SCOTT MANNING STEVENS: I'm sure when I looked at it as a boy, I was probably glad to see a Native person in that boat. I thought “I am American. Washington, he can't be that bad. Right?" Then as I grew older and listened to my elders (Laughs) who said, “Well, you know.”

My name is Scott Manning Stevens. I am an associate professor of Native American and Indigenous Studies at Syracuse University. I’m a citizen of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation and reside on Onondaga territory in central New York. 

We can identify soldiers, yeoman farmers, an African American amongst the group and, greatly to my interest, a Native American at the back of the boat. He is wearing fairly ethnographically accurate clothing. The quillwork on the pouch he's carrying identifies that as the Northeast Woodlands Native dress. The fur-covered hat and shirt, the moccasins all seem like Leutze has taken time to do his research.

NARRATOR: While the depiction is accurate, the painting presents an ennobled version of violent events during the Revolutionary War, including against Native peoples. Three years after Washington’s crossing of the Delaware, he ordered General Sullivan to destroy key British-allied Indigenous communities and take extensive prisoners to protect settler interests in what is now central New York state. The results of the Sullivan Campaign of “ethnic cleansing” were devastating for the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.

SCOTT MANNING STEVENS: It’s not a piece of reportage.

Leutze wants to paint our better angels. He shows it's not just Washington alone; There are boats in the background. This is a real effort, and everyone from society is represented - except for women. 

And the problem with this painting is it gets very close to becoming propaganda. We have no idea who is in his boat. The reality is always messier, more unsettling, more complicated. 

The Native figure probably thinks that in helping the United States, he’s helping his people, and of course we know that did not happen immediately after independence was a huge land loss for Native people. Our term for Washington in our languages is Hanadahguyus which means “destroyer of villages,” and that becomes our term for all U.S. presidents. That becomes the term for the Office of the Presidency, “destroyer of villages,” and they never disappoint.