The illusion of imperium: visual and material perspectives of colonial Louisiana

Abstract

Alexandre de Batz's 1724 watercolours of Native Americans living in the Lower Mississippi Valley were part of an emerging archive of material, corporeal, and social differences in French Louisiana. While these images created and promoted a certain plan of colonization, the details of colonial materialities are illusory. Most notably, the French and their interactions with Native Americans are invisible in de Batz's artistic vision. In this paper, I explore how these watercolours influenced social and material engagements between French and Native Americans, while probing the anxieties of colonial entanglements found along the margins of de Batz's paintings.

Keywords:

• Louisiana
• Alexandre de Batz
• colonialism
• Native Americans
• materiality
• archaeology
• dress
• adornment

Acknowledgements

I gratefully acknowledge the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University for making this study possible. I am grateful to John Robb and Elizabeth DeMarrais for their support and insightful comments on various versions of this paper. I would also like to thank Craig Cipolla, Christina Hodge, and the anonymous reviewer for their thoughtful commentary.