Simcoe County Museum Ledger - Lakota?

[grahamew]

Thanks, Carlo. Interestingly, there's an Oglala Iron Cloud in the Sitting Bull Surrender Census who was transferred from Standing Rock to Pine Ridge in May 1882

[carlo]

Yes, this was the brother of White Horse (Itazipco), born c. 1856. I believe he was known as Peter Iron Cloud in later years. Maybe he is our man.

Interesting side note: Crow chief Plenty Coups killed his other brother in 1874, name unknown.

[Californian]

Thanks for sharing this Grahame - that is quite interesting information. There are some figures depicted thereon that look Metis to me and thus it would have made sense that if the artist really was Iron Cloud of the Oglalas that these might have been made during the Canadian exile, however the museum seems to date these prior to 1877. Of course the Metis traded with the Lakota coming down across the line furnishing them with powder and ball and also cartridges for the more modern weapons. I wonder if the Simcoe Museum has some primary source documentation that would definitively pinpoint the artist or was it an attribution based on style ?

Dec 23, 2020 8:51:42 GMT -5 grahamew said:

I emailed the Simcoe Museum and am pleased to say Darryl Wines responded very quickly indeed.

"The ledger drawings in question are attributed to Iron Cloud (Mahpiyamaza), Oglala Lakota, c. 1851-?? We have a total of 14 drawings, many depicting fights with Crow warriors. It is believed they were completed prior to his temporary relocation to Canada in 1877."





it-it.facebook.com/mcmastermuseum/videos/1977438725734589/


I realise there are images where the iconography may not fit this attribution and it has been suggested to me that it is possible we may be looking at the work of an Arikara - which would raise questions about who the enemy figures are. Crow? Assiniboine? Or, are we just looking at evidence of the cultural borrowing that permeated Northern Plains life? I have asked for more information, so I'll let you know more when the museum gets back to me.

[grahamew]

When you talk about the Metis, do you mean the two men at the right of this drawing?



I took their headgear to be scarves/neckerchiefs worn over their heads. You can see this in several of Bad Heart Bull's drawings (drawing No. 17. for example, or 213) or like Crawler below:



In drawings, they are often associated with winter wear, which would fit with the capotes worn by the antagonists. I'll admit the lowest one looks different, however... though probably not a million miles from the other - or from this Hidatsa drawing of (or by) Lean Wolf:




I have contacted the museum for more information on the provenance and I'll let you know what they say.

I think there are several POSSIBLE hurdles in identifying these drawings as Lakota simply from looking at them. For example, if we read the drawings in the conventional manner and see the protagonists entering the frame from the right, here we have a man in the kind of panel leggings (and striped breechclout and hairstyle) usually associated with the Crow in Plains Indian iconography (though in reality, with other tribes too) entering from the right:



I realise, of course, that this isn't a hard and fast rule; moreover, we can see a Lakota in panel leggings - presumably booty or trade items) in this drawing by Jaw (unless he's captured a Crow woman wearing man's leggings...):




When I first saw the drawings, I wondered about this and the use of fringed cloth shirts by both protagonists and antagonists and often associated with the Crow (but also the Berthold tribes) - about which, more in a later post - and I contacted Ross Frank and (before he knew what the museum said about its provenance) he wondered about the POSSIBILITY (and I want to stress that he only said it was a possibility) that this might be the work of an Arikara artist and pointed me in the direction of Candace Greene's article on Arikara art in American Indian Art Magazine Summer, 2006, which deals with the Hazen collection which had initially been misidentified as 'Sioux.'  edan.si.edu/slideshow/viewer/?damspath=/Public_Sets/NMNH/NMNH-RC-Anthropology/NMNH-RC-Anth-Archives/NMNH-RC-Anth-Archives-NAA/NAA-MS/NAA-MS_154064A

No, I don't have Greene's article on the drawings - yet - though I do have her article, The Hazen collection: A new source on Arikara
material culture.

If we are looking at a set of Arikara drawings, would the enemy still be Crow or maybe Assiniboine?  Again, hardly exclusive to one tribe, but here's an Assiniboine coat reasonably similar to those in the drawings and when we look at the Sitting Bull autobiographical Bull drawings (the Fort Randall version), he draws himself fighting with Assiniboine warriors who wear the 'Crow' hairstyle.



