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Theodor de Bry. Adam and Eve in America. Engraving in Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of . . . Virginia (Frankfurt, 1590; F229. H27 Rosenwald Coll). Rare Book and Special Collections Division. LC-USZC4-5347.

Eve, a European maiden with the anatomically awkward body type familiar from Northern European engravings by such artists as Albrecht Dürer, looks knowingly over her shoulder as she reaches for the fatal apple indicated by the she-demon-serpent entwined at the center of the tree of knowledge, while Adam gazes guilelessly heavenward. In the background are the consequences of her action--Adam tills the soil while Eve mothers Cain in a makeshift shelter. In Eve: The History of an Idea (1984), John Phillips describes his impression from studying many pictures of Eve conversing with her snake-woman adviser: "the artist is governed by a male dread of conspiring females, the fear of the witches' coven" (p. 62).

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Cartouche. From Henry Popple, A Map of the British Empire in America with the French and Spanish settlements adjacent thereto (London, 1733; G1105.P6 1733 Vault). Geography and Map Division.

The tropical Indian queen surveys her world from above the map title. Surrounded by a palm tree, an alligator, a parrot, and a monkey, holding an arrow, and with her foot placed firmly on a severed human head, she announces her South American origins. To the right, her daughter, the Indian princess, represents the British Colonies in North America. With a protective arm around a small child and separated from her warrior by the title, she glances up at her mother but gestures toward a port scene (not shown) where European gentlemen supervise the unloading of a ship, symbolic of trade.

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Edward Savage. Liberty. In the form of the Goddess of Youth; giving Support to the Bald Eagle. Stipple engraving,1796. Popular Graphic Arts Collection (PGA-Savage-Liberty [C Size]). Prints and Photographs Division. LC-USZ62-15369.

A buxom young woman in a windblown diaphanous dress and garlanded with flowers offers a feeding cup to a swooping eagle, symbol of the proud new nation. Floating in the sky are the liberty cap mounted on the pole of the American flag. Under her right foot Liberty tramples implements of English tyranny, including chains, scepter, key, and medal.

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Theodor de Bry. Florida Indians planting beans of maize. Engraving after a watercolor by Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, 1564. From de Bry, Brevis narratio eorum quae in Florida Americae [America. pt. 2 Latin] (Frankfurt, 1591; G159.B7 Rosenwald Coll RBSC), plate 21. Rare Book and Special Collections Division. LCUSZ62-31869.

De Bry and Le Moyne show a division of agricultural labor between the sexes: the universally young and attractive Timucua women with incongruous blond and curly locks and modest moss skirts perform the less physically demanding task of planting the maize while the men, who are perhaps more realistically depicted, till the soil. The baskets and implements are all European types with the exception of the digging stick. Father Joseph Lafitau only slightly modified this same engraving for his 1724 account of the Iroquois, even though he described farming as being purely women's work.

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Theodor de Bry. Their Manner of praying with Rattles about the Fire. Engraving after a watercolor by John White. From Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of . . . Virginia (Frankfurt, 1590; F229 .H27 1590 Rosenwald Coll RBSC), plate 17. Rare Book and Special Collections Division. LC-USZ62-54017.

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John White. Indians round a Fire. Photograph of a watercolor drawing in the British Museum. Graphics File. Prints and Photographs Division. LC-USZ62-571.

De Bry's description for this engraving, based on Hariot's text, begins: "When they have escaped any great danger by sea or land or returned from the war, as a token of joy they make a great fire about which the men and women sit together, holding a certain fruit in their hands like a round pumpkin or a gourd . . . ." Among the additions that de Bry made to John White's drawing were the two standing and conversing figures on the left, one of them female, and the foreground and background details. The Prints and Photographs Division holds reproductions and negatives for many of John White's watercolor drawings.

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Paul Revere. View of the Obelisk erected under Liberty-tree in Boston on the Rejoicings for the Repeal of the . . . Stamp Act 1766. Etching with watercolor. Boston, 1766; restrike printed 1839 or later. Popular Graphic Arts Collection (PGA--Revere--View of the obelisk [A size]). Prints and Photographs Division. LCUSZC4-4599 (color); LC-USZ62-22385 (black and white).

Paul Revere. Masthead engraving with Liberty figure for the Massachusetts Spy, or, Thomas's Boston Journal, July 7, 1774. Newspaper and Current Periodical Room. LC-USZ62-7984.

Paul Revere's schematic rendering of the illuminated obelisk erected on Boston Common to celebrate the repeal of the Stamp Act includes the Liberty figure on two sides; three of the panels also include the Indian princess. By the time British soldiers had occupied Boston, however, Liberty had become the American symbol for revolution. The British remained wedded to the Indian princess as the battle of the cartoons was engaged.

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Scipio Moorhead. "Phillis Wheatley, Negro Servant to Mr. John Wheatley, of Boston." Frontispiece engraving to Wheatley's Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (London: Printed for A. Bell, 1773; PS866.W5 1773 RBSC). Rare Book and Special Collections Division. LC-USZC4-5316 (color); LC-USZ62-40054 (black and white).

