Bird-on-the-Ground

[jinlian]

Bird-on-the-Ground's year of birth is given as 1847 or 1849 by the 1885 and 1900 Crow Agency census. According to the same source, he died on November, 2nd 1905.
He was married to Looks At One Kills/Takes at Knife and having two children named Pretty Eagle Tail (male, 17 in 1885) and Sings to the Enemy (female, died between 1887 and 1890).
One of Bird-on-the-Ground's war exploits was reported in Joseph Medicine Crow's From the Heart of Crow Country. In the late 1860s, Black-Bird-on-the-Ground (obviously, our same individual) announced he would raid a Sioux camp near Otter Creek. He succeeded in taking horses, but, in the attack and in the following pursuit by Lakotas, he lost two of his warriors, Well-Known Magpie and Yellow Leggings.


Other Bird on the Ground photos:



Late 1870s early 1880s: Bird On the Ground is sitting in the front row, second from left



Early 1880s: Bird on The Ground is sitting, first from right



A Throssel portrait, early 1900s



Another Throssel portrait, most probably taken in the same session of the previous one.

[jinlian]

Bird -on-the-Ground (here name is spelled as "Bird All Over The Ground"), early 1900s, uncredited.

[jeroen]

probably taken on the same occasion as above:

[tipifan]

Dec 8, 2009 8:30:11 GMT -5 jeroen said:

probably taken on the same occasion as above:

Jeroen, it ain't. The one you sent is a Curtis while the one posted before by jinlian definitely is from a different photographer and on a different occasion.

Unfortunately I cannot name the photographer. I just remember that back in the mid-1980, I had to pay more than 20 dollars for one glossy print at the Denver Public Library!

I don't think that these men just sat around all day to have their likenesses taken as if they were some fashion models, switching from one outfit to the next. That picture taking by Curtis & Co was remembered a long time after the events and the men joked and teased each other for having themselves photographed on "women's horses."

[jeroen]

tipifan, I think you are right. You 'd assume they are taken on the same occasion as Bird on the Ground is wearing pretty much the same items, but a closer look shows that the horse's tarppings are not identical. And, although Curtis and Throssel took their photographs in the same time period, I agree that was not necessarily on the same day!

[tipifan]

Jeroen: You're right, Bird-on-the-Ground almost always wears the same--his--shirt and leggings on the pictures (no matter who took them), and most often he wears the classic Crow hair bows.

I'm just not sure who took this photo -- it is neither among the Throssel photographs at the Univ. of Wyoming nor among those at SIRIS in Washington DC. However, the handwriting on the image is the same as on that well-known photograph of Plenty Coups with his daughter -- see attachment. It could be a clue to who took the photographs but I doubt that.

The blanket strip, by the way, that Plenty Coups wears over his arm, is now at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science ... at least it was when I was there in 1984; the piece is a real beauty!

Attachments:

[jinlian]

I agree with Tipifan on the two images being taken by different photographers and in different occasions. I have the Plenty Coups and daugheter picture posted by Tipifan as a Joseph Dixon one; the Plenty Coups one below (100% taken by the same photographer of the Bird-on-Thee-Ground one) was labeled as a Dixon too:



However, I have some doubts about the photographer since Dixon, as far as I know, took most of his Crow photographs between 1909 and 1913, while Bird-on-The-Ground died in 1905.

[tipifan]

Jinlian: I remembered another source to have a photo very similar to the one you posted, and indeed I found it in Barbara Loeb's PhD dissertation on Transmontane beadwork (1983). However, I can't verify Wildschut's authorship of this image as is suggested by the caption. At least, THIS one was taken on the same occasion as yours.

Sorry for the poor quality of the image, but that's what I have from the book You can't expect high-quality printing from Dissertation Abstracts in Ann Arbor -- beggars can't be choosers, or, better than nothing.

Attachments:

[jinlian]

Great image, Tipifan, thanks for posting it. I share your doubts about Wildschut's authorship too: it may have been just part of his huge collection (almost 400 negatives). According to the Smithsonian notes, at least 139 of the images originally credited to Wildschut have been in fact took by Fred Miller. However, I strongly doubt that the images we're discussing are Miller's works...