Or are we looking a drawings, be they Teton, Yanktonai or one of the Berthold tribes, that reflect the cultural interchange on the Northern Plains? We tend to view 'Sioux' - Arikrara relations as hostile, but there were clearly periods when this wasn't the case (see www.researchgate.net/publication/312542357_Hereditary_enemies_An_examination_of_Sioux-Arikara_relations_prior_to_1830 ) and not just in the earlier half of the 19th century either:

[carlo]

Grahame, the coats in the drawings are capotes made from Hudson's Bay point blankets, apparent by their very distinctive details. They were popular as winter wear across the Northern Plains and Rocky Mountains.

See for pictures here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson%27s_Bay_point_blanket and here www.inquiry.net/outdoor/winter/gear/capote.htm

Color of the blankets would often be completely scarlet, gray, or blue, or (as seen here) white with four colored stripes.

[grahamew]

Ah, I thought they were another kind of capote because of the thin stripe, but yes, you're right, the colour arrangement makes sense.


I'm still curious who this enemy would be if the drawings are meant to be Arikara though. Did they have a history of warfare against the Crow? They don't appear to be Lakota, who you might expect to see in some of the drawings.

[grahamew]

I was going to leave this a day or two, but here you go...

While it was probably wishful thinking on my part, I have to admit that my first thought on seeing this was that it was Lakota, particularly since the ledger seems to have been collected in Canada. It seemed that the dominant figures – if we read the ledger in conventional fashion and see the figure moving right to left as the protagonist – are largely pitched against men wearing hair styled in what has come to be seen as shorthand among Cheyenne and Lakota drawings as one of the signifiers that identify them as Crow – though other tribes like the Hidatsa and Assiniboine also wore hair in that style. Similarly, some wear panel leggings and striped breechclouts, also shorthand for Crow, yet also worn by several other tribes, from the Nez Perce to the Cree, to the Hidatsa.



On top of this, a number of them wear a cloth fringed shirt. As Bill Holm has pointed out, this is another item associated with the Crow (Holm, quoted in Berlo, Spirit Beings and Sun Dancers: Black Hawk’s Vision of the Lakota World, p110).



In this Crow painting by Above, Captain of the Indian Police, the Crow, are drawn coming in from the right of the frame and routing the Lakota. Most of the Crow are wearing fringed cloth shirts and have striped breechclouts. (https://arc.lib.montana.edu/indian-great-plains/item.php?id=254)

Here’s an example of a fringed cloth from the AMNH, collected by Robert Lowie:



I know there are plenty of other types of fringed cloth shirts, like the later Ghost Shirts and like this stroud one in this Hamilton photograph of a Yanktonai, which seems to be have been influenced by military jackets...



... but these seem to be a particular type. In ledger drawings, the fringes are often red (though sometimes, as in the Simcoe ledger, blue) or there are marks painted on the shoulders – you can see these, though not the fringes, in any number of works by Amos Bad Heart Bull - and it’s immediately noticeable that he doesn’t illustrate the white shirts worn by the Lakota in this manner.




This portrait of White Man Runs Him shows a fringed cloth shirt with what appear to be beaded epaulets and possibly paint on the shoulders. In the Fouche photo below, Curley also appears to be wearing a variant on that style of shirt.




Here’s drawing by Spotted Buffalo, a Crow, where the red-fringed cloth shirts are clearly in evidence on two of the protagonists (https://arc.lib.montana.edu/indian-great-plains/item.php?id=234 )



However, all this needs to be tempered with the fact that in the Simcoe ledger, it’s not just members of the ‘enemy’ tribe who wear this type of garment:


If the ledger is read conventionally, the man coming in from the right is a member of the artist’s tribe and in this case, the protagonist is wearing a fringed cloth shirt.


And again - under that war cape, the fringed cloth shirt is clearly visible.

The fringed cloth shirt with the coloured fringe can also be seen in Stanley Morrow’s photographs of people living at Fort Berthold:


On the left is The Wanderer, a Hidatsa. The man on the right is wearing a darker fringe cloth shirt.


