War Stories: Reading Plains Indian Biographic Rock Art 9781800739758

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
VIGNETTES
Preface. Navigating through the Book
Acknowledgments
Introduction
CHAPTER 1 BIOGRAPHIC ART AS PICTURE WRITING
CHAPTER 2 THE BIOGRAPHIC ART LEXICON
CHAPTER 3 THE PICTOGRAPHIC DICTIONARY
CHAPTER 4 CONVENTIONS AND CONNOTATIONS
CHAPTER 5 READING THE NARRATIVES
APPENDIX I SITE NAMES AND NUMBERS FOR FIGURE 1.1, NORTH AND SOUTH HALVES
APPENDIX II SOURCE MATERIALS AND SITE INDEX FOR ILLUSTRATIONS
APPENDIX III IDENTIFICATION OF SOURCE MATERIALS FOR FIGURES
GLOSSARY
REFERENCES
INDEX

Citation preview

War Stories

WAR STORIES READING PLAINS INDIAN BIOGRAPHIC ROCK ART

⤞⤝

James D. Keyser and David A. Kaiser

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2023 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2023 James D. Keyser and David A. Kaiser All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Keyser, James D., author. | Kaiser, David A., author. Title: War Stories: Reading Plains Indian Biographic Rock Art / James D.Keyser and David A. Kaiser. Other titles: Reading Plains Indian Biographic Rock Art Description: New York: Berghahn Books, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023004641 (print) | LCCN 2023004642 (ebook) | ISBN 9781800739741 (hardback) | ISBN 9781800739758 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Indian art—Great Plains. | Petroglyphs—Great Plains. | Rock paintings—Great Plains. | Indians of North America—Great Plains—Antiquities. | Indians of North America—Wars—Great Plains. Classification: LCC E98.P34 K499 2023 (print) | LCC E98.P34 (ebook) | DDC 709.01/130978—dc23/eng/20230207 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023004641 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023004642

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-80073-974-1 hardback ISBN 978-1-80073-975-8 ebook https://doi.org/10.3167/9781800739741

CONTENTS

⤞⤝ List of Illustrations

vi

Vignettes

xix

Preface. Navigating through the Book

xx

Acknowledgments Introduction

xxiii 1

Chapter 1. Biographic Art as Picture Writing

39

Chapter 2. The Biographic Art Lexicon

86

Chapter 3. The Pictographic Dictionary

102

Chapter 4. Conventions and Connotations

328

Chapter 5. Reading the Narratives

407

Appendix I. Site Names and Numbers for Figure 1.1, North and South Halves

425

Appendix II. Source Materials and Site Index for Illustrations

428

Appendix III. Identification of Source Materials for Figures

433

Glossary

442

References

446

Index

464

ILLUSTRATIONS

⤞⤝ Figures Figure 0.1a. Map, north half of Plains with extent of Biographic Tradition rock art shown in grey. Figure 0.1b. Map, south half of Plains with extent of Biographic Tradition rock art shown in grey. Figure 0.2. Ceremonial Tradition rock art imagery showing humans and animals. Figure 0.3. This typical Ceremonial Tradition composition shows V-neck humans, juxtaposed with a boat-form elk. Figure 0.4. Zigzag lines, spirals, and internal organs are sometimes used to show supernatural attributes of Ceremonial Tradition figures. Figure 0.5. This image of a Buffalo Shaman is identified by the bustle, headdress, and fly whisk he carries. Figure 0.6. The Hand of God and Bear-Coming-Out shield designs. Figure 0.7. This red pictograph shows a tally of defeated warriors and a captured shield war trophy. Figure 0.8. Early Biographic narrative scenes identified by the full-body shields and occasional metal projectile points. Figure 0.9. This tally of enemies on whom coup had been counted is the work of two artists. Figure 0.10. Early coup count scenes from the Late Prehistoric and Protohistoric periods. Figure 0.11. A tally of captured women. Figure 0.12. The spread of the horse across the Great Plains. Figure 0.13. Early horses at Atherton Canyon, Montana. Figure 0.14. Honor mark vocabularies. Figure 0.15. Blackfoot warrior, Morning Eagle, leads his war horse, elaborately painted with his war honors, through camp, 1908. Figure 0.16. Early Biographic scenes from the Foureau bison robe, early 1800s. Figure 0.17. Biographic scene from the Segesser I hide painting, dating to the early 1700s.

2 3 5 6 7 8 9 11 13 14 15 16 19 22 25 27 28 29

ILLUSTRATIONS ♦ vii

Figure 0.18. Combat scenes on one page of the Five Crows ledger folio. Figure 0.19. A scene from the Samuel Strong, Roman Nose ledger. Figure 0.20. These three scenes show exactly the same battle action in rock art, robe art, and ledger art. Figure 0.21. Winter count and pictographic census imagery uses many of the same lexical conventions and synecdoche as other Biographic art. Figure 1.1. Warning signs with pictograms are a type of picture writing. Figure 1.2. X-ray perspective is common in the Ceremonial Tradition for both humans and animals. Figure 1.3. Some Biographic images are also depicted in X-ray perspective. Figure 1.4. X-ray perspective includes the depiction of “unseen” elements that are known to be there but are not visible to the observer in real life. Figure 1.5. Unseeable attributes, such as sound, are sometimes shown in Biographic art. Figure 1.6. This Elk Dreamer carved in Montana bridges both Ceremonial and Biographic Traditions. Figure 1.7. Twisted perspective is relatively common in Plains Ceremonial and Biographic rock art. Figure 1.8. Tie Creek ledger drawing showing a man capturing an unseated cavalry horse while braving enemy fire. Figure 1.9. Several perspectives are evident in this battle scene. Figure 1.10. In this red-painted battle scene, the participants have been reduced to two ranks of short dashes and their tracks and horses’ hoofprints. Figure 1.11. This elaborate Hot Dance petroglyph commemorates the 1882 transfer of the dance from the Hidatsa to the Crow. Figure 1.12. Sexual capture, shown by a man reaching out to grab a woman’s breast or genitalia. Figure 1.13. Groups of entrenched combatants are shown encircled by a line representing some form of fortification. Figure 1.14. Camp circle arrangements can show tipis facing either inward or outward. Figure 1.15. Camp circles feature a defined perimeter. Figure 1.16. Hierarchical perspective shows an object or participant in a scene with an exaggerated size to denote its importance. Figure 1.17. Exaggerated length can indicate an object’s importance, or act as a way to connect elements of a scene. Figure 1.18. This combat scene tells a complete story using many conventions with a minimum of images.

31 32 34

35 48 50 51

52 53 54 55 56 57

58 59 59 60 60 60 61 62 63

viii ♦ ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1.19. The Rocky Coulee battle scene at Writing-On-Stone is a classic example of the “donut-hole” perspective. Figure 1.20. The development of the capture hand in Blackfoot Biographic art. Figure 1.21. Two women wearing fringed leggings. Figure 1.22. This painting is a progressive narrative showing a sequence of coups counted. Figure 1.23. This petroglyph of a man spearing another is an example of an explicit, monoscenic narrative any observer would recognize. Figure 1.24. These narrative scenes, illustrating a warrior touching an enemy to count coup, range from explicit to implied to inferred. Figure 1.25. Capture of an enemy’s horse is often shown without depicting the protagonist himself. Figure 1.26. Compositions using the Blackfoot Biographic art ideograms show two men’s success as horse raiders. Figure 1.27. This Ute warrior shows detailed weapons, hairdo, and items of clothing. Figure 1.28. This vignette from American Horse’s winter count is a biographic scene. Figure 1.29. A Crow man’s tally of his coups. Figure 1.30. This vignette from a coup count tally shows the protagonist only by his footprints. Figure 1.31. The Schoch war shirt is a masterpiece showing a career’s worth of war honors. Figure 1.32. This scene is a cyclical narrative showing a running battle near a train and a later adoption ceremony. Figure 1.33. Trees, such as these shown in a horse stealing scene, are rare in Biographic art. Figure 1.34. Painted elk skin robe by Blackfoot artist Big Nose, ca. 1893. Figure 2.1. Key narrative conventions are the same in all Biographic art media. Figure 2.2. Dancers in rock art and ledger art show the same characteristic postures and regalia. Figure 2.3. A corkscrew-shaped gun worm. Figure 2.4. A pipe-carrying partisan shoots an enemy. Figure 2.5. A quirt can connote many different things in Biographic art. Figure 2.6. Hoofprints can have a variety of meanings. Figure 2.7. The Tie Creek ledger shows a mounted warrior using a saber to count coup on an American soldier. Figure 2.8. Horseshoes depicted on a captured cavalry mount in a ledger drawing. Figure 2.9. This warrior shows Blackfoot “kill shots” to the head and chest.

64 65 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 73 74 75 76 79 80 81 87 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 95

ILLUSTRATIONS ♦ ix

Figure 2.10. Evolution of the horse stealing war honor ideogram in Blackfoot Biographic art. Figure 2.11. A Crow warrior’s drawing was latter tagged by a Blackfoot artist. Figure 3.1. A herd of Mature-style horses indicates a successful horse raid. Figure 3.2. A Crow object tally includes captured war trophies. Figure 3.3. Blackfoot- and Crow-style humans from various sites. Figure 3.4. Blackfoot combat scenes typically display humans in static postures, whereas Crow artists show combatants using more fluid lines. Figure 3.5. Humans are sometimes minimally portrayed, using only their shield, weapon, headdress, or other accoutrements. Figure 3.6. Women are only occasionally shown as warriors. Figure 3.7. This large battle scene includes numerous biographic conventions. Figure 3.8. A warrior dismounts his horse to count coup on a fleeing enemy. Figure 3.9. A handprint, indicating a war honor, is drawn on a horse’s hip. Figure 3.10. A variety of animals are shown in Biographic art. Figure 3.11. Hunting scenes are occasionally part of Biographic Tradition rock art. Figure 3.12. A horse raid scene shows many shorthand horses. Figure 3.13. Shorthand horses show minimal detail. Figure 3.14. Early horses are shown as boat-form animals or stick figures. Figure 3.15. Ledger style art is often quite realistic. Figure 3.16. The evolution of horse depictions in rock art, robe art, and ledger art. Figure 3.17. Tie Creek ledger drawing showing a mounted warrior surviving a hail of bullets to count coup on a soldier. Figure 3.18. This Crow combat scene uses the floating weapon convention. Figure 3.19. Ledger drawing by Flathead chief Five Crows depicting a battle. Figure 3.20. At this Montana site a warrior wearing an antelope horn headdress defeats an enemy on horseback. Figure 3.21. This wagon train shows nine wagons pulled by oxen. Figure 3.22. The Bierce Arborglyph shows Indians attacking a Red River cart and a flatboat. Figure 3.23. At this Montana site a hunting scene is shown above a horse raid.

97 100 103 103 104

105 106 107 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 113 114 115 116 119 120 121 123 123 124

x ♦ ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 3.24. According to tribal tradition, Crazy Horse carved this composition just after the Custer Battle. Figure 3.25. Scene from the Red Dog ledger shows a horseman killing a Pawnee enemy with his gun. Figure 3.26. These scenes show the sexual capture of women by touching their breasts or genitalia. Figure 3.27. This combat scene shows a warrior counting coup on a woman. Figure 3.28. Capture hand takes a flintlock gun from a mounted woman. Figure 3.29. Elk and bison are sometimes shown with an emphasized penis. Figure 3.30. Late Ledger Art-style horses show very realistic details. Figure 3.31. Women indicated by illustration of the vulva. Figure 3.32. Shorthand sexual capture shown only as a vulva-form coupled with capture hand. Figure 3.33. Detailed scene shows the adoption of a captured woman into her captors’ group. Figure 3.34. Coats and jackets. Figure 3.35. Military uniforms and priest’s vestments. Figure 3.36. Two cowboys, wearing distinctive brimmed hats, rope a Texas longhorn. Figure 3.37. In this combat scene, the lower figure wears a chief’s coat. Figure 3.38. Leather-armor coats shown with high collars and short sleeves. Figure 3.39. Images from the Schoch war shirt showing three defeated men wearing chief’s coats. Figure 3.40. A warrior with a long hairplate dropper is shown multiple times in this coup count tally. Figure 3.41. At Caballero Shelter, Texas, a horseman rides between two Spanish mission churches. Figure 3.42. Images redrawn from the Tie Creek Ledger Figure 3.43. Shaman figure. Figure 3.44. Sashes were a common item of clothing. Figure 3.45. An extensive fight scene shows a shield-bearing warrior struck with a Spanish socketed lance. Figure 3.46. On the left side of this panel, a woman wearing a dress is sexually captured by a man crawling up to touch her vulva. Figure 3.47. Moccasins are illustrated in various ways. Figure 3.48. This “bear warrior” wears bear-paw moccasins, a bear’sears hairstyle, and face-paint tear streaks. Figure 3.49. This Colorado petroglyph shows humans, horses, an elk, and a bear.

126 127 129 130 130 132 133 133 134 135 138 139 140 141 141 142 144 145 146 148 149 150 151 152 153 154

ILLUSTRATIONS ♦ xi

Figure 3.50. This unique panel shows unusual bow-spears with a projectile point at both ends and a bi-pointed lance. Figure 3.51. Mature-style Crow horse with realistic triangular notch cut in its ears. Figure 3.52. Garters, bracelets, and knee tails. Figure 3.53. Horseman wearing a long hairplate dropper. Figure 3.54. A group of celebrants, wrapped in blankets, gathers at a ceremonial lodge. Figure 3.55. Groups of men and women found in rock art are similar to groups shown in late ledger drawings. Figure 3.56. Blankets are uncommon in rock art. Figure 3.57. Men’s clothing and accoutrements. Figure 3.58. In this combat scene the central warrior holds his shield before him. Figure 3.59. Ledger drawings of cloud-shaped, German silver pectorals. Figure 3.60. This group of dancing warriors at a site in northern Mexico, are showing off captured war trophies. Figure 3.61. Elk dreamers wearing trapezoidal or triangular masks with antlers. Figure 3.62. A shield-bearing warrior wears a bird-beak mask and has a bird bundle tied in his hair. Figure 3.63. Early Plains combat featured leather armor for both men and their mounts. Figure 3.64. Personal body armor, shown as a long leather coat with short sleeves and a high collar. Figure 3.65. This combat scene shows a horse and rider (both wearing armor) attacking a tipi camp. Figure 3.66. Early Plains combat featured both armor and large shields. Figure 3.67. A horseman wears a necklace with a suspended knife sheath. Figure 3.68. This bear shaman wears rectangular earrings, bear paw moccasins, and pendants at his knees. Figure 3.69. Bear warriors show their power. Figure 3.70. Face-paint patterns found in rock art compared to robe and ledger art. Figure 3.71. This scene shows a striped-bodied man riding a stolen horse away from a village. Figure 3.72. Blackfoot painted robes show honor marks used since the late 1800s. Figure 3.73. Robes illustrated in ledger drawings show various exploit marks. Figure 3.74. Crow exploit mark denoting the striking of fourth coup. Figure 3.75. A horse wearing a necktie, juxtaposed with a picket pin.

155 156 157 159 160 160 161 163 164 165 166 167 167 168 169 170 171 173 173 175 176 177 179 179 180 180

xii ♦ ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 3.76. Headdresses. Figure 3.77. A possible White man. Figure 3.78. This scene likely shows the hanging of the Blood warrior, Charcoal, at Fort McLeod in 1897. Figure 3.79. Explorers Petroglyph shows a Blackfoot horse raid on William Clark’s returning party in 1806. Figure 3.80. Despite wearing a brimmed hat, the wounded man in the fortification is identified as an Indian or a mixed-race warrior. Figure 3.81. A horse raider escapes with three horses. Figure 3.82. Hairstyles. Figure 3.83. Self-portraits by Medicine Crow in the Barstow ledger collection. Figure 3.84. Animal medicine bundles. Figure 3.85. A dancer with a lightly abraded body wears an elaborate headdress, a feather bustle, and a bird bundle. Figure 3.86. The items of horse tack found in Biographic rock art. Figure 3.87. Armored horses in rock art. Figure 3.88. Crow horses and Blackfoot horses show differing morphology. Figure 3.89. Rock art saddles. Figure 3.90. Spanish Estradiota-style saddle. Figure 3.91. Various items of horse tack. Figure 3.92. Drawing by Mato-tope showing his horse. Figure 3.93. A tacked up horse. Figure 3.94. Spanish soldiers riding horses. Figure 3.95. A person holds the reins of two horses, each wearing a pack strapped to its back. Figure 3.96. A scene in New Mexico depicts a horseman whose animal is tethered to a Spanish Mission church. Figure 3.97. Spanish estribos de cruz cruciform stirrups. Figure 3.98. A “war bridle” made of a single rawhide rope with a honda loop serving as a rein. Figure 3.99. Cut picket ropes indicate stolen horses. Figure 3.100. A raider cuts the picket rope tethering a horse. Figure 3.101. A New Mexico scene shows the capture of feral horses. Figure 3.102. Bison scapula from Texas painted with a scene showing an Indian attack on a pair of cowboys. Figure 3.103. Horse headstalls in rock art and ledger art. Figure 3.104. Combat scene in ledger drawing by the Crow warrior “Above.” Figure 3.105. Decorated bridle bits. Figure 3.106. Scalps shown suspended from horses’ bridle bits in rock art.

