When doing research for my final paper, I stumbled across a number of artistic representations of Native people and white Americans engaged in conflict. I finally settled on analyzing an image depicting the Fort Mims massacre, a conflict which was portrayed as an atrocity committed by the Red Stick Creek faction of the Upper Creek Indian tribe in Alabama. During the massacre a number of white pioneers, their native allies, and the pioneer’s black slaves were murdered. However the black and native deaths were not included in the artistic rendering of the event. Instead the loss of white life was highlighted, and the very existence of these other groups was erased.

This led me to wonder how many other conflicts or events in US history featuring the contributions or lives of people of color have been erased through art. What compels an artist to erase an entire group from an image? Is this motivated by a desire to further demonize a certain minority group (similarly to the image depicting the Fort Mms massacre). Is it specifically motivated by racist ideology or an attempt to alter the historical narrative?