The man on the left here is the son of Red Cow, the Mandan leader.

For good measure, here's an Assiniboine:


And in 'ledger' art, here is Sitting Bull in the Fort Randall version of his autobiography, killing an Assiniboine wearing a fringed cloth shirt (and sporting a 'Crow' hairstyle):



I'm pretty sure I've seen photos of Blackfeet wearing a similar style of shirt. I'm assuming some of these were ready-to-wear trade goods and I might have an answer to that soon...

I don't recall seeing photographs of any Lakota wearing such a shirt, but I'm willing to be proven wrong. The nearest I've seen are white cloth shirts with blue paint on the shoulders in the Black Hawk ledger:


This is, of course, another ledger featuring many 'enemy' warriors (with 'Crow' hairstyles) in white cloth shirts fringed with red:


However, I realise, this may yet again come down to cultural borrowing among these tribes, particularly as the Berthold Indians had been a trading centre for some time. When you see the following panel, you might instantly think: Lakota Miwatani society, but then you remember the famous Bodmer painting and what the word Miwatani means...

[Californian]

Thank you Grahame, yes - I was thinking that the figures in the Hudson Bay blanket coats might be Metis, but to be honest I do not know  very much about the Metis' clothing attributions. Also the figures on the right seem to be somewhat unfamiliar with what I have seen in ledger art. I suppose I ought to study this intensely to better understand. Thanks also for the extensive elaborations and image samples, this is very helpful.

Dec 31, 2020 14:23:22 GMT -5 grahamew said:

When you talk about the Metis, do you mean the two men at the right of this drawing?



I took their headgear to be scarves/neckerchiefs worn over their heads. You can see this in several of Bad Heart Bull's drawings (drawing No. 17. for example, or 213) or like Crawler below:



In drawings, they are often associated with winter wear, which would fit with the capotes worn by the antagonists. I'll admit the lowest one looks different, however... though probably not a million miles from the other - or from this Hidatsa drawing of (or by) Lean Wolf:




I have contacted the museum for more information on the provenance and I'll let you know what they say.

I think there are several POSSIBLE hurdles in identifying these drawings as Lakota simply from looking at them. For example, if we read the drawings in the conventional manner and see the protagonists entering the frame from the right, here we have a man in the kind of panel leggings (and striped breechclout and hairstyle) usually associated with the Crow in Plains Indian iconography (though in reality, with other tribes too) entering from the right:



I realise, of course, that this isn't a hard and fast rule; moreover, we can see a Lakota in panel leggings - presumably booty or trade items) in this drawing by Jaw (unless he's captured a Crow woman wearing man's leggings...):




When I first saw the drawings, I wondered about this and the use of fringed cloth shirts by both protagonists and antagonists and often associated with the Crow (but also the Berthold tribes) - about which, more in a later post - and I contacted Ross Frank and (before he knew what the museum said about its provenance) he wondered about the POSSIBILITY (and I want to stress that he only said it was a possibility) that this might be the work of an Arikara artist and pointed me in the direction of Candace Greene's article on Arikara art in American Indian Art Magazine Summer, 2006, which deals with the Hazen collection which had initially been misidentified as 'Sioux.'  edan.si.edu/slideshow/viewer/?damspath=/Public_Sets/NMNH/NMNH-RC-Anthropology/NMNH-RC-Anth-Archives/NMNH-RC-Anth-Archives-NAA/NAA-MS/NAA-MS_154064A

No, I don't have Greene's article on the drawings - yet - though I do have her article, The Hazen collection: A new source on Arikara
material culture.

If we are looking at a set of Arikara drawings, would the enemy still be Crow or maybe Assiniboine?  Again, hardly exclusive to one tribe, but here's an Assiniboine coat reasonably similar to those in the drawings and when we look at the Sitting Bull autobiographical Bull drawings (the Fort Randall version), he draws himself fighting with Assiniboine warriors who wear the 'Crow' hairstyle.