182 184 184 185 185 186 187 191 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 202 202 203 204 205 206 206 207 208 209 210 211 211 213 213

ILLUSTRATIONS ♦ xiii

Figure 3.107. Spanish chain bits, Navajo tinkler chain bit. Figure 3.108. Spanish chain bits are often illustrated as a cluster of zigzag lines hanging directly from the horse’s nose. Figure 3.109. Spanish chain bits and Navajo tinkler chain bit in ledger drawings. Figure 3.110. Curb bit with distinctive metal rings to which the headstall and reins are attached. Figure 3.111. A horse with a curb bit showing circular rings on the shanks. Figure 3.112. This fringed forelock decoration is found at multiple sites. Figure 3.113. Beaded keyhole-shaped forehead ornament for horse decoration. Figure 3.114. Armor coverings are worn by four horses in this scene in New Mexico. Figure 3.115. This early Historic battle scene shows a variety of weapons. Figure 3.116. Throatlatch amulets shown in robe and ledger drawings. Figure 3.117. Stick-figure human amulet attached to the lightning reins of a horse. Figure 3.118. Tie Creek ledger drawing showing a horse wearing a cloth necktie. Figure 3.119. Horse wearing a cloth necktie at a site in Montana. Figure 3.120. Horse raids are frequently indicated by animals picketed next to a tipi. Figure 3.121. Plains warriors decorated their horses’ tails in a variety of ways. Figure 3.122. A horse mask. Figure 3.123. Feather horse bonnets are worn by horses at several rock art sites. Figure 3.124. A warrior with an elaborately decorated bear-paw shield leads a branded horse. Figure 3.125. Horse tack on Ute charcoal drawings in Colorado. Figure 3.126. Horse brands found as repeated examples in Biographic art. Figure 3.127. Branded horses in one Alberta scene. Figure 3.128. Stylized body markings indicate piebald or skewbald horses. Figure 3.129. A horse faces a large keelboat in this Wyoming scene. Figure 3.130. Combat scenes at Verdigris Coulee. Figure 3.131. A Texas battle scene. Figure 3.132. Tally of captured weapons. Figure 3.133. Spears show a variety of forms from simple to elaborately decorated.

216 216 217 219 219 220 221 223 224 227 227 228 229 230 232 234 236 236 237 239 240 242 243 244 245 245 247

xiv ♦ ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 3.134. Weapon flags decorate the shafts of various weapons. Figure 3.135. This early fight scene shows opposing forces of shield bearers and warriors without shields. Figure 3.136. A warrior with a rectangular wood-slat shield counts coup on an enemy. Figure 3.137. Partizan blades. Figure 3.138. Spanish socketed lances. Figure 3.139. Part of a ledger drawing by the Comanche warrior Yellow Wolf. Figure 3.140. Indian use of metal partizan blades at the Watson Petroglyphs, Oregon, and Bear Gulch, Montana. Figure 3.141. Shield bearer shown using an atlatl. Figure 3.142. Flintlock pistols are recognized by their curved, rounded-end hand grip. Figure 3.143. These combat scenes show classic Crow motifs and conventions dating to the 1860s. Figure 3.144. A horseman wearing an elaborate headdress faces a fusillade of fire from the enemy force. Figure 3.145. Long guns and their firing mechanisms. Figure 3.146. Shield-bearing warrior with a flintlock long gun. Figure 3.147. Ramrods being used to count coup. Figure 3.148. A rectangular shot pouch with strap and powder horn and shooting cross sticks shown in rock art. Figure 3.149. Knives are commonly shown in combat scenes. Figure 3.150. Clubs, varying from triangular to baseball-bat-shaped, held by shield warriors. Figure 3.151. Gunstock warclubs, with one, two, or three inset metal blades. Figure 3.152. Maces were clubs with one or two sharpened spikes at the distal end. Figure 3.153. Two types of swords are found in rock art. Figure 3.154. Metal tomahawks are shown in four distinctive types. Figure 3.155. Missouri war axe redrawn from a portrait of Hidatsa chief Addih-Hiddish. Figure 3.156. A bowman leads a group streaming out to defend their tipi camp. Figure 3.157. Quirts are illustrated in three primary forms. Figure 3.158. In this combat scene dashes indicate bullets streaming from the flintlock gun in the center to the defeated enemy. Figure 3.159. Shield heraldry includes a wide variety of geometric and naturalistic designs. Figure 3.160. Ethnographic examples of shield trailers and drapes. Figure 3.161. Freestanding metal projectile point incised as a petroglyph. Figure 3.162. Battle scene between shield-bearing warriors.

248 249 249 250 251 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 262 263 263 264 265 267 268 269 271 272 274 276 279 281

ILLUSTRATIONS ♦ xv

Figure 3.163. Scalps are shown in a variety of ways. Figure 3.164. A scalp is attached to the lance carried by this pedestrian warrior. Figure 3.165. “Box and Border” geometric motifs on women’s decorated hide robes. Figure 3.166. Pipes indicate war party leadership. Figure 3.167. Taking a partisan’s pipe. Figure 3.168. This rock art scene shows an Assiniboine Pipe Dance. Figure 3.169. This extensive coup-count tally in South Dakota includes numerous defeated enemies and captured weapons. Figure 3.170. Wounds are key parts of the Biographic art lexicon. Figure 3.171. Tipis are drawn in a variety of ways. Figure 3.172. Horse stealing scenes often involve lodges. Figure 3.173. A natural crack was used as a groundline for this villagescape. Figure 3.174. Conical, multipole structures, often with crisscrossed lines to represent their pole and bark covering, identify war lodges. Figure 3.175. Eagle-trapping lodges and/or earth lodges are identified by their odd form. Figure 3.176. Woman associated with a squat conical lodge representing a menstrual hut. Figure 3.177. Shield tripods are so far found only at southern Plains sites. Figure 3.178. This cluster of wooden buildings shows gabled roofs, doors, and windows. Figure 3.179. Various buildings are occasionally part of Biographic narratives. Figure 3.180. This church at a Texas site shows three crosses placed on top of the nave’s peaked roof and at both corners of the building. Figure 3.181. Mission church showing triangles and crosses on the roof. Figure 3.182. A pole barrier apparently served as a defensive rampart. Figure 3.183. Four humans approach a tipi. Figure 3.184. Piegan chief Bird Rattle carved this scene at Writing-on-Stone. Figure 3.185. A sketchy train engine and cab with a coal tender. Figure 3.186. Wagons of various sorts in Biographic narratives. Figure 3.187. Travois can often be identified only when found in scenes. Figure 3.188. People ride in a flatboat carved at a Kansas petroglyph site. Figure 3.189. Tracks can tell various stories. Figure 3.190. A Crow-style horse is juxtaposed with a cluster of thirty-three hoofprints. Figure 3.191. A charcoal-drawn coup-count tally in New Mexico.

284 285 287 288 289 290 291 293 295 296 296 298 299 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 310 311 313 315 317 318 319 320 323

xvi ♦ ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 3.192. The Bear-Coming-Out heraldic motif painted on a Crow shield. Figure 4.1. Red-painted blood shows wounds. Figure 4.2. Two people are fatally enveloped by outsized arrows in a likely revenge killing. Figure 4.3. Red-painted coup count tally in Wyoming. Figure 4.4. Two warriors holding fringed shields engage an enemy. Figure 4.5. Beside this tally of captured guns, enemies overcome are shown as Blackfoot “wineglass” style humans. Figure 4.6. Two warriors fight a stacked array of generic weapons. Figure 4.7. Attacking or defending forces can be depicted by a stacked array of weapons. Figure 4.8. A stacked array of guns with dashes behind indicates a group of armed combatants. Figure 4.9. Stacked arrays of generic weapons represent a group who could be either friends or enemies. Figure 4.10. A scene from the Tie Creek ledger shows a horseman striking an army tent. Figure 4.11. Three scenes show pedestrian warriors counting coup on enemy tipis. Figure 4.12. The trampling coup in rock art, ledger drawings, and robe art. Figure 4.13. Taking an enemy’s weapon as a trophy was considered a primary war honor. Figure 4.14. Horse-raiding scenes in robe and ledger art directly corresponding to rock art scenes. Figure 4.15. Horse stealing scenes were shown in a variety of ways. Figure 4.16. Additional ways of showing horse capture. Figure 4.17. Vignette showing the war record of Piegan warrior, Shortie Whitegrass. Figure 4.18. Creasing a Horse. Figure 4.19. Groups of horse hoofprints clustered together as a tally of stolen horses in robe art drawings. Figure 4.20. Group of horses tallying stolen animals. Figure 4.21. A Comanche horse raid in New Mexico. Figure 4.22. A coup-count tally showing enemies struck with spontoon tomahawks and a spear. Figure 4.23. Capotes were long, hooded coats made of a wool blanket. Figure 4.24. A possible capote. Figure 4.25. A tipi village as background for a horse raid is shown in stacked perspective. Figure 4.26. A horse-raiding scene on an Ojibway warrior’s breechclout design.

325 330 332 334 335 337 338 338 339 339 340 341 343 345 346 347 348 349 351 352 353 353 358 361 361 362 363

ILLUSTRATIONS ♦ xvii

Figure 4.27. Two bowmen ready for combat. Figure 4.28. Shield-bearing warriors often hold arrows at the ready. Figure 4.29. Fight scene shows a spear wielding horseman counting coup on a pedestrian. Figure 4.30. Scratching over of an earlier image to tag or obliterate it is called a “rubout.” Figure 4.31. Among the Lakota, a scalp hanging from a horse’s bridle indicated the animal had trampled an enemy underfoot. Figure 4.32. A wolf skin worn over the shoulder marks a war party scout. Figure 4.33. Two warriors riding a single horse indicate the rescue of a comrade in battle. Figure 4.34. A warrior carrying a shield and spear rides an armored horse to rescue a comrade. Figure 4.35. Four stick-figure riders shown astride a single horse indicate the rescue of comrades. Figure 4.36. This red-painted Thunderbird image shows zigzag lightning streaks coming from its wings and hailstones dotting its breast. Figure 4.37. Horses were painted with zigzag streaks to mark the animal’s power, speed, and agility. Figure 4.38. A lightning quirt carved with a saw-toothed-edge handle representing the zigzag lightning bolt. Figure 4.39. Spanish chain bits were often illustrated using a series of zigzag lines, symbolizing lightning and speed. Figure 4.40. Landscape features occasionally occur in Biographic art. Figure 4.41. Indian maps drawn on paper show natural features and many narrative elements. Figure 4.42. Landscape details occasionally feature in rock art. Figure 4.43. Trees feature in the narrative of a tally of stolen horses and weapons. Figure 4.44. This communally oriented scene appears to be a horse race, like some in ledger drawings. Figure 4.45. The capture hand is an abbreviated representation of a warrior used in various ways. Figure 4.46. This Blackfoot capture hand shows the direct barehanded touching of an enemy. Figure 4.47. Capture hands are used to indicate taking an enemy’s weapon or other war trophy. Figure 4.48. Sexual capture, indicated by touching a woman’s breast or genitalia. Figure 4.49. A floating “action hand” holds a weapon to perform an action.

363 364 364 365 367 368 370 371 371

375 376 378 379 381 382 382 383 386 389 390 391 392 393

xviii ♦ ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 4.50. Capture hands can be paired with exploit marks or ideographic elements to clarify narratives. Figure 4.51. Exploit marks were painted on various items to mark the owner’s war accomplishments. Figure 4.52. This X below the combat scene may be a coup-strike exploit mark. Figure 4.53. Hidatsa and Arikara artists drew lines above the head of a vanquished enemy to denote various coups counted. Figure 4.54. A successful stand against the enemy by fighting from behind defensive breastworks was symbolized by a single # or a series of them. Figure 4.55. Scout-service symbols painted by various groups. Figure 4.56. Crow leggings painted with war honors, including a bar tally with stolen horses, scalps, and defeated enemies; and quirts signifying horses given away. Figure 4.57. Cayuse and Nez Perce warriors used a horse track (either square or C-shaped) to signify coups, which they called “hit marks.” Figure 5.1. Rocky Coulee battle scene. Figure 5.2. Explanation of the lexicon elements used to narrate the Rocky Coulee battle scene. Figure 5.3. Superimposed art episodes at Joliet, Montana. Figure 5.4. Timber Creek style animals. Figure 5.5. Tally of coups at Lucerne, Wyoming. Figure 5.6. Enemy attack on entrenched warriors at 5GF1339, Colorado.

394 395 397 398

399 400

401 404 408 409 412 415 419 422

Vignette Figures Figure V1. A Mandan warrior’s illustrious career captured as a tally of coups counted. 77 Figure V2. This coup-count tally at Ellison’s Rock uses many conventions of the Biographic art lexicon. 83 Figure V4. A Crow bar tally uses conventionalized shorthand to document a warrior’s war honors. 181 Figure V5. Early encounters with firearms must have been awe inspiring. 225 Figure V6. Warrior artists often repurposed previous drawings to tell their own story. 308 Figure V8. This horse raid at Writing-on-Stone tells a detailed story. 384

Table Table 1.1. Types of pictorial narration.

72

VIGNETTES

Vignette 1. A Mandan Warrior’s Personal History

77

Vignette 2. Warrior’s Coup Tally: Ellison’s Rock, Montana

82

Vignette 3. The Elk Dreamer

177

Vignette 4. Deciphering A Crow Bar Tally

180

Vignette 5. Surviving the First Encounter with a Thunderstick

225

Vignette 6. Atherton Canyon Fortification Scene

308

Vignette 7. Rescuing a Comrade in Battle

372

Vignette 8. A Kutenai Horse Raid

384

PREFACE

NAVIGATING THROUGH THE BOOK

⤞⤝ Writing this book has been a monumental task. Likewise, reading it will require significant effort, but we feel the reward of understanding or interpreting the stories of Plains Indian people from centuries past will be worth it. Because the book is data-heavy and because there may be multiple entries for the same or similar images, we feel it necessary to clearly explain the volume’s structure. Initially the reader will note that we have listed many of the same images and items both in the section laying out the “Pictographic Dictionary” (chapter 3), where they are described in detail to facilitate identification at newly discovered sites, and also in the chapter on “Conventions and Connotations” (chapter 4), where we explain the ways such items are animated and interrelated to express the meaning the scene was intended to convey. To give merely one example, arrows are identified by their basic forms in the dictionary but later discussed and illustrated again in the connotations chapter to show how they indicate a warrior’s status as ready for battle. Many such items are shown twice in this way, and the quirt shows up in three different places. This repetition is necessary because the volume serves both as a type of pictographic dictionary (a simple list of items used in this picture writing) and also—in a linguistic sense—as a lexicon (where meaningful morphemes and lexemes are listed and explained). As such, a reader will use the volume in different ways for different purposes, and thus, the serious user will need to rely heavily on the extensive index provided.

Using the Appendices Because this volume is so data heavy, we include three appendices to assist the reader in identifying the ultimate sources for the illustrated images. For rock art images, Appendix I has site names and numbers referred to in the text and listed on Figure 1.1, and Appendix II includes an alphanumeric listing of all rock art sites referred to in the text, organized by state and province. Appendix II also identifies the source of and provides the cataloguing infor-

PREFACE ♦ xxi

mation (where known) for all ethnographic images that were used as sources for our illustrations. Finally, Appendix III identifies the source material for each specific illustration.

A Note Concerning Figures Because the stories encoded in these Biographic art narratives often depend on the identification of minute details, and nuances of a story may depend on a single detail, illustrating these drawings is key to accurately retelling these narratives. This can be difficult when attempting to illustrate polychrome paintings done on various media (stone, paper, and hide), but it is equally challenging for lightly incised petroglyphs that have often suffered damage by both natural and cultural agencies since they were originally drawn. Thus, we have used a few standard artistic conventions. That is, in our rock art illustrations, unless otherwise indicated, stippling indicates red pigment while light grey indicates areas damaged by erosion or human agency. For drawings from robes and ledgers, shades of grey indicate various colored pigments. We have attempted to use the widest variety of imagery possible to illustrate our work. For those interested in original source material, Appendix III provides the source for every illustration.

A Word about Tribal Names In writing for a generalized audience (rather than a solely professional one) we had to accept that many people would recognize only the commonly used names of many Plains Indian tribes. For example, nearly everyone understands that the Crow are the tribe that occupied south-central Montana and north-central Wyoming in the period when Biographic art was drawn, but far fewer would automatically recognize that same tribe by their name—Apsáalooke—in their own language. The same can be said for nearly all tribes. To constantly refer back and forth to a list of native language names corresponding to the common English tribal names seems cumbersome (especially when there are multiple orthographies used for some tribal names) and doing so risks decreasing the utility of the volume for the greater part of our readership. Therefore, we have tried to use the most well-known common names for all tribes in the area of our study. Only when we believe there could be confusion do we list the name in the native language. One further note is needed. There is always potential confusion when one names tribes of the Blackfoot confederacy, which are one of the few major Plains groups to have members living on officially designated reservations/ reserves in both the United States and Canada. The tribe in Montana calls

xxii ♦ PREFACE

itself the Blackfeet Nation (or Blackfeet Tribe), whose land base is the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in northern Montana. Known popularly as the Piegan (or South Piegan), the Montana tribe is most closely related to the Peigan (or North Peigan) who have a reserve in Alberta. Along with the north and south divisions of the Piegan/Peigan, the Blackfoot confederacy also includes the Blackfoot (Siksika) and Blood (Kainah) tribes, both of which also have reserves in southern Alberta. We have tried not to use Blackfoot tribal subdivisions in this book, though that has been necessary in a few instances where a Piegan individual must be specifically identified. In general, however, to avoid confusion in this volume, we use the term “Blackfoot” to designate the three allied tribes as a whole or to refer to them in general or to designate their common language. When we use the term “Blackfeet,” we are indicating people of Montana’s Blackfeet Nation.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

