We Just Wanted to Be Free

by Steve Henderson

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Price

$15,000

Dimensions

72.000 x 40.000 x 2.500 inches

Title

We Just Wanted to Be Free

Artist

Steve Henderson

Medium

Painting - Oil On Canvas

Description

There were few, so few of them left.

The 418 remaining Nez Perce Indians of Chief Joseph’s Wallowa (OR) tribe consisted primarily of elderly, children, infants, women, and very few warriors. In 1877, in a last-ditch effort for freedom, the tribe (then numbering around 800) trekked 1170 miles toward the Canadian border, with the U.S. Army pursuing relentlessly behind them.

For years, the Nez Perce had tried many means to overcome or pacify the aggressive forces of U.S. expansion promoted by financial magnates (the billionaires of the day) who thirsted after the West’s “Indian lands” for the resources there to be exploited. The Nez Perce negotiated. They signed treaties (which the U.S. Government dishonored). They fought. Who wouldn’t, whose lives and families and culture were attacked by a combative, bellicose enemy? The enemy’s goal was to displace at best, but more preferably, destroy.

So in 1877 it came to a head, and the Nez Perce fled to Canada, where they hoped they could find some land, settle, and live out their lives in peace and with dignity.

Forty miles from the border, they were overtaken, captured. This is where, in his famous surrender speech, Chief Joseph declared that he would “fight no more forever.”

The painting, We Just Wanted to Be Free, is the artist’s view of a time after that surrender, when Chief Joseph's band – the elderly, the children, the infants, women, and very few warriors – were loaded up on trains and shipped out to a reservation in Oklahoma, where many died of disease, illness, exposure and despair.

In the foreground is Chief Joseph, arrayed in full regalia, with an enigmatic look on his face, as if he were saying to the viewer, “What do you think about this?”

To the left is Edward Curtis, the photographer who captured (an appropriate word) the disappearing indigenous people on camera, at the behest of financial magnates like J.P. Morgan, who wanted a record of their existence, but just a record. Financial magnates cared little for their existence.

The fashionable couple on the right seems unsure of themselves – they suspect there is something wrong with this situation, but like many good people, don’t know what to do or say.

There’s the preacher, holding his Bible and mercifully, for once, silent. The soldiers atop the train stand ready to shoot any insurrectionist who tries to run, even if it were a child.

It is a moment of shame that we need to burn into our hearts, because these things still go on today. And while there is nothing we can do about what happened back then, the descendants of the financial magnates, the warlords, the powerful who continually thirst after lands for their resources to be exploited, live and act and rule today.

History speaks. It spoke then, and it speaks now.

Featured on 24 Fine Art America Groups, including Old West by Southwest.

Social Commentary of the Week, Our World Gallery Group, July 2021

Uploaded

June 30th, 2021

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