In 1956 the Power Authority of the State of New York (NYPA) commissioned two paintings by Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975) for display at the Robert Moses Power Dam in Massena, New York. Both panels celebrate French explorer Jacques Cartier’s 1534–1535 voyage into the Gulf of St. Lawrence to Lachine Rapids, just south of present-day Montreal. In these paintings, Benton portrays imagined scenes, drawn from details Cartier captured in accounts of his expedition.

The first panel depicts the local Iroquoian people running to investigate the strangers’ ship anchored near their palisaded village. Benton did considerable research for his murals, visiting historic sites, reading archival sources, and examining related artifacts in museum collections. The village portrayed is based on a 16th-century illustration of Cartier’s observations. Benton was careful to depict the Iroquoian people as skilled agriculturists, tending their crops of corn, beans, and squash. He found models for his subjects among the Seneca and Cayuga peoples living in Oklahoma (closer to Benton’s home in Missouri), and he based their weapons and headdresses on artifacts he had seen at the New York State Museum.

The second panel portrays Cartier presenting a wary elder with a cross, while French soldiers erect a much larger cross in the background. Benton wished to honor both the Indigenous peoples and the explorers in these paintings, depicting a fertile and inhabited land about to be changed forever.

Scott Manning Stevens, PhD
Director, Native American and Indigenous Studies, Syracuse University