⤞⤝ We both became fascinated with American Indian rock art at an early age, and since that time, we have devoted more than sixty-five years to its study between the two of us. A majority of that time has been spent on the Plains, recording the narrative pictographs and petroglyphs that compose biographic art. Our studies have included many rock art sites but also painted buffalo robes, ledger books, and winter counts, and they have taken us the length and breadth of the Great Plains and even to museums in Europe. We have been fortunate to have opportunities to study at Writing-on-Stone, Bear Gulch, the Cave Hills, the Yellowstone Valley, and the Picketwire Canyonlands—all famous concentrations of biographic rock art. Throughout this research, we became increasingly interested in the stories biographic art illustrated and the fact that there were preliminary “dictionaries” that enabled us to read them. But prior to Keyser’s (1987) seminal work on a lexicon for Plains biographic rock art, no one had made the leap from painted robes and ledgers to these rock art drawings. Since Keyser’s first few publications on the rock art at Writing-on-Stone and in the North Cave Hills, which were the genesis of his 1987 article, we have published more than one hundred articles and books addressing Biographic art in its various guises. Along the way we have worked with and received assistance from dozens of colleagues who have shared site data and museum collections with us, others who have worked with us helping record and analyze various sites, and still others who have helped us gain access to different sites and collections. In alphabetical order we list these people: Susan Ashley, Mike Bergstrom, Mike Bies, Janice Bouma, Doug Boyd, Jack Brink, Craig Bromley, Arni Brownstone, Scott Burgan, Phillip Cash Cash, Jean Clottes, Stu Conner, Mike Cowdrey, Carl Davis, Bob Dawe, John Ewers, Pete Farris, Ken Fehyl, Mark Fitzsimmons, Mike Fosha, Angelo Fossati, Severin Fowles, Zane Fulbright, Susan Gray, Mavis and John Greer, Melissa Greer, Loren Haar, Joe Horse Capture, Sueann Jansen, Mike Jordan, Michael Klassen, Jeff LaFave, Halcyon LaPoint, Bill Lawrence, Larry Loendorf, Jannie Loubser, Stephen Lycett, Marty Magne, Carling Malouf, Tim McCleary, Ron McCoy, David Minick, Mark Mitchell, Audrey Murray, Becky Murray, Berta Newton, Jacquie Peterson, George Poetschat, Melissa Ray, Stephanie Renfro, David Rickman, Lisa Ripps, E. Helene Sage, Helen Schuster, Floyd Sharrock, Lorie Sijohn, Paula Sindberg, Becky Steed, Jim Stewart, Linea Sundstrom, Russ Tanner, Mike Taylor, Solveig

xxiv ♦ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Turpin, Tim Urbaniak, Dave Vlcek, Danny Walker, and Mark Willis. We also acknowledge numerous other people whom we have failed to mention by name but who provided much valued assistance. Museum Curators and park employees who provided special access to collections are Jack Brink and Karen Giering (Royal Alberta Museum); Darla Bruner (Pictograph Cave State Park); Hugh Dempsey and Georgeen Barass (Glenbow Institute); Baretta Due (National Museum of Denmark); Candace Greene (Smithsonian Institution); Wolfgang Haberland and Corrina Raddatz (Hamburgisches Museum für Voelkerkunde); Troy Helmick (Broadwater County Museum); Ernest Klay and Daniel Kessler (Bernisches Historisches Museum); Hans Lang (Indianer Museum der Stadt Zürich); Evan Maurer (Minneapolis Institute of the Arts); George Miles (William Robertson Coe Curator of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University); Nancy Merz (Jesuit Missouri Province Archives); Charles Rambo and Mike Fosha (Bear Butte Museum, Tie Creek Ledger); Fred “Scotty” Shearer and Nancy Shearer, and Megan Berry (Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park); Gaylord Torrence (Nelson-Atkins Museum); and Renate Wente-Lukas (Deutsches Ledermuseum, Offenbach am Main). Landowners and land managers who graciously provided access to sites are Walt Allen, the Blackfeet Nation, Robert Brubaker, Marie Cantrell and the Turner family, Kierson Crume, Kim Herzog, Marvin Kimmet, Macie Lundin, Tom McCormick, Bill and Johnny O’Hara, Mr. and Mrs. Howard Penrose, and Arlene Weppler. Susan Gray read the completed manuscript in draft and provided valuable comments. Funding for various projects from which the data in this book are derived was provided by Ray and Jean Auel, David Easly (Indigenous Cultures Preservation Society), Jacqueline Peterson (Sacred Encounters Project), Alberta Parks, Dominquez Archaeological Research Group, National Endowment for the Humanities (Travel Grant FE-21101-87), Montana Archaeological Society, Oregon Archaeological Society, and the USDA-Forest Service. Our previous research, which led to this book, has been published in a variety of professional journals. These include American Antiquity, American Indian Rock Art, Archaeology in Montana, Canadian Journal of Archaeology, Journal of Field Archaeology, Plains Anthropologist, and The Wyoming Archaeologist. We would especially like to thank American Indian Rock Art for permission to use parts of our recent article, “Hoofprints and Footprints—The Grammar of Biographic Rock Art” (Kaiser and Keyser 2020). In addition to these professional colleagues and organizations, we have been supported by our families during the decades that we did this research. For this Jim thanks Dr. Raymond C. and Mina M. Keyser and Karen McNamee. David expresses his gratitude to Alan Kaiser for taking him to see his first rock art site and Susan Caisse for her unwavering patience and support.

 

INTRODUCTION

⤞⤝ Plains Indian rock art is some of the most recognizable on the North American continent because it represents the tribes that dominated popular culture during the period of westward expansion. From the earliest explorers through the Indian Wars and then into the twentieth century, artists such as George Catlin, Karl Bodmer, Frederic Remington, and Charlie Russell competed with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show; ethnographers such as Grinnell and Wissler and films like Cheyenne Autumn, Little Big Man, and Dances with Wolves captured the attention of North Americans in portraying Plains Indian culture and the lives of famous warrior chiefs. The result is that these tribes—from the villagedwelling Mandan to the nomadic Blackfoot, Lakota (Sioux), and Cheyenne— are known around the world, and their warrior art is one of the most famous North American native art forms. The fame of this warrior art is also due in large part to its use in so many media, which were highly valued as collectables from the first contacts with Plains Indians. From southern Alberta to northern Mexico, artists, missionaries, businessmen, and soldiers all returned to Europe and the eastern United States and Canada with painted buffalo robes,1 decorated items of clothing, winter counts, and elaborate war shields. Ledger books filled with warrior art were captured when villages were overrun, but hundreds more such drawings were purchased directly from the warrior artists themselves—the most famous are those interned at Fort Marion, Florida, but numerous others used the drawings as “currency” at frontier trading posts during the last of the “Buffalo Days” (Berlo 2000b:12, 166). Today thousands of these artifacts stock museums throughout North America and Western Europe, and nearly every large institution displays one or more such items. Less well understood, however, is that this same warrior art occurs as paintings (pictographs) and carvings (petroglyphs)—popularly known as rock art—scattered across the landscape of western North America from Canada to northern Mexico (Figure 0.1a and b). Extending from the Rocky Mountains and upper Snake and Colorado River drainages eastward to the Black Hills of South Dakota and the Smoky Hills of Kansas, such rock art sites occur in Alberta, a dozen American states, and the Mexican state of Coahuila. These thousands of rock art images represent a first-person account of Plains Indian life that

2 ♦ WAR STORIES

Figure 0.1a. Map, north half of Plains with extent of Biographic Tradition rock art shown in grey. Dots represent major sites; circles indicate site clusters. Numbered sites, referred to in text, identified in Appendix I. Drawing by James D. Keyser.

could be read2 and understood by members of all Plains groups, friend and enemy alike. Through detailed study of this art and researching the numerous Plains ethnographies and ethnohistoric accounts that describe and document these Historic period cultures, scholars have recently learned to read these rock art images as well. The stories these paintings and carvings tell, written by the hands of their own tribal heroes, are riveting documents of these peoples’ struggles to retain their ancestral homelands in the face of encroaching tribes and the most determined foe of all—the westward-expanding Euro-American populace, who came as gold seekers, traders, military men, and settlers. In this book we provide an overview of Plains Indian Biographic rock art, describe how it functioned as a system of picture writing for the people who drew it, and compile the first attempt at a complete, detailed lexicon to serve as an aid in understanding and interpreting it.

INTRODUCTION ♦ 3

Figure 0.1b. Map, south half of Plains with extent of Biographic Tradition rock art shown in grey. Dots represent major sites; circles indicate site clusters. Numbered sites, referred to in text, identified in Appendix I. Drawing by James D. Keyser.

Plains Indian Warrior Art Plains Indian representational art from the last millennium includes half a dozen art traditions carved and painted by both men and women (Keyser 2004a; Keyser and Klassen 2001; Sundstrom 2004b). Despite their fascinating subject matter and intriguing imagery, we will not address here the Dinwoody, Hoofprint, or Columbia Plateau traditions because they communicate not about the daily lives and struggles of the artists but rather focus on the relationship of men and women with the supernatural. As such, these arts

4 ♦ WAR STORIES

are infused with mysticism and religion to the point that interpreting specific imagery is often impossible and experts must rely on general concepts of religion and cosmology to have a basic understanding of these pictures (e.g., Keyser 1992; Loendorf 2004; Sundstrom 2002). Likewise, we do not discuss the most common Plains women’s art—geometric designs painted, quilled, and beaded on clothing, parfleches, some bison robes, and other items. Though highly structured and often understandable based on detailed symbolism reported by many artists, this art tradition has almost no rock art counterpart. Additionally, as with the rock art traditions mentioned above, this art communicates primarily about people’s interaction with spiritual matters rather than actual events. Interested students can refer to the works of several distinguished scholars who discuss these designs and artifacts in detail (e.g., Maurer 1992:288; Taylor 1994:121–22; Torrence 1994; Wissler 1907). Instead, there are two art traditions that tell the everyday stories of Plains Indian cultures through the eyes of their warrior artists. Spanning the period from just before European contact (ca. AD 1300) to the period just after World War I, these pictographs and petroglyphs are firsthand accounts of tribal conflicts, personal glory, and cultural upheaval. Such images communicate even today—sometimes across several centuries—a narrative that was meant to be read and understood by anyone versed in the warrior art lexicon (Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997:xxviii; Keyser 1987; Keyser, Kaiser, and Dobrez 2015; Keyser, Dobrez, Hann, and Kaiser 2013; Petersen 1971:269–308, 1988:xvii). These art traditions are the Ceremonial Tradition, known predominantly as rock art, and the Biographic Tradition, known from three primary media: rock art, robe art, and ledger drawings.

Ceremonial Tradition Art Plains Indian Ceremonial Tradition art (Figure 0.2) began in the Late Prehistoric period and continued into the last years of the Historic period. The earliest known examples are pictographs and petroglyphs—our main interest here— but drawings in many different media were photographed and collected even as late as the early reservation years (Keyser 2004a). Ceremonial Tradition rock art of the Late Prehistoric and Historic periods shows primarily shield-bearing warriors and V-neck, rectangular-body, and stick-figure style humans. These figures are often juxtaposed with one another and with simple boat-form or rectangular-body style animals to form simple, typically static compositions (Figure 0.3). Such poses are termed “iconic” and were apparently structured as if for a cosmic audience. As such, illustrated human and animal figures regularly show detailed anatomical features, including both external genitalia and internal organs such as ribs, heartline, and kidneys—the places where spirit power was thought to reside. Facial features—especially eyes—are shown on

INTRODUCTION ♦ 5

Figure 0.2. Ceremonial Tradition rock art imagery showing humans and animals. Drawing by the authors.

both humans and animals, while horns, antlers, claws, teeth, and hooves are routinely illustrated to specifically identify various beasts, both real and mythical. Furthermore, humans often brandish elaborately decorated weapons or eagle-feather fans, and others have their arms upraised in supplicatory posture. Relatively simple costume details, including headdresses, leggings, shirts, and sometimes even body painting are portrayed. Occasionally geometric designs such as zigzag “lightning bolts” or spirals are incorporated into these figures or serve to connect one to the other (Figure 0.4). The overall impression one gets when viewing these iconic images is that they were drawn primarily to communicate with the spirit world. Often carved or painted at sites whose cliffside settings and hoodoo-dominated topography lend an otherworldly air to the location, these images frequently command imposing views of distant landscapes including sacred mountains and mesas or broad valley bottoms. In a summary discussion of such iconic expression, Michael Klassen has written: “Iconic images are static, symmetrical, [and highly] detailed motifs found alone or in small, juxtaposed groups. They rep-

6 ♦ WAR STORIES

Figure 0.3. This typical Ceremonial Tradition composition shows V-neck humans, one with feather fans and feather-fan headdress, juxtaposed with a boat-form elk. Drawing from original tracing modified by photo-tracing. Photograph copyright, Michael A. Klassen. Drawing by James D. Keyser.

resent sacred themes . . . [supernatural] beings, and medicine visions” (Keyser and Klassen 2001:34). These Ceremonial Tradition sites seem intrinsically connected to the “otherworldly” aspects of the locations where they occur. Combined with the frequent illustrations of sacred themes and supernatural beings, this has led Klassen (1998:68–69, 2003:177–82; Keyser and Klassen 2001:55–56) to characterize many of these Ceremonial Tradition site locations as sacred places and “Medicine Rocks.” This idea is borne out by such modern Indian place names as Deer Medicine Rocks, Medicine Creek Cave, Home of the Little People, and Place of the Ghost Writings (McCleary 2016). From both ethnographic clues and direct ethnographic and ethnohistoric reports we know these sites were places “where the spirits dwelt.” For instance, Writing-on-Stone, in southern Alberta,3 was considered so powerful a

INTRODUCTION ♦ 7

place that many people feared to camp there, and those who did heard strange spirit “voices” and left offerings to placate the supernatural occupants (Klassen, Keyser, and Loendorf 2000: 198). South Dakota’s North Cave Hills (and especially the most impressive site complex at Ludlow Cave) were known as “the home of the Buffalo” or “Buffalo Home Butte” where the great herds had originally emerged from underground to populate the Lakota world (Sundstrom 2004b:79–82). Indian scouts reported both Writing-on-Stone and Ludlow Cave to early military expeditions as places where “White Men” had drawn pictures on the rocks (H. Dempsey 1973:24; Sundstrom 2006:54–57). Figure 0.4. Zigzag lines, spirals, and internal However, by not understandorgans are sometimes used to show supering that this cultural reference natural attributes of Ceremonial Tradition equated “White” men with superfigures. Drawing by the authors. natural beings, in both cases, these early visitors remarked that they found no European images but only “rude drawings of men and animals” in typical Indian style. In addition to their designation as supernatural places, the imagery drawn at these sites is the sort used throughout Plains Indian art to document encounters with spirit beings and spirit power. A pictograph of Thunderbird at Writing-on-Stone (Figure 0.2x), incorporating lightning bolts streaking from its wings, hailstones covering its breast, and a symbol for the sound of thunder clutched in its beak, is nearly identical to others drawn and explained exactly as such by Historic period Blackfoot artists (Taylor 1997). Rock art animals connected to humans by zigzag lines mimic those documented by later artists as images of their supernatural visions. And bugling bull elk, with heads thrown back and bodies marked or surrounded by obvious vulva-forms, show exactly the same details and composition as Historic period drawings by Sioux informants illustrating the acquisition and use of “elk ‘love’ medicine” (Figure 0.2q). The artists who drew these Ceremonial Tradition pictographs and petroglyphs were obviously illustrating their own spiritual experiences and/or the denizens of their supernatural cosmos. Some artists would have been vision supplicants, seeking a spirit helper for assistance in the trials of life and after-

8 ♦ WAR STORIES

ward recording their contacts with supernatural beings from whom they were soliciting various powers. Such vision quest compositions often show the supplicant juxtaposed with a bird or other animal. These images are like those used in several rock art traditions to illustrate the visionary’s acquisition of a spirit helper. Other artists were religious specialists—shamans—who enlisted supernatural aid to control game animals or the weather, foretell the future, and cast various spells. Some images drawn by these “medicine men” likely illustrate their own religious rituals or practices, conducted individually or in groups, while others might show Thunderbird, underwater animals, or different supernatural beings to which their prayers were directed. Some images are shamans’ self-portraits showing their own transformation into spirit animals, including birds, elk, and grizzly bears. These typically show dominating therianthropomorphic figures that combine some animal element(s) with a basic human form (Figure 0.4). Quite common are “bear-men” illustrated with bear claws or entire paws for one or more hands or feet; but examples of men with bird wings, or a bird’s claws and beak, or a man with elk antlers and cloven hooves are known (Keyser, Kaiser, Poetschat, and Taylor 2012:74; Keyser and Sundstrom 2015:132–33). But not all Ceremonial Tradition images were drawn by shamans or vision supplicants. Some few show an important man or—very rarely—a woman (but neither an obvious shaman nor warrior) dressed in ceremonial regalia (Figure 0.5). Such finery includes detailed headdresses, items of clothing, fringed and decorated leggings, and decorated staffs or feather fans. While such humans might well be portraits of shamans or warriors (or both), no attribute identifies them as such, and they could just as well simply represent an important tribal leader or band chief. Warriors also drew Ceremonial Tradition images. These men stand stiffly, facing the viewer, and many carry a large, circular, full-body shield. Most of these men are almost completely hidden behind their shield, though in about 10 percent of these drawings, the warrior’s body is visible as if the shield were transparent. Certainly this transparency does not represent reality—such buffaloFigure 0.5. This image of a Buffalo hide shields could not actually have been Shaman is identified by the bustle, “see-through”—instead, it represents a headdress, and fly whisk he carries. type of perspective typical of Plains InDrawing by the authors.

INTRODUCTION ♦ 9

dian art where all parts of a figure are shown precisely because they really do exist, though hidden from view (Keyser and Poetschat 2014:12). Just more than half of the shield-bearing warriors hold weapons; either projecting up and out from behind their shield or positioned just outside the shield’s perimeter—often held in an outstretched hand. In the region-wide sample, such Ceremonial Tradition warriors are armed with nearly every type of weapon known on the Plains (except certain firearms and the spontoon tomahawk). A somewhat smaller percentage of V-neck, rectangular-body, and stick-figure style warriors are armed, but those that do have weapons have the same types as shield bearers. While the most common armaments for all Ceremonial Tradition warriors are lances and clubs, only a single atlatl is shown. Interestingly, bow-spears, which are well documented in ethnographic accounts, are much more common in Ceremonial Tradition art—more than two dozen are illustrated at ten sites—than they are in Protohistoric and Historic period Biographic Tradition art. Many shields are decorated with heraldic designs using both naturalistic and geometric motifs. Geometric motifs can range from simple to extraordinarily complex, but any meaning we can ascribe to them is at best an educated guess. Conversely, naturalistic heraldry shows a variety of human and animal forms—some of which have direct counterparts in actual Historic period shields collected from various tribes (Keyser and Kaiser 2014). Extrapolating from Historic period shield heraldry, we can assume with some certainty that most illustrated shield designs were meant to represent spirit helpers or medicine visions serving both to protect the shield owner and intimidate his opponent. Two of the most expressive such designs are Bear-Coming-Out and the Hand of God. The first depicts a grizzly bear as if it were emerging from its den—and metaphorically, the shield itself—to attack the owner’s opponent (Figure 0.6c, d), while the Hand of God shows a vertically divided shield with a human arm and hand reaching out from the darker half of the shield’s face

Figure 0.6. The Hand of God (a, b) and Bear-Coming-Out (c, d) shield designs. Dark grey stippling (c) is red paint. Drawing by the authors.

