There are many nineteenth-century images of Detroit’s earlier history that were painted on canvases now hanging on the walls of local libraries, or carved into stone on buildings now destroyed or abandoned. The creators of these images sought to capture the past life of the city as truthfully and faithfully as possible, basing their work on published histories and memoirs of the time. Their work was part of a movement in the nineteenth-century to use local history in the construction of a marvelous origin story of Detroit. Today, it is apparent that these romanticized works of art are inaccurate depictions of an earlier era, and merely remind us how little we know of Detroit’s early history. Despite this realization, however, these problematic representations are still the dominant motif for learning the history of the City, and they masque a much more complex and provocative past.
How can we now turn these images inside-out and use them to guide us to fresh insights that better reflect Detroit’s early status as a central political, economic, and cultural meeting ground for European and indigenous communities? Karen Marrero will explore these questions by considering two works of art created in the 19th century to depict two moments viewed as pivotal in Detroit’s history.