This book examines the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British images of Native Americans. It is a scholarly enterprise that we have needed for a long time. Certainly, this has been a neglected area of study in art as well as in Native American studies. Stephanie Pratt has done an able job, and it will be an important work in its field for a generation to come. As an aside, I was also very pleased to see a picture of my ancestor, Tomochichi, on the front cover of the book (The Common Council of Georgia Receiving the Indian Chiefs by William Verelst, Winterthur Museum).

In essence, the author “attempts … to reveal the ways in which American Indians were imagined by British artists in a relatively neglected era” (5). Pratt also believes that the dearth of American Indian art historical studies today implies that Native Americans do not occupy an important “place in modern consciousness” and that the analysis of images is not as urgent a task as the “analysis of other groups subjected to the colonial gaze” (5). As a Native American scholar, I would agree with her assertions.

Pratt's work explicates an artistic tradition that is very diverse in its content and scope. Obviously, the British Empire made alliances with a large array of Native American nations to further their economic and political designs, and the visual images that commemorate this process have been understudied, particularly in the latter part of the twentieth century. Hence, Pratt's book fulfills an important need in the field. Pratt points out that the visual images are often stereotypical (brutal or noble savages), and she points out that an analysis of the mixture of visual depictions of diplomatic embassies, warfare, and contacts has great value in promoting an understanding of the intercultural process. Similarly, the book demonstrates that these images have some limited value even in creating an understanding of Native American cultures.

Interestingly enough, Pratt's work gets us away from art as an abstract process and leads us into an analysis of actual people(s). American Indian people emerge as actors with some agency in the colonial process in her scholarship. But Pratt cautions us that viewing these visual images as just images of historical processes is reductive since the images have ideological and cultural contents that complicate their value as documentary objects. With the loss of many of the British North American colonies after the American Revolution and the War of 1812, English attention to Native Americans became more muted and complex, so interest lessened in the art and images of Native Americans. By the 1840s, the “vanishing” Native American artistic trope tended to become the more produced work and tradition, and this is where the author's work ends.

Pratt's conclusion rightly raises concerns about the veracity of visual representations of Native Americans since they are often a “confection that provides a pleasing surrogate to stand in for the alterity of an alien culture” (152). Moreover, the author points out that Native Americans were portrayed in ways “conformable to European values, because the alternative, presenting them in terms conformable to Indian values, was literally unthinkable” (152). Pratt is to be applauded for her pioneering and significant work about the parameters and limitations on the study of Native American images. She has made a significant and pathbreaking achievement in the field of Native American studies and art.

Having praised Pratt's important work, I must now offer a couple of criticisms. In looking through her bibliography, I noticed that she cited “Elizabeth McClung-Fleming” as the author of two articles on images of the “Indian Princess” in the Winterthur Portfolio (186). I was E. (Edward) McClung (Mac) Fleming's only Native American student when he was writing those articles on images of Indian Princesses at the Winterthur Museum. He lived into the 1990s, and I do believe that his wife might have been upset about a change in gender. E. M. Fleming is an important pioneer in the study of images and objects in American history, and it is not that difficult to find his correct name. Perhaps this was an error in editing or reviewing by the press, but it is a very noticeable error to those who are in the field. Second, Pratt does not cite or use any Native American scholars in her analysis of the colonial history of North America. Omitting the work of John Mohawk, J. N. B. Hewitt, Arthur C. Parker, and Donald A. Grinde Jr. limits her perspective on the interpretation on British Native American Art during the colonial period and the historical parameters thereof. Aside from those errors and omissions, the reviewer believes that this is an important book that fulfills a great need in a neglected part of Native American studies.