10 ♦ WAR STORIES

into the opposite “lighter” half (Figure 0.6a, b). This “hand of god” is probably akin to the being known as “Long Arm” who lives in the sky but reaches down to earth to punish some people and protect others. Ceremonial Tradition warriors (and some other anthropomorphs of the tradition) wear or carry numerous different items of ceremonial and secular finery. Aside from weaponry, warriors and important men wear many types of headdresses and hairstyles, face paint or tattoos, various items of clothing (including shirts, belts, breechclouts, fringed or decorated leggings, and moccasins), and feather bustles, bracelets and armbands, garters, knee pendants, and moccasin tails. In addition, some few carry rattles, branches, a fly whisk, or feather fans. The weapons of others are decorated with flags and pennants of several sorts and eagle-down fluffs. Shields are elaborated with feather bustles, feather fringe, and medicine bundles (Keyser, Kaiser, Poetschat, and Taylor 2012; Keyser and Poetschat 2014). In summary, like those compositions showing vision quests and shamanic rites, warriors’ drawings fitting clearly within the Ceremonial Tradition are static and illustrate the man and his shield and/or other weaponry and finery as if posing for a divine audience. Because no explicit action is illustrated, we know the artist’s attention was not to show what the warrior is doing but rather to show how he presents himself in a supernatural sense (e.g., his shield design and some items of regalia and weaponry indicating the type or potency of his spirit helper) and/or secular sense (e.g., some elaborations of armament and dress indicating his “persona” or his accomplishment of various deeds). In essence, the Ceremonial Tradition artist is portraying the who and a very restricted part of the what of a narrative, but most of the what, how, and why are missing. These missing narrative elements greatly reduce the information available about these compositions, but fortunately the specific details of costume and accoutrements, the stylization of body morphology, and the structure of the compositions themselves still allow us a fuller understanding of these rock art images than any other in the North American Plains except those of the Biographic Tradition. Ceremonial Tradition art began sometime during the Late Prehistoric period, certainly before Euro-American contact with Plains Indians, and most likely even before the European discovery of North America. Currently, the best estimate places the beginning of Ceremonial Tradition art sometime between about AD 1000 and 1300 (Keyser and Poetschat 2014:72–82). The tradition continued through the Protohistoric period (AD 1600–1700) and into the Historic period, with the latest relatively dated images reliably assigned well into the 1800s (Keyser and Sundstrom 2015:136; Sundstrom 2004b). This continuation into the Historic period conforms to the use of similar Ceremonial Tradition imagery drawn in a few ledgers and painted on various robe art items, including ritual clothing and tipi covers (Berlo 2000b; Ewers 1971; Keyser 2004a:11).

INTRODUCTION ♦ 11

Biographic Tradition Art Sometime within the last century or so of the Late Prehistoric period (ca. AD 1450–1600), before Euro-Americans first contacted Plains Indians, some Ceremonial Tradition rock art began to undergo a gradual transformation into explicitly narrative Biographic Tradition art (Figure 0.7). The exact timing of this change within this century-and-a-half cannot yet be determined with certainty, except to say that it occurred before Plains Indians knew of Europeans and before they had adopted from these newcomers any of the metal tools or horses that were to change their lives so radically. Whether this evolution began prior to the actual European discovery and colonization of the New World is unknown, but we believe it highly likely that its earliest beginnings predate AD 1500 since by AD 1700 Biographic Tradition rock art was widespread across the Plains, and artists were using several quite complex conventions to tell narrative stories. This gradual transformation from a relatively static, iconic art form to one whose intent was to recount explicit narratives of warriors’ glory is well documented by the work of Michael Klassen (1995, 1998; Keyser and Klassen 2001; Magne and Klassen 1991) at Writing-on-Stone. As expected with such a transition, the basic forms remain the same for both humans and animals, but what changes is the introduction of explicitly depicted action scenes into these rock art compositions. And with these earliest Biographic action scenes, one can

Figure 0.7. This red pictograph shows a tally of defeated warriors and a captured shield war trophy. Note floating, coup-strike bows and club (at bottom) and arrows piercing shields and wounding warrior in leg (at right). Drawing by the authors.

12 ♦ WAR STORIES

clearly see that the artists’ intent was to tell a story that could be generally understood by any other human observer conversant in Plains Indian lifeways of that time. Although many of these images are painted and carved at sacred sites—often identified as such by the earlier Ceremonial Tradition rock art located there—the focus of these drawings is on the everyday, and many sites are in quite pedestrian locations. The overall impression is of a secular art with a far different structure than Ceremonial Tradition art, which was intended for a completely different audience. In what is currently the most detailed discussion of this type of rock art, Keyser and Klassen have said: “[Biographic Tradition] images are active, asymmetrical, schematic compositions found in . . . complex integrated scenes, which depict specific historical . . . events . . . . [T]hese scenes recorded a warrior’s most significant lifetime accomplishments, such as war honors and brave deeds” (2001:34). By recording actual historic events, this rock art creates a pictorial history of Plains Indian people and their cultures drawn by the participants themselves. But such art is also tied to the supernatural realm, since a warrior’s shield is often emblazoned with an image of his supernatural helper, and the coups he is shown counting demonstrate not only his bravery but also the power of his supernatural helper. Nonetheless, it is the stories embedded in these drawings—which can reach out and speak to us even today—that make this art the most fascinating firsthand record of Plains Indian history still preserved. Unfortunately, even though it is almost certain that articles like painted buffalo hides, tipi covers, and decorated clothing were made during this early transitional period when Biographic art was developing from the Ceremonial Tradition, we have no examples of such perishable art recording these earliest images. Such things would long ago have decomposed in the harsh Plains environment. But, conversely, we are extremely lucky to have thousands of petroglyphs and pictographs across the region to provide a detailed record of how and where this evolution occurred. And recent studies utilizing the known dates for the introduction of Euro-American items into Plains cultures and the changes in native art that accompanied these introductions (Keyser 2010; Keyser and Kaiser 2010; Greer, Greer, and Keyser 2019) have enabled us to construct at least a basic chronology that helps date many of these transitional sites. The earliest Biographic scenes utilize shield-bearing warriors and V-neck, rectangular-body, and stick-figure style humans, but only at a single known site—Wyoming’s Red Canyon (48FR2508)4—do these scenes include animals (Figure 0.8). As would be expected, the few animals in these Red Canyon scenes are basic boat-form and rectangular-body style creatures. What sets these earliest Biographic compositions apart from their Ceremonial Tradition counterparts, however, is the inclusion of action. Warriors face off against one another (or sometimes a bear) in mortal combat, weapons either raised in

INTRODUCTION ♦ 13

Figure 0.8. Early Biographic narrative scenes identified by the full-body shields and occasional metal projectile points (c, d) date to the Late Prehistoric and Protohistoric periods. Drawing by the authors.

aggressive pose or actually striking the enemy. Many, but certainly not all, of these are shield bearers. Some winners lean forward in an aggressor’s posture, and often they have significantly more costume detail and more elaborate shield design. Some are significantly larger than the loser. Defeated warriors occasionally tilt backward, as if in the act of falling, with arms flung wide. Some defeated enemies have not yet engaged the winner with a weapon. Some winners are shown grappling in hand-to-hand combat and taking the weapon of a losing warrior. Usually this is shown in shorthand fashion by the weapon being oriented in a vertical, nonthreatening position and seeming to “float” from the vanquished foe to the victor. Such early combat action occurs both as pairs of fighting individuals and larger battle scenes involving as many as a dozen participants. Some individual actions show a shield bearer facing off against an unshielded opponent, but many more such scenes show two shield-bearing warriors or two V-neck warriors in direct combat. However, all early battle scenes include a few participants without shields, and sometimes they even outnumber shield bearers. These early combat scenes occur throughout the northern Plains, with larger battles scattered from Williams Coulee (EcPl-25), Alberta, to the Gateway Site (48LN348) in southwestern Wyoming. Other notably early Biographic compositions are coup counts and coupcount tallies (Figures 0.7–0.9), depicting specific acts of bravery and war hon-

14 ♦ WAR STORIES

Figure 0.9. This tally of enemies on whom coup had been counted is the work of two artists. The second artist added the four people on the right. Note the richness of detail for weaponry. Drawing by the authors.

ors. Such war honors—called coups—included a variety of actions ranging from touching or killing an enemy to taking his weapon or scalp to braving an enemy’s overwhelming firepower or serving as the leader of a war party. From the earliest days of coup counting, capturing an enemy woman was accorded high honor. After the introduction of the horse in the first decades of the 1700s, stealing an enemy’s horse became a paramount coup and various uses of the horse in warfare (such as trampling an enemy underfoot, relinquishing the advantage of one’s mount to enter combat afoot, riding by and striking an enemy with your quirt, and giving away horses to less affluent tribesmen) became specifically noted honors. Some tribes commemorated even lesser, secondary honors, including being wounded, acting as a war party scout, or fighting from behind fortifications (Keyser and Klassen 2001:267). For several tribes there was a hierarchy of coups that included being the first through fourth person to touch an enemy, taking something from him in hand-to-hand combat, leading a war party, and stealing an enemy’s best horse from where it was picketed at his tipi. But merely performing these deeds was not enough. To validate his status, a warrior had to recount his coups at various tribal gatherings and depict them on personal equipment and clothing and as rock art.5 Sometimes these images are full-fledged action scenes detailing how various coups were performed. Other recounts were in the form of tallies, where vanquished enemies, captured women, captured weapons, and other war booty were listed by illustrating them in a group. With defeated enemies, often the particular weapon used to strike the person was illustrated in meticulous detail. The earliest coup-count rock art shows a standing or falling warrior who is struck by a floating weapon. There are also a few tallies illustrating a victorious warrior’s brave deeds in the form of a row of multiple figures showing both vanquished enemies struck with various weapons and items of war booty captured on the battlefield. About a dozen such early coup-count images are scattered from Alberta to Wyoming, and early tallies of coups are found at site DgOv-83 in Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park, three sites in Montana, and a site in northern Wyoming (Keyser 2017b; Keyser and Poetschat 2014:167, 244;

INTRODUCTION ♦ 15

Keyser, Kaiser, Poetschat, and Taylor 2012:269–74). The early coup-count compositions (Figures 0.7, 0.10) typically show an enemy warrior (often but not always a shield bearer) being hit with a coup-strike weapon. Rather than being held by a winning combatant, however, these weapons float free to strike the enemy’s body or shield. In this more abstracted narrative, the floating weapon is usually the only thing indicating the scene’s protagonist. Coup-count tallies are more conventionalized compositions. Six such very early examples are currently known, all characterized by shield-bearing warriors and/or V-neck humans hit by coup-strike weapons or capture hands (a disembodied hand or arm and hand, signifying the protagonist’s bare-hand touch to count coup or capture an enemy). These images are often aligned in a row with one or more captured war trophies (Keyser 2017b). The shieldbearing warriors all carry full-body-size shields, indicative of a Late Prehistoric or early Protohistoric period age. Three of these tally compositions have been extensively studied and recorded in detail. One at DgOv-83 (Figure 0.7) shows two defeated enemies standing side by side, both struck with multiple weapons, and a captured shield aligned with them (Keyser 2017b). Both warriors are pierced by arrows and struck on the head and shoulders (or upper-right shield margin) by a floating “coup-strike” bow. One warrior is also hit with a club positioned just to the right of his legs. A lance stands just to the left of this warrior, which may mean the tally’s creator captured it from him; but the other is unarmed (as though his weapon were taken by another combatant). To the left of both warriors, but carefully aligned in the short row, is an undecorated circle representing a captured shield—a composition similar to later Historic period examples. The absence of metal projectile points in this composition, combined with the full-body-size shields, is persuasive evidence that it dates to the Late Prehistoric period (at least pre-AD 1600 and quite possibly one or two centuries earlier). Two tallies at Montana’s Bear Gulch site (24FR2) are approximately contemporaneous with the one at DgOv-83. The simplest shows two side-by-side women both grabbed in their genital or breast areas by a capture hand to

Figure 0.10. Early coup count scenes from the Late Prehistoric and Protohistoric periods typically involve floating coup-strike weapons. Drawing by the authors.

16 ♦ WAR STORIES

indicate they were taken captive by the tally’s creator (Figure 0.11). The second composition—clearly the product of two different artists—is much more complex. It is a row of eleven scratched humans (Figure 0.9), several of whom have obviously had coup counted on them (Keyser 2011e). Initially, the first artist drew himself bravely facing a nearly overwhelming fusillade of enemy arrow fire (represented by twenty-two flying arrows, only one or two of which slightly wound him), followed by four enemy warriors on whom he has counted coup by touching each with a bow-spear or a highly decorated arrow. Then come two women who stand under an over-arching bow-spear positioned to indicate their capture and control. A later artist, recognizing the first man’s coupcount tally, added his own tally of four V-neck enemy warriors to complete the row, but he did not clearly illustrate how these enemies were overcome. The classic V-neck style humans (one of whom is also a shield-bearing warrior) combined with the full-body-size shields and metal projectile points shown on three arrows and three bow-spears date this tally to the early part of the Protohistoric period, sometime between approximately AD 1620 and 1700. Based on stylistic criteria and superimpositions of similar figures at Bear Gulch, the tally of two women taken by the capture hand might be as much as a century older than the longer lineup, but it could just as easily date sometime in the 1600s (Keyser, Kaiser, Poetschat, and Taylor 2012:233–37). Despite these relatively simple beginnings, the development of action scenes and the focus on actual events marked a radical change in the purpose of Plains Indian rock art. Then, just as this relatively slow evolution was happening, Plains Indian cultures were exposed to an onslaught of events that

Figure 0.11. A tally of captured women. Note the breasts (at right) and emphasized hips on both. Drawing by the authors.

INTRODUCTION ♦ 17

transformed everything. The initial incidents were neither large-scale nor particularly disruptive. Sometime in the late 1500s or first decades of the 1600s, strange diseases—against which the natives had no immunity—first began to appear. But unlike the second wave of such epidemics a century or two later, these first exposures were not especially detrimental on a society-wide scale. Contacts with the few native traders and travelers who unwittingly carried these microbes were rare, and pedestrian groups were limited to relatively restricted ranges in which they infrequently contacted other tribes. So, the first wave of these strange diseases never reached epidemic proportions on the Plains during the Late Prehistoric period since the diseases quickly burned themselves out in these small, relatively isolated groups. Along with these diseases, a few metal tools first appeared—primarily knives and projectile points—brought to the Plains by native middlemen traders who obtained them from groups further away who were in direct contact with Euro-Americans. We can imagine the first of these items would have passed from group to group across long distances, becoming more and more valuable the further from their source. These strange new lightweight but nearly indestructible weapons rapidly became highly sought-after among plainsmen since they provided a marked advantage over enemies who still wielded stone-age weapons. And the fact that the first of these weapons are so carefully and forcefully rendered in early rock art (Keyser and Kaiser 2010; Keyser, Kaiser, Poetschat, and Taylor 2012:118–22) is a strong indication that a warrior’s prestige must have increased manifold if he was armed with an iron spear point. But these weapons were still relatively few, and for a century or more war still remained a foot soldier’s domain, with relatively minor casualties and comparatively few opportunities for a man to amass a war record (Tyrrell 1916:328–44).6 The first White men visiting or living with various native groups were fur traders, and they increased the number of these trade goods slightly, but change continued very slowly. Then, about AD 1700–1730 (depending on where you lived on the Plains), everything changed. To the north, fur traders began entering the area in regular numbers and with them came guns and ammunition, woven cloth, and many other sorts of trade goods. From the south, Spanish horses were stolen and traded northward all the way to the Saskatchewan River in present-day Alberta. In the span of one man’s lifetime, a warrior could easily have transitioned from a foot solder carrying a large buffalo hide shield to a mounted cavalryman carrying a much smaller shield and shooting a flintlock rifle. Coupled with the increasing intertribal conflicts caused in part by groups being pushed onto the Plains from surrounding areas by the domino-like expansion of Euro-American civilization to the east and south, these new weapons of war set the stage for a florescence of Biographic art into a Plains picture writing that captures a first-person look at one of the most exciting periods of frontier history.

18 ♦ WAR STORIES

Influence of the Horse on Plains Indian Culture as Represented in Art The importance of the horse to Historic period Plains Indian culture cannot be overstated. First appearing among the tribes of the southern Plains in the beginning decades of the 1600s, horses were traded north all the way into Canada in just more than a century (Figure 0.12). In tribe after tribe, a man who spent his childhood in a culture with nothing but dogs for beasts of burden grew into adulthood as a horseman tending his herd and replenishing it through raids on neighboring tribes. His own sons would never know life without horses. This newfound treasure of horses revolutionized hunting, transport of household goods, warfare, art, and the entire economy of his tribe. Additionally, they became fixtures in religious ceremonies and were soon accorded origins steeped in mythic symbolism. As Horse Capture and Her Many Horses state in their book A Song for the Horse Nation (2006), the horse was as central as the buffalo to the existence of Plains Indian culture during the two centuries from about 1700 to 1880. If anything, the horse was even more central to the practices of Plains Indian warfare and thus, ultimately, to how it was portrayed in Biographic art. Although the earliest Plains Biographic images undoubtedly date to prehorse days and document coups counted, weapons captured, and prisoners taken as part of the Biographic art lexicon (Keyser 2011e, 2017b), these few drawings record pedestrian warfare between men who carried large full-bodysized shields and engaged one another as shock troopers slugging it out in close-quarter combat with clubs, elk-antler-spike maces, and spears (Figures 0.7, 0.8). Bows and arrows were occasionally brought to bear from a distance, but even the early historic addition of iron arrowheads and spear points served only to increase the mayhem inflicted by one force of foot soldiers on another unlucky enough to be numerically overwhelmed (Keyser 2018c; Keyser and Poetschat 2014:107–18). But from their first introduction, horses changed everything. Kroeber (1939:76–84), Wissler (1914), and H. Wilson (1963) demonstrated that these animals radically altered the economy and social systems of Plains tribes, and Grinnell (1910), Secoy (1992), Ewers (1955b), Lewis (1942:46–59), and McGinnis (1990) illustrated the effects of the horse on the war complex. Certainly, horses greatly increased mobility and significantly changed buffalo hunting, but more relevant to our interest, they became, in fact, the raison d’etre for Plains warfare. And in so doing, they embodied almost everything—speed, strength, power, wealth, masculinity, and dominance—that Plains warfare represented and Biographic art sought to portray. Case in point, one primary war honor among many tribes was for a man’s horse to run down a foe—to actually trample him to death underfoot. And this act was proclaimed in various ways, from picturing the deed to tying a bloody enemy scalp on the horse’s bridle to painting the image of the unfortunate victim on the horse’s chest—just as if he were still being overrun. In fact, one famous Crow war horse named Baaaatcheih-

INTRODUCTION ♦ 19

Figure 0.12. The spread of the horse across the Great Plains. Dates are approximate for the arrival of horses in various areas. Drawing by James D. Keyser.

