Tableau of the Principal Peoples of America (Tableau des principaux peuples de l'Amérique)

Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This print tableau was made to illustrate a text by Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur that describes the mores, customs, religion, and commerce of the peoples of the Americas. A series of twenty-four vignettes purports to represent the physical appearance and characteristic dress of indigenous types from Canada to Patagonia. A lively border inhabited by animals native to the Americas alludes to the famed natural abundance of the New World. Grasset’s compilation, which he claims is "exact and true," is in fact based on earlier prints and travel accounts. Moreover, he closely follows the negative assessment of the peoples of the Americas advanced by some European naturalists, who held that the climate had resulted in the physical and moral degeneracy of the human species.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art