Rain-The-Face

[grahamew]

One day, I'll upload the Rain in the Face photos I have...

Meanwhile, here he is The World's Fair in Chicago, 1893, in front of Sitting Bull's Log Cabin. The woman to the left of the photo seems to be the one named Pretty Face in the George Spencer thread and she is name-checked in the text below, as is Lone Dog and Mary Hairy Chin, who I assume is Hairy Chin's wife and who isn't in the photo (and nor is she in the full version - see below). We've had this photo in the past, but this time I'll include a few close-ups. The final image is the entrance to the Sitting Bull's cabin exhibit















sittingbullcollege.wixsite.com/website/single-post/2019/01/07/Where-is-Sitting-Bulls-Cabin

[Dietmar]

This is indeed an intriguing picture. I got this list of Sioux attending the World´s Fair in 1893:

Sioux - Many arrived June 30 in Roddy´s group of sixty-one:

Black Bull – Sitting Bull´s cabin
Black Tomahawk – From Northern Cheyenne on Missouri River [Cheyenne River?]
Chasing Fly - Sitting Bull´s cabin
Cotton Wood - Sitting Bull´s cabin
Curly – Note: There was also a Curley identified as Crow
Charles Eastman – Wrote paper on “Sioux Mythology” for international Folk-lore Congress, July 18
Flat Iron – Attended opening ceremonies
Grey Eagle - Sitting Bull´s cabin
Mary Hairy-Chin – Midway Village
Kills Him Twice
Lone Dog – Midway village
Prairie Chicken - Sitting Bull´s cabin
Pretty Face (Sitting Bull´s niece) - Sitting Bull´s cabin, interpreter and artisan
Pretty Face´s husband - Sitting Bull´s cabin. Note: May be the one of the men listed in this section.
Rain-in-the-Face – On display in Sitting Bull´s cabin
“Red Cloud” – Young Native man claiming to be “the famous Sioux of Western notoriety” in Midway village
War Bonnet - Sitting Bull´s cabin
["Unfair Labor?: American Indians and the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago" by David R. M. Beck (Univ. of Nebraska Press), page 210/211

According to this list, Mary Hairy Chin was Sitting Bull´s niece and the interpreter. Note that Curly was Curly Head, an Arikara.

I think that War Bonnet is the man standing 6th from left (wearing a long breast-plate). Like Rain-in-the-Face, Pretty Face, Curly Head and others, he was photographed by George F. Spencer that year (1893) in Chicago.

As Jack Red Cloud was also photographed by Spencer, perhaps he could be the one of "Western notoriety", but this is just a tentative theory. He was indeed at the fair as part of the 1893 Buffalo Bill Show performer contingent, but this "Red Cloud" at 'Midway village' could easily be another person.

[grahamew]

And here we have Mr T. R. Roddy (aka White Buffalo - a name given by the Winnebago), the midwest dealer/collector who organised the Indian village (a separate entity to the Wild West Show which performed at the Fair.




Same man but younger? This was taken in Wisconsin where Roddy was collecting native material objects

Either way, I don't see him in the photo, unless he's the white man nearest Rain in the Face.



The Coffeyville Daily Journal

Coffeyville, Kansas

04 May 1911, Thu • Page 8

[Dietmar]

Rain-in-the-Face In Chicago.
Whatever may be said about the
spectacular careers of the rest of the
Sioux since the wars of 1876 and 1891,
says a Chicago special to the Pioneer
Press, Rain-in-the-Face cannot be
charged with having sought notoriety.
Until the Wisconsin Central train hauled
him out of St. Paul on Friday night he
had never been east of the Mississippi
river. The biggest town he had been up
to that day was Mandan, in North Da-
kota.
Rain-in-the-Face left Mandan, N. D.,
on Thursday. He was accompanied by
a son of Major McLaughlin, the famous
agent at Standing Rock. Before the
men left the agency the Sioux gave
Rain-in-the-Face a big sent-off. A steer
was slaughtered in sight of the agency
buildings, and gathered about the roast-
ing steaks and sputtering fat the war-
riors made merry until it was time for
the buckboard to start for the train.
Rain-in-the-Face is wonderfully im-
pressed with what he has seen. St.
Paul upset the old man's nerve, but the
roar of Chicago's streets upset him com-
pletely.
"Heap thunder," he said to his com-
panion, and then he would crouch upon
his crutches as though in momentary
fear of being hit by something. The
big domes of the fair and the mighty
roof of manufactures building filled the
old fellow with awe. He said he would
visit them when "his eyes were rested
and he did not see so big."
Sitting Bull's cabin on Grand river,
before whose door the old savage gave
up his life at the beginning of the last
war with the Sioux, was placed in posi-
tion at the Sixty-third street grounds
yesterday. It is built of oak and cotton
wood logs, with a sood roof. The door
Has been perforated in three places by
Bullets, and two holes in the floor show
Where deadly missiles entered after they
Has passed through the bodies of Bull´s
Sons.