20 ♦ WAR STORIES

chipuahosh (The-One-Who-Jumps-Over-All) was remembered more than half a century later as a superior mount precisely because he could execute this deed (Keyser 2012:7; McCleary 2010).7 To emphasize their centrality to war, Plains warriors developed extensive rituals and practices designed to safeguard all the above-mentioned qualities in their horses and project them outward so anyone seeing the actual animals or even drawings of them would understand their power, speed, and skill. Thus, horses quickly came to take a central place in various religious rites and ceremonies (Ewers 1955b). Additionally, protective amulets, body paint designs, and various body modifications were developed and used religiously. Furthermore, Plains Indian horsemen invented or adopted a remarkable range of horse finery and accoutrements that added to both the utility and the beauty of these animals. To document their horses’ various characteristics, Plains warrior-artists illustrated their horse accoutrements in painstaking detail and devised numerous symbols and conventions to commemorate the attributes of their mounts in Biographic drawings. Initially, horses embodied power. The first horses gave their owners a distinct advantage over pedestrian enemies, and many were quickly cloaked in leather armor so they could be used as “tanks” to crash through enemy defenses. We know much of this story from the detailed accounts of an aged Cree warrior, Saukamappee, who told David Thompson in 1787 of his earliest battles (as an ally of the Blackfoot) in which he saw the first horses and guns put into use in this manner (Tyrrell 1916:328–32). No such armor still exists, but rock art fills in the details by depicting such battles and provides relatively detailed information regarding the methods of construction and decoration of this leather armor worn by both horses and humans (Greer, Greer, and Keyser 2019; Keyser 2016; Mitchell 2004). Furthermore, pictographs and petroglyphs document the prevalence of such armor and demonstrate its efficacy against various types of weapons (Greer, Greer, and Keyser 2019; Keyser 2018c; Keyser and Poetschat 2014). Not surprisingly, these earliest horses are illustrated as blocky, sturdy animals who are typically shown in close-quarter combat, often with arrows or spears stuck in—or deflected by—their armor, while helping their riders strike down less well protected foes. The efficacy of the horse in battle rapidly changed warfare practices on the Plains. Speed became paramount, and clubs and maces—along with fullbody shields—were largely ineffective against the tempo and power of the horse. Close combat was soon replaced by quick sorties in which warriors would charge into battle on horseback. As equestrian warriors became commonplace, they traded their large shields for smaller versions easier to carry on horseback. These were further reduced in size as their usefulness waned with the introduction of firearms, sometimes shrinking to become little more than amulets, but still worn to convey spiritual protection or the power of the warrior.

INTRODUCTION ♦ 21

Speed remained a key attribute of horse warfare from these earliest days until the reservation period. Lightning-quick raids, and the ensuing race home with a captured herd, were the highlight of the warrior experience and were the means by which a young man gained both a horse herd and his reputation for bravery. Light cavalry tactics were practiced from childhood and perfected for combat so that “ride-by” coups counted on an enemy with a spear, a coupstick, or a quirt are a common portrayal in Biographic scenes. Likewise, swooping in to rescue a wounded or unhorsed comrade, racing out to strike or capture an enemy or his horse, and even riding down a foe to trample him underfoot were all deeds of bravery frequently illustrating a man’s war record. But speed was also a highly valued defensive tactic. Mounting one’s best horse and pursuing fleeing raiders sometimes foiled their taking your own horses and carrying a wounded friend from the battle enabled both to fight another day. The speed and agility of these Plains Indian warriors was so legendary that more than one US cavalryman remarked that Plains Indians were the finest light cavalry they had ever encountered. Given this focus on speed, portrayal of the horse’s body shape soon changed from the early blocky, tank-like creature to a long, lean animal with extended neck, sleek head, and a long trailing tail. Legs were stretched out front and rear to show this newfound ability to hit-and-run an enemy that had previously been overcome only by massive force of shock troops. The overall depiction of the horse as a sleek and slippery creature able to get into and out of tight spots not even previously envisioned is powerful testimony to the importance of this fleet-footedness. But numerous conventions were designed by warrior-artists to reinforce this concept and communicate it through their Biographic art. These include split ears, medicine bundles, and amulets believed to magically help a man’s mount avoid pitfalls and stumbles. Further, various sorts of lightning symbolism were used for body paint and to illustrate the shape of reins and quirts to magically invoke the speed and power of lightning and symbolize the fleetness of the horse versus the pedestrian foe. But the horse also expressed power in the form of a masculine ideal that was emphasized to a greatly exaggerated degree in the art of some Plains tribes. For instance, early horse depictions (Figure 0.13) by warrior-artists from an unknown tribe illustrate a stallion’s outsized penis in what is clearly both a fascination with the organ itself but also an expression of both masculinity and fertility (Keyser, Kaiser, Poetschat, and Taylor 2012:90).8 One of these horses has a line extending from its penis into a vulva-form–shaped crack in the cliff in an obvious expression of sexual potency, though whether this actually was intended to refer to the horse or, metaphorically, to its owner is not known. For later warrior-artists, however, especially those from the Crow, Cheyenne, and Lakota tribes, horses came to embody the masculinity—and therefore strength and power—of their owners. Biographic art depictions, especially in

22 ♦ WAR STORIES

Figure 0.13. Early horses at Atherton Canyon, Montana. Drawing by the authors.

rock art, show horses with an emphasized prepuce (penis sheath) and often a very elongated tail. This exaggeratedly long tail is especially true for Crow warrior-artists’ rock art horses, since Crow warriors felt their own long hair was the ultimate symbol of masculine virility and potency (Denig 1976:155).9 Given the importance of horses to all aspects of Plains culture, the variety of horse tack items and accoutrements comes as no surprise. Some items, such as saddles, estribos de cruz stirrups, snaffle bits, jingle bits, saddle blankets, and German silver-ornamented headstalls, were adopted directly by Plains horsemen from Spanish and later US cavalrymen. Others, such as quirts, reins, and horse armor, were native-made versions of items adapted from those initially seen being used by Euro-American horsemen. Still others, including a wide variety of decorative adornments, tied-up tails, medicine bundles and amulets, and body painting schemes, were native inventions designed to meet the tribesmen’s spiritual views of horses as their partners in war. In fact, horse accoutrements show the greatest diversity of any category of items illustrated in Plains Biographic drawings. In short, Plains Indian culture is often viewed through a lens that shows it as dependent on the bison, and for thousands of years the archaeological record demonstrates this to be true (Kornfeld, Frison, and Larson 2010:207– 89), but, in fact, during the two-plus centuries of the Historic period, starting around the mid-1600s, Plains Indian culture rapidly became just as dependent on the horse. In contrast, however, Plains Biographic art is all about the horse. Although this art tradition is rooted firmly in the pre-horse period, had Plains Indians never acquired horses, their biographic drawings would be but a pale imitation of what Biographic art eventually became. So with new weapons, greatly increased mobility because of the horse, and the constant presence of nearby enemies, Plains warfare rapidly changed from lumbering, precontact, close-quarters, shock-trooper engagements to light cavalry raids whose intent was the theft of horses and the acquisition of war honors (Keyser 1979, 2018c:101–17; Keyser and Poetschat 2014:92–118).

INTRODUCTION ♦ 23

And with this change in warfare came a distinctive change in Biographic rock art. Horses dominate this art, with humans often restricted to supporting roles. Many humans are shown as almost sketchy riders, while their mount is emphasized with hooked hooves, a long neck, and sleek body, and accoutrements that might include split ears, reins and decorated bridle, a feather war bonnet, a tied-up tail, a forelock decoration, a saddle, and even a brand or body paint. By this time the shield-bearing warrior is rarely seen, and heraldic shield decoration is all but unknown. Across the region, pedestrians are typically small, rectangular-body style figures, though limited numbers of V-neck style humans still occur, and hourglass-body style humans become the hallmark of historic Blackfoot art. Human headdresses and hairstyles are often emphasized, and some clothing items—especially fringed war shirts and leggings—are frequently shown. Occasional images show even fancier dress, including dance bustles, Chief’s Coats, moccasins, women’s dresses, and blanket clothing. But such humanrelated items are almost always subservient to the action in which the wearer is engaged. Headdresses and Chief’s Coats serve primarily to identify a particular man or his opponent so the battle actions can be readily attributed to the artist. Dance bustles and the detailed garments worn by groups of observers and participants indicate the type of ceremony being illustrated so the drawing can be understood in the historical context of the artist’s tribe. If anything rivals horses in Biographic art, in terms of number and details, it is weapons. Guns and lances dominate among the two dozen types of weapons shown, but often multiple examples of these are stacked in impressive columns to represent massed enemies against which a lone raider has triumphed. In a type of synecdoche common to this art, whereby a part stands in for the whole, a weapon routinely represents a human actor—even the hero of the scene—who is not illustrated. Multiple types of different weapons are commonly illustrated, so there are four different kinds of tomahawks, four different sorts of coupsticks, and five different kinds of firearms found in this art. These weapons also show elaborate detail. Guns show intricate hammer-and-trigger assemblages as well as ferrules sometimes holding a ramrod; or there is a swatch of red cloth strung through each ferrule to emphasize them. Lances have all manner of decorative elements, including feathers, banners, and flags; but more important in many cases is their large metal killing point. Bows are frequently shown as recurved, sinew-backed, composite types, but others are simple long bows. Arrows show a variety of points (some metal) and often elaborate fletching. Decorative tabs hang from spears and sword and tomahawk handles; and the shafts of several types of weapons are sometimes shown wrapped with ermine skins or other decorative material. In addition to these details of accoutrements, regalia, and weaponry, Biographic scenes are clarified and expanded by emphasizing action and movement. Riders strain forward, quirting their galloping horses into the action,

24 ♦ WAR STORIES

while victorious combatants lunge forward to strike a blow against an enemy who is falling backward in defeat. A striding warrior, using his own shield as a battering ram, deflects an enemy’s coup strike to land his own killing blow. Arrows fly, and bullets—shown as a series of dots, dots with “tails,” or a line running from the gun barrel to the flying projectile—whiz across the battlefield while the tracks of men and horses show their paths to and fro throughout the action. Muzzle blasts indicate the discharge of firearms, while bullet wounds marked with a dot and arrows stuck in horses or humans are often accompanied by flowing blood. Warriors dismount to strike a foe or take his weapon as a war trophy, while another man rides through the field of battle to lash an enemy across the face with his quirt. Others rain bullets or arrows down on an enemy force. And after the fight a man would take time to recount his personal glory with a tally of defeated enemies and the weapons he had taken from them. Usually aligned in a row or column—although sometimes just scattered across a metaphoric field of battle—a series of vanquished enemies would be illustrated, with detailed information as to how each was overcome. For each foe, a coup-strike weapon documents the honored blow, and tracks of a horse and human sometimes show details of how he was hunted down. A horse or horses posed in front of a tipi, sometimes with the hero interposed between, illustrates a man’s theft of a prize horse from an enemy. A woman “tagged” with a capture hand indicates a war captive brought home to be incorporated into the winner’s tribe. In short, coup counting was almost the singular focus of this art, and action was fast and furious. Shorthand conventions were used to illustrate the action and document the acquisition of war honors, and these conventions— along with the various forms of actual things being portrayed—form a lexicon that organizes and informs Plains Biographic art. Thus, a single weapon might be shown twice in a scene to illustrate its sequential use more than once in the action. Likewise, a cluster of bullets above and behind the head of a rider leaning forward to touch and capture a fallen soldier’s horse illustrates the fusillade of fire the warrior braved in performing this daring deed. A circle surrounding a group of humans indicates an entrenched war party facing off against superior enemy forces, and a strategically placed capture hand can indicate anything from a stolen horse or captured weapon to a counted coup or the enslavement of an overpowered woman. Finally, quite late in the Historic period, Biographic art underwent further change, wherein ideograms were developed out of the basic pictography structuring this art. Plains Indian artists began to draw symbols that stood for things rather than drawing the objects themselves. Thus, among the Blackfoot, a horse’s C-shaped hoofprint was squared-off into a three-sided, quasi-rectangular image and stood for the leadership of a war party, and an X (Figure 0.14) represented a stolen horse by depicting the pin to which it had been picketed.

INTRODUCTION ♦ 25

For the Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, and Crow, a hashtag (#) symbolized a man’s bravery in fighting from behind hastily constructed breastworks, and among several different tribes, an X elaborated in a variety of ways (e.g., -X-, =X; see Figure 0.14) stood for the counting of first through fourth coup. Nearly universally across the Plains, an arc with a pendent zigzag line symbolized a man’s service as a war party scout. Whether these ideograms represent a natural evolutionary development in this art that would have occurred regardless of

Figure 0.14. Honor mark vocabularies used by artists from the Blackfoot confederacy and those from the Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, and Crow tribes. Drawing by the authors.

26 ♦ WAR STORIES

contact with Euro-Americans or were derived in response to Indian artists seeing written languages has been the subject of some debate; but in either case, they move the lexicon another step away from Ceremonial art and show a transition from picture writing toward idiographic writing. It is this lexicon, and the “rules” that Plains Indian artists used to structure their narrative art, that enables it to be read by others—often centuries after it was drawn. One of us (Keyser) has spent forty years studying Biographic art and learning its lexicon and rules, and the other (Kaiser) has more than a decade of recording and analyzing Plains Biographic art in this way. We have both read widely, consulting a multitude of historical sources that discuss this art form in its several manifestations. Additionally, we have both published extensively on this subject. During that work we have spoken with dozens of different experts in various aspects of Plains Indian culture and coauthored papers with several of them on different topics related to this general theme. In this process, we have educated ourselves to the point where we are moderately fluent in this Biographic picture writing. Seeing others struggle to interpret these drawings or miss the nuances that enable a fuller understanding of such imagery encouraged us to write this book. We hope it is as enjoyable for you to read and use as it has been for us to write. More importantly, we hope it helps reveal the depth of these historic, first-person accounts of the lives of Plains warriors and enables modern-day viewers to better understand these messages sent across the centuries.

For All to See: Other Biographic Art Media Plains Biographic art occurs in several different media, the primary three being rock art (discussed in detail, above), robe art (painted bison robes, tipi covers, items of hide clothing, and muslin sheets in the latest years of the Historic period), and ledger art (drawings in pencil or pen and ink on many different sorts of paper, including entire ledger books but also individual sheets and loose-leaf folios). In addition to these major media, Biographic images are also drawn on trees, engraved on various metal tools such as axe blades and a brass bucket (Scott et al. 1997), on antler quirt handles (Keyser and Cash Cash 2002; Penney 1992:264–65), and painted or engraved on various other items (Maurer 1992:235). Some warriors (Figure 0.15) even painted various war honors on their horses (Bethke 2016:220–21; L. Dempsey 2007:14–16; Densmore 1918:329–30; Penney 1992:56). Women sometimes also produced Biographic images in beadwork showing their husband’s war honors. Most known beadwork examples are from the reservation period in South Dakota (Lessard 1990; 1991). Finally, winter counts are a special type of Biographic art, recording tribal history by depicting significant events, with each pictograph characterizing a specific year. This art has a more corporate than personal orientation and is drawn on everything from hides to muslins to paper. While using many con-

Figure 0.15. Blackfoot warrior, Morning Eagle, leads his war horse, elaborately painted with his war honors, through camp, 1908. Drawing made by the authors from this and another photograph to clarify the Biographic imagery. Note red-painted handprint on horse’s shoulder and squared hoofprints indicating horse raids. Photograph from Walter McClintock Papers. Western Americana Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT.

INTRODUCTION ♦ 27

28 ♦ WAR STORIES

ventions found in other Biographic art, winter count images acted primarily as mnemonic devices to remind the reader of a significant event that occurred in a particular year. Some of these individual year glyphs have proven to be key to interpreting rock art (e.g., McCallister, Keyser, and Kaiser 2021) and others have provided interesting supplemental information. However, since this book has Biographic rock art as its primary subject, and there is no rock art equivalent to winter counts, we discuss them here only in relation to the few cases where they already have (or are likely to have) an impact on understanding rock art. Conversely, we provide somewhat more detailed summaries of the other primary types of Plains Biographic art media, specifically because they have such close correlation to rock art and have been used so frequently as comparative material. Other than rock art, Robe Art provides the earliest evidence of Plains Biographic art. Given what we know of the development of Biographic rock art, we can assume tipi covers, war shirts, and bison robes were painted with similar scenes of personal honors in the Late Prehistoric and Protohistoric periods, even though no examples have survived. The earliest perishable items decorated with Biographic imagery that still exist likely date from the late 1700s and early 1800s (Horse Capture et al. 1993; McLaughlin 2003).10 These show typical V-neck and rectangular-body style warriors arrayed in a variety of scenes documenting different sorts of engagements (Figure 0.16). The scarcity of firearms depicted in these scenes contrasts markedly to later robes, supporting an early date inferred for these pieces. Later robes and war shirts were painted

Figure 0.16. Early Biographic scenes from the Foureau bison robe, early 1800s. Drawing by the authors.

