What a 19th-Century Photograph Reveals About Power, Privilege and Violence in the American West

Martha A. Sandweiss's The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West delves into a single 1868 photograph taken at Fort Laramie. In this image, six federal peace commissioners are posed with a young Native American girl, whose identity was long forgotten. While the men are named, the girl remained anonymous until Sandweiss's meticulous research identified her as Sophie Mousseau.

Sandweiss uses this photograph as a lens to explore the intertwined lives of its subjects and the broader context of westward expansion during the Reconstruction era. She examines the roles of figures like Alexander Gardner, the photographer known for his Civil War images; William S. Harney, a Union general with a violent reputation among the Lakota; and Samuel F. Tappan, an abolitionist involved in investigating the Sand Creek massacre.​

The narrative brings to light Sophie's life, marked by personal hardships and the systemic challenges faced by Native Americans as settlers encroached upon their lands and the federal government enforced reservation policies. Through this focused historical inquiry, Sandweiss not only recovers a lost individual story but also offers a profound reflection on how history is recorded and remembered.​

From The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West by Martha A. Sandweiss. Copyright © 2025. Available from Princeton University Press.

Martha A. Sandweiss's The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West posits that by uncovering the identity and life story of Sophie Mousseau—the unnamed Native girl in an 1868 photograph—we can challenge and enrich the conventional narratives of the American West. Sandweiss argues that this single image, often overlooked, encapsulates the complexities of westward expansion, highlighting the intertwined lives of individuals from disparate backgrounds during a transformative period in American history. By bringing Sophie's story to the forefront, the book emphasizes the importance of recognizing marginalized voices to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the past.

This book deals directly with what I’ve been working on for years. This book highlights the blatant instances of othering and TMT. The abuse and marginalization of the Native Americans was, and still is, unreal.

Read the article here.

Update on My Book and Preparing for My Doctoral Studies (PhD Program)

Greetings,

I hope this post finds you in good health and good spirits. I know that’s a lot to ask in the world today, but remember gratitude, humility, and awe go a long way to lift your spirits. I try to employ them every day. Happy Spring Equinox, too! It’s warm here. We’re hitting 82F (28C) most days and sunny.

“In the Shadow of Sun Mountain: The Psychology of Othering and the Origins of Evil.” 8” x 10”, 381 pages, seven chapters, and it weighs 3 pounds.

What About My Book?
My book is being printed as I type—the final draft copy anyway. I’ve gone through so many iterations it’s hard to keep track. I can tell you that I’m very happy with the work. In fact, I’m over the moon about it—excited. I hope to include a lot of it in my doctoral studies. I’ll keep you posted when I have copies ready to ship.

Visionary Practice and Regenerative Leadership PhD
I’m preparing to start my PhD work (Visionary Practice and Regenerative Leadership) at Southwestern College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This is the ONLY school I would attend to do something like this. Period. It’s a great fit for me. It’s a lot like Goddard College, where I earned my M.F.A. These schools are rare and special.

What is the program, and why am I pursuing a PhD? This is how the school describes it:
This unique transdisciplinary doctoral program is designed to prepare you as a regenerative leader to navigate the complexities of changing the old story of separation, domination, competition, and control into the emerging story of cooperation, compassion, connection, and capacity to regenerate broken social systems and struggling ecosystems. Relationships based on authentic partnership are key to our future. This program responds to the question of ‘how shall we shape these relationships of mutuality in order for individuals, families, and communities to live in good relationship with each other and with the plants, animals, soils, waterways, weather systems, oceans, and atmosphere upon which we depend for our lives?’ Responding to these challenges requires “change agents” capable of honoring wisdom traditions and creating new knowledge to envision and enact a new paradigm.

It begins with these questions: “Do you have a vision?” and “Can your vision make a difference for the world?”

I can see my pursuit clearly in those goals.

I’ve given a lot of thought to this. A couple of months ago, I wasn’t going to do it. And I still have days where I wonder if I should or not. My reasons for doubting have nothing to do with the importance of the work. I feel strongly about that. I feel like I would be contributing something unique and valuable to the world. My concerns have been around funding and what the current government is doing to the DOE and other institutions that I would rely on. However, right now, I’m enrolled and ready to attend my first residency at the end of August. I understand part of it is on a ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico. Does that sound familiar to you? I’ll write more about it later.

I’m going to use my blog as a journal as I go through the program. I think it will help me sort things out and use it as a reference as I go through the program. I have a lot of ideas and am well on my way to making this happen. What I’m hoping to find in the program is a community that I can interact with and expand my ideas. Give me new thoughts, approaches, and information that I don’t currently possess. I have a lot to learn. I know that’s what happened in graduate school (M.F.A.). It was wonderful and very enlightening. I hope for the same here, maybe even more.

