An American Family Picture

When I look at this picture, a flood of emotions come over me. Truth be told, I find it to be both beautiful and heartbreaking. First and foremost in my mind is the unquestionable recognition of "family" as the primal institution of the human race. I see four people who feel calm, happiness, strength and inpenertrable confidence with each other. The true universal essence of Family. In this picture I also see a natural comfort between people of what (at the time of this photograph) would have been considered different "races".

During the American society of the 19th Century, people who were "black" or "red" skinned, as defined by "white"males, were, under the Constitution, neither citizens nor fully considered human beings.

It is truly sad (to me) knowing that this photo's era marked the end of the Native way of life. Their language, religion, society and their relationship with the "Great Mother" Earth, all substituted for the "civilization" of the "Great White Fathers"evidenced by the clothing and the classic "pose of the day"


Similarly, the African slave, it was a life sentenced to purgatory in America with an irreversable loss of any future connection to their African homeland.

"As sure as the grass grows and the wind blows" to quote Dustin Hoffman in 'Little Big Man'. That was as long as the People would be allowed to Live Peacefully upon their lands.

The Grass and Wind are still blowing and yet, there is nothing even close to the peaceful living between these two early American Cultures today.

Conrad Sage