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The Great Plains
I. Who were the people of the Great Plains? Really there were no substantial groups before the horse was reintroduced by the Spaniards and the greatest abundance of traditions are concentrated on the woodland fringes. Little known of southern and central peoples.
A. Woodlands (Algonkian speaking) and Great Basin (Uto-Aztecan [Takic] speaking) people who were able to exploit the resources of the Plains in a brand new way.
1. Travel by horseback made killing bison a simpler task by spear or stampede.
2. Mobility allowed travel with the herds. Herds were huge.
a. travois
3. Hides became the main material for everything and was often highly decorated
a. Clothing and accessories patterns varied.
b. Housing is the property of women.
i. Hair removed from up to 20 hides.
i. Tipi started with a base of 3 or 4 poles.
iii. Expert cutters and seamstresses esteemed.
aa. Women formed guilds of tipi makers. The better a woman could cut and sew a tipi the more highly regarded she was. She was highly paid for her skills and good cutters were often quite wealthy.
c. Bedding is buckskin with the hair left on.
d. Food storage.
e. Dry storage.
f. Horse tackle, hunting, and battle equipment.
4. Horse became the currency of the Plains.
a. Control of herds = wealth.
B. Divided into northern and southern groups.
1. Northern groups bounded by Rockies (RM), Mississippi River (MR), and Southern Canada: Plains Cree, Blackfoot, Crow, Dakota Sioux, Cheyenne, Mandan, Osage.
2. Southern Plains groups bounded by RM, MR, and Texas/Oklahoma: Arapaho, Pawnee, Kiowa, Comanche, Apache, Wichita.
3. Common traits.
a. Skin garments
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i. Northern men wore shirt, loin/breech cloth, hip leggings, moccasins, and bison robes, women wore two piece dresses, leggings and moccasins, bison robes.
ii. Southern men wore loin cloth and moccasins and added robes and leggings in winter, women wore skirts and blouses worn loose at the waist and boot moccasins, bison robes.
b. Decorated horse trappings. (Midwestern barns)
i. Saddle blankets.
ii. Feather and quill horse masks maybe European in origin.
iii. Geometric designs in quills and beadwork on saddle bags (molded to horse’s body).
iv. Saddles for women had wooden core stretched with buckskin, decorated with beads, quills, paint, incising.
v. Reins and loops woven into horses mane and tail.
c. Parflech, rawhide container, envelope folded.
i. Held items of a personal nature.
ii. Designs geometric, perhaps assoc. with shamanism?
iii. Designs cut, incised (peeled like bark art), painted.
e. Carved stone pipes of Catlinite (bloodstone, pipestone).
i. Named after George Catlin, the first EuroAmerican to record, through drawings, the sacred pipestone quarry.
ii. Once open to all comers, under Sioux control since 1700s.
f. Feather bonnets.
i. Originated among the Sioux, used principally north.
ii. Special containers made for storage.
iii. Tall headdress favored among the Blackfeet.
iv. Southern men folk favored caps.
g. Some metal work, tin jinglers/tinklers.
h. Women’s saddles.
i. Hides used to record events; killed with owner.
i. Winter counts are assoc. with seasons not calendar years. Mnemonic devices for recording droughts or long winters
ii. Hung on tepee to brag re: hunting or war prowess or vision quests. No regular design forms.
iii. Paper and ink, pencil, pastel, etc, and ledger books eagerly adopted.
j. Painting on hide laid out in bustrophedron , spiral , and stick-figure designs.
i. Little depth, little shading.
ii. Many perspectives at once.
iii. Direction of tracks indicates direction of travel.
iv. Trajectory indicated by stippling between gun and target.
v. Images may be superimposed.
vi. Use of motifs restricted to owners, may be bought and sold.
vii. Hierarchical scales relative.
k. Shields ubiquitous. Made of rawhide and used only by men. Nonowners protected from the power of the shield by segregation. We have lost context and frequently disregard their power.
i. Design derived from vision quest, dreams, not casually acquired. Fasting usually involved.
ii. Design rights were commodities, bought and sold.
iii. Similarities of owners’ backgrounds make deigns appear similar.
iv. Design and techniques refined over time. Designs may represent a tick (tough to kill) or a turtle (protective shell) common among the Arapaho, or a dragonfly (swiftly darts away).
v. Early shields made of tough neck skin, shrunk and formed and dried and covered with decorated buckskin.
vi. Designs had a protective function, it was an amulet of hide, paint, and feathers. Thickness of shield mattered less than design regarding piercing.
vii. Late shields made of steer hide, decorated with trade pigments, and stretched over a wooden hoop.
viii. Latest shields were canvas over masonite.
ix. A sophisticated treatment of space with emphasis on negative space.
