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THE PICTORIAL TRADITION AT NIAGARA FALLS |
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THE
PICTORIAL TRADITION AT NIAGARA FALLS by
P. M. Eckel The use of old representations and
depictions to make inferences about past natural conditions and character at
Niagara Falls is not a new idea. For example, James Hall, the New York State
Geologist, used such images in a geological report on Niagara Falls (Hall,
1843) describing the fact of recession at the cataracts of Niagara: "All the historical evidence that
we possess upon the subject [of recession] proves the falls to have receded:
and, although there have been no monuments established, yet the
representations of early travelers, when compared with the present condition
of the falls, proves that a change has taken place, though we can not be
certain of its precise amount." Hall produced a facsimile of a print of
the falls seen from the west side of the gorge of the original published in
F. Louis Hennepin's work (1697). In this print Hall noticed a
"cross-fall" flowing from west to east from what is now the
Canadian shore. The print "represents a projecting rock upon the west
side of the river which turned a part of the water across the main fall, as
seen in the sketch." This waterfall did not exist in the later
nineteenth century. Luna Island is also not drawn, or did not exist to be
drawn in this print, although Hall seems to excuse this due to the
inaccessibility of Goat Island at that time. The text of Hennepin also
describes this third falls, flowing from west to east. Hall also mentioned the visit of Peter
Kalm, student of Linnaeus, in 1750, who visited the falls seventy-two years
after Hennepin. Kalm "distinctly alludes to the projecting rock, which
forced the water out of its direct course, causing it to fall across the
great fall. He speaks of this rock having fallen down a few years previous,
and in his view of the falls the spot is indicated. In this interval of
seventy years we find that the recorded observations of these two travelers
prove precisely the same kind of change to have taken place, as we suppose to
have occurred previously, and which has subsequently altered the outline and
position of the falls." The physiognomy or structural appearance
of plant communities can be seen in broad outlines from these early
depictions at Niagara Falls. The density of plant communities can be
estimated. Various artists will, as in written accounts, provide more or less
information of greater or lesser accuracy in their depictions, depending on
the interest, skill and intent of the individual. To some extent a
"formula" or iconography was established which became a part of the
tradition of illustrating Niagara Falls, which was expected in any drawing,
and with which draftsmen could make quick illustrations for books, magazines,
popular literature, signage, newspapers, etc. Other artists, desiring some
originality or wishing to imprint their own personality in their paintings
offer differing views, different sorts of detail. Other artists again,
pursuing the perfection of a certain style, such as the landscape artists of
the Hudson School of painting, especially as they chose to represent their
views with realism, provide ever more detail and standards in accuracy by
which less exact illustrations could be compared. One extraordinary example of
realistic painting are the sketches and paintings of Frederick Church, around
1857. Among the various cautions to be made in
ascribing factual weight to aspects of any drawing of the vicinity of the
cataracts, is the apparent practice of taking sketches or earlier depictions,
especially those used as illustrations, and altering them, usually back in
Europe in the earliest pictures, to improve, clarify or otherwise enhance the
information provided by the earlier sketch. The tendency in this sort of
practice is to reduce the visual complexity (and accuracy) of the view, to
simplify and embolden the image. Another is to remove "blemishes"
such as blasted trees, de-vegetated areas, and the like. Occasionally it
appears that the conifer species (Pine and Hemlock) of the first drawing
tends to resemble a European species, such as a Spruce, probably because the
artists producing the second drawing were not the artist of the first, and
were using imagery with which they were familiar. One artist who did not "spruce
up" or repair his Niagara trees was Thomas Davies, who painted Niagara
from the Canadian prospect through Oak-conifer tree frames, showing native
peoples. In the two paintings reproduced by Adamson (1985), headless
tree-trunks are drawn, their crowns torn away. This kind of depiction gives
some indication of either the senescence of the native trees, and/or
mechanical stress on trees at the crestline. Blasted trees, their trunks
ending in jagged stumps are also depicted in a drawing with unusual content among
Niagara's illustrations done after a work by James Pattison Cockburn entitled
"The Falls of Niagara." In "View of the Horse Shoe Falls from
Goat Island, 1857" (Adamson, 1985, No. 109), one of the more elaborate
picnics is drawn with several adult couples, children, pets and an individual
seated on the ground drawing the view. A front-woods of a conifer is drawn
directly facing the Falls behind which occur deciduous trees, at least four
of which are without crowns. The smooth, clean trunks of deciduous trees are
also shown on the ground, their fore-ends pointed down slope as though they
were intentionally cast there before heaving over the crest onto the talus
slope below. This picture shows the peculiar conifer
vegetation fronting Goat Island on this (southwest) side and the deciduous
trees behind. An extensive shrub layer is shown in the background, not in the
coniferous zone, but the deciduous. The artist made an attempt to emphasize
the interaction of civilization and wilderness, which may have been characteristic
of many regional paintings of the time. One of the most striking icons of the
