“Family Tree”

IN THIS SYMBOLIC FAMILY TREE Norman Rockwell tried to suggest something of the complexity of the American heritage, including Yankees and Confederates, yeomen and buccaneers, preachers (note Rockwell as preacher) and pioneers, fair skinned and dark.

This is the American heritage as most Americans choose to picture it, a genealogy that finds room for pirates as well as puritans, for aristocrats—note the coat of arms alongside the Spanish beauty—as well as commoners. It is interesting that Rockwell—a New Englander by adoption—chose to portray the birth of the New World not at Plymouth Rock but on an isolated Southern shore, off which a privateer has launched an attack upon a treasure galleon.