What do I hope to accomplish? After reading Ernest Becker’s book in 2018, I discovered why I was making art and why I had the questions I did about human behavior. I've since married the two ideas and feel I have a decent grasp on the intersection of creativity and mortality. In other words, why artists create and how existential art is a powerful buffer against death anxiety. My goal is to show how creative types process and deal with finitude (their impending death) differently than non-creatives. Or at least that’s the question I’m going to address. Keep in mind, this can (and should) radically change over time, but that’s the gist of it.

I think I've found a powerful combination to work with. The interplay between visual art and writing creates a unique space to explore mortality and Becker's theories. Photographs and paintings can capture what words sometimes can't—those abstract, ineffable aspects of confronting mortality. The visual work becomes a direct embodiment of death anxiety and its transformation, while my writing provides the conceptual framework and personal narrative that grounds the experience.

This dual approach seems especially fitting for exploring Becker's ideas. His concepts often deal with the tension between concrete physical reality (our mortal bodies) and symbolic systems of meaning (our immortality projects). My combination of visual art and writing mirrors this tension perfectly—tangible images paired with explanatory text.

The autobiographical element adds another crucial dimension. By documenting my own journey through these philosophical territories, I’m not just theorizing about art as a mortality buffer but demonstrating it in practice. My creative process becomes both the subject and method of the book and my doctoral studies.

By capturing these ceremonial and medicinal (Ute) plants, both alive and after death/going to seed, I’m creating a visual meditation on transformation rather than simple cessation. This connects beautifully to Becker's ideas about death as both an ending and a transition that humans seek to understand through cultural and symbolic frameworks.

The cultural significance of these specific plants adds another layer—these are plants that have been used in healing practices and ceremonies, often related to life transitions. By documenting their living and dead states, I’m tapping into indigenous wisdom about mortality that offers a counterpoint to contemporary death denial.

Meanwhile, my abstract paintings exploring my personal concepts of death—the abyss, chaos, the unknown—provide the subjective, emotional dimension of confronting mortality. The contrast between these approaches is particularly effective, to my mind: the photographs document an observable process in the natural world, while the paintings express the internal, psychological experience of contemplating one's own mortality.

This combination seems especially relevant to Becker's work and Terror Management Theory (TMT). The photographs acknowledge death's reality and place in natural cycles, while the abstract paintings might represent the symbolic systems we create to manage our awareness of that reality.

I begin this August with a six-day residency. This is what the first year looks like (2025-2026):

FALL
VPRL 600 Residency I: Seeking
VPRL 610 Embodied Cosmology
VPRL 620 The Phenomenology of Visionary Practice and the Call to Serve

WINTER
VPRL 630 Traditions of Native American Thought: New Minds and New Worlds
VPRL 640 Regenerative Leadership

SPRING
VPRL 670 Roots & Streams: Finding Your Voice, Clarifying Your Vision, Mapping Your Influences
VPRL 651 Self-Directed Study I

SUMMER
VPRL 660 Introduction to Research Methods: Pathways of Insight
VPRL 681 Self-Directed Study II

My (current) thesis idea: "Transcending Through Creation: The Artist's Existential Advantage in Confronting Mortality."

 Thesis implications: The title suggests a powerful hypothesis: that artists possess unique psychological tools for confronting death anxiety through their creative practice. It indicates my dissertation will explore whether creative individuals have a distinct existential advantage when facing mortality awareness.

I’ve been thinking about the first course, “Embodied Cosmology.” No, it’s not about Tarot cards (LOL!) or astrology. Although it might sound a bit strange if you’re not familiar with the verbiage. Let me explain how I feel about it.

I think about Peter Zapffe’s ideas about “cosmic panic.” Some people stare at the night sky and are exhilarated and engaged—buffering death anxiety with illusions. Some stare at the night sky and see the reality of the indifference and terror of it all.

Artists don't escape the fundamental human condition of mortality—they just develop different mechanisms for confronting it directly.

What distinguishes the artist in this framework isn't an immunity to death anxiety but a willingness to stare longer at the unbearable truth before turning away. Where others might immediately retreat into cultural or religious buffers that deny death's finality, the artist might instead develop practices that allow them to hold mortality awareness in consciousness just long enough to transform it through their work.

