The Sioux War Panorama and American Mythic History

Abstract

Aremarkable theatrical production toured newly settled towns of the American Midwest in the 1860s and 1870s. John Stevens, a skilled sign painter with an ingenious sense of advertising, would pull onto the main street of town riding a “long, covered sleigh” decorated with large translucent canvases that he had painted to depict lurid and exciting scenes from the spectacle he would present that evening: “The Panorama of the Indian Massacre of 1862 and the Black Hills,” now more commonly known as The Sioux War Panorama.1 In a schoolhouse, town hall, loft above a general store, or sometimes even a city opera house, Stevens and his assistants would set up a mechanical picture screen: a wooden frame about eight-feet wide and seven-feet tall, with two horizontal dowels set at the top and bottom, whose rotation was controlled by gears and a handcrank.2 Rolled up on the bottom dowel, and ready to spool up around the top one, was a piece of canvas six-feet wide and 222-feet long. On this Stevens had painted thirty-six scenes that, in performance, would fill the rectangular frame, one after another. Two oil lamps placed inside the frame made the paintings glow.

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