Ohio Indian Trails by Frank Wilcox (review)

Wedged between the Great Lakes and the Ohio River, the terrain that was to become Ohio was a rich and varied social landscape in the eighteenth century, with a population spanning many indigenous cultures. Ambiguously both a “backcountry” and a “frontier” for European newcomers, the Ohio region was contested. From the perspective of the white aggressors, the outcome of that contest was never truly in doubt. But the Ohio landscape bore ample evidence of earlier occupants, and one way white newcomers discerned that the landscape in fact had a history was through the trails those occupants had created to negotiate the terrain.

This attractive volume presents one scholar’s visual interpretation of how the native peoples of the Ohio region traversed the landscape and interacted with white American culture as the region transitioned through statehood. Frank Wilcox, the original author, was a Cleveland-based artist in the early twentieth century. He is known for using art to interpret history and chronicle actively the cultural transformations that he observed in his surroundings. Ohio Indian Trailswas published in 1933, and in it Wilcox uses the three genres for which he is best known—drawing, watercolor, and printmaking—to present his interpretation of scenes along a series of trails throughout the region, as well as to document artistically the various encounters that occurred in the vicinity of these trails and significant locations during the period prior to Ohio’s statehood. Also included are prints depicting the landscape contemporary to Wilcox’s time, prints that he uses to interpret the physical geography of the region and the land-use transformation of the early twentieth century.

The new introduction by historian Richard S. Grimes provides excellent background on Wilcox’s career and his efforts to integrate visual art into the study of history. It also explores the social and cultural context of the 1930s, an issue quite relevant both to the book’s original reception and to its original audience. Title notwithstanding, Wilcox’s intent in this volume was to highlight the advance of white settlement into the Ohio region as a heroic process, part and parcel of frontier conquest along the lines that had been idealized by Frederick Jackson Turner a full generation before. But Grimes notes that by the 1930s, the “myth” of frontier conquest had become “an outdated and invalid apparition” because it implied limitless growth and reinforced the very capitalistic practices that had brought the economic ruin then being endured by the American people (xv). In that sense, Wilcox’s thesis—namely, that the contemporary reader can gain new insights into the march of white progress by attempting to reconstruct the historical landscape across which that march unfolded—was a bold one for his 1930s audience.

Less evident is the context for the second edition, produced in 1970 at the hands of editor William A. McGill. His preface and introduction, as they are presented in this edition, are undated and unsigned, leaving the reader to wish for a more systematic explanation of this book’s quite complicated history. One is struck that the volume’s second edition emerged at a time when the demoralization of Native Americans had reached a shocking low and some reservations in the West were experiencing violent protests. Against this backdrop of continued brutal humiliation of living Native peoples came the second edition of Ohio Indian Trails, which unapologetically romanticizes Native Americans and quite literally paints a picture of the mysterious allure of their traces on the landscape.

Although Grimes forewarns the reader that the volume adopts an unabashedly Eurocentric perspective, the language is still jarring. For both Wilcox and McGill, the native peoples of Ohio were “lurking savages,” “warlike and hostile, ” and the first white settlers intrepidly sought to settle the “savage-haunted hills” (3–4). The acceptability of this perspective to earlier audiences opens clear opportunities for educators to use this volume as the basis for critical discussions of the changing historiography of encounters between...