l. Sun dance is a misnomer. Sun is not sole element or focal point.
i. Derived from Dakota practice of auto sacrifice by “sun-gazing.”
ii. Danced to fulfill a vow given in time of distress by man or woman. Autosacrifice in trade for supernatural aide. Placation ceremony.
iii. Among the Kiowa begins with a hunt for a pole which will represent an enemy. Pole used in construction of dance hall and enclosure. Timing coincide with the summer hunt when tribelets gather for ceremonies of reciprocity. Bird bones pierce skin and muscle are attached to the ceiling by weighted cords. Dancer hangs or drags themselves until the bones rip through.
iv. Instead of anesthetic, dancers blow bird-bone whistles. The goal is transcendence.
m. Power fetish and medicine bundle.
i. Designed to give user (usually male shaman) a connection to supernatural powers and personages.
ii. Contains things assoc. with power like stones, parts of animal and plants, umbilical cord.
n. Horn and wooden effigy spoons for men at ceremonies.
o. Gaming ubiquitous among men and women and children.
p. Rapid adoption of innovation.
i. Whiskey, guns, household goods, cloth, processed foods.
ii. Sedentary to mobile life-style change with horses.
iii. Embracing books and paper for record keeping (White Swan).
iv. Adoption of emblems and images, flags and banners.
v. Rapid recreation of the shirt from hide tubes.
vi. Early adoption of Navajo blankets.
v. Early tribal newspaper Oglala Light.
4. Design conventionalizations.
a. Robe designs for men and women differed.
i. Mandan, Comanche, Dakota men used concentric circles or sunburst said to relate to war.
ii. Women frequently used hourglass derivative.
b. Moccasins “heelless shoe.”
i. Kiowas developed distinctive sole attachment by seaming while inside-out. All others seamed in the outside.
ii. Decorate with seed beads as in “clover” pattern of Sioux.
iii. Early mocs are beaded on sides only.
iv. Later and commercial use mocs beaded on top and often soles.
c. Taste in design varied by time and location.
i. Northern designs involved broad areas of bead work (1850), southerners used beads as accents or stripes.
ii. Blue, black, and white, (Czech) beads are early. Red and yellow added late.
iii. Paint preceded quills preceded beads. Can’t dye quills black so maiden hair fern acquired and substituted. Bird quills used too. Straw sometimes used.
iv. Northerners used more floral designs near woodlands, southerners used more geometric designs.
v. Farther south the fringes got longer to compensate for the wetter weather. The fringe served as a gravity drain and greatly increased evaporative surface area
5. The Comanche, Uto-Aztecan speakers, arrived c. 1540.
a. Lived in brush homes until the arrival of the horse. Name was Yaparika, or “root eaters.” Then they became “Lords of the Plains.” More food, more clothing, more miscarriages. Decline in raiding prompted by extermination of the buffalo, T.B., cholera, small pox. Loss of lifeways after Ft. Sill detention.
b. Clothing as described in I.3.B.A.ii. Heavily fringed. Boys wore no clothing until puberty, girls no clothes until 2 years of age.
c. Hair was worn full length with central part, often braided.
i. Women cropped hair in mourning.
ii. Men wore braid wrappers and scalp locks.
d. Jewelry and ornament favored by both men and women.
i. Males wore bone breast-plate, medal of peace, hairpipe chokers and breast-plates. Up to eight holes pierced in each ear. Scars tattooed to draw attention. Body painting.
ii. Women wore attachments on their fringed clothing, painted their parts and face.
e. Comanche
innovations and inventions
include
tin jinglers, boot moccasins, and the breast plate.
6. Ghost Dance revived in 1889 by Wovoka under pressure.
a. Grew out of Shakers, Dreamers, Mormons in the Plateau region.
i. Was a renaissance of Indian culture.
ii. Taken to Plains by Arapaho and Cheyenne.
b. Preached disappearance of whites and return of herds and ancestors.
i. Religion originally preached peace with whites.
c. Dance is a catalyst for reunion with dead.
d. Special clothing, decorated with red ocher from Mount Grant.
i. Believed to give protection from bullets.
ii. Designs were discs, which represented suns or moons,
eagles with outspread wings assoc. with shamans.
e. Designs inscribed on skin and skin pulled out as in ”sun dance” leaving a sun or crescent shaped scar.
f. Whites in Dakotas feared dances and ruled them illegal and sent the Army to disperse dancers. Resulted in 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee Creek. More than 300 women and children and men were hunted down and killed.
g. Ghost Dance "relics" sought after by collectors
i. Incredible high prices commanded
aa. Collectors place a premium on militaristic objects
ii. Collecting is akin to collecting relics of any genocide
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