensus allows us to propose the “following installation: the north wall constituting the ‘Lewis and Clark exhibit’… the south wall devoted to objects of natural history; and the west and east walls serving as a fine art gallery of painting and sculpture.”9 The ‘Lewis and Clark exhibit’ was made up primarily of the utilitarian tools and weaponry the tribal leaders exchanged with the explorers on their expedition. The arrangement of these artifacts in this exhibit was carefully constructed in a way that represents a modern museum, signifying his deep respect for the culture tied to the pieces. The most striking piece collected was undoubtedly the painted buffalo pelt from the Mandans representing a map of a “battle which was fought eight years prior by the Sioux and Ricaras against the Mandans, Minitarras, and Ahwahharways”10 tribes. However, this pelt was not displayed alongside the rest of the artifacts collected by Lewis and Clark, but was hung “in odd union with a fine painting of the Repentance of Saint Peter”11 on one of the sidewalls. The conscious decision to display the most striking piece of Native American art in his collection alongside his revered Renaissance paintings is meaningful, and was definitely perceived by his guests who had no knowledge of the indigenous culture, but now associated it with that of the European elite. Consistent with his views on the culture as a whole, Jefferson thought of the artistic ability of Native Americans as “a germ in their mind which only wants cultivation,”12 reiterating the “potential” of the Native American in the eyes of Jefferson, and their capability of improvement to the level of the white Euro-settlers. The location and arrangement of these artifacts, and especially the buffalo hide, in the most public space of his personal home reveal that Jefferson sought to spread this vision for what a future America with the assimilated indigenous people could look like.
Although Jefferson’s collection and arrangement of Native American art in the ‘Indian Hall’ of Monticello served as evidence of his propensity towards amicable progress and a more cohesive future for America, his eventual political strategy came with a great cost to the Native American population. To acquire land and facilitate trade, he convinced them to purchase American goods on credit to fall into debt, which they could eventually relieve through the sale of lands to the government- ultimately surrendering their own culture to assimilate into the colonial way of life. The path to ‘improvement’ for indigenous people was implicitly tied to exploitation and the conformation to the ways of the white man. His high regard of the cultural, intellectual, and physical capabilities of the Native American people was paired with the belief that the Native Americans would still be better off if they assimilated into the mainstream culture of the Euro-American settlers of the time. Jefferson’s ‘Indian Hall’, and specifically the placement of the painted buffalo pelt, at Monticello sought to visually and spatially demonstrate how the products of North America could stand on their own and take their place alongside those of the Old World,13 but ultimately exemplified the white enlightened man’s confidence in a world in which they still reigned supreme.
Footnotes:
1. Joyce Henri Robinson, “An American Cabinet of Curiosities: Thomas Jefferson’s “Indian Hall at Monticello”,” Winterthur Portfolio, Col. 30, No. 1 (1995): 43
2. Joyce Henri Robinson, IBID: 44
3. Joyce Henri Robinson, IBID: 44
4. Joyce Henri Robinson, IBID: 49
5. Joyce Henri Robinson, IBID: 53
6. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (Richmond, VA: J.W. Randolph, 1853), 98-99
7. Thomas Jefferson, IBID, 106
8. Jefferson to Meriwether Lewis, October 26, 18o6, in Donald Jackson, ed., “Letters of the Lewis and Clark Expedition”, with Related Documents, 1783-1854, 2 vols. (2d ed.; Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 2:3
9. Joyce Henri Robinson, IBID: 47
10. Joyce Henri Robinson, IBID: 54
11. George Ticknor, Peterson, Merrill, ed. Visitors to Monticello (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1989), 62.
12. Thomas Jefferson, IBID, 106
13. Thomas Jefferson Foundation, “The Indian Hall,” Thomas Jefferson Foundation, October 2, 2018. https://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/indian-hall
Image Credits:
Figure 01: Monticello Entry Foyer, Jonathan Hillyer Photography
© Alek Tomich_ New York, NY