Bismarck Weekly Tribune, April 28, 1893

The son of Major McLaughlin mentioned above according to other newspaper articles was Harry Mclaughlin.

[Dietmar]

Rain-in-the-Face was not only photographed by George E. Spencer while he was in Chicago in 1893, but also by Place & Coover:



Rain-in-the-Face by Place & Coover, 1893



Pretty Face by Place & Coover, 1893

[grahamew]

That's great, Dietmar


I'd thought this was a Place and Coover but his necktie's different. It's obviously from around that time.

[grahamew]

I'm currently re-posting as many Rain in the Face photos as I can find and I came across this: his Dakota/Metis-style coat at Heritage Auctions -

[grahamew]

I've gone through the thread and re-uploaded all the Rain in the Face photos I can find except the following, which allegedly show John Grass and rain in the Face and which have been referred to several times by a number of posters - so here you go:

They were supposedly taken by Stephen T. 'Dick' Fansler at a tenth anniversary celebration/commemoration of Little Bighorn on the Crow Reservation in 1886, when the Crows hosted their former adversaries. This would be a couple of months earlier than the visit where Sitting Bull was at first insulted and then welcomed by the Crow and later criticised for stirring up anti-US Government feelings.

If they were taken in 1886, this is too early for Fansler. It's feasible he was taking photos earlier, but I think he was in Ohio until 1889 or 1890 and he didn't open a studio until 1892 at Fort Yates after he was discharged from the army.

This is the clearest version I've seen of the image that purports to show Grass and Rain in the Face. Does it show either?
It doesn't look like Grass to me and how comfortably could Rain in the Face dance without his crutches? I don't think I've seen a non-studio shot of a full length Rain in the Face where he doesn't have his crutch when he's standing, never mind dancing. I will, of course, be happy to be proven wrong.



The other images were

#
















There are any number of similar images held by the Montana Historical Society, including this one, which surely shows the same men from a different angle:



Accompanying text:

Group of men, probably Crow Indians, dancing outdoors. Two of the men wear long feather headdresses decorated with horns. Some men wear breechcloths and bells. To one side are bundles and men in a wagon watching the dancers. Note: Bud Lake acquired this photograph as part of a scrapbook labeled 'taken on a camping trip of 10th Cav. from Ft. Custer, Montana, 1894-95,' and kept by William Henry Hay. Lake identified O.S. Goff as the photographer. Note: In April 2016, Grant Bulltail provided information about this photograph: This looks like some War Dance Society. Two men have horn headdresses with full eagle-feather trailers and pointed horn headdresses. The horns were heated and then bent and symbolize buffalo tails. Fringed leggings and vertical lines on leggings are military symbols and indicate the dancer is a leader of a war party. The long flat sashes are part of the breechcloth. The man in front in the print shirt has fringe made out of trade cloth and he also appears to be a pipe carrier. One man wears a dance bustle and another has a trailer coming off his head with what looks like squares with darker centers (made from some kind of bright shiny metal) indicating he is a member of a dance society and has done a lot of giveaways. One man carries a pointed stick and another has a large number of ermine tails on his shirt that indicate honors won in battle.

mtmemory.org/digital/collection/p267301coll3/id/5794

Fansler later occupied the studio that Barry and Goff had used so he possibly sold their work in his mounts later; of course, he took on Frank Fiske as an apprentice, who sold Fansler works in his mounts...

[Dietmar]

Thanks for all the work, Grahame.

I´m sure you think the same: these two above are neither Rain-in-the-Face nor John Grass. Someone wanted to sell pictures by coming up with prominent names and Little Bighorn fame.

[grahamew]

I suppose I should include this depiction of Rain in the Face by Kicking Bear:





Rain in the Face (here: Rainy Face) is the man with the bird skin tied in his hair but Rod Thomas has suggested the figures have been mislabeled and that this is Crazy Horse and rain in the Face is the man in the bonnet. See Rod's Rubbing Out Long Hair.

[Dietmar]

I got these from Ebay auctions:

[grahamew]

Wow! He looks pretty old in the top photo. Wonder if they're Fiske's work

[grahamew]

This is a drawing of Rain in the Face by Edward Esmonde from life - probably at Coney Island when he was with some exhibition or other in 1894:



This is Rain's diagram of Little Bighorn on the back of a buckskin jacket - made for Esmonde:

[nicolas (carlo)]

Apr 12, 2020 4:01:01 GMT -5 grahamew said:

This is Rain's diagram of Little Bighorn on the back of a buckskin jacket - made for Esmonde:

Never saw that one, very interesting!

[grahamew]

Apr 12, 2020 5:15:34 GMT -5 nicolas (carlo) said:

Apr 12, 2020 4:01:01 GMT -5 grahamew said:

This is Rain's diagram of Little Bighorn on the back of a buckskin jacket - made for Esmonde:

Never saw that one, very interesting!

It's in Cyrus Townsend Brady's Indian Fights and Fighters.