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Post by tkavanagh on Jun 23, 2013 15:36:30 GMT -5
I believe these are the S. Cheyenne delegates to the 1875 "International Council" of the various Indian nations of the Indian Territory, held in Muskogee. I am not sure who this photographer was, but this was the occasion during which Jack Hillers took his various images of S Cheyennes, Arapahos, and Pawnees sitting on that rock outcrop. I have some other views of the Cheyenne delegation, as well as the Comanches Tabananaka and Cheevers, and their wives.
This Muskogee council was an outgrowth of the 1830s councils between the "5 Civilized Tribes" and the others of IT/OT. In 1834, after the Dragoon Expedition, the Comanche captive known as The Little Spaniard, aka Jesus Sanchez, returned to Fort Gibson with them, where he met in council with the Creeks and others, and received a "White Feather" of peace. There are a few other mentions of these councils, which I am (slowly) gathering into a larger article.
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Post by tkavanagh on May 13, 2013 6:06:01 GMT -5
# 1 is Whirl*WIND* Horse, "Tasonke Wyammiyommi', or at least that's how it is identified on the original prints from 1913. It is #W3717 in the Wanamaker Collection at the Mathers Museum, Indiana University. It was taken by Joseph Dixon (or one of his staff) on the "Wanamaker Citizenship Expedition." While most of Dixon's original materials. prints and negatives, are at the Mathers, the original glass negatives from1913 are at the American Museum in New York.
See p 168-169 of my book, North American Indian Portraits: Photographs from the Wanamaker Expeditions", NY: Konecky (1996).
tk
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Post by tkavanagh on Apr 27, 2013 18:26:07 GMT -5
Any one know anything about the cane Iron Nation is holding in the census report pix?
tk
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"SPC"
Apr 10, 2013 13:48:20 GMT -5
tora likes this
Post by tkavanagh on Apr 10, 2013 13:48:20 GMT -5
I don't know if this has been pointed out before -- and I don't really have time to search the whole site (as much as I want to) --
Some of you may have seen those blue pencil handwritten letters "SPC", often accompanied by "Copy neg #" on a variety of photos posted here [e.g., SPC 016045.07" in the "Unidentified" thread], and wondered, "What are those numbers and what do they mean?"
These are images from the "Source Print Collection" (SPC) from the Smithsonian's National Anthropological Archives. Originally the Archives of the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE), when the BAE was disestablished in 1965, it became, first the Smithsonian Office of Anthropology Archives (SOA-A) and then the NAA.
I am not sure of their entire institutional history of location, but from the med-1950s, they were in the Smithsonian castle, behind the Rose Window; documents were stored in fire-proof vaults in the tower itself. In 1968, the NAA moved to the basement of the Museum of Natural History (NMNH); most recently they have moved to the Museum Support Center (MSC) in suburban Maryland.
[As background, I have worked at the Archives in various capacities for almost fifty years: in the tower in 1967 as a volunteer fresh out of high school; 1968, in the NMNH basement as a "Private Roll" fellowship; 1989-92, as Illustrations/Artifact researcher for Vol 13 of the Handbook; 1992, Catalog of James Mooney photographs; and of course, innumerable research visits, most recently to the MSC last month. Been there, done that.]
Margaret C Blacker (Margaret as she was known) was the first designated BAE archivist, appointed in 1958. It was she who set up most of the photographic "Collection" categories, including the "SPC," and most of the writing on SI images is hers, sometimes with the initials "MCB."
As the name says, the SPC comprises "source prints." These are prints, photographic and otherwise, collected by Smithsonian people for whatever purpose and which ultimately ended up in the BAE/SOA-A/NAA. These are *not* (necessarily) prints of photographs produced by Smithsonian photographers, although many SPC images were in fact, Smithsonian products. The SPC also includes many images originally derived from other institutions collected by researchers for their own projects. Identifications made by various visitors to the NAA, sometimes valid, sometimes not, were often added to the images.
The SPC numbers are those assigned by Margaret, or by her assistants Joanna Cohan Scherer and Paula Fleming, both since retired. The current photo archivist is Gina Rappaport.
Since these are prints, they do not (necessarily) have original negatives associated with them. Thus, (until recently, via digital) any further reproduction had to come via copy negatives: thus the "Copy neg #."
