Frances Slocum - George Winter's Influence

George Winter's Influence

After the news spread that the "Lost Sister of Wyoming" had been found,the story of Frances Slocum became famous. The Slocum family hired European artist George Winter to paint a portrait of Frances. In antebellum America, most Americans viewed all Indians as uncivilized no matter the circumstances. George Winter is one of the few reliable Euro-American sources from the time, and as a recent immigrant from Europe did not possess the racial biases of many Americans in the Old Northwest region. Unfortunately the journal he kept was not published in his lifetime, nor anytime in the nineteenth century so his views could not be shared with other Americans. He wrote many descriptions of the Miami Indians, Dead Man's village, and Young Bear and her family in his journals. He was hired to do a painting of Frances Slocum for the Slocum family but he also did one of his own. The two paintings are signifcantly different. In the painting for the Slocum family, Frances's skin appears whiter and her clothes not as vibrant. In his other painting, Young Bear appears with her daughters in elaborate dress and is darker skinned. Also one of her daughters in a common Indian practice, refused to face the artist. The description Winter wrote in his journal of Young Bear more closely fits the paiting he drew of her in his journal, "Though bearing some resemblance to her white family, her cheekbones seemed to have the Indian characteristics--face broad, nose bubly, mouth indicating some degree of severity, her eyes pleasant and kind."