INTRODUCTION ♦ 29

throughout the nineteenth century and even into the early decades of the 1900s, although many of the latest examples were painted on pieces of muslin and canvas. There are currently more than one hundred specimens in museums throughout North America and Europe, but many others are known only from photographs (Bates, Kahn, and Lanford 2003:8; L. Dempsey 2007:49, 123; Hungry Wolf and Hungry Wolf 1977; Keyser 2000:87). Tribes particularly noted for their robe art include the Blackfoot, Sioux, Mandan, Hidatsa, Cheyenne, and Crow, but a few examples are also known from the Flathead, Shoshone, Gros Ventres (A’ani’nin), and Pawnee. Robe art imagery typically illustrates characteristic war-honor scenes involving fighting warriors, captured weapons and stolen horses, and tallies of enemies bested or war trophies taken. Among some groups a painted robe or muslin might also have symbols showing scout service, war party leadership, and even stolen horses given away to increase a man’s prestige. Although almost any piece of robe art can have any type of imagery, some tribes are known to favor certain compositions; thus, Blackfoot robes almost always include tallies of captured war trophies and entrenched forces, while Missouri River tribes (e.g., Mandan, Sioux, Cheyenne) more frequently emphasize coupcount tallies of defeated enemies. Only a few pieces of robe art are annotated in detail, but among these are more than thirty Blackfoot robes, muslins, and a tipi cover (Brownstone 1993, 2005a, 2007; L. Dempsey 2007:78–91; Ewers 1983); Mandan warrior-chief Mato-tope’s robe (Catlin 1973:V.1:148–54); and robes and muslins drawn by the Crow warrior White Swan (Lycett and Keyser 2021b; Wildschut 1926). One painted bison robe—the Segesser I hide painting (Figure 0.17)— deserves special mention. Created sometime in the late 1600s or early 1700s,

Figure 0.17. Biographic scene from the Segesser I hide painting, dating to the early 1700s, shows leather armor for both men and horses, shields, and weaponry very much like those depicted in northern Plains rock art. Drawing by the authors adapted from Hotz 1991 and author’s photograph.

30 ♦ WAR STORIES

the piece is not typical of robe art elsewhere on the Plains, and it may not even have been painted by an Indian artist (Hotz 1991). However, analysis shows that it illustrates a battle somewhere on the central or southern Plains between 1690 and 1720. Its importance to the study of Biographic art is the fact that it illustrates leather body armor for both humans and horses in forms that can be recognized in rock art images scattered from Kansas and southeastern Colorado to southern Alberta. For many Plains groups (except notably the Blackfoot), robe art declined in importance in the last decades of the 1800s, and it was replaced by ledger art in several instances. But the value of robe art for the study of Biographic art in general is well documented, and in many cases it provides a “missing link” between the unannotated rock art of earlier periods and the hundreds of annotated ledger drawings obtained from numerous groups (Keyser 1996). Ledger Art is the name given to a broad range of drawings on paper. Most commonly drawn in business ledgers and similar bound volumes obtained by tribal artists from a variety of sources, ledger art is also drawn in a Dakotalanguage Bible, in autograph books, in loose leaf folios, and on a wide variety of individual sheets of paper. Drawn with pen and ink, colored or plain graphite pencils, or even watercolors, many ledger drawings are exceedingly colorful and often utilize multiple different writing instruments, so that a single figure can be outlined in ink and infilled with colored pencils or a watercolor wash. The earliest documented ledger drawings (Figure 0.18) were collected primarily on the northern Plains from Mandan, Hidatsa, Flathead, Blackfoot, and Gros Ventres artists in the years between 1835 and 1850 by explorers, Jesuit priests, and Fort Union’s fur trade factor (Denig 2000; Keyser 2000; Point 1967; Thomas and Ronnefeldt 1976). Several of these are exceedingly well annotated. Others were collected at similarly early dates from Ute and Comanche artists on the southern Plains (Ewers 1982a). But the heyday of ledger art was the Indian Wars period and the decades immediately after. During this time dozens of Lakota, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Nez Perce, Arapaho, Arikara, Hidatsa, and Crow artists drew more than a thousand ledger drawings that survive today. The majority of these, authored between 1860 and 1880, were drawn in actual ledger books that were kept by members of various warrior societies among the Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Kiowa. Termed “war books” (McLaughlin 2013:52–68), these ledgers filled with drawings of famous men and their battle exploits were used to maintain the cohesion of a multiethnic tribal fighting force as it faced the US military. Many such war books were captured on the battlefield or removed from warrior burials. Others were created by Arikara and Crow warriors who were enlisted as scouts with the US military. Still other ledger drawings are the products of Cheyenne and Kiowa war prisoners interned at Fort Marion, Florida, between 1875 and 1878. Native artists from this group, such as Howling Wolf, Making Medicine, and Zo-Tom,

INTRODUCTION ♦ 31

Figure 0.18. Combat scenes on one page of the Five Crows ledger folio, attributed to the Flathead chief Red Feather (Adolphe). Photograph by Keyser, original ledger drawing from the De Smetiana Collection, Missouri Province Archive, Jesuit Archives & Research Center, St. Louis, Missouri.

were well-known names among patrons of the arts living along the eastern seaboard at that time (Petersen 1968, 1971; Szabo 1994, 2007; Viola 1998). Still other ledger drawings were produced for use as currency at frontier trading posts during the early years of the reservation period. Sometimes commissioned by interested collectors but often simply done by warrior artists who used them to obtain supplies to support their families, these drawings often exist as loose-leaf folios (Berlo 1996:146; Heidenreich 1985; Miles and Lovett 1994, 1995), and many are the exploits of famous men drawn not by themselves but by others. Finally, probably the largest collection of ledger drawings is more than four hundred drawings by Amos Bad Heart Bull (Bad Heart Bull and Blish 1967) done in the first decade of the 1900s as a pictographic history of the Oglala Sioux. Because much of this art was produced directly for consumption by artists, collectors, and ethnographers, hundreds of these drawings are annotated as to what they show and sometimes how they are structured. Certainly some annotations are nothing but fanciful inventions or wishful thinking of a collector who knew little or nothing about the art (McLaughlin 2013:5), and these provide either no information or can actually mislead an unwary researcher. One of the most blatant (and hilarious) examples is the Schild Ledger in which a collector annotating in German misidentifies the gender and ethnic iden-

32 ♦ WAR STORIES

tity of numerous illustrated participants in his captions for the illustrations. Another example is the Samuel Strong/Roman Nose ledger in which the annotations mistakenly identify coup-strike weapons as those having been thrown at a retreating enemy in frustration (Figure 0.19) or identify tallies of enemies on whom coup has been counted as soldiers seeking peace with the Indian artist (Smithsonian 2019). Obviously, such misleading captions provide nothing of substance for our study; but fortunately, annotations for hundreds of other drawings (e.g., Berlo 1996:96, 150–55; Bad Heart Bull and Blish 1967; Heidenreich 1985; Keyser 1996, 2000; Miles and Lovett 1994, 1995; White Bull 1968) provide invaluable information concerning the anthropology of this art. And it is these hundreds of annotations and captions for different drawings that form the “Rosetta Stone” aspect that ultimately enabled the reconstruction of the Biographic art lexicon (Keyser 1987, 2000; Parsons 1987). Winter Counts are pictorial calendars arranged as a linear series of images depicting significant yearly events in a group’s history. The Lakota created most of these, but examples by the Kiowa, Mandan, and Blackfoot also survive. Surviving winter counts date from the mid nineteenth to early twentieth century, and some record events more than two hundred years previous. Possibly this historical knowledge was known through oral recitation, but it may be that earlier winter counts existed and were buried with their keepers (Burke 2007:2; Mooney 1898:144). Some later winter counts, like ledger art, were collected by, or commissioned for, Euro-Americans (Corbusier 1886; Mallery 1877; Mooney 1898). These collectors’ annotations enable not only interpretation of the meaning of indi-

Figure 0.19. A scene from the Samuel Strong, Roman Nose ledger illustrating a fanciful (but nearly meaningless) annotation by a collector who did not understand the Biographic art lexicon. Note floating coup-strike bow. Drawing by the authors, based on original ledger drawing NMNH-1303–11008300, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

INTRODUCTION ♦ 33

vidual images but also facilitate understanding of how artistic conventions were used. And, uniquely, they sometimes allow comparison of different illustrations of the same events, showing the variety of ways different artists could depict similar actions and ideas. These pictorial records acted largely as a mnemonic device to remind the reader of noteworthy happenings. While some calendar entries are explicitly narrative, much winter count imagery comprises only implied or inferred narrative. As such, these images sometimes seem incomplete or cryptic to an outsider; but the events would have been known to insiders based on their own observation or others’ verbal testimonies. Although some winter count entries have exact parallels with Biographic warrior art, much winter count content differs significantly. Warriors’ coups, which are the cornerstone of other Biographic art, are underrepresented, as they were less significant to the group (Sundstrom 2018). Furthermore, winter counts generally reflect communal experiences and focus on more memorable, unique, or unusual occurrences. Such events include significant battles, peace treaties, and the deaths of tribal leaders. They also record times of plenty, as well as starvation, suicides, and defeats rather than just victories. Episodes of disease, floods, fire, and impressive meteor showers are also drawn. As such, winter counts expand the Biographic lexicon to give a broader view of Plains life. While using often-abbreviated narratives in keeping their calendars, the artists were also familiar with Biographic rock art, robe art, and ledger drawings. As such, they were well versed in the standard Biographic lexicon and compositional structures (Kaiser and Keyser 2020). Therefore, many calendar entries parallel other Biographic art illustrations depicting typical narrative events. As Risch (2000:32) notes, one of the main narrative categories found in winter counts is “contests,” which includes various types of conflict, horse stealing, hunting, and violent deaths. From these and a few other images (e.g., those detailing disease), we can better understand some conventions and narrative structures and use them to assist in the interpretation of rock art (e.g., McCallister, Keyser, and Kaiser 2021; Parsons 1987). For our purposes, however, what is most important about these various media is that Plains Biographic drawings are essentially the same no matter what material the artist chose as his “canvas” (Figure 0.20). A mounted man engaging a pedestrian foe is structured the same way, and uses exactly the same sorts of conventions, whether it is carved as a petroglyph, painted on a bison robe with native pigments, or drawn with colored pencils in a ledger book. Likewise, other than the use of guns as both primary and coup-strike weapons, a tally of coups counted on defeated enemies painted on a northern Plains war shirt collected in 1837 is essentially identical to one carved more than 150 years earlier as a petroglyph at Bear Gulch (Figure 0.9). Additionally, many of the conventions used in winter counts (such as the action hand, the

Figure 0.20. These three scenes show exactly the same battle action (the claiming of a riderless horse) in rock art (a), robe art (b), and ledger art (c). Note that a and c show the action while the protagonist is under fire, as indicated by the flying bullets above and behind him. Drawing a by the authors. Drawing b adapted by the authors from a Lakota bison robe, American Museum of Natural History, New York (cat. no. 50/6793). Photograph c, image courtesy of Michael Fosha, Black Hills State University, Spearfish, South Dakota.

34 ♦ WAR STORIES

INTRODUCTION ♦ 35

coup-strike weapon, track sequences, muzzle blasts, and flying bullets) are the same as those used in rock art, robe art, and ledger drawings (Figure 0.21).11 What this means is that understanding the structure and meaning of the art in any one medium is usually transferable—at least to some extent—to understanding the art in another. Each of these Biographic art media have experts who specialize in studying that particular expression—sometimes to the exclusion or near exclusion of other media. Thus, some scholars (e.g., Petersen, Szabo, Berlo) are best known for detailed studies of ledger drawings, and their publications detail entire ledger books filled with Biographic imagery, while other specialists (e.g., Brownstone, Dempsey) focus their expertise primarily in the study of painted bison robes and other items made of animal skin (e.g., war shirts, leggings). Still others (e.g., Howard) specialize in winter counts. Finally, a few scholars (e.g., Ewers, Greene, Horse Capture, Maurer, McLaughlin) have multiple publications that include analyses of Biographic drawings on various media, including hides, clothing, paper, muslin, and even smaller objects such as engraved antler quirts and beadwork-decorated bags. What these experts all lack is sufficient familiarity with rock art to translate their knowledge of Biographic art in their preferred medium of study to the pictographs and petroglyphs so widely scattered across the Plains. Thus, despite the fact that there are several authors (e.g., Keyser, Sundstrom, Klassen, Turpin, Jordan) who have published extensively on Biographic Rock Art,

Figure 0.21. Winter count and pictographic census imagery uses many of the same lexical conventions and synecdoche as other Biographic art. These include striking a tipi (a), ride-by coup count (b), flying projectiles (c–e), muzzle blasts (d), stacked arrays of combatants (c), floating weapons (b, d, f), and the capture hand (g–h). Drawings by David A. Kaiser adapted from various winter count images.

36 ♦ WAR STORIES

introductions to major texts on Biographic art often begin with some other type of pictographs or petroglyphs, such as the fantastic spirit beings of the Dinwoody Tradition, or shield-bearing warriors and V-neck humans in Ceremonial Tradition poses and compositions.12 Conversely, Keyser (1996, 2000, 2014a; Bouma and Keyser 2004; Keyser and Brady 1993) has done extensive research in all three major Biographic art media—rock art, robe art, and ledger art—and has spent most of his career (e.g., Keyser 1987, 1996, 2008b; Keyser and Klassen 2001, 2003; Keyser and Cowdrey 2008; Keyser and Mitchell 2001; Keyser, Kaiser, and Brink 2014; Lycett and Keyser 2017, 2019a, 2021a) studying and elucidating the relationships between these various expressions. Likewise, Linea Sundstrom (1987, 1997, 2004b; Sundstrom and Fredlund 1999; Sundstrom and Keyser 1998; Jordan, Sundstrom, and McCleary 2016) has written extensively on rock art, ledger art (including historic Indian maps), and winter counts and has used many different examples from these non-rock art media to aid in interpreting pictographs and petroglyphs. Mark Parsons (1987) also published the seminal study interpreting Texas rock art in terms of other media; but unfortunately, he has apparently not continued this work. Finally, Michael Jordan (2012, 2015; Jordan, Sundstrom, and McCleary 2016) has recently begun to amass an impressive publication record doing essentially the same sort of comparative work using Biographic art on perishable media to expand the interpretation of rock art imagery in the Southern Plains. Future studies of this sort are planned and will greatly increase our understanding of rock art from that large—and until now, largely understudied—region. The primary result of this research has been the realization that many annotated examples of Biographic art (typically ledger drawings but also a few painted bison robes and some winter count images) can be used as a sort of Rosetta Stone to decipher Plains Biographic rock art. Initially, discovery of Karen Petersen’s (1971) “Pictographic Dictionary for the Fort Marion Ledger Drawings” led Keyser (1987) to propose that many aspects of that work could be directly applied to rock art imagery. And then a decade later, the opportunity to study the Five Crows ledger drawings (Keyser 2000) provided the ultimate blind test of this Rosetta Stone hypothesis, since the annotations on these drawings came directly from Five Crows himself but were written in French by Father Pierre-Jean DeSmet. Because Keyser does not read French, he was able to study and “read” the ledger drawings before having the annotations translated. The result was a notably close correspondence between what could be read from the drawings and what was reported by the artist (Keyser 2000:32). Lastly, Kaiser (2021; McCallister, Keyser, and Kaiser 2021) has shown winter counts to be an excellent source for determining conventions and understanding perspectives so as to better interpret Biographic rock art. The ultimate result of these last several decades has been the development and use of the Biographic art lexicon over the course of more than thirty years

INTRODUCTION ♦ 37

of our own research, which has built on more than a century of interest in the basic topic.

Notes 1. When Europeans first saw North American bison (Bison bison), they referred to them as both bison and buffalo. While both bison and buffalo belong to the same Bovidae family, buffalo are native to Asia and Africa and lack the distinctive hump, among other differences. However, since both terms are commonly used interchangeably for North American bison throughout the literature and in everyday conversation, we use both terms herein. 2. These pictorial narratives are not technically read, as such, but interpreted. Objects, actions, and conventions need to be recognized, connotations understood, and then all these are considered based on the interrelation of images. This is a more fluid and interactive process than simply reading a manuscript. However, we use the term “read” as an easy shorthand for this interpretive process. 3. The name Writing-on-Stone refers both to the Provincial Park in southern Alberta and to a more expansive area stretching downstream along the Milk River from Coffin Bridge to private property just east of the designated park. When we use the term without modification, we intend to refer to the greater Writing-on-Stone area in general, but occasionally we will add the Provincial Park modifier to refer directly to the park or sites within it. 4. Throughout the book we use both site names and official site numbers to reference rock art sites containing images of interest. For sites with widely accepted names, we typically use that name but in the first instance also include the official site number, so the reader will be able to recognize that both refer to the same place. A few named sites (e.g., Turner Rockshelter) do not have an official site number due to the wishes of the landowner or other factors.  Site numbers primarily follow two major systems. In the United States they are usually part of the Smithsonian Trinomial system (STS), where the first two-digit number refers to the state in alphabetical order (minus Alaska and Hawaii, which were added as 49 and 50), the following two letters are an abbreviation of the county name, and the following number represents the site’s position in a sequential listing of sites within that county. Thus, Vaquero Shelter’s number, 41VV77, indicates Texas (41), Val Verde County (VV), and the fact that it was the seventy-seventh site recorded in that county. However, some states do not use the STS. For instance, New Mexico uses “Laboratory of Anthropology numbers” so we must occasionally use them in this volume.  The situation in Canada is different. There, archaeologist Charles Borden designed a numbering system based on major and minor blocks of latitude and longitude designated by capital letters and lower-case letters with a sequential site number within that particular block. Thus, DgOv-2 represents the second site sequentially recorded in a block of land measuring 16 km (ca. 10 miles) on a side. 5. The explicit coup-counting function of Biographic Tradition rock art in the system of recounting one’s war honors is summarized best by Fowles and Arterberry (2013:76), who write, “Indeed, it is increasingly clear that scratching out a battle or horse raid, probably with an accompanying narrative, may have served as another means of counting coup, with certain [rock art] sites serving as locations where such war honors were repeatedly performed.” 6. The recollections of an aged Cree Warrior named Saukamappee, recorded by David Thompson in 1787, provide a firsthand account of warfare during this early period and are used as the basis for much of this reconstruction.

