John M Coward – författare

After 1850, Americans swarmed to take in a raft of new illustrated journals and papers. Engravings and drawings of "buckskinned braves" and "Indian princesses" proved an immensely popular attraction for consumers of publications like Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper and Harper's Weekly . In Indians Illustrated , John M. Coward charts a social and cultural history of Native American illustrations--romantic, violent, racist, peaceful, and otherwise--in the heyday of the American pictorial press. These woodblock engravings and ink drawings placed Native Americans into categories that drew from venerable "good" Indian and "bad" Indian stereotypes already threaded through the culture. Coward's examples show how the genre cemented white ideas about how Indians should look and behave--ideas that diminished Native Americans' cultural values and political influence. His powerful analysis of themes and visual tropes unlocks the racial codes and visual cues that whites used to represent--and marginalize--native cultures already engaged in a twilight struggle against inexorable westward expansion.

How newspapers shaped the image of Native AmericansJohn M. Coward looks at how nineteenth-century newspapers and news making practices shaped the contradictory and still persistent representation of Native Americans. As Coward reveals, journalism failed to describe Indigenous people on their own terms. Instead, reporters chose portrayals that adhered to the norms of the majority white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant society that read their papers. In addition, Coward shows how journalists turned Native Americans into symbolic and ambiguous figures used to measure American progress.An in-depth look at the power of the press, The Newspaper Indian provides insight into how journalism wove a skewed idea of Native Americans into the fabric of American life.