Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/216603
ARCHITECT OF THE CAPITOL Fig. 4. Preservation of Captain Smith by Pocahontas, 1606, by Antonio Capellano, 1825, sandstone, Capitol rotunda above west door. showed a more egalitarian and peaceful relationship but one that ultimately resulted in the sacrifice of Indian land to the profit of Penn and his settlers (fig. 6). The Conflict of Daniel Boone and the Indians (1826-27) over the south door demonstrated the fourth method of subjugation by war (fig. 7). The real person of Daniel Boone by then had become a legend, a paradigm of the white hunter who led the settlers westward during the Revolutionary War era as an agent of civilization opposed to the untamed wilderness and the savage and bloodthirsty Indian. These motifs of interaction continued in the four paintings commissioned to supplement those painted by John Trumbull to commemorate the Revolutionary era. The topics continue to emphasize the legitimization of national expansion following 26 THE CAPITOL DOME encounters between Europeans and Native Americans. The new set of paintings uses Christian events and Christian symbolism. The provision of Christianity to the heathen Indian provided the moral basis and justification for their conquest. The first painting, by John Gadsby Chapman, was commissioned in 1837 and hung in 1840. It illustrates the Baptism of Pocahontas at Jamestown, Virginia (fig. 8). Rather than the better known story of John Smith, it emphasizes the transformation of the heathen princess into a Christian Virginian. Her subsequent marriage to John Rolfe and the birth of a son made her the ancestor of several of Virginia's "First Families." With the choice of her baptismal name of Rebecca, there is a suggestion that she would be the forerunner of a Christianized Indian nation. SUMMER 2013