Minneapolis Institute of Art

Wenona's Leap, Lake Pepin, Mississippi River

Seth Eastman

Date

1851

Medium

Watercolor

Department

Arts of the Americas

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

This meticulous landscape is Seth Eastman's illustration for a story interpreted and then published by his second wife, Mary Henderson Eastman. In Mary’s version, young Wenona’s parents wanted her to marry Chaskè, a good hunter, but she loved another. One day, while her friends hunted porcupines along the shores of Lake Pepin along the Mississippi, they watched her jump off a cliff; this work depicts the moments before her leap. As Mary recounted in “The Maiden’s Rock; or, Wenona’s Leap”: “She was there indeed, loudly and wildly singing her dirge, an invocation to the Spirit of the Rock, calm and unconcerned in her dangerous position, while all was terror and excitement among her friends below her.” United States, Americas

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