civilizing of the North American wilderness is the presence of stumps as
evidence of clearing in nineteenth century landscape portrayals. Although not
a stump, one of the tree boles is conspicuously drawn to show its big sawn
end. This raw surface is placed by the artist directly beside one corner of
the picnic blanket indicting an association between their pleasure and the
cutting of the forest. It is obvious in this drawing that the
forest had been cleared away to provide a greensward, or grassed and closely
mown area on which picnics could be had. Such a lawn could not have existed
here without personnel hired by the island owners to tend it. The crest woods
had been stripped to provide a prospect out onto the river. This process of
opening up the high bank forest may have created the condition of exposure by
which the deciduous trees lost their crowns. This particular depiction, and another
after a drawing by the same artist (Adamson, 1985 No. 108, "The Falls of
Niagara. View of Horse-shoe Fall from Below Goat Island, 1857") are
valuable because they give some evidence of conditions before the invention
and general use of the camera. Prospect areas in the vicinity of the Falls
were probably the first forested areas to be cleared. By the time photography
came into general use, these areas probably looked totally different than
they had originally, if for no other reason than the reality of trampling by
thousands of visitors. The two depictions drawn after Cockburn's drawings
"originally engraved in 1833" (Adamson, 1985), one of Porter's
Bluff overlooking Terrapin Rocks, or what is now known as Terrapin Point, and
the other of the base of the gorge probably near what was known as the
American Landing, or the American Stairs, now the base of Prospect Point,
show how dense the coniferous element was - almost certainly Eastern Hemlock
(Tsuga canadensis), although this extraordinary density
may be the result of later "touching up" of an earlier drawing.
Later photographs of the wooded slope overlooking the Terrapin Rocks in the
early years of this century, show a more open forest of younger trees
dominated by deciduous trees with occasional conifers - probably not the primitive
condition. A whole series of early, pre-photography paintings and drawing
show a dense conifer forest on the islands in the American channel, the
island and mainland shorelines, crested areas of hills and gorge, and
particularly at the very base of the talus slope at the bottom of the gorge.
Loss of this forest today, and by the time photographs were widely used
disguise the ecological response of the primitive forest to early lowered
water levels in the Niagara River here when the area was above the falls, and
the extent of what is probably now a rare herbaceous community established on
the exposed riverbed. Saw mills were some of the earliest
human establishments at Niagara on both sides of the river, coinciding with
the need of explorers and voyageurs for planks for ships, continuing into the
military requirements of later history in the region, and culminating in one
of the largest log, paper and pulp milling industries in New York State
(Recknagel, 1923; Scott & Scott, 1983). Baring a biological cause for the
early loss of this forest community at Niagara, such as inability to adapt to
higher pollution regimes, the paper and related industries, now mostly gone
with the depletion of the region's forest reserves, might be presumed a
reason for the disappearance of this forest component (Recknagel, 1923). Out of this treasury of representation,
and compared with the visual characteristics of the present landscape at
Niagara, images can be chosen that appear to accurately reflect the historic occurrence
of certain tree species in their correct habitats and relationships. Certain
icons, such as conifer trees drawn to resemble species of Spruce (Picea
sp.) which never occurred naturally on Goat Island, as far as published
reports by botanists ever related, can be dismissed as perhaps later
renditions of sketches of native conifers made at the site, and perhaps
painted out back in the region from which the artist had traveled, and with
whose native species of conifer the artist was familiar. The valuable
information to be had in this case was that there were conifers at Niagara. Guessing the species of deciduous trees
depicted in two centuries of drawings, is more hazardous than that of
conifers, except where the bark is painted white and peeling, when Paper, or
Canoe Birch (Betula papyrifera) is likely the species
depicted, such as occur in the crest forests of the Niagara gorge, and which
are frequent today on the crest of the gorge, especially on the American
side. We are fortunate in that the crest
forest is frequently drawn, since all of the famous prospects take place
within a framework of trees. The crest is a relatively harsh place, in the
face of the prevailing winds on the American side, and with shallow soils on
the Canadian when not on the exposed crests of slopes. Conifers and birches
are frequently painted, and Oaks are as frequent, and Staghorn Sumach
occasional - primarily in early paintings where the observer is on the
Canadian side looking across the gorge at Goat Island, as in paintings by
Edward Hicks around 1830. Even Arbor Vitae (Thuja occidentalis)
is sometimes drawn sprouting, with its characteristic bent-back growth form,
out of fissures in the unlikely habitat of the dolomite caprock, easily seen
in the gorge today. A full account of the illustrated
tradition at Niagara would make an extremely useful study in itself, but only
the most general indications can be discussed here. Kalm's facsimile print, used by Hall
above, also showed an interesting distinction between a perimeter habitat on
Goat Island, and a central habitat. The perimeter is of conifers, as is the
bank of the river on the Canadian or southern shore, and conifers are present
at the summit of a small hill on the mainland American or northern side.
