American Art Collaborative

In the mid-nineteenth century, the United States government moved tribes from the Southeast to Indian Territory, which later became Oklahoma and Kansas. In 1843, Cherokee principal chief John Ross called a meeting of the tribes at Tallequah (also spelled Tahlequah) to “renew their ancient customs, and to revive their ancient alliances.” Hundreds of Native Americans attended, as did several United States government officials. John Mix Stanley was there, and a contemporary newspaper reported that the artist had with him a “Daguerreotype apparatus.” Stanley may have relied on the camera as the basis for the detailed portrait of Zachary Taylor, the gray-haired man in the center of the composition wearing a military frock coat and holding a palmetto hat. Taylor was the top-ranking government official at the meeting. (Schimmel, “John Mix Stanley and the Imagery of the West in the Nineteenth Century.” PhD diss., 1983