The Natchez
by DELACROIX, Eugène, Oil on canvas, 90 x 117 cm
Delacroix knew that the Native Americans were ‘doomed and must perish’, and that their ultimate destiny was to yield their land to white Christian settlers, and he mourned it. In 1835 he completed this painting (based on Chateaubriand’s story) of a Native American couple fleeing from the massacre of their Natchez tribe, with their little son, new-born by the Mississippi but also doomed to die.