Conifers are also depicted on the western face of Goat Island, facing into
what we know to be the prevailing winds and spray zone of the Horseshoe Falls
- also at Prospect Point and the spray zone of the American Falls. Conifers
are drawn on rocks in the cavity of the plunge pool, or the head of the
gorge. The primitive iconography of deciduous
and evergreen trees is simple and without question - useful characteristics
to employ in interpreting tree and habitat types from all sorts of
illustrations depicting the falls: deciduous trees are drawn in oval or
circular outline, evergreens in triangular, spiky outlines; deciduous trees
are always lighter in color than the evergreens, and in autumn and winter
scenes the contrast with the dark colorations of the conifers is unambiguous. The coniferous possibilities are only
four: White Pine (Pinus strobus), Hemlock (Tsuga
canadensis), Arbor Vitae, or White Cedar (Thuja occidentalis),
and Red Cedar (Juniperus virginiana) with a small
likelihood of Balsam Fir (Abies balsamea), as this tree
is and has been rare in the region (Zenkert, 1934) with a station reported
for Niagara Glen, several miles downstream at the base of the Niagara River
gorge (Hamilton, 1943). I have taken it that the vegetation in
most depictions of the falls environment is not distorted beyond credibility
through attempts at idealization or romaticization of nature so much as it is
simplified to signs indicating tree species and community types. Most of the
depictions consulted in the present study were made by people attempting to
report back to an incredulous but skeptical and well-educated public a
stupendous natural phenomena during times when the intended readers were
experiencing a cultural explosion in the elucidation of natural history. They
had an interest in being factual knowing full well, as the eighteenth and
nineteenth century seemed to produce many travelogues, that their
presentations would be tested sooner or later - as would their pictures.
Their ability to accurately relate their experiences in one particular would
relate to their credibility as a whole. Also, the floristic representations are
corroborated through time by different authors and painters, so diverse in
time and origin as to be unlikely that they deliberately participated in a
tradition based on authority rather than their own experience. Vegetational characteristics seem to
correspond to the distribution of species as they occur today, and as they
are likely to occur - for example, today Arbor Vitae enjoys cold, wet boggy
soil as may have occurred in the saturated soil margins on Goat Island, as
drawn, and it occurs today in rocky bluffs in the dolomite caprock of the
Niagara gorge, the talus below and the talus slopes in the plunge pool basin
area at the head of the gorge - none of which contradicts early drawings on
conifers in these areas. It is probable that at least the
shoreline visible around Goat Island was covered with Arbor Vitae because
Francois Andre Michaux said "Goat Island ... is seen from the banks of
the river to be bordered with Arbor Vitae" (1819). Wied-Neuwied (1843)
indicated that "The shores of [Goat Island] are shaded by old pines and
very large white cedars ...." As for the lower forest in the pit of the
plunge pool area at the head of the gorge, Olmsted (1880) quoted Robinson
(1875) in that the talus below is wooded "often so far below that you
sometimes look from the upper brink down on the top of tall pines that seem
diminished in size." White Pines overtop the deciduous canopy
of the primaeval forest, and several old paintings show this contrast (for
discussion see section on the central woods of Goat Island). In Petrides' (1958) identification
manual of trees and shrubs, in which silhouettes of various tree species are
given, certain useful characteristics may be used to differentiate various
conifer species. Generally, an attempt may be made to distinguish Red Cedar
from Arbor Vitae, in that in the former, the branches may be higher off the
ground, exposing the stem, than in the latter, where the branches descend almost
to the ground, covering the stem or trunk. White Pine has graceful limbs
extending horizontally with the extremities gently ascending. The long, bare
trunk differentiated from a crown, and long plumelike needle-leaves growing
in bunches of five and imparting a dense look to the limbs of the White Pine
contrasts with the trunk covered with old or young limbs of the Hemlock, not
displaying a distinct crown in its rather triangular silhouette. Hemlock
presents a looser, tattered silhouette, with short needless, its branches not
in the bold, heavy strokes of the Pine, but feathery, light tracery. In White
Pine, the trunk may be seen in the crown as the needles are borne away from
it out to the sunlight, but in Hemlock, the upper trunk is usually hidden in
the foliage. Habitat will also serve to separate Red
Cedar from Arbor Vitae in photographs: Red
Cedar: intolerant of shade, open, sunny habitats, dry soils, isolated