This transformation isn't about finding false beauty in terror but about developing the capacity to metabolize terror itself as a raw material for creation. The resulting work doesn't need to be beautiful or comforting—it might be disturbing, challenging, or bleak. What matters is that through the embodied act of creation, the artist has found a way to process mortality awareness without completely surrendering to either denial or paralysis.

In this sense, cosmological embodiment for artists might function not as an escape from Zapffe's cosmic panic but as a unique pathway through it—a method for physically engaging with the knowledge of cosmic indifference and personal extinction that doesn't rely on conventional meaning systems.

The artist's advantage, then, isn't transcending death anxiety but developing more sophisticated and conscious techniques for managing it—techniques that acknowledge the terror rather than disguising it as something else. This allows for moments of clarity about our true position that might be unbearable without the transformative vessel of artistic practice.

This approach offers rich territory for my studies, particularly in examining how my own artistic practice has functioned as a way to metabolize cosmic panic and mortality awareness through physical creative engagement rather than through denial or distraction. This is, in essence, embodied cosmology.

These are the kinds of ideas I’ll be tackling throughout the program.

Arundel Camera Club (Maryland) Talk

Christine and John invited me to give a talk for their camera club. I gave an overview of my new book and shared a few images from it.

We Lost Moshe Yesterday to Cancer

We lost our little friend and long-time companion yesterday, February 26, 2025. He was 11 years old—maybe 12 years old, not sure he was a rescue. Our daughter saved him from a terrible place in Nebraska in 2013. We have many great memories with him. We are so grateful to have had him all of these years. It’s so difficult to lose a pet like this.

Photogenic Drawings

An example from my new book, “In the Shadow of Sun Mountain” pages 251-252:

“Rocky Mountain Cotton On Vellum Paper” 

This image really speaks to the heart of what I’m exploring about mortality and artistic process.

The Talbotype process creates this direct indexical relationship between the object and its representation—the Rocky Mountain cotton literally left its shadow on the paper, what you might call a kind of death mask of the plant. This connects powerfully to what Becker writes about our need to leave traces of ourselves behind.

The luminous quality of the cotton head against that deep, velvety darkness reminds me of what Terror Management Theory describes as our attempts to create permanence from impermanence.

By using Talbot’s historical process, I’m not just capturing an image – I’m participating in a kind of photographic immortality project that spans nearly two centuries. The plant’s physical contact with the paper creates what we might call a “presence of absence.”

What fascinates me most is how this process makes visible something I’m deeply exploring in this book – the way artists transform ephemeral moments into lasting artifacts. The cotton’s delicate structure, rendered in this ghostly white against the dark ground, becomes both a document of its physical existence and a meditation on its transcendence through art.

The fact that this image was created through direct sunlight adds another layer of meaning—it’s as if nature itself is participating in this act of preservation. The process captures not just the form of the cotton but something of its essence, its being-in-time.

This relates directly to how I think artists process mortality differently—we’re not just recording death, we’re transforming it into something luminous and enduring.

Photogenic Drawings

As a visual artist exploring mortality and creativity, I'm fascinated by how Talbot's early photographic experiments mirror our human desire to capture and preserve moments against the inevitable flow of time. In 1834, five years before photography was officially announced to the world, William Henry Fox Talbot began his quest to record nature's fleeting images. His work wasn't just about technical innovation—it was about our deep-seated need to hold onto the ephemeral.

What draws me to Talbot's process is its raw intimacy with light and shadow, life and death. He called these camera-less images "photogenic drawings" drawings"—drawings born from light itself. The process feels almost alchemical: paper baptized in sodium chloride, anointed with silver nitrate that darkens like aging skin in the sun. When he laid objects—delicate botanical specimens or intricate lace—on this sensitized surface, he was essentially creating shadows, preserving the ghost prints of these items in negative space. Where light touched, darkness bloomed; where objects blocked the light, whiteness remained.

The resulting images were fragile, temporary—not yet truly "fixed" in photographic terms, but stabilized in a salt solution. Like our own attempts at immortality through art, they existed in a transitional space between permanence and fade. Talbot's preference for recording delicate, intricate patterns in nature speaks to me of our attempt to capture beauty before it withers, to hold onto the detailed texture of existence before it slips away.

His negative-to-positive process, which became the foundation for photography throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, fundamentally changed how we preserve our memories, our faces, and our moments of being. In doing so, it transformed how we negotiate with our own mortality.

Blurb and Cover for My New Book

Through four years of living in the shadow of Sun Mountain (Tava-Kavvi) on ancestral Nuuchiu (Ute) lands in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, artist Quinn Jacobson confronts humanity's deepest psychological armor: our denial of death.