[As an example of one of those "not necessarily" exceptions, the NAA has original prints from James Mooney's various field trips in the SPC. They also have original negatives, in other "collections". However, the two were not correlated; indeed, copies of Mooney images showed up in a number of different "Collections" at the NAA. As part of my Mooney Catalog, I was able to match up many, if not most, these photographic materials: orginal negative, vintage print, copy negative, copy print, etc., creating an "image number" with sub-number for different type of material or different location.]
Some, but not all of these images--although not their backgrounds -- are on-line (obviously, here) via the NAA. I have not tried to back-check posted numbers.
While I'm at it, some of these prints have the notation "OPPS." This is the Office of Prints and Photographs.
tk Esimotsoraivo
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Post by tkavanagh on Apr 6, 2013 18:51:25 GMT -5
johnnycobra: see other thread.
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Post by tkavanagh on Apr 6, 2013 18:30:18 GMT -5
Johnnycobra:
The names "Toponypeah" and "chop-pay", or any variant I can think of, apparently do not appear on any Comanche census list 1879-1942. Nellie Chibitty was born in 1895 and so could not have been the wife of Tomotsucut, who died ca 1880,
tk Esimotsoraivo
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Post by tkavanagh on Apr 2, 2013 6:54:04 GMT -5
Darlington:
Perhaps it's because (1) there never were the kind of distinct "cultural identit[ies] ... from way way back" of the kind you are looking for; or (2) powwow is not timeless, but is contemporary, and as such requires that this year be different than last year.
Now, if you want 'different', go to an Oklahoma powwow. preferably Comanche Homecoming in mid-July. ;-)
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Post by tkavanagh on Mar 26, 2013 14:05:51 GMT -5
FWIW, I visited Edward Iron Cloud at his home on Pine Ridge in the fall of 1971. His granddaughter, Ardis, worked for us at the Smithsonian was an Intern at that time. Her daughter was in one of my classes at Georgetown University in 1989.
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Post by tkavanagh on Mar 22, 2013 14:01:27 GMT -5
I'm gonna sign out from this discussion until you have time to read the text of my book and the Counting the Comanches paper. That way I don't have to repeat myself any more than I have to.
The acquisition of the horse and its effects on socio-cultural [incuding military] organization was a gradual, processual, trajectory. If the majority of horses came after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 (says I, Director of the Hopi Tricentennial, 1980-81), then it would have taken some years to acquire enough to risk them in war (Rivera noted, in 1726 or so [if indeed he was referring to Numunuu] that many were still pedestrian, using dogs for baggage transport). As late as 1749 (San Saba), Comanche horse-tactics included leather-armored horsemen.
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Post by tkavanagh on Mar 21, 2013 8:56:35 GMT -5
As for going out and buying _The Comanches: A History_ (aka _Comanche Political History_), for present purposes, portions of it are on-line courtesy of Google:
books.google.com/books?id=RFW8_SWARicC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
I often suggest that people *not* read it in linear order, but do it chapters 1, 2, 8, 3-4-6-7.
That is:
Chapter 1 lays out the "problem" I was dealing with: the problem of so many different ethnonyms. I suggest that the solution is politico-economic resource base (resource domain) innovation, exploitation, and exhaustion.
Chapter 2 is a reconstruction of Comanche political culture, normative and processual. In Raymond Firth's terms of social structure and social organization: The normative is the cultural ideal of what *should* happen; the processual is the "on-the-ground organization of people-on-groups is mediated by “the magnitude of the situation (as in men and materials), the alternatives open for choice and decision, and the time dimension.”
Each middle chapter deals with a specific time period and the various resource domains utilized by the different Comanches politico-economic groups during it. Each chapter ends with a summary of those domains.
Chapter 8 is a summary of those chapter summaries.
Chapter 2 has my thoughts on the processual effects of the introduction of the horse.