individuals, needles usually to the tree tops, sucessional: with weedy
growth. Arbor
Vitae: tolerates shade, shaded habitats, wet soils [also along the calcareous
rim rock where Red's might also grow], individuals clumped or contiguous,
tree tops in old specimens frequently denuded, may be a climax species on
river edges, with native growth. One interesting study might be to
examine a century of promotional and souvenir photographs of the Falls on
postcards and other commercial printings to detect the relative distance of
the observer in these pictures from the actual surface of the vegetation. It
may be that with more and more destruction of the shrub communities,
eradication of the herb and shrub layers in Goat Island's central woods and
thinning of the trees, coupled with the establishment of greater lawn areas
with interspersed shade trees, that the potential observer recedes further
and further away from the landscape surface. Note that today nearly all
promotional photographs are taken from airplanes and helicopters, or up in
the tall towers on the Canadian shore, or from the Canadian prospect, or the
vegetated landscape is blocked by a screen of falling water. Aerial and other distance views distort
the impression of the extent of vegetation on Goat Island. From above, the
canopy in summer looks dense, close and forested, concealing the barren
lawn-scapes beneath them. The intimate close-up views of the earlier part of
the century used in the annual reports of the Commissioners to the New York
State Legislature, for example, and early postcards, show a different habitat
than now, and intimate views of vegetated areas are generally unavailable
today. Pictures, painted or photographed,
constitute a rich resource for indirect evidence of the condition of the
early environment at Niagara. Although the possibility of factual inaccuracy
is granted, they provide a context in which to test hypotheses, suggest them,
corroborate other testimony and generally give direction to reconstruction
schemes of the early ecosystem and its appearance.
Facsimile of the drawing of the Falls printed
in Hennepin's narration, English edition, 1698 (Gardner, 1880). The cross
fall is drawn on the right. This is the first illustration of the coniferous
borders on the mainland and the island shore.
Squalor, naturally, is best emphasized
in winter views (Disfigured Banks, Repulsive Scenery Around Visitor
Approaching Goat Island Bridge for First View of Rapids," ca. 1879,
Plate VIII from James T. Gardner, 1880, in Adamson, 1985). BIBLIOGRAPHY Adamson, J. E. 1985. Niagara,
Two Centuries of Changing Attitudes, 1697-1901. Corcoran Gallery, Washington,
D.C. Hall, J. 1843. Geology
of New York. Part IV comprising the survey of the fourth geological district.
Caroll & Cook, Albany, New York. Partially reprinted in the Eighth Annual
Report of the Commissioners of the State Reservation at Niagara for
1890-1891, 1892. Albany. Hamilton, G. H. 1943.
Plants of the Niagara Parks System of Ontario. Ryerson Press, Toronto. Hennepin, F. L. 1697. A
New Discovery of a Vast Country in America, extending above fourthousand
miles, between New France and New Mexico: with a description of the Great
Lakes, Cataracts, Rivers, Plants and Animals: also the Manners, Customs and
Languages of the several Native Indians: and the advantages of commerce with
these different nations, &c." Utrecht. [London, 1698]. Michaux, Francois
Andre. 1819. Published edition 1841. North American Sylva; or, a Description
of the Forst Trees of the Unitec States, Canada, and Nova Scotia, J. Dobson,
Philadelphia. Olmsted, F. L. 1880. in
Gardner, J. T., Director. 1880. New York State Survey. Special report on the
preservation of the scenery of Niagara Falls, and fourth annual report on the
triangulation of the state for the year 1879. Albany: Charles Van Benthuysen
and Sons,, pp. 27-31. Petrides, G.A. 1958. A
Field Guide to Trees and Shrubs. Peterson Field Guide Series. Houghton
Mifflin Co. Boston. Recknagel,
A. B. 1923. The forests of New York state. With an introduction by Liberty
Hyde Bailey. Macmillan, New York. Robinson, W. 1875.
Alpine Flowers. John Murray, London, in Gardner, J. T., Director. 1880. New
York State Survey. Special report on the preservation of the scenery of
Niagara Falls, and fourth annual report on the triangulation of the state for
the year 1879. Albany: Charles Van Benthuysen and Sons, pp. 27-31. Scott, S. D. & P.
K. Scott. 1983. The Niagara Reservation Archaeological and Historical
Resource Survey, 1983. New York Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic
Preservation. Historic Sites Bureau, March. Wied-Neuwied, M. A. P.,
Prinz von. 1843. Travels in the interior of North America, with numerous
engravings on wood and a large map; translated by H. Evans Lloyd. Ackman
& Co., London, pp. 493-496. Zenkert, C. A. 1934.
Flora of the Niagara Frontier Region. Bulletin of the Buffalo Society of
Natural Sciences. Vol. XVI. Buffalo. |
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