The Chronicles of Native Life

The MacMillan Gift of Seth Eastman Watercolors

In a serendipitous merging of events, the Army put a talented artist-soldier named Seth Eastman at Fort Snelling in the 1830s and 1840s, when Native life was still intact around the Upper Mississippi. Captain Eastman spent his long assignment transfixed by Native ways, and he produced the most frank and intimate – if slightly romantic – record of Native people in pre-territorial Minnesota. Mia is extraordinarily fortunate that the W. Duncan and Nivin MacMillan Foundation has given Mia 35 of Eastman’s historic watercolours and drawings, most based on his Minnesota sketches. Among these small, detailed gems are Indian Sugar Camp and Gathering Wild Rice, believed to be the first-ever images of harvesting maple syrup and wild rice. Eastman’s quiet observations are especially evident in Dakotah Encampment, which reveals wonderful details of tipi construction.

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