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7. It must be noted that George Catlin, who painted and drew several pictures of this horse and his owner, mistakenly thought the man’s name was “He-Who-Jumps-OverEveryone” (Catlin 1973:192), but this misunderstanding was corrected in the 1880s when a Crow delegation viewed one of Catlin’s paintings of this man and his horse and set the record straight (McCleary 2010). 8. In these two drawings, and another at Grinnvoll Rockshelter, 24JT401 (Conner and Conner 1971:Figure 11), each stallion’s penis is drawn approximately life-size in its extended tumescent state. These are the only drawings we currently know of that show Plains horses with the penis emphasized in this way. 9. Crow warriors often augmented the natural length of their own hair by incorporating additional human or horse hairs attached with daubs of pine pitch, white clay, or some other fixative. Such hair extensions for a few well-known warriors were sometimes long enough to reach the ground, and one famous chief, named Long Hair, had tresses that measured ten feet in length in the 1830s (Denig 1976:194, editor’s footnote 40). 10. Given that rock art dating to at least the 1600s (and probably as much as a century earlier) features all sorts of Biographic imagery, it seems almost certain that there were perishable examples (e.g., tipi covers, war shirts, bison robes) made for possibly two hundred years prior to the first examples being collected. Unfortunately, no specimen has survived in the Plains archaeological record. 11. In addition to winter counts, elements of the Biographic art lexicon, and the conventions used with them, were also used in some name glyphs, as seen in the Lakota reservation census recorded by Red Cloud and other tribal rosters (Mallery 1886:174–81). 12. Exceptions to this general truism are the work of Evan Maurer (1992:26–27), which includes some of the key Biographic rock art compositions at Writing-On-Stone, and the work of Arni Brownstone (2001a, 2001b), in which he has successfully integrated various rock art images into his work with decorated robes and war shirts.

CHAPTER 1

BIOGRAPHIC ART AS PICTURE WRITING

⤞⤝ John Ewers, one of the preeminent Plains ethnographers, first voiced the idea that Plains Biographic art was picture writing. Based on extensive early study of Plains pictographic robe art (Ewers 1939) and later work among the Blackfeet of Montana, whose old men still used simple Biographic drawings as name glyphs even in the 1940s (Ewers 1983), Ewers became convinced that Biographic art was picture writing: The term “picture-writing” aptly describes the form and function of this primitive art. The creator of such works was as much a historian as an artist. Indeed, esthetic considerations may have been secondary to the artist’s concern for recording the memorable accomplishments of his own military career and those of his fellow tribesmen. (Ewers 1968b:8)

Karen Daniels Petersen, who did some of the earliest detailed studies of the ledger art of the Fort Marion prisoners, makes this conclusion even more explicit in one of her last major works: [P]ictography was the means of communicating over time and space. Just as the Indian sign-language was the lingua franca on the Great Plains, the language of pictography could be read by members of most tribes. . . . With the passage of time, pictography became more refined, employing greater precision, more detail, and greater realism. . . . [Now this art] communicates with us through the language of pictography from a distant time and place. (Petersen 1988:xiv–xv)

Examination of the historic record clearly shows that both the artists themselves and many frontiersmen who were observing Indians drawing and using these pictures understood this was picture writing. Point (1967) describes a drawing done in 1842 as an “Indian Letter,” implying that it was meant to communicate from the native artist to a recipient; and less than forty years later Cheyenne warrior-artists held prisoner in Fort Marion, Florida, drew ledger art that was sent home to family members to communicate their wellbeing and the conditions under which they were being held (Szabo 1991, 2007:121– 23). Another such biographic art “letter” was sent in the US Mail from Indian

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Territory (Oklahoma) to Pine Ridge Agency, South Dakota, around 1880, as recounted by Mallery (1893:363–64). Others noted that Biographic drawings on trees created between 1820 and 1835 were done to “convey to others considerable information” (Pond 1908:394). The earliest such reference to arborglyphs so far known is that of James (1823:296–97), who wrote about Omaha warriors he was observing making such art in about 1820: [War parties] peel . . . the bark from a tree and on the trunk . . . delineate hieroglyphics, with vermillion or charcoal, indicative of the success or misfortune of the party, in their proceedings against the enemy. These hieroglyphics are rudely drawn, but are sufficiently significant, to convey the requisite intelligence, to another . . . party. On this rude chart, the combatants are generally represented by small straight lines, each surmounted by a head-like termination, and are readily distinguishable from each other; the arms and legs are also represented, when necessary to record the performance of some particular act, or to exhibit a wound. Wounds are indicated by the representation of the dropping of blood from the part; and arrow wound[s], by adding a line for the arrow, from which the Indian is able to estimate, with some accuracy, its direction, and the depth to which it entered. The killed are represented by prostrate lines; equestrians are also particularized, and if wounded or killed, they are seen to spout blood, or to be in the act of falling from their horses. Prisoners are denoted by their being led, and the number of captured horses is made known by the number of lunules, representing their track. The number of guns taken, may be ascertained by bent lines, on the angle of which is something like the prominences of the lock. Women are portrayed with short petticoats, and prominent breasts, and unmarried females by the short queues at the ears.

In terms of later ledger drawings, Ruthann Hines described her 1930 attempt to obtain documentation of the authenticity of the Barstow ledger drawing collection in this way: We visited Pryor, Montana, on the Crow Reservation . . . we went . . . to an old war-time [Crow] chief, Charlie Bird-Hat, a contemporary of chief, Plenty Coups. . . . we proceeded to display the pictures [ledger drawings] . . . for the next hour, he [Charlie] read the pictographs, as one would read a newspaper. . . . Thus, Charlie Bird-Hat recalled [the events pictured] and explained much of interest to us. (Hines 1985:18–19)

But the best testimony as to the efficacy of this art as a means of communication comes from the writing of Edwin Denig, the fur trade factor at Fort Union, located at the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers in present-day North Dakota. Denig was an incredibly astute observer of Plains Indian culture, and his observations, written in diary form, were later edited by J. N. B. Hewitt into a major publication of the United States Bureau of American Ethnology.1 Writing in 1854 about Biographic art (though he does not call it that), Denig states:

BIOGRAPHIC ART AS PICTURE WRITING ♦ 41

Most Indians can carve . . . or paint, who they are, where going, whence come, how many men, horses, and guns the party is composed of, whether they have killed enemies, or lost friends, and, if so, how many, etc., and all Indians . . . friend or foe, will have no difficulty reading the same, though such representations would be quite unintelligible to whites unless instructed. (Denig 2000:18–19—emphasis added)

Denig’s statement contains two key points. The first is that this art was truly picture writing, in widespread use across the Plains and widely understood by all tribes (“all Indians . . . friend or foe, will have no difficulty reading [it]”). The second may be the most important for this work, because it avers that the messages require specialized knowledge (“such representations would be quite unintelligible to whites unless instructed”). Thus, Denig knew even then that this art was fully comprehensible only to those well versed in the lexicon. Without this knowledge, most of the drawings are just pictures, but with an understanding of the lexicon, many become narrative messages that can be read.

The History of Research into Biographic Art as Picture Writing Despite Denig’s early assertion that Plains Biographic art was picture writing with rules that could be learned by anyone who wanted to read it, anthropologists only slowly arrived at such an understanding of this art. The earliest effort to attempt to decipher a “proto-language” behind American Indian pictography was the work of Army Colonel Garrick Mallery (1886, 1893), who collated all the known reports of North American rock art and integrated them with other pictography, including ledger drawings, winter counts, illustrated birch bark scrolls, and even sign language. Although Mallery’s work is an amazing source of information, and contains some seminal insights into Biographic pictography, as with many introductory studies, it is handicapped by having too broad a scope combined with insufficient data from any one source. Thus, petroglyphs from the American Southwest are conflated with Sioux name glyphs, a Cheyenne narrative letter is likened to a summons for an Ojibwa Mide ceremony, and Micmac rock art and Northwest Coast Chilkat woven cloth shirts are included in a section with a Hidatsa ledger drawing. More focused early studies are those of Clark Wissler and Ernst Vatter. Wissler, who conducted extensive ethnographic field work among Montana’s Blackfeet tribe, had a broadly based interest in pictography and symbolism among American Indians and was fortunate enough to have Blackfeet informants who were versed in the Biographic art lexicon. From his work among the Blackfeet he collected a tipi cover illustrated with several men’s war deeds and recorded informants’ explanations as to what those illustrations showed (Wissler 1911:36–44).2 Along with these annotations, he also recorded several of the ideograms common to Blackfoot Biographic pictography and showed

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how two of these had developed from pictograms of the actual action (Wissler 1911:41–42). Unfortunately, Wissler did not follow up on these initial efforts, and he did no more research into the Biographic art lexicon. Other contemporary ethnologists also recorded a few bits of information relevant to the communication potential of Biographic art (e.g., Lowie 1922a:253–54), but none of them expressed more than a passing interest in this subject. About a decade after Wissler’s research, German anthropologist Ernst Vatter (1927) published the first detailed study of Plains Indian bison robes residing in European museum collections. He made many significant discoveries in terms of the lexicon, among which are his recognition of the importance of the capture hand, understanding how horse tracks are used for various purposes, recognizing the tallying of captured war trophies, and identifying the use of horse and human tracks to show routes of travel. He was intimately familiar with the work of both Mallery and Wissler, along with the ethnographic discoveries of Catlin, Wildschut, and Lowie as they related to Biographic art. From Wissler’s work, Vatter made a strong case for the need to be knowledgeable about Plains Indian cultures in order to understand this art, and he even understood how some of the ideograms (what he called mnemotechnic signs) developed from their pictogram forebears. With this background, Vatter seemed poised to fully grasp and elucidate the Biographic art lexicon; but for whatever reason, he did not. In his initial work, he became bogged down in the artistic and aesthetic merit and structure of the robe paintings he was studying as seen through the perspective of western European art. Thus, even though he acknowledged “Indian painting follows similar rules as that of the Paleolithic hunters” (Vatter 1927:75), he commented that “a true composition is nowhere available” (Vatter 1927:76). He further argued that although the more primitive representations have an artistic attraction, they lack perspective, confuse front and side views, and utilize an “x-ray” mode of depicting bodies underneath clothing. He further bemoaned the monotonous contents of the imagery and compared the art to the sketches of children (Vatter 1927:76–77). Clearly, Vatter was a product of his time, and he was a well-read anthropologist who dedicated this particular work to Franz Boas, the preeminent North American anthropologist. Had he been able to step outside the mindset of the “primitive artist,” it seems likely he would have been the first scholar to truly lay out the basics of the Biographic art lexicon. John Ewers, one of Clark Wissler’s students, did his master’s thesis on Plains Indian robe art (Ewers 1939) and for the next half century continued to research and publish about Plains Biographic art, among many other topics. Like Wissler, Ewers worked among the Blackfeet in Montana, and his work contains many references to annotated Biographic art pieces (Ewers 1968b, 1982a, 1983, 1985), but his research focus never coalesced around the Biographic art lexicon despite his keen interest in the subject and his familiarity with some rock art—especially that at Writing-on-Stone.3

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While approaching Biographic art more from the perspective of an artist rather than a scholar, DeCost Smith studied these images and discussed them with Lakota and Crow men, publishing a chapter on Picture Writing in his book Indian Experiences (1943:108–24). Unfairly critiquing some compositional styles in comparison to western realistic representation, he nonetheless recognized it as a “system of art narrative.” He noted the personal biographic nature of the art and its use of conventional signs and symbols. He also identified the use of synecdoche, twisted perspective, track sequences, and even the function of floating coup-strike weapons. In 1965, Howard Rodee added a voice to the chorus of scholars beginning to formulate the concept of the Plains Biographic art lexicon with an article that discussed the origin of Plains Indian painting and the relationship of Biographic art in various media (Rodee 1965). Unfortunately, Rodee was not familiar with the just recently published research of Mulloy (1958), Conner (1962), and Dewdney (1964), so the rock art he includes in his evolutionary sequence is not as convincing as that shown by later authors. Roughly contemporary with Rodee’s effort, specialists in both rock art (Conner 1962, 1980, 1984; Conner and Conner 1971) and ledger art (Petersen 1968, 1971) were beginning to fully understand the intricacies of Biographic art and its relationships among different media. Stu Conner began studying Montana Plains rock art in the late 1950s and published his first work concerning Biographic pictographs and petroglyphs as part of a 1962 synthesis of central Montana rock art. In a later, more broadly based synthesis and two important articles (Conner 1980, 1984; Conner and Conner 1971), he related many rock art images to robe art and ledger drawings and interpreted some of them based on his preliminary but incomplete understanding of the communication potential of Biographic imagery. In his work, Conner was the first to name Biographic rock art, and his interpretations of several key sites are masterful examples of making the most out of fragmentary knowledge. Karen Petersen, in her seminal studies of Cheyenne ledger drawings, was the first person to formalize the concept of a Biographic art lexicon. Devising what she called a “Pictographic Dictionary” for helping understand and interpret a large folio of drawings by the Fort Marion ledger artists, Petersen (1971:269–308) listed nine different categories of “conventions” used by the Fort Marion artists. These various conventions showed how the artists illustrated dozens of different material culture items, animals, and natural landscape features; how they drew name glyphs; and how the various conventions provided detailed connotations, giving the illustrations nuanced meaning. In a later work she continued using her “dictionary,” showing how it could help decipher the deeper meaning of various drawings, including some quite complex compositions (Petersen 1988:xvii, image 41 and caption). But Petersen was also woefully uninformed about rock art, leading her to state:

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At first glance the relationship is not apparent between these [ledger] drawings and the inscrutable petroglyphs, those crude depictions and abstractions that adorn cave walls and cliffs throughout the Great Plains. Rock art in time gave way to hide painting. (Petersen 1988:xiv)

Of course, this is not true; we know rock art was not restricted to “crude depictions and abstractions” but instead contains thousands of images that rival any of those in hide painting, and some that are as refined and detailed as any ledger drawing. We also know rock art continued to be made in significant quantity alongside robe art (hide paintings) and ledger drawings into the last decades of the 1800s (and even occasionally as late as the 1920s). But Petersen was not a formally trained anthropologist and certainly not a student of rock art. Given the lack of substance concerning rock art in most archaeological texts published during her most active period of scholarship, it is unsurprising that she was so misinformed about the subject. Finally, in a 1997 publication, Jean Afton used a version of Petersen’s dictionary as a guide to the “key conventions of style” and name glyph identities that had assisted her team in interpreting the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers ledger book (Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997:xviii, 322–23).4

Formulation of the Biographic Art Lexicon It was not until the mid-1980s that scholars first formalized the use of Petersen’s “dictionary” for understanding rock art images. After intensively recording the rock art at Writing-on-Stone and in the North Cave Hills—two areas located some 725 km (450 miles) apart at opposite corners of the northwestern Plains— Keyser was struck by marked similarities in the Biographic imagery from these two places. In completing initial publications on these site complexes (Keyser 1977a, 1977b, 1979, 1984), he was also exposed to the details of the work of Stu Conner and noted the many correspondences between the Biographic imagery of central Montana and the areas he was studying. Serendipitously, at that exact same time, he was also introduced to Petersen’s Pictographic Dictionary and saw his first ledger book—the Tie Creek Ledger—on display in South Dakota’s Bear Butte Museum. Noting that North Cave Hills petroglyphs of shield designs, combat scenes, and men and horses were nearly identical to those pictured in Cheyenne ledger drawings, Keyser saw how aspects of Petersen’s pictographic dictionary could be used to significantly augment the interpretation of these and other Biographic rock art scenes (Keyser 2013). He then authored an article wherein he first developed and named a “lexicon” for use in better interpreting historic Plains Indian rock art (Keyser 1987). Unbeknownst to Keyser, at essentially the same time (from 1981 to 1987), Mark Parsons had begun to recognize and apply a similar approach to two petroglyph sites in the Texas Panhandle region (Parsons 1987). Working with

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ledger drawings, hide paintings, and winter counts as comparative materials for Texas rock art, Parsons commented on the striking “congruence of function between portable art and the consummately unportable rock art.” He further noted that the close parallels between Keyser’s earlier works (1977b, 1979, 1987) and his study, which he had completely independently conducted, led to “virtually identical conclusions.” Finally, he also observed that these parallels confirmed the “applicability [and utility] of this technique to the study of historic rock art sites up and down the Great Plains” (Parsons 1987:257). These articles by Keyser and Parsons (published two volumes apart in Plains Anthropologist) quickly became the basic source materials for structuring the study of Biographic rock art across the Plains (e.g., Keyser 1991; Keyser and Brady 1993; Turpin 1989a), and their approach has continued to be refined and augmented over a quarter century by reference to many more rock art sites and other Plains Indian Biographic narratives drawn on buffalo robes and in ledger books. Since 1990 more than twenty different authors have analyzed Plains rock art sites from Canada to Mexico using and expanding the lexicon (e.g., Boyd 1990; Greer and Keyser 2008; Jordan 2015; Jordan, Sundstrom, and McCleary 2016; Kaiser and Keyser 2015; Keyser 1996, 2000, 2004a; 2006; 2007a, 2008a, 2008d, 2010, 2011c, 2011d, 2011e, 2012, 2014a, 2014b, 2016, 2017b; Keyser, Dobrez, Hann, and Kaiser 2013; Keyser and Cowdrey 2008; Keyser and Kaiser 2010, 2014; Keyser, Kaiser, and Brink 2014; Keyser, Kaiser, and Dobrez 2015; Keyser and Klassen 2001, 2003; Keyser and Lycett 2019; Keyser and Mitchell 2000, 2001; Keyser and Poetschat 2005, 2009, 2012; Keyser and Renfro 2017; Keyser and Sundstrom 2015; Keyser, Sundstrom, and Poetschat 2006; Klassen 1998; Klassen, Keyser, and Loendorf 2000; Labadie et al. 1997; Loendorf 2012; Loendorf and Olson 2003; Lycett and Keyser 2017, 2021a; McCallister, Keyser, and Kaiser 2021; McCleary 2008a, 2016; Sundstrom 2004b; Sundstrom and Keyser 1998; Turpin and Eling 2011). This book is the culmination of these forty years of research, with thanks to all those many colleagues who have shared their knowledge and site information with us.