Using historical photographic processes and contemporary painting, he excavates the hidden forces behind cultural violence, erasure, and our desperate attempts at immortality.

Internationally renowned for reviving 19th-century wet plate collodion techniques, Jacobson merges this haunting medium with terror management theory and the writings of Ernest Becker to explore how death anxiety shapes human behavior.

Through his intimate collaboration with the mountain's landscapes, sacred plants, and symbols, he reveals both the wounds of colonization and possibilities for healing through artistic creation.

In the Shadow of Sun Mountain is a raw meditation on mortality, creativity, and the stories we tell ourselves to keep darkness at bay.

More than an artist's memoir, it is an invitation to confront the universal truth that shapes every human life: our shared impermanence.

Editing Artwork For My Book

Writing is an exercise in balance. It's the skill of retaining a reader's interest for an extended period, guiding them through the intricacies of your story. And let’s be honest—it’s hard to do well.

As a visual artist, I’ve spent years working in mediums I deeply understand: photography and visual arts. Writing, though? That’s a newer addition to my creative repertoire. Am I a writer? Maybe. Ask me again after you’ve read my book. For now, I’ll say this: I’m proud of the work I’ve done, but I’m acutely aware of the challenges. Writing isn’t about grammar or structure alone—it’s about connection. It’s about creating something that resonates, that lingers. Time will be the judge of whether I’ve succeeded.

In contrast, when it comes to visual art, I know my footing. I’ve spent decades refining my craft, immersed in observation, thought, and exploration. Despite my confidence, I find myself at a crucial juncture. I’m editing the visuals for my book—selecting which photographs and artworks will make it to print. The process is as exciting as it is painstaking. With over 200 pieces to choose from, I’m paring it down to 50, maybe 75. Every cut feels like a sacrifice.

How do I choose? For me, it’s all about context—how each image aligns with the narrative. The connection between the visuals and the text has to be seamless. Every photograph, every piece of artwork, must do more than look beautiful; it must amplify the story, offering a lens into its deeper layers.

This process reminds me of something essential: storytelling, whether through words or images, isn’t about showing everything—it’s about showing the right things. It’s about creating space for meaning, for resonance. And if I can do that, then maybe—just maybe—I’ll have a successful piece of work.

I still remember the first time I encountered the term homo narrans. The idea struck me immediately: storytelling, not language or reasoning, is what sets humans apart from other species. It suggests that we make decisions based on the coherence of stories rather than cold, hard logic. That resonates deeply with me. Storytelling isn’t just something we do—it’s how we make sense of our world, how we uncover meaning, and how we better understand ourselves.

Humans, though, carry an extraordinary burden. We’re the only creatures who know we’re alive and, someday, will die. That knowledge—whether we admit it or not—is crushing. Most of us suppress it, carrying the weight unconsciously. But it shows up, often in destructive ways, shaping our behavior and relationships in ways we don’t always recognize.

I see it every day. People walking around, bogged down by what some thinkers call the "overabundance of consciousness." There’s even a theory that our awareness of mortality—our recognition of death—was an evolutionary misstep. It’s hard not to feel that sometimes. But I also know this: if we hadn’t evolved the ability to deny and distort the reality of death, we wouldn’t have survived. That’s clear to me. Fear would have paralyzed us, kept us from taking risks, from facing danger, from living.

Think about it. We drive cars, walk across busy streets, play contact sports—all things that carry real risk. If we were constantly aware of what could go wrong, we’d be immobilized. And in our younger years, we pushed those limits even further. Some of us didn’t make it. I’ve written about those moments—stories of risk-taking and the tragic outcomes they sometimes led to. And yet, we still carry on, fueled by the unspoken belief: it won’t happen to me. That denial is what makes action possible, what allows us to survive, even thrive.

This dynamic fascinates me. The way we navigate mortality—the lies we tell ourselves, the unconscious bargains we strike—is at the heart of what it means to be human. As I’ve studied these ideas, I’ve come to understand just how central this denial is to our survival. It’s a feature of our evolution, not a flaw.

I’m excited to see these ideas come to life in my book. If you're interested, stay tuned to this blog for updates on its release date. I’m still deciding the best format: hardcover, softcover, audiobook, Kindle? Maybe all of the above. Stay tuned. It’s coming soon.

The Origins of Evil

The title of my book includes the phrase “The Origins of Evil.” The full title is In the Shadow of Sun Mountain: The Psychology of Othering and the Origins of Evil. I want to share some of the writing I’ve been working on around this theme.

