#4 George Caitlin's Indians

In George Caitlin's painting, "Pigeons Egg Head" you can clearly see the difference in the indian in both before and after he went to washington mostly by the way he is dressed on either side of the painting. George Caitlin viewed the Native Americans as being proud of their heritage but on the other side he views them as weak against the white settlement.

In the painting before the Indian went to washington he was proud of his heritage, he stood tall and dignified. He is dressed with all his Native American clothing on and has his feathers in his hair that makes him look like the chief of his tribe. After comming back from Washington and being influenced by the white settlement he didn't seem like he cared to much about his heritage. He is dressed like the white people, he has bottles of liquor in his back pockets and he is hunched over like he is drunk. He has on a blue coat and blue pants and looks like he is dressed like a soldier, he is also smoking a cigarette and carrying a fan and in thoes days only women carried fans.

George Carlin is saying that Native Americans are easily influenced by any outside sources. If they didn't have any outside sources they would always be proud of their heritage and wouldn't change the way they dress.

Comments

[April Rose]

I think you get the basics that Caitlin is trying to get across to the audience; however, you could expand more on the paintings. You could mention what Pigeon's Egg Head is facing in each painting (i.e., his tribe and Washington). In your thesis, Washington should be capitalized. Also, you should add a comma in your thesis to make it flow better. When describing the indian's arrival back to his tribe he is seen leaning on a cane, and drunk. You could mention this, as well. By including specific events that happened in history during this time period you could prove how great of an influence the colonists had on the Native Americans. Also, you could show your audience that the Native Americans were forced to adopt American culture as their own; this would show how destructive the new lifestyle was for the indians. Finally, in the last paragraph, the artisit is George Caitlin, not George Carlin. Your paper was short and you could definitely expand on some of the ideas you mentioned.

[Jackie Hollinger]

I think you do a good job of picking out the definite changes in the Indian chief in your blog. The thing is that you do not describe or expand on your observations. Also the introduction is only 2 sentences long. That is not a full paragraph. You could make the paragraph fuller with explaining some background of the Indian's removal from the textbook. The last sentence in the second paragraph is a run-on. You could make it into three sentences. For example, “He has on a blue coat and blue pants and looks like he is dressed like a soldier. He is also smoking a cigarette and carrying a fan. In those days only women carried fans.” (The word "those” was spelled wrong in your sentence.)

[Dan Cianciolo]

The blog as a whole explains every detail about the painting and the differences between the two Native Americans. It starts off by describing the dress of the Native American before he went to Washington, and when he came back. You can practically visualize what the Native American looked like had you not seen the picture. However, in the first sentence, there is a grammatical error. The word “Washington” is not capitalized and it should be because it is the name of a city. In addition to this, the first sentence can be broken up into two different ones and it can also be more “politically correct”. Instead of writing, “In George Caitlin's painting, "Pigeons Egg Head" you can clearly see the difference in the indian in both before and after he went to washington mostly by the way he is dressed on either side of the painting.” This could flow better if it was written as: “In George Catilin’s painting, Pigeon’s Egg Head, one can easily see the differences in the “Native American” on both the before and after parts of the painting. This is seen by the way he dressed on either side of the picture.” By writing it his way, you avoid a long run-on sentence. Finally, in the second paragraph, I believe the comma is misused after “white people”. You wrote, “He is dressed like the white people, he has bottles of liquor in his back pockets and he is hunched over like he is drunk.” I think that a semi-colon would work better in this case. The blog could use some spelling and grammatical help, but the description of the Native American was accurate and well-done.