How Is Biographic Art Picture Writing? While Biographic art has long been recognized as a picture writing system, in which information is stored by one person to be transferred to another in a different time or place, is it actually a written language? Like all writing systems, there needs to be a shared understanding between creator and reader in order to encode and decode the content. Written systems come in a variety of forms but are generally either pictorial, which depicts objects and actions, or phonetic, which involves graphic representation of the spoken word (Kolers 1969:349). Phonetic writing is generally divided into Alphabetic, with symbols representing each phoneme (or individual sound) in the spoken language (as

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in English); Syllabic, consisting of symbols representing syllables (as in Japanese katakana or the Cherokee syllabary); or Logographic, in which a symbol represents an entire word or phrase (as in Chinese writing or Japanese kanji characters). Finally, there are Ideographic or picture writings that directly represent images of objects and actions. Biographic Tradition art would fall into this latter writing system. Picture writing is composed of pictograms, which are graphic symbols conveying meaning through their resemblance to actual physical objects. However, many seemingly straightforward images communicate much more than simply “picture equals object” because they are pregnant with symbolism and subtext. Also, pictorial writing does not necessarily conform directly to a specific spoken language because the reader is reading pictures rather than words or syllables. Thus, even though many groups who drew Plains Biographic art were from the same few language families and necessarily shared many cultural practices and attributes, their visual system of communication (picture writing) did not correspond to any specific spoken utterances. However, there are drawbacks to such a writing system, since pictorial writing cannot express the full range of human thoughts and ideas or convey all that is represented in spoken language. While detailed and intricate symbolism and conventions are often used, abstract concepts and tense can be difficult to convey. However, that is not to say complex ideas cannot be represented. Lacking the ability to communicate complicated or abstract ideas with the high degree of accuracy of a spoken language, pictorial writing is often considered only a “partial” writing system (Hill 1967). However, this form of communication also has advantages over what Hill terms “complete” writing systems in that it is not restricted to speakers of a specific language. Complete writing systems are self-contained constructions of components, including words, syntax, and grammar, whereas pictorial communication is comprehensible to a wider audience, the members of which share only generally similar cultural attributes and some understanding of how the communication system works. Rather than being a lesser or incomplete writing system, then, pictorial writing must be viewed as an entirely different form of written communication, which has been termed a discourse system (Hill 1967:92). Discourse communication is unique in that it does not require the reader to know the writer’s spoken language, and instead relies largely on nonlinguistic cultural knowledge. As such, discourse systems are a kind of pictorial pidgin language, a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups who do not have a language in common. Such pidgins are commonplace where different linguistic groups come into frequent contact, most often as trade languages such as Chinuk Wawa (or Chinook Jargon) in the Pacific Northwest and Plains Sign Language. Biographic pictorial writing allowed communication among various tribal groups across the Plains who, while not necessarily sharing the same lan-

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guage, shared nearly identical lifeways and forms of warfare, which enabled them to understand its fundamental meaning. This is what allowed the development of Biographic rock art as a graphic lingua franca (McLaughlin 2013:43) and enabled it to spread across the North America Plains (and parts of adjacent regions). The construction of this picture writing without ties to specific linguistic utterances is also what allows modern scholars, who do not speak the traditional indigenous languages, to still read Biographic compositions. In part, this occurs because some of the pictures are self-explanatory to anyone. Such things as bullets streaming from a gun’s muzzle or horse hoofprints leading up to a horse being ridden into battle are readily understandable to anyone, even those without knowledge of Plains warfare. However, understanding Biographic art is not simply looking at pictures that are readily intelligible to everyone. Instead, reading these “texts” requires that we filter the images through the proper cultural and historical contexts to understand the connotations as well as the denoted meanings of the images (Keyser 1987:52). As such, these pictorial writings have been described as “‘High Context’ messages, which can be fully understood only by cultural insiders who already understand the messages’ larger contextual references” (McLaughlin 2013:44). In this regard, we agree with McLaughlin that some specifics (e.g., locations, tribal identity of participants, individuals’ names, and other elements that might be considered the composition’s backstory) are beyond our understanding for many biographic compositions (cf. Keyser, Dobrez, Hann, and Kaiser 2013). However, as archaeologists whose work has involved the notoriously imperfect archaeological record, we prefer to emphasize what can be read in these compositions by understanding the lexicon that has been developed using the direct historical approach and other archaeological and ethnographic techniques. Discourse systems also have an advantage in that some ideas can be related in a more condensed manner that provides a quicker reading through pictorial representation than by the written word. The use of simplified or exaggerated imagery increases the speed of recognition (Ryan and Schwartz 1956). Modern examples include the use of gendered silhouettes on restrooms, an image of someone falling to warn us of slippery floors, or a sign indicating an icy road (Figure 1.1). As in other pictorial writing systems, some of these images would be readily comprehensible across diverse language groups and levels of technology (a falling human), but understanding the meaning behind others (gendered silhouettes) would require understanding of the cultural context (indoor, gender-specific toilets, with sex indicated by gender-specific dress), and still others would require significant familiarity with appropriate technology (fast-moving automobiles and paved roads). Hence, just as we sometimes struggle to understand the implication of the figures in Biographic rock art, the creators of this art would often be equally confused by our modern use of the same sorts of images.

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Figure 1.1. Warning signs with pictograms are a type of picture writing. Drawing by the authors.

Discourse systems like Biographic art are a more participatory form of communication than simply reading a book. Therefore, deciphering the content is less a matter of following a strict set of rules than it is of active interpretation, where the reader must take in the entire image while at the same time breaking down individual details for their content, conventions, and cultural implications, and then piece these back together to arrive at the intended narrative. But doing this today is neither simple nor easy, because observers lack familiarity with many aspects of the technology (old-style weaponry, horse gear, and elements of clothing and accessories), and they are not fully conversant with either the Plains war complex or the overall cultural milieu in which it was practiced. Therefore, many of the conventions and connotations that provide the context for the art have not yet been elucidated. Furthermore, understanding rock art sites often has an added difficulty resulting from the imperfection of the record caused by natural erosion of and modern cultural damage to the original images. Thus, we are left trying to decipher a narrative that might simply be lacking key elements that were originally present. However, pictorial writing is particularly suited for documenting real world objects and narratives, which is exactly the content of Biographic rock art, with its focus on a complex system of war honors, including actual fighting, coup counting, horse theft, sexual capture, and to a lesser extent hunting prowess. This relatively narrow focus of Biographic rock art results in a limited corpus of images with repeated conventions and compositional structures. It is a visual sprachbund: an “area of shared understandings as to what to talk about and how to say it” (Hymes 1980:409). However, these compositions can be arranged in a variety of ways that the reader needs to unravel. Additionally, with repeated depictions of similar actions, a process of shortcuts and abstrac-

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tions occurred in the historical development of Plains Biographic art, leading to reduced detail and greater conventionalization, as well as the development of abstract ideograms. This evolution began to move the pictorial language away from direct representations, easily readable by people immersed in the cultural context, to a more specialized communication that requires culturally specific knowledge of the abstract symbolism. Understanding this level of abstraction today requires readers to carry more culturally specific knowledge with them, reducing the pictorial writing’s advantage of easy interpretability. But condensation and abstraction also show the beginnings of a gradual development into a more complex writing system with the introduction of logograms (signs representing words, phrases, or ideas) and more formal structure. Apart from the cultural knowledge needed to identify some of the objects and events in Biographic art, the way in which the art is composed can sometimes confuse or obfuscate the intended meaning for someone not versed in the rules informing Plains Indians’ ideas about perspective and narrative. To this end, as modern readers, we need to understand the variety of nonWestern perspectives as well as differing compositional narrative structures that are used in the creation of Biographic art. Narrative art tells the story of a single event or sequence of events. However, narratives are told over time (diachronic) whereas static images, such as rock art, are seen all at once (synchronic). Therefore, reading a narrative embedded in a pictographic image requires the understanding of certain conventions and organizing principles. These principles define the direction and order of the narrative. While these organizational components are key to understanding a pictorial narrative, they are not regulated by hard and fast rules like most other writing systems. First, the reader is required to identify the objects depicted. This can be as simple as recognizing a human figure or involve more culturally specific recognition that the object on the human’s head is a “wolf hat” or require intimate and detailed knowledge of the Biographic art lexicon to know that a Crow warrior’s mark X= meant counting third coup. Moreover, one also needs to be aware of the social and cultural implications of the object depicted. For instance, the wolf hat is a sign that the wearer served as a scout for a war party. Understanding how multiple objects relate to one another adds even further complexity. However, there are some overall keys to reading the narrative that include types of perspective and the structure of narrative expression, and these clues can help unlock a composition’s content and meanings.

Perspective in Plains Indian Warrior Art Plains Indian warrior art is characterized by several different types of perspective plus an overall artistic convention that all differ markedly from our Western European ideal of linear, geometric perspective characterizing modern

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realism.5 These include X-ray perspective (with the corollary of unseen details), twisted perspective, stacked perspective, bird’s-eye/aerial view perspective, flattened perspective, hierarchical perspective, expanded space/empty center perspective, and the convention of synecdoche (a rhetorical trope in which a part of something is used to symbolize the whole of an object or action). Initially, X-ray perspective is commonly used to depict humans and animals in the Ceremonial Tradition, but it also occurs on some human figures in early examples of the Biographic Tradition. In this type of perspective, internal organs are illustrated, somewhat as if the figure’s body were shown as an X-ray (Figure 1.2). Such internal organs are not necessarily realistic and often neither accurately portrayed nor positioned, although sometimes the ribcage in particular can be quite lifelike. These organs include ribs, heartline (which is not an actual entity since it includes the esophagus, which often, but not always, has an abstract heart-like organ at its terminus), and a kidney “belt” or kidneys shown as dots. In Plains Indian spiritual beliefs, all these organs were thought to be locations in which supernatural power resided. On the outside of the body—so not truly in X-ray perspective—artists also drew primary sexual characteristics, including a penis and sometimes testes for a man and vulva and/or breasts for a woman. This was not to indicate that they were naked but instead was used to convey gender or virility. A few shield bearers and other warriors engaged in early Biographic combat scenes (Keyser and Poetschat 2014:61) are the most common examples of Figure 1.2. X-ray perspective is common in X-ray perspective in Biographic the Ceremonial Tradition for both humans and animals (a). Internal organs include ribs, art, but there are a few late Bioheartline, and kidneys, as well as external sexgraphic Tradition humans drawn ual organs. Shields can also be shown as transin X-ray style. One classic examparent (b), revealing the person behind them, ple is a rectangular-body style who is sometimes also transparent to show human with a heartline and kidinternal organs. Drawing by James D. Keyser.

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neys shown grappling with an hourglass-body style figure who takes his gun at DgOw-29 at Verdigris Coulee in the greater Writing-on-Stone area of southern Alberta (Figure 1.3). Corollary to this X-ray perspective is depiction of “unseen” details, even though these are not actually visible to the observer. In this type of depiction, the artist “knows” what really exists and draws those details despite the fact that they are hidden from view. Thus, a Plains Indian horseman with both legs depicted (Figure 1.4) is not sitting side-saddle but instead has his “off-side”

Figure 1.3. Some Biographic images are also depicted in X-ray perspective. A V-neck warrior with a see-through shield (a) is shown taking a gun from a warrior drawn with a heartline, dot kidneys, and penis and testes. A second warrior then reused the image by superimposing his own self-portrait (b) showing him wearing fringed leggings and capturing an enemy’s gun. Drawing by James D. Keyser.

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Figure 1.4. X-ray perspective includes the depiction of “unseen” elements that are known to be there but are not visible to the observer in real life. The mounted warrior’s “off-side” leg is an example. Drawing by the authors.

leg drawn specifically because the artist understood that one leg does not really go away simply because it is hidden from the viewer behind the horse’s body (Keyser and Minick 2018:13). An equally common occurrence is the “seethrough” shield (Figure 1.2b) that allows a shield-bearing warrior’s body outline (sometimes even with his internal organs shown in a two-level X-ray perspective) to show through his shield as if it were transparent (Keyser and Poetschat 2014:10, 61). This certainly does not represent reality—such hide shields could not actually have been transparent—but rather is another instance of unseen detail, where the reality of what the Indian artist knows to exist overrules what his eye actually sees. We are fortunate to have a diary entry by the Swiss artist Rudolph Friederich Kurz that clarifies the reason for such X-ray illustrations. While Kurz was at Fort Union on 26 February 1852, he engaged in a debate with a Sioux warrior-artist about the merits of the European artistic tradition. In their discussion, the Sioux artist noted that Kurz’s manner of representing a rider with his off-side leg not drawn because it was not visible behind the horse, “was not at all satisfactory” because everyone knows that “a man has two legs” (Hewitt 1937:301). Finally, some images are illustrated with what we term “unseeable attributes.” Sometimes this is sound, where a line or lines are drawn exiting the mouth of a bull elk to represent the bugling sound that animal makes in the rut (Figure 0.2q). Likewise, lines issuing from a human’s mouth can be drawn to represent a spoken utterance. Although we only have a few such “voice” lines in rock art (e.g., Figure 1.5), a line from the mouth or head is commonly used in ledger art and winter counts to connect a person to his/her name glyph—an image representing their spoken name. Still another example of

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Figure 1.5. Unseeable attributes, such as sound, are sometimes shown in Biographic art. The human head with lines streaming from its open mouth has been identified by Crow traditionalists as a “clan father” singing the praises of the nearby men carrying military society staffs, which indicate they have accepted military society leadership. One man wears a fringed blanket and has his long hair tied-up behind his head. Drawing by the authors.

voice is in a Cheyenne pictographic letter drawn about 1880, where lines from the mouth indicate a spoken invitation (Mallery 1893:363–64). Other unseeable attributes include supernatural indicators or disease (which was believed to have supernatural causation). These can include spirals or zigzag lines associated with humans or animals to denote a being’s “spirit aura,” or the possession of animal body parts for a part human/part animal therianthropic figure, which indicate the transformation of a human into his animal spirit. In some winter count images, spirals or lines in a filigree pattern were used to represent the dyspepsia (including nausea, bloating, stomachache, and other symptoms) that accompanied many epidemic diseases. Such “disease lines” were drawn in the abdominal region for dyspepsia, exiting the belly to indicate stomach rumbling or flatulence, or exiting the mouth to indicate belching or vomiting. In rock art, such unseeable details are typically drawn for Ceremonial Tradition imagery (Figure 0.4), presumably to indicate shamans or other supernaturally powerful individuals. But occasionally an image that clearly has biographic intent will utilize such conventions. A classic example is the Elk Dreamer/Dancer carved at the Elk Dreamer site (24RB275) in southeastern Montana. This human figure (Figure 1.6) has elk antlers and what appear to be cloven hooves in an

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Figure 1.6. This Elk Dreamer carved in Montana bridges both Ceremonial and Biographic Traditions. It depicts a man morphing into his elk spirit helper as indicated by the antlers, ears, and feet. His body is elaborately painted with lightning streaks, hailstones, celestial imagery, and the Cheyenne hetanehao “man-power” symbol. Photograph and drawing by James D. Keyser.

image that clearly has both Ceremonial and Biographic aspects. As such, this drawing appears to occupy a position that to some extent bridges both traditions (Keyser and Sundstrom 2015:132–33). A woman drawn at Picture Canyon (5BA12) in southeastern Colorado has her body covered with circles and a small filigree at her mouth. This has been interpreted as a depiction of epidemic disease (Renaud 1936:34, Plate 13) but it has yet to be verified. Twisted perspective, where one or more parts of a figure or composition are drawn in one or more different planes than the rest of the drawing, also differs greatly from our ideal of Western realism, although we readily accept its use in some modern comic strips (Keyser 2011a). The simplest twisted perspective illustrates a figure in two separate planes, often at right angles to one another, so that an animal’s body (including head and legs) is seen in side profile while another part (usually horns, antlers, and/or eyes) is shown frontally, as if being viewed head on (Figure 1.7). The most common example of using two-plane twisted perspective in Biographic rock art is illustrating a horse completely in side profile except for its hooked or C-shaped hooves (which are a representation of the animal’s one-toed, C-shaped track) turned 90 degrees so as to be shown in plan view (from above). More complex exam-

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Figure 1.7. Twisted perspective is relatively common in Plains Ceremonial and Biographic rock art. Both “two-plane” perspective (a–b) and “three-plane” perspective (c–d) are common. Drawing by James D. Keyser.

ples of twisted perspective can include three or even more planes. A classic Biographic art example of three-plane twisted perspective is a horse shown in side profile with C-shaped hooves shown as plan view hoofprints, but with two eyes showing pendent tear-streak face paint drawn on the near side of the head, as if in front view (Figure 1.7d). Horseback shield bearers also occasionally show twisted perspective. Since the horse is always in side profile, we can assume the rider astride the animal was most often meant to be viewed in the same way. But a few mounted men (especially shield-bearing warriors) have either facial features or a headdress that indicates their head is drawn as if looking directly at the viewer. Sometimes we cannot determine whether this is merely a case of the rider being depicted as if turning his head to face the viewer, but there are figures whose arms and legs are clearly drawn to indicate that the human is in front view while the horse is just as clearly in side view (Keyser and Poetschat 2009:Figure 13a). Several of these are early mounted warriors who presumably were drawn in this manner because their creators were unfamiliar with horses and how to artistically integrate the horse and rider into a single image. Plains Indian artists portrayed distance in a composition far differently than is typically done