Or are we looking a drawings, be they Teton, Yanktonai or one of the Berthold tribes, that reflect the cultural interchange on the Northern Plains? We tend to view 'Sioux' - Arikrara relations as hostile, but there were clearly periods when this wasn't the case (see www.researchgate.net/publication/312542357_Hereditary_enemies_An_examination_of_Sioux-Arikara_relations_prior_to_1830 ) and not just in the earlier half of the 19th century either:

[pontiachieft]

Amazing archive you have found, I am glad that there are sites on the internet where you can find Ledger Drawings of such detailed illustrative quality.

Great find.

[Dietmar]

Our member Eric has sent me a picture and some comments concerning the Simcoe county ledger drawings.

"One topic in the above discussion was the muslin shirts with colored fringe which were attributed to Arikara by one of the forum members and doubt was shed on the Lakota provenance.

In the Foto below, you see Standing rock Sioux at a grass dance.




One of the two dancers is holding a Crow Owner short/ravenskin lance.
One of the drummers is wearing a muslin shirt with dyed fringe like in one of the ledger drawings, supporting the Lakota attribution of the drawings.


singer/drummer on the left.x


Next to the fact that the raven skin short lances were a typical Sioux feature."



Thanks Eric!

[grahamew]

Thanks for posting these photos. The shirts look the same style as those worn by the Berthold and Crow people, some – I’m guessing – 20 years earlier.

To quote myself from above: “When I first saw the drawings, I wondered about this and the use of fringed cloth shirts by both protagonists and antagonists and often associated with the Crow (but also the Berthold tribes) - about which, more in a later post - and I contacted Ross Frank and (before he knew what the museum said about its provenance) he wondered about the POSSIBILITY (and I want to stress that he only said it was a possibility) that this might be the work of an Arikara artist and pointed me in the direction of Candace Greene's article on Arikara art in American Indian Art Magazine Summer, 2006, which deals with the Hazen collection which had initially been misidentified as 'Sioux.'

www.si.edu/object/book-arikara-drawings-anonymous-artist-ca-1875:siris_arc_255840

I guess now we know the Simcoe’s identification of the artist as Oglala is based on the item’s provenance, a lot of this will appear redundant; however, since my last post in this thread, I have read Greene’s excellent article in American Indian Art Magazine (Volume 39; No. 2; Spring 2006) . This is based around her successful reattribution of items in the Hazen collection in the Smithsonian as Arikara after it had been formerly identified as Lakota and she carefully explains her criteria for doing so, largely based on aspects of material culture, including body adornment and hairstyle.

She points out that the pompadour hair and clay-daubed netted extensions which usually indicate Crow in Plains Indian art, are, of course, shared by other tribes and it is the same with the panel leggings. One of those other tribes is the Arikara. Another identifier is the use of diagonal painted lines on men’s arms and X-shaped exploit marks on cloth shirts or bodies. None of these are seen in the Simcoe drawings on protagonist or antagonist.

She highlights the use of the fringed white cloth shirts amongst the Arikara Taroxpa Society and quotes Lowie: members “combed [the front of their hair] up stiff in the centre, and wore switches in the back. Owl feathers with eagle feathers in the centre were attached above the switch. All members were shell breast ormanments. Horn-shells [dentalium] were strung together in rows and attached to a strip of hide, which was placed on each side of the head. The shirt worn was generally of white muslin, with red flannel around the sleeves and shoulders, and along the border. (Lowie 1915:665)”


Anonymous Arikara drawing of man with face paint, tomahawk, and wearing painted buffalo robe, ca. 1875; Manuscript 154064B, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

However, as we can see from the examples in the posts above, they weren’t the only tribe using this type of shirt; indeed, Greene points out that many elements of Arikara material culture are similar to that of the Hidatsa and Mandan, with whom, of course, they shared a village after 1862 and their villages had been trading centres for years. She quotes Wolf Chief, a Hidatsa saying he wore “a shirt of white sheeting with the edges all trimmed with red cloth where it opened at the neck, and… red fringe hanging down.”

She questions – and challenges others to question - the almost automatic identification of drawings of men with pompadour hair, loop necklaces and panel leggings as Crow and refers to an example in the Barstow Collection of Montana State University where men in battle are dressed in the red-trimmed white shirts of Taroxpa and two have the netted hair extensions.

