Artist as Arbiter

In an explanatory program for his 1899 painting Custer’s Last Stand, Edgar Paxson claimed that he had “gathered data” of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, which he “sifted and resifted” for two full decades. With this work, Paxson joined a wide host of other settler artists who interrogated Native eyewitnesses to glean information of the conflict for their compositions. Tellingly, his description elided evidentiary or “data” extraction with resource prospecting, linking artistic refinement processes with those of copper mines that surrounded his studio in Butte, Montana. This essay explores the ways in which extractive impulses are layered in Paxson’s picture across registers of culture, knowledge, and environment. Ultimately, I argue that Paxson’s hyperfocus on historical accuracy, fact, and detail—especially in light of the Little Bighorn’s testimonial incongruity—served as a means of securing witness status, and hence dominance, for the settler view.