2/27/2024 0 Comments Buffalo robes for saleIt is thus evidently of the nature of a biography. Again, the record has a character too extensive and too circumstantially detailed to permit its being regarded as the transcript of a vision. That this robe does not belong to that class is evident from the appearance in a majority, if not certainly in all, of the incidents pictured upon it, of the same principal figure, who is shown as the victor in most or all of the series of combats represented. The time count was by its nature the chronicle, though of course only a partial one, of a group of people. Robes decorated with realistic drawings of this kind fall into three chief classes: time counts or calendars in which remarkable events of successive seasons, winter or summer, were represented in a series of drawings by which the succession of these periods was marked for the remembrance of posterity in a particular tribe or group personal records, or biographies, commonly autobiographies, since it was usually his own exploits that a warrior set down in the graphic texts of which the robe here figured is a fine example and the imaginative records of visions. A Painted Buffalo Robe of the Plains Indians One of the painted episodes with which the surface is covered has been partially obliterated by a rent which has removed a portion of it that part of the hide which has been torn away in the region of the head of the buffalo which provided the skin probably contained no painted figures. Considering the age of this record of a vanished time and a vanishing people, the state of preservation in which it has reached us is remarkable enough. In sum, this is just one example of the depth and richness of the stories contained in the Museum’s American Collections, which never cease to amaze and inspire me as Keeper of these materials.The museum has lately acquired a painted buffalo robe of that interesting class which provides pictorial records of the warlike activities of the tribes of the upper Missouri valley at a time when the prairies were still open to their war parties and bands of buffalo hunters. This in no way negates the consummate artistry displayed in its painting. There is evidence to suggest, however, that this robe (as well as the other four obtained from McGlaughlin) were not painted for Native use but rather for sale at the trading post. The robe would have been traditionally worn with the fur side in for warmth. After brain-tanning the hide, Tall Woman painted the design using vermillion (from China) and blue, green, and yellow pigments obtained through the trading post. The hide is that of a buffalo cow which was killed during the autumn when buffalo begin to grow their winter coats. The Buffalo Robe painted by Tall Woman/Charging Thunder is most likely NA3985, a winter robe with the design called “feathered circle” or “war bonnet.” This is a design reserved for robes that were worn by men. At the time of this census she was 41 years old which means that she would have been 38 when she painted the robe and at the height of her artistic and creative powers. Her name in Lakota is Winyan Hanska (Tall Woman). Charging Thunder appears as number 235 on the rolls of the Sihasapa (Blackfeet) Lakota. Beginning in 1885, and yearly thereafter until 1940, the census was conducted by the agent in charge of the reservation. Spotted Horn Bull were, I began to comb through the census records for Standing Rock Reservation. This was information which had never been entered into the catalogue and did not appear on the registrar’s cards. Here was information naming the artists of pieces which were in the collections of the American Section. When I first ran across this letter in the Museum Archives a few years ago (interestingly, while looking for something else), I was stunned. Charging Thunder in 1882…the other two were painted by Mrs. Gordon had asked: “I wish particularly to know at what time they were made and by whom.” McGlaughlin responded: “…the robe with the rising sun on it, was painted by Mrs. In it, McGlaughlin replied to a query from Gordon about five painted buffalo robes that the Museum had purchased from him the year before (1911). McGlaughlin, who ran a trading post on Standing Rock Reservation, in North Dakota. One hundred years ago this year (when the Penn Museum was just celebrating the 25th anniversary of its founding) a letter arrived on the desk of then Director, George Byron Gordon.
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