However, as noted in an earlier post, it is clear that the Crow too wore the trimmed white muslin shirts:


White Man Runs Him, Crow

This photo from Eric shows the Lakota did too:


She points out that among the Berthold tribes, “men often are shown with their hair clubbed on the forehead for battle. Compared to the small topknots appearing in the drawings of other Plains tribes, these are exaggerated in height and are often bound with a strip of red cloth.” Here’s a drawing from the Hazen collection she believes may be a self-portrait of Bloody Knife:


Anonymous Arikara drawing of warrior striking enemy with fur-wrapped lance, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution; MS 154064B 017.

The clubbed hair is wrapped in red, but I’m not sure it’s more prominent than the style worn by many men in Red Horse’s drawings of Little Bighorn. 


MS 2367-a Red Horse pictographic account of the Battle of the Little Bighorn; National Museum of Natural History, National Anthropological Archives

In this drawing by the Crow, Spotted Buffalo made on 27 March 1884, we can see two men with ‘exaggerated’ clubbed hair wrapped in red, one of whom might be a Crow or it is possible that both are enemies challenging the Crow who wears a white cloth shirt trimmed in red:


From MSU Billings; 1930.38

In this drawing by Plenty Coups, which, interestingly enough subverts the usual convention of the depicting the antagonists at the right, he shows a Lakota with clubbed hair bound with red cloth, a Crow with clubbed hair wrapped in white cloth and, just for good measure, the lead Crow on foot is wearing a white cloth shirt trimmed with red (though you’ll notice that the labelling is incorrect as far as tribal identification is concerned).


From the Charles F. Barstow Collection, Special Collections, Montana State University–Billings Library;  1930.36

There is only one man with clubbed hair in the Simcoe drawings, where he also wears a painted cape:



While it may be possible to see the man in the drawing below as a member of the Arikara Young Dog Society with a headdress made from flared magpie feathers topped with a row of eagle feathers and the “long cloth sash”, it is likely he is member of the Lakota Miwatani society.

Another issue may be the lance with the crow skin. Is it a Crow Owner’s lance? It is significantly different from those drawn by Bad Heart Bull. Or is it the lance of the Arikara Black Mouth Society, as the crow skin is at the other end of the shaft?

If we were to entertain the possibility that it was Arikara, it begs the question: who are the pompadoured and capoted enemy? Assiniboine? Is that lance with the Crow skin on it a Crow Owner’s lance (it is significantly different from the one drawn by Bad Heart Bull) or is it the lance of the Arikara Black Mouth Society, as the crow skin is at the other end of the shaft? Or am I being too pedantic? The bow lance is also noticeably different to the Tokala society lance depicted by Bad Heart Bull, though I have seen others that are more in keeping with the Simcoe depiction, such as this one by Joseph No Two Horns, another man who had crossed the border into Canada after Little Bighorn.




Collected by Rev. A McGaffey Beede, Fort Yates, North Dakota. Courtesy State Historical Society of North Dakota. Cat. No. 9380-LL

Perhaps these drawings simply underline the amount of cultural borrowing among the tribes of the Upper Missouri. Greene notes that photographs from the 1870s show Yankton men wearing leggings that have diagonal stripes and there are Lakota winter counts that have stroke marks over a victim's head to indicate a coup counted; both these features are conventions associated with the Berthold tribes. 

The puzzling picture in the collection remains the one showing the ‘enemy’ coming from the unorthodox side right of the photo, with panelled leggings, pompadour, striped breechclout and a necklace type associated with the Crow (or Arikara); yet the man he shoots seems to have the pompadour hairstyle under his capote hood…

[grahamew]

A Fort Reno ledger drawing in the Gilcrease:



Note the white cloth shirt fringed with red worn by the man being struck with a quirt by the Cheyenne. Further evidence of the spread of this style of shirt. No tribal identification was given. Ute?

The drawings were collected in 1887 from Cheyenne and Arapaho serving as scouts at Fort Reno, though many depict events involving the inter-tribal warfare of the past.

[grahamew]

More evididence of the wider distribution of the fringed cloth shirt:



Nez Perce village. Photo by WH Jackson, 1871


Two Nez Perce boys shortly after Joseph's surrender; Fouch, 1877