Post by grahamew on Jun 3, 2008 10:15:03 GMT -5
This is from the recent Cowan Auctions. Date is wrong, though. It's at least one year too late.
Fine Stereoview of Brule Lakota Visitors at Minnehaha Falls, Near St. Paul, Minn., lacking a maker's imprint, ca 1885, on pale yellow mount. Ink inscription, verso: Minnehaha Falls, Minn. The man standing at left is Standing Elk.
The two men sitting or crouching at the left and the middle man standing were used as the basis for figures in William Fuller's naive painting Crow Creek Agency 1884. The purpose of the painting was to illustrate the inevitability of progress and integration (look at the evidence of agricultural progress, the wagon, the steamboat, the agency buildings, the oderliness and the clothing worn by some of the men), although some of the Indians are at different stages of that journey. I was always intrigued by the man in the feathered hat and had assumed Fuller, a carpenter at the agency, had painted him from life - until I saw the photo. The man standing behind the two seated men is Standing Elk, but I don't know the names of any of the others. I wonder if any other photos exist from this session.
Here's the painting -
Fuller numbered and named the main figures in his painting, but, unfortunately, I haven't seen the key. However, the two men in civilian clothing are Drifting Goose and Wizi, a great supporter of the Hampton Institute, and I believe the man to their left is White Ghost, Wizi's brother.
Peter Hassrick in The American West Goes East ( www.tfaoi.com/aa/5aa/5aa183.htm), wrote this: "The acculturation process was gradual, painful and unrelenting. William Fuller, carpenter on one of the Sioux reservations in the Dakota Territory, painted his version, 1884, of this transformation in Crow Creek Agency, D. T. The Yanktons, a group of the Sioux nation, were persuaded to move to the Crow Creek Reservation east of the Missouri River in the present-day South Dakota. Here they were given promise of annuities for thirty years and rations until such time as they could become self-supporting. Education, too, was promised as a means of converting the nomadic Indians into self-sufficient farmers.
Already the "civilizing" processes are in evidence in Fuller's painting -- two of the tribe's three leading chiefs are attired in white man's clothing (1, 2, and 3). Beside them stands the interpreter, Mathew Wells (4), and mounted in the central foreground is his brother, Wallace (5), who served as the government agent. Below them on the river plain are the agency buildings, most conspicuous of which were the Episcopal Church (9), mill (20), and various school facilities (11, 12, and 13). Aside from the children, who were no doubt required to live in the dormitories, most of the Indians still preferred their traditional tipis to the clapboard dwellings of the whites. In the background a steamboat plies the muddy waters of the Missouri River. Even at this date, over ten years after the first railroads crossed the West, water transportation was integral. "
The original is in the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth (http://www.cartermuseum.org/works-of-art/1969-34); I first saw it on the cover of The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier edited by William H. Truettner; Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, 1991.
Below is Drifting Goose (taken from www.usgs.gov/features/native_americans.html):
Here is White Ghost, from liveauctioneers.com - "J. N. Templeman Cabinet Card of White Ghost, Sioux, Head Chief of the Lower Yanktonais Sioux at Crow Creek Reservation, D.T. Albumen cabinet card with imprint of J. N. Templeman, Miller, D.T. Three peace medals, presented on different trips to Washington, D.C., hang from White Ghost's neck. He wears fully-beaded moccasins and wool leggings with beaded strips. A single, golden eagle tail feather rises from his scalp lock."
You'll notice that he appears to be wearing the three medals in Fuller's painting, although he has two feathers in his hair.
Fine Stereoview of Brule Lakota Visitors at Minnehaha Falls, Near St. Paul, Minn., lacking a maker's imprint, ca 1885, on pale yellow mount. Ink inscription, verso: Minnehaha Falls, Minn. The man standing at left is Standing Elk.
The two men sitting or crouching at the left and the middle man standing were used as the basis for figures in William Fuller's naive painting Crow Creek Agency 1884. The purpose of the painting was to illustrate the inevitability of progress and integration (look at the evidence of agricultural progress, the wagon, the steamboat, the agency buildings, the oderliness and the clothing worn by some of the men), although some of the Indians are at different stages of that journey. I was always intrigued by the man in the feathered hat and had assumed Fuller, a carpenter at the agency, had painted him from life - until I saw the photo. The man standing behind the two seated men is Standing Elk, but I don't know the names of any of the others. I wonder if any other photos exist from this session.
Here's the painting -
Fuller numbered and named the main figures in his painting, but, unfortunately, I haven't seen the key. However, the two men in civilian clothing are Drifting Goose and Wizi, a great supporter of the Hampton Institute, and I believe the man to their left is White Ghost, Wizi's brother.
Peter Hassrick in The American West Goes East ( www.tfaoi.com/aa/5aa/5aa183.htm), wrote this: "The acculturation process was gradual, painful and unrelenting. William Fuller, carpenter on one of the Sioux reservations in the Dakota Territory, painted his version, 1884, of this transformation in Crow Creek Agency, D. T. The Yanktons, a group of the Sioux nation, were persuaded to move to the Crow Creek Reservation east of the Missouri River in the present-day South Dakota. Here they were given promise of annuities for thirty years and rations until such time as they could become self-supporting. Education, too, was promised as a means of converting the nomadic Indians into self-sufficient farmers.
Already the "civilizing" processes are in evidence in Fuller's painting -- two of the tribe's three leading chiefs are attired in white man's clothing (1, 2, and 3). Beside them stands the interpreter, Mathew Wells (4), and mounted in the central foreground is his brother, Wallace (5), who served as the government agent. Below them on the river plain are the agency buildings, most conspicuous of which were the Episcopal Church (9), mill (20), and various school facilities (11, 12, and 13). Aside from the children, who were no doubt required to live in the dormitories, most of the Indians still preferred their traditional tipis to the clapboard dwellings of the whites. In the background a steamboat plies the muddy waters of the Missouri River. Even at this date, over ten years after the first railroads crossed the West, water transportation was integral. "
The original is in the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth (http://www.cartermuseum.org/works-of-art/1969-34); I first saw it on the cover of The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier edited by William H. Truettner; Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, 1991.
Below is Drifting Goose (taken from www.usgs.gov/features/native_americans.html):
Here is White Ghost, from liveauctioneers.com - "J. N. Templeman Cabinet Card of White Ghost, Sioux, Head Chief of the Lower Yanktonais Sioux at Crow Creek Reservation, D.T. Albumen cabinet card with imprint of J. N. Templeman, Miller, D.T. Three peace medals, presented on different trips to Washington, D.C., hang from White Ghost's neck. He wears fully-beaded moccasins and wool leggings with beaded strips. A single, golden eagle tail feather rises from his scalp lock."
You'll notice that he appears to be wearing the three medals in Fuller's painting, although he has two feathers in his hair.
