This painting is in the central hall of the art museum, seen yesterday. It shows a quite romanticized version of life along the Mississippi, with peaceful native Americans, some buildings made by Europeans and even a 19th Century riverboat. You could view it as idyll, fantasy or propaganda.
We will ask our resident expert, V de Q, for help on this.
This figure has stood on a pedestal at Cherokee and Jefferson for many years. I always thought it marked the beginning of the Cherokee Street shopping district. It may also have been a reference to the Anglo-American tradition of a cigar store Indian, signifying that the business behind it was a tobacconist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigar_store_Indian
Yet it has survived decades of social change. I never looked at it very closely until I took this picture. I am not knowledgeable in these matters, but the tablet the figure holds looks like an example of the Cherokee language, part of a very sophisticated culture. Perhaps someone knows more about it.
Soulard Farmers Market has some vendors of things other than food. This man was selling Native American jewelry. Damn, he was a good model. Click the link in the left sidebar to my Flickr page to see a couple of other pictures of him. For some reason we got talking about the Lone Ranger, that racist Western adventure that ruled my childhood. The name Tonto, the LR's Indian companion, means fool or stupid in Spanish. Tonto always addressed the LR as kimo sabe. I thought it was a corruption of the Spanish que mas sabe, or "that knows more" in English. My subject (I didn't get his name - hope he emails me) said it was simply an Apache term for pale face.
