1987.56
Chief Vanderhoop of the Wampanoag Indians, Gayhead, Massachusetts
Artist
Bruce Davidson (Bruce Landon Davidson)
(Oak Park, Illinois, 9/5/1933 – )
Title
Chief Vanderhoop of the Wampanoag Indians, Gayhead, Massachusetts
Creation Date
1987
Century
20th century
Dimensions
10 15/16 in. x 13 7/8 in. (27.8 cm. x 35.2 cm.)
Classification
Photographs
Creation Place
North America, United States
Medium and Support
color print
Credit Line
Gift of Elizabeth Flanders, Class of 1981
Copyright
This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s
Copyright Terms and Conditions.
Accession Number
1987.56
A durable cliché of the frontier myth is the vanishing Indian. This portrait of Chief Vanderhoop taken by Bruce Davidson, a photographer with the famed Magnum agency, challenges this stereotype. On the southwest tip of Martha’s Vineyard, he captures the Wampanoag leader staring defiantly at the camera. Vanderhoop’s ancestors, Tisquantum (or Squanto) and Massasoit, had assisted the Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony. The English later repaid their hosts with near-ruin during King Philip’s War in 1675–76, killing almost half of the populace and selling hundreds of others into slavery. Standing on the edge of the Atlantic, framed by windswept grass and leaden skies, Vanderhoop’s droll expression is a powerful rejoinder to the substitution of history for myth. In this New World, the Pilgrims have to confront their hubris, face to face.
Object Description
old man in tribal costume standing on sand bluffs overlooking ocean
