King James BibleHe found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. DEUTERONOMY 32:10

St. John the Baptist Goes into the WildernessGIOVANNI DI PAOLO 1454

Temptation of St. Anthony

ST. JOHN IN THE WILDERNESS by Leonardo DaVinci

JESUS IN THE WILDERNESS

From WILDERNESS & THE AMERICAN MIND, by Roderick Nash

For the Puritans, of course, the wilderness was metaphor as well as actuality. On the frontier, the two meanings enforced each other, multiplying horrors.17th Century writing is permeated with the idea of wild country as the environ-ment of evil. Just as the Old Testament scribes represented the wilderness as the cursed land where satyrs and lesser demons roamed, the early settlers agreed with Michael Wiggelsworth that on the eve of settlement, the New Worldwas A waster and howling wilderness/ Where none inhabited/ But hellish fiendsand brutish men/ That Devils worshipped. The idea of a pagan continent hauntedthe Puritan imagination . . . . Cotton Mather believed . . . Satan had seduced the first Indian inhabitants for the purpose of making a stronghold . . . . As self-styled agents of God, the Puritans conceived their mission as breaking the powerof evil. (36)

WATSON AND THE SHARKJohn Singleton Copley 1771

Manifest Destiny

YOUNG LADIES TAKEN CAPTIVE BY SAVAGES

AMERICAN TEXTBOOK ART

Savages—snake dance

EARLY AMERICAN CONFLICT

Fake INDIAN SURRENDER SCENEMiama leader Little Turtle surrendering to Anthony Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, but no such scene ever occurred.

MANIFEST DESTINYTHE PROMISED LAND. 1821-1873 William S. Jewett

KINDRED SPIRITAsher Durand 1849

THE NOBLE SAVAGEBenjamin West.

NOBLE SAVAGE

END OF THE TRAIL

Sumi painting SHRIMP

Mountain scroll

Sumi TREES

Wanderer