History of Wyoming Massacre told through art

Stark and imposing, the Wyoming Monument stands as an unequivocal solemn statement to the memory of settlers killed in a seminal event in the valley’s history.

But the same can’t be said of illustrations of the bloodbath on July 3, 1778 as depicted by artists more than a half century later.

The distinctions became evident to art historian Michael J. Lewis as he delved into a part of the Revolutionary War that occurred close to his backyard.

Lewis, a Kingston native and Professor of Art at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, shared his work, writing “The Wyoming Massacre, On Stone and In Memory,” in the Spring 2020 edition of “Nineteenth Century” magazine.

“That’s what I do. I grew up, growing up in the valley where this is such a major event and then becoming a historian, historian of American art, I felt a kind of obligation to turn what I know into local history,” said Lewis, 63, a 1975 graduate of Wyoming Valley West high school.

In 2015, Lewis returned to the monument along Wyoming Avenue, in Wyoming to deliver the keynote address at the 237th anniversary of the massacre. He joined an impressive list of speakers that included Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes, Teddy Roosevelt and Jimmy Carter.

One early version of the massacre inaccurately reported the survivors were driven back into the fort near the scene of the massacre and killed when it was set ablaze by the Loyalists and Indians.

“The first account was garbled and it has become an urban legend that is indestructible. People continue to repeat it,” Lewis said.

History has corrected it and Lewis strove to add his emphasis to the verified version.

“It’s my community. I feel I have an obligation to share what I know and can do about it,” Lewis said.

The magazine’s audience stretches from coast to coast, specifically to those interested in the culture in this country during the 19th century reign of Queen Victoria. Outside of Northeastern Pennsylvania, however, the Wyoming Massacre is not well known. “And my hope in writing this was bringing that to a national audience,” Lewis said.

The article looked at illustrations that accompanied print articles chronicling the rout and massacre of patriot soldiers defending a settlement along the Susquehanna River from English Loyalists and their Seneca Indian allies who entered the valley. Lewis focused on Felix Octavio Carr Darley and Alonzo Chappel in the context of what the nation was feeling and experiencing during the six years separating their works. Darley’s “Wyoming” appeared in 1852 and Chappel’s “Massacre of Wyoming” in 1858.

“That was the point of my article,” Lewis said during a phone interview Thursday. “That is my assertion, that is, my best judgment is something changed between those two popular images,” Lewis said.

Darley depicts an “Indian massacre,” while Chappel shows “white men killing white men,” Lewis said.

“It is a prediction of the Civil War,” Lewis said of the Chappel illustration. “That’s the difference between 1852 and 1858, when you’ve already had the caning of (U.S) Sen. Charles Sumner on the floor of Congress and John Brown’s first murders.”

Lewis pointed out that Darley’s piece actually was of the “Harding Massacre” from June 30, 1778, when the Loyalists and Indians attacked and killed the farmers working their fields. Nonetheless, the outcome was the same three days later downstream.

From a critical perspective, Darley’s was the superior work and Lewis described Chappel’s as “distressingly unsatisfying as a work of art.”

Lewis explained his criticism.

“When I say it’s unsatisfying, this is I’m making a value judgment. When you look at it, a great work of art, let me say this, leads your eye to powerful shapes and forms,” Lewis said. “An unsatisfying work of art gives you no place for your eye to rest. It keeps flitting around like a bee looking for the flower, but there’s no flower, there’s no place to land.”

Just what Darley and Chappel relied on to create their illustrations Lewis acknowledged he didn’t know.

“They had, both of them, if you look at each of them, Chappel and Darley, these are very convincing depictions in costume, weapon and setting,” Lewis said. “But I don’t know exactly, did either of them go and walk the terrain in the Wyoming Valley. I have not found any evidence that they did.”

That discovery process combined patience and perseverance with a touch of risk taking.

“To be a good historian you have to have the personality of a gambler. You have to have a gambler’s addiction that you’re going to keep spending time looking around for the big payoff,” Lewis said. “It’s a slot machine. But instead of putting in quarters, you’re putting in hours of your life.”

Darley, no doubt, was the better artist with a bigger reputation working with authors such as Edgar Allen Poe, Washington Irving and James Fennimore Cooper, Lewis noted.

“The first one is heroic. It is like a group of sculptures,” Lewis said of Darley’s work. “And the other is anarchy.”

But possibly Chappel attempted to capture the moment, Lewis said.

“Maybe the answer is that that sort of chaos and confusion is the meaning of it and Chappel got it,” Lewis said. “He got it for what it’s like for the line to break, panic to break out and men are being killed on the ground all around in the scene of confusion and panic.”

Artists aside, the monument, begun in 1833 and completed in 1843, presents it’s own imagery compliments of architect, Thomas U. Walter, who also put the dome on the U.S. Capitol, Lewis noted.

President Abraham Lincoln continued the construction of the dome during the Civil War, as a “powerful symbol that the country would stay together,” Lewis said.

“The same way, that memorial of the monument, it’s two things. It is a tomb and it’s an obelisk,” Lewis said.

In his address at the site on July 4, 2015 , Lewis said, “And that is why this monument is exactly right in the shape, in the mournful dignity of that shape, a tomb for the bones, a proud spire saying, ‘Here is what happened. Here is where it happened.’”