Nineteenth-century Plains Indian drawings

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 1996 by Janet Catherine Berlo

As the nineteenth century progressed, however, Plains men also began to draw on paper with pens, pencils, and watercolors. These new mediums were provided by explorers and traders early in the century and by military men and Indian agents in the second half of the century. The white explorers and traders who trickled across the continent and up the great rivers in the first three decades of the nineteenth century, the thousands of families who walked the Oregon Trail in the 1840s and 1850s, and the unstoppable tide of soldiers and settlers after 1860 changed Plains Indian life irrevocably.

The first native histories of these profound changes occur in the drawings made by Plains men. Large bound ledgers and small pocket notebooks pedestrian items used by traders and military officers - were appropriated by Indian artists on the Great Plains as new surfaces on which to draw. Sometimes the notebooks were among the goods exchanged in trade, and sometimes they were part of the plunder taken from dead white soldiers on the battlefield.

While continuing to record personal and tribal histories. these drawings on paper were also an important medium of communication between the indigenous and white cultures. The greatest number of surviving drawings are by Lakota (Western Sioux), Cheyenne, and Kiowa artists. Smaller numbers are known by Arapaho, Blackfeet, Crow, and other Indian cultures of the Great Plains.

Early travelers to the Great Plains repeatedly noted the power that visual images held for the natives, and how impressed the Indians were with some of the pictorial arts of their visitors. In the 1830s the artist and explorer George Catlin (1796-1872), who traveled throughout the West, described the eagerness of Crow, Blackfeet, and Assineboin men to see his work. He observed that his

painting room has become so great a lounge, and I so great a "medicine-man," that all other amusements are left, and all other topics of conversation and gossip are postponed for future consideration.(1)

The work of the Swiss artist Karl Bodmer engendered similar excitement among Plains Indian men. Bodmer was a member of the expedition up the Missouri River led by Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied (1782-1867) in 1833 and 1834. The prince noted in his journals the enthusiasm with which many Indians posed for their portraits, and how much they admired their detailed likenesses. Bodmer befriended Mato-Tope, a Mandan chief, not only painting many portraits of him [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE I OMITTED], but also sharing his paper, pencils, and watercolors with him. One of Mato-Topes own drawings from this time has survived and become a familiar icon of nineteenth-century Plains art [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE IV OMITTED]. Clearly, the Mandan chief had learned to appreciate the way in which details of clothing and figure can enhance a drawing, for in this self-portrait he carefully delineated his face painting, quillwork, feathers, and other details, appropriating Bodmer's delicacy of line and pattern. In contrast, the indigenous Plains drawing tradition was most economical, composed of semi-abstract stick figures and a limited amount of detail. This style, which was traditionally employed on hide paintings, also appeared on drawings on paper made throughout the nineteenth century [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATES VI, VII OMITTED].(2)

Prince Maximilian recorded his distress at seeing the Plains chiefs dressed in their best garments, which included commercially made British military coats. One native artist even depicted himself in such a coat in a drawing he made for Maximilian and Bodmer [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE II OMITTED]. Bodmer, of course, showed the Indians in "traditional" garb [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE III OMITTED]. After all, Maximilian had not crossed the ocean and traveled a thousand miles upriver to make scientific studies of Indians in British frock coats!

Rudolph Friederich Kurz (1818-1871), a Swiss artist who lived and sketched among the Indians of the upper Missouri River from 1846 to 1852, wrote several times in his journal that some Indians were very suspicious of the realistic likenesses he drew, probably because in the preceding decades virulent outbreaks of smallpox had followed in the wake of white visitors. In one entry he commented,

Not withstanding their mistrust, however, they were so impelled by curiosity that they would stand in wonder before the drawings and took great pleasure in looking at them and in recognizing Father DeSmet from some rough sketches I made.(3)

Pierre Jean De Smet (1801-1873) was a tireless Jesuit missionary who traveled the upper Missouri from 1840 to 1848 accompanied by Nicolas Point, another Jesuit. No doubt Point provided materials to the native artists who made drawings like the one shown in Plate XIII, for he was himself an architect and draftsman who made many drawings of the people and places he encountered in his missionary work.

Drawings were a common meeting ground for those few whites trying to build bridges of understanding with the natives. De Smet and Point emphasized that they used pictures to educate and convert the Indians. About his own painting, The Art of Conversion, shown in Plate VIII, Point wrote, "I made great effort to speak to them through pictures."(4) For the next half century the Indians too used pictures to educate whites about their traditions and histories.