On the other end of the spectrum from "cookie-cutter" imagery to denote African American slaves, and perhaps indicating early abolitionist sentiments as well as the poet's brilliance, Phillis Wheatley was the subject of a rare printed image of an individual female slave--or, indeed, of any individual woman in America. Wheatley was brought to Boston from Africa as a small child, was given a liberal education by her owners, and was shown working on a poem--pensive and refined, and yet still identified as a "Negro Servant"--in the frontispiece to her Poems. The tension between reality and symbol is manifest in images of African Americans.

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"The able Doctor, or America Swallowing the Bitter Draught." Etching. From the London Magazine, May 1, 1774. British Cartoon Collection (PC 1-5226 [A size]). Prints and Photographs Division. LC-USZC4-5289 (color); LC-USZ61-77 (black and white).

Prime Minister Lord North, author of the Boston Port Bill, forces the "Intolerable Acts," or tea, down the throat of America, a vulnerable Indian woman whose arms are restrained by Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, while Lord Sandwich, a notorious womanizer, pins down her feet and peers up her skirt. Behind them, Mother Britannia weeps helplessly. This British cartoon was quickly copied and distributed by Paul Revere.

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Philip Dawes. A Society of Patriotic Ladies, at Edenton in North Carolina. Mezzotint. London, March 25, 1775. British Cartoon Collection (PC 1-5284B [A size]). Prints and Photographs Division. LC-USZC4-4617 (color); LC-USZ62-12711 (black and white).

Considering the important role that women played in supporting the boycott of English goods and in raising funds and providing supplies for the revolutionary army, the dearth of printed imagery of real white women contrasts strikingly with the serried ranks of allegorical women. An exception--in that it depicts individualized, if imagined and caricatured, women from varying social backgrounds, including a slave woman--is a rare British cartoon that satirizes the fifty-one "patriotic ladies" of Edenton, North Carolina, in their attempt to endorse the nonimportation association resolves of 1774. Their depiction as ugly or foolish probably owes more to their allegiance to the colonial cause than it does to their gender. As Linda Kerber has remarked, for many American women, the signing of a petition--virtually unknown before the 1770s--was their first political act (Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America [1980], 41).

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America Triumphant and Britannia in Distress. Etching. Boston, 1782. Popular Graphic Arts Collection (PGA--Unattributed--America Triumphant--A size). Prints and Photographs Division. LC-USZC4-5275 (color); LC-USZ62-45922 (black and white).

While the peace talks were under way, a Boston printer published a crude allegory, both as a separate print and as the frontispiece to Weatherwise's Town and Country Almanack of 1782 (AY 201.B7 W5 Am Almanac Coll RBSC), where America is represented by the martial, helmeted Liberty or Britannia figure with cap and pole. She holds out an olive branch to a weeping, bare-headed Britannia, and invites all nations--represented by many ships--to trade with her.

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John Wallis. Cartouche; etching. From The United States of America laid down From the best Authorities (London, April 3, 1783; G3700.1783.W3 Vault). Geography and Map Division.

The differences between the cartouches on the map used in the negotiation of the Treaty of Paris (1783) and the one drawn up to show the new, independent territories are revealing. The first, the long used and much published 1755 Mitchell map, shows the lovely Indian queen, with attendants, in a tropical setting. The Wallis map pairs Liberty with George Washington and Wisdom and Justice with Benjamin Franklin. American leaders now wanted symbols that indicated equality and dignity. Thus, generic, universal but white, females and heroic, individualized but white, males became the subject of countless celebratory and memorial designs of the period.

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"America! With Peace and Freedom blest." Frontispiece etching. From the Columbian Magazine, or Monthly Miscellany, 1789 (AP2.A2 U6). Rare Book and Special Collections Division. LC-USZ62-45573.

America becomes a young white woman enjoying the benefits of prosperity and education now that the war is over. At her side rests her shield, bearing a new national emblem, the eagle. Her liberty cap and pole lean against the palm tree behind her. Apollo with a lyre points to the Temple of Fame and sings to her: America! With Peace and Freedom blest, Pant for true Fame, and scorn inglorious rest: Science invites; urg'd by the Voice divine, Exert thyself, 'till every Art be thine.

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Background Image: Theodor de Bry. "Four women of the tribe take four pieces of the dead body and carry these around a hut while they scream with pleasure." Engraving in de Bry, Americae,part 3 (Frankfurt, 1593; G159 .B8), p. 86. Rare Book and Special Collections Division. LC-USZ62-45103.

A woodcut by Hans Staden, an illustration to his chapter "Of their manner of killing and eating their enemies," inspired this gruesome scene by de Bry but seems quite tame by comparison--until you notice the body parts being roasted by the women. De Bry's title for his engraving shows that he embellished his engravings of cannibalism with some of the details from Staden's account, particularly the degree to which the Tupinamba women tormented their prisoners before killing them, their quartering of the bodies, and the pleasure they took in the entire ritual. The terrified, bearded Hans Staden is at top right. (See discussion on page 178.)