Esimotsoraivo
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Post by tkavanagh on Mar 20, 2013 13:58:03 GMT -5
Two comments: At the time of the "Comanche expansion," various Plains Apaches (I'm not sure, but I don't think the "Lipan" ethnonym had emerged yet) were experimenting with settled Pueblo-esque living, as in El Cuartelejo. It was a precarious experiment, as the climate in western Kansas was not particularly suitable for horti-agriculture. Moreover, a mobile force -- either pedestrian or horse-mounted --- has certain advantages over a stationary one. It would not take much to force those proto-horti-agriculturalists to pack up and leave. Now, as for Comanche population numbers ... As you probably know by now, if someone gives me a "fact" about Comanches, I will ask, "what are the sources?", "did that person know what he was talking about?" For the results of an investigation of said high Comanche population reports, please see Playing a Numbers Game: Counting the Comanches in History and Anthropology: An Historiographic and Ethnographic Review, an article I wrote years ago and posted to my old, nay ancient, home page at Indiana. php.indiana.edu/~tkavanag/count7a.htmlI no longer have access to it to edit it, but it's there. Some of the other articles on that page may be of interest as well: php.indiana.edu/~tkavanag/home.htmlHave at it.
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Post by tkavanagh on Mar 19, 2013 20:11:57 GMT -5
C trading horses to S. Cheyenne, probably, post-1840; Lakota? probably not. They would have been too far north. Remember, C's had declined to participate in Thomas Fitzpatrick's Ft Laramie peace conference because it was too close to Crow and Lakota horse thieves.
Speaking of which, another point I was getting at was whether C actually *bred* as many horses as has been alleged. Remember (again) that there were a number of decrees in Mexican New Mexico against the purchase of *branded* horses from C's. Of course, C did not brand their horses. Therefore, the inference is that (some) C's were dealing in stolen goods, in that case horses, just as in 1860-65, the Quahadadachokos, aka Quahadadetsakanu, aka Numukiowa, [later] under Patsokoniki 'Otter Belt', were stealing Confederate Texican cattle and selling them to Marcus Goldbaum of Albuquerque, who was selling them to Federal troops at Forts Bascom and Union. They kept this up even after the end of the Recent Unpleasantness, selling the cattle to Hispanic New Mexican ranchers, thus leading to the Red River War. [And, in 1872, Oliver Loving (of the Goodnight-Loving trail) raided up the Pecos River in NM, stealing them back.]
See, isn't real history a lot more fun than the made-up stuff?
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Post by tkavanagh on Mar 19, 2013 14:48:30 GMT -5
@ dt: "a high level of mastery of horsemanship." Um; good question. Ask yourself this: what is the evidence? Did the people who were making this assertion know what they were talking about? What were Comanches doing with all those horses? Eating them? How about selling them to Seminoles who sold them into St Louis?
@ grahamew: Yes, EotSM is watered down Fehrenbach. I think that's where Gwynne got his mistaken ideas about what's in T-301.
re: PH's book: its axe is in the other direction: see how great THE Comanches were. I emphasize the singular here because that's his approach: THE Comanches migrated out of Wyoming as a singular group, took a hard right turn at the Arkansas as a singular group, stayed there a while with the Utes (another singularity), and then moved as a singularity to the Plains. There is no internal variability, no need to discuss possible political-economic differences amongst them.
Anderson is an updated version of Liz John's _Storm's Brewed_. It bites off a lot, with the result that local group detail is lost.
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Post by tkavanagh on Mar 19, 2013 7:25:55 GMT -5
Sorry it's taken a while to reply: I've been away, doing actual work in actual archives
Only in fiction does "written as a good story" trump "the validity of the documentary sources."
So, do we agree that this is fiction and therefore not to believed.
I have too much other real historiography to do (finally get Joe A's book done; bring the history up into the 20th C) than to point all of the errors in this piece of kwitapU.
The problem with things like this is that all of those bad bits will get stuck in your head like a mondegreen (a song heard wrong) and you start to believe that they are true.
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Post by tkavanagh on Feb 27, 2013 7:13:03 GMT -5
dT: "In fact, I am now wondering if S. C. Gwynne actually read all of these references, or merely listed them. It would be disingenous for the author to cite references and not really absorb what they are saying."
Ah, young padowan, tuebitsi, you begin to understand. Tracking citations back to their sources is a most important scholarly activity. But beware, be wary, that way lies madness. Hic sunt dracones.
...
"The story is well told - which is what sells books."
We may disagree on the "well" part of the telling, but I agree, unfortunately, that the telling is "what sells books."
And, BTW, the ethnonym is "Comanche"-- one 'm'.
tk Esimotsoraivo
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