Life, 1910-12-01 · page 40 of 108
Life — December 1, 1910 — page 40: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This Life magazine cartoon presents a fictionalized "memoir" of Columbia (the female personification of America), narrating her early colonial encounters. The scene depicts Columbia recounting her reception among America's founding populations—Puritans, Catholics, and Dutch colonists. The satire centers on **Peter Stuyvesant**, the historical Dutch governor of New Amsterdam (later New York), depicted here with his famous wooden leg. The text humorously claims Columbia "tried conclusions" with Stuyvesant through both bowling and political debate, joking that she would have "easily bowled him over" were his wooden leg less fixed. This puns on his literal wooden prosthetic while satirizing early American political rivalries and cultural tensions between competing colonial powers. The cartoon uses Columbia's personified perspective to offer a lighthearted, revisionist take on colonial history, emphasizing how various religious and national groups initially viewed early America with suspicion or fear.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
56556 SLIFE S 6 65528 THE MEMOIRS OF COLUMBIA No, 3 “MY RECEPTION BY PURITANS AND CATHOLICS AROUSED AN INTEREST IN ME THROUGHOUT THE LAND, EVEN THE DUTCH OF NEW AMSTERDAM ENTERTAINING ME—THO’ PRIVATELY THROUGH FEAR OF THEIR GOVERNOR. “AS "TWAS, 1 TRIED CONCLUSIONS WITH OLD PIETER STUYVESANT, BOTH ON TIE BOWLING GREEN AND IN POLITICAL DEDATE, AND HAD HIS MEAD NOT BEEN MORE WOODEN AND FIXED THAN HIS NINE-PIN LEG, 1 HAD EASILY BOWLED HIM OVER UPON HIS OWN PREMISES. . . .’”