After walking into the museum, I found myself surrounded by beautiful art work. Each piece, whether it was a sculpture, painting or sketch, allowed me to time travel and feel like a part of different eras. One particular painting stood out because it was rather confusing. On the side, the plaque titled the piece, “The Peaceable Kingdom” by Edward Hicks and it dated back to 1820.
The painting pictured the time in history when Christopher Columbus entered the Americas. On the left of the painting, Columbus was shown to be bribing the Native Americans with items inside a box. The Indians looked as if they were shocked by whatever was in the boxes. On the right, it pictures a group of about ten wild animals, including lions and bulls, natural predators, coexisting. Near the animals, babies draped in white robes are pictured playing with the lion and hanging around the animals. The painting leaves viewers with a confused first impression because it is unnatural to see dangerous animals coexisting with the Native Americans and the Europeans.
With close inspection, the painting just gets more confusing. Although in nature, they are known to be dangerous, the animals are depicted as harmless in this painting. The animals were the Native American’s source of food and were important in religious rituals which is most likely why the animals were given importance in the painting — they are drawn unproportionally large compared to the tiny image of the humans. Also, it is interesting that the harmless animals are only pictured with the white children instead of Native American children even though the Indians lived near these animals. Additionally, all the wild animals are drawn with similar attributes even though they tend to hunt each other. These similar attributes suggests more equality between the animals compared to between the Indians and Europeans. The dull colors used in the painting may foreshadow the dull future that awaits the Indians. There is confusion portrayed on the Native American and European faces suggesting that they did not understand each other.
-Noshin Choudhury