Humans have grappled with the concept of evil ever since we became conscious—since we gained the ability to understand what others feel, a capacity tied to the theory of mind. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been preoccupied with the ways humans treat one another—whether it’s the large-scale horror of war or the quiet, everyday conflicts between neighbors. Ernest Becker’s perspective on this resonates deeply with me, and his work continues to shape how I think about these issues.

Ernest Becker viewed evil not as an external force or inherent quality but as a human creation, deeply rooted in our existential condition. According to Becker, the psychological strategies we use to deal with the fear of death give rise to evil. At its core, Becker saw evil as the destructive outcomes of humanity's denial of mortality, expressed through the dehumanization, domination, and destruction of others.

Evil as the Byproduct of Death Denial

Becker believed that humans, aware of their mortality, develop cultural worldviews or meaning systems that give their lives significance and offer a sense of symbolic immortality. These worldviews—whether religious, political, or ideological—help shield individuals from existential terror. However, when these worldviews are threatened, people react defensively and often violently. Evil, in Becker’s terms, is what results when individuals or societies use domination, violence, or oppression to preserve their illusions of immortality and meaning.

The Role of "Otherness" in Evil

For Becker, the creation of the "other" lies at the heart of human evil. To preserve their meaning systems, people project their fears and insecurities onto those who hold different worldviews. By dehumanizing others, they justify violence, exclusion, or oppression. In this way, evil is often framed as a necessary act to protect the "good"—a tragic irony Becker frequently emphasized.

Evil as an Attempt to Eradicate Evil

Becker saw evil as a paradox: much of human violence is committed in the name of eliminating evil. Whether through religious crusades, genocides, or wars, societies often justify atrocities as moral imperatives to rid the world of perceived threats. However, this effort to purge the world of "evil" only perpetuates it. Becker argued that this cycle is driven by humanity's unconscious fear of mortality and the desire to assert control over an uncontrollable reality.

Heroism and Evil

Becker connected evil to humanity’s desperate pursuit of heroism, the drive to achieve significance in the face of death. He argued that this pursuit can lead to both constructive and destructive outcomes. When heroism involves creativity, compassion, or self-transcendence, it can inspire greatness. However, when it involves domination over others, it leads to evil. He noted that totalitarian ideologies and imperial conquests often stem from this darker side of heroism, as leaders and followers alike seek to assert their worldview at the expense of others.

Evil as the Fear of Impermanance and Insignificance

Evil, in his view, is also rooted in humanity’s fear of impermanence and insignificance. The knowledge of our impermanence drives people to cling to meaning systems that promise eternal significance, or symbolic immortality. When these systems are threatened by alternative perspectives or "others," people lash out. This existential anxiety becomes the psychological basis for atrocities as individuals and societies attempt to assert their importance by diminishing or annihilating others.

Systemic Evil

Becker recognized that evil often becomes systemic, embedded in cultural and institutional frameworks. When groups define themselves as morally or spiritually superior, they create structures that dehumanize and marginalize others. For example, he linked the violence of colonization to the death anxiety of the colonizers, who sought to suppress indigenous cultures to reinforce their own symbolic systems. This has happened throughout humanity to a wide range of marginalized populations. You can see it today, played out all over the world.

Ernest Becker Quotes about Evil

"Men cause evil by wanting heroically to triumph over it, because man is a frightened animal who tries to triumph, an animal who will not admit his own insignificance." This underscores the paradoxical nature of evil—how humanity's denial of insignificance leads to destructive heroism.

"Man’s natural and inevitable urge to deny mortality and achieve a heroic self-image are the root causes of human evil." This directly ties evil to the existential dread that drives people to deny their creatureliness and seek immortality through domination.”

"The need for self-esteem entails the denigration of others." Becker saw the quest for personal or cultural significance as inherently competitive, often leading to the devaluation or destruction of those perceived as "threats."

The Solution to the Problem of Evil: Consciousness of Mortality

Becker believed that the solution to evil lies in confronting our fear of death rather than projecting it onto others.

I’ve written a lot about how artists can channel this awareness into their work, using it as both a buffer against anxiety and a constructive, non-destructive way to confront and process death anxiety.

He advocated for humility and self-awareness, urging humanity to recognize the shared condition of mortality. By facing our fears head-on, we could reduce the cycles of violence and othering that perpetuate evil.

In Becker’s framework, evil is not inherent to human nature but a symptom of our existential condition. It arises from our denial of death, our need for meaning, and our tendency to dehumanize others to sustain the fragile illusions that protect us from existential terror.

His work challenges us to confront these truths with honesty and courage, offering a path toward a more compassionate and self-aware existence.

“Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an aesthetic end.”

— James Joyce