Trial+of+Red+Jacket,+The

Date: 1869
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/1990/1990.34_1a.jpg?itok=Z-_BqOT3 width="377" height="242" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/trial-red-jacket-31895"]] || Title: **The Trial of Red Jacket**

Artist: **John Mix Stanley** Born: Canandaigua, New York 1814 Died: Detroit, Michigan 1872

Medium: oil on canvas Dimensions: 23 1/2 x 36 1/8 in. (59.7 x 91.7 cm.) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of George M. Stanley (grandson of the artist) and family and museum purchase

Accession: 1990.34 || Red Jacket (1758-1830) was a famous leader of the Seneca tribe of the Iroquois Nation. In this ambitious painting, John Mix Stanley showed the chief defending himself against a charge of witchcraft. Under his white robe is the red jacket given to him by a British officer for his help as a messenger during the American Revolution. Stanley trained as a portrait painter, and all of the figures in this work are portraits of identifiable individuals. The Trial of Red Jacket was almost destroyed in the Smithsonian Institutions fire of 1865. (//Antiques//, November 1990; Javiga da Costa Nunes, "Red Jacket: The Man and his Portraits," //The American Art Journal//, Summer 1980)
 * Exhibition Label: **

The Iroquois Confederacy, of which the Seneca were a part, were the most powerful Native American people. They sided with the British in the Revolutionary War to protect their land interests and were devastated by the loss and the reparations that the United States required of them.

Red Jacket, who got his name from the gift of a red coat in thanks for his service as a messenger in the British army, was an incredibly intelligent man and a celebrated orator. He rose to popularity and influence because he filled the vacuum of leadership left by the Revolutionary War disaster. Seneca chiefs who lost power because of their mistakes in the Revolutionary War were bitter about Red Jacket's popularity. They accused him of practicing witchcraft, a crime punishable by death. He defended himself, pointed out the weaknesses and jealousies of his accusers, and won his own acquittal. Throughout his life, Red Jacket worked to preserce Seneca culture, beliefs, and society. The peace medal he wears around his neck was given to him in Philadelphia when he went as a delegate. While there, he successfully negotiated financial support for his tribe and preserved lands held by the tribe.

George Catlin described Red Jacket in his Letters and Notes:

"Red Jacket has been reputed on of the greatest orators of his day; and, no doubt, more distinguished for his eloquence and his influence in council, than as a warrior, in which character I think history has not said much of him. This may be owing, in a great measure, to the fact that the wars of his nation were chiefly fought before his fighting days; and that the greater part of his life and his talents have been spent with his tribe, during its downfall; where, instead of the horrors of Indian ways, they have had a more fatal and destructive enemy to encounter, in the insidious encroachments of pale faces, which he has, been for many years exerting his eloquence and all his talents to resist. Poor old chief-- not all the eloquence of Cicero and Demosthenes would be able to avert the calamity, that awaits his declining nation-- to resist the despoiling hand of mercenary white man, that opens and spreads liberally, but to entrap the unwary and ignorant within its withering grasp."

Exerpt from: George Catlin, //Letters and Notes//, Letter 47


 * Suggested Questions: **
 * Who are his accusers? What do you think they are thinking?
 * What is the mood of the crowd?


 * Resources: **

Artist Biography SAAM Collections Page
 * Links: **