Rain in the Face

[grahamew]

A tipi/cabin liner by Rain in the Face can be found in the Brooklyn Museum www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/55885 It was donated by the artist Edwin W. Deming, who received it from Rain in the Face during a visit to Standing Rock in 1889.

[grahamew]

The following are drawings by Rain in the Face collected by the artist DeCost Smith in 1885 and now in the National Museum of the American Indian:


Omaha Dance


Omaha Dance


Fighting a Crow


His signature

This image appeared on an auction site, dated 1881-85, collected at Standing Rock:

Buffalo hunt

[Californian]

DeCost Smith had a lot of interaction not only with Rain-in-the-Face but also Jaw/His Fight - the latter of which his brother Leslie Smith photographed at the time and DeCost created later a painting based on it. I always wondered why he did not interact with the far more prominent Sitting Bull until it dawned on me that DeCost's visit to Standing Rock likely coincided with Sitting Bull's absence on account of the latter's touring with Buffalo Bill's circus. It seems that most of the surviving tipi liners in museums and private collections, particularly those painted on canvas or muslin were made on commission by white people and so were most of the ledger art drawings.

[grahamew]

At some point, Rain in the Face drew a set of autobiographical images, now also in the NMAI. Unfortunately, while each comes with an explanation, its accuracy and the origin of the images in terms of why they were drawn and who for, isn't known. 


At left is Rain's tipi; at right is Sitting Bull making medicine in front of a 'medicine lodge' during Little Bighorn.


This one is supposed to show Rain at Little Bighorn and the number of wounds on the horse is said to show the number of horses that were shot from under him. There are, of course, some writers who question his role in the battle and I've seen one interview with Gall (that I can no longer find - but please point me in that direction if you know it) that backs this up - although this may well have been well after the battle when their paths had diverged and rain had become sort of a celebrity through the Whitman and Whittier poems and the Custer rumours.


This represents the two bears Rain had killed - on the same occasion?


Rain in the Face, out looking for his horse (hence the rope), comes across a woman out digging roots, and he steals her for his wife.


He 'steals' his third wife.


Rain has a dream about a buffalo hunt in which he has to dress as a buffalo or the buffalo will kill him, but while dancing, another Lakota shoots him with an arrow.


He has another dream about the buffalo and is once again shot with an arrow that enters his bosy up to the feathers; he removes the arrow, but the point remains, then he coughs it up and rubs earth on the wound, which quickly heals.


In a dream about deer, he is told to dress like one to avoid harm.


Another dream about deer. The antlers on the left are a bush; on the right, a feather. He holds a weed in his right hand and a wreath of sage bush in the other.


In a dream, lightning tells him to give a buffalo feast or he will kill him. He has filled a kettle with red hot buffalo tongues, which he then eats in order to live.

americanindian.si.edu/collections-search/search?edan_q=Rain%20in%20the%20Face