In 1860 Thomas Moran took his first sketching trip outside his home base in Philadelphia, to Michigan’s Lake Superior. Moran may have been drawn to the area because of the popularity of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, first published in 1855.¹ Pictured Rocks was the setting for the poem’s fictive account of the Ojibway leader Hiawatha’s life, including his marriage to Minnehaha of the Dacotah, a union that brought peace to the two warring tribes.²

In Pictured Rocks of Lake Superior, the circular format of the image echoes the arch of the cliffside cave and its reflection in the water. A canoe approaches the shore, where another group awaits its arrival. A rainbow rises above the cliffs, signifying the hope of a harmonious meeting and perhaps the peaceful union of the Ojibway and Dacotah, as represented by the marriage of Hiawatha and Minnehaha.³

This wood engraving, however, was not created until more than a decade after Moran’s visit to Lake Superior. Moran made numerous sketches of the area during that trip, which often focused on the Great Cave of Pictured Rocks.⁴ The 1860 sketches became the basis for this image, which appeared in the January 1873 issue of The Aldine, accompanying an article focused on the region’s rugged beauty and its relation to Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha. Throughout his career, Moran proved adept at capitalizing on field sketches that he had created years, even decades, earlier.⁵

—Sandra Pauly, Henry Luce Foundation Curatorial Scholar for Moran Collection Research, 2021

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¹ Anderson et al., Thomas Moran, 26–27.
² Wilkins, Thomas Moran: Artist of the Mountains, 30. I am using Wilkins’s synopsis of the poem, but Longfellow’s names and tribal designations.
³ Kinsey, Thomas Moran and the Surveying of the American West, 25–26. Kinsey points out that the rainbow is a frequent motif in Moran’s art, suggestive of hope and unity.
⁴ Four of these sketches in the Gilcrease collection are Looking from the South Entrance of the Great Cave (13.754), Side Entrance of the Great Cave, Pictured Rocks (13.758), The Great Cave, Pictured Rocks from the East (13.762), and Entrance to the Great Cave, Pictured Rocks (13.765).
⁵ Morand, Thomas Moran: The Field Sketches, 14–15, 93nn12–14. Moran did use the sketches as early as 1861 as the basis for two oil paintings exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts: The Pictured Rocks from Miners River and The Grand Portal of the Pictured Rocks (present location of both unknown). The sketches also provided the basis for a set of ink washes Moran created to illustrate an edition of Longfellow’s Hiawatha, although that project was unrealized. In addition, Moran created several oil paintings on the Hiawatha theme: Hiawatha and the Great Serpent, the Kenabeek (1867, Baltimore Museum of Art, 1967.17); “Fiercely the red sun descending/Burned his way along the heavens” (1875–76, North Carolina Museum of Art, 52.9.34); and Gilcrease’s 1875 Hiawatha and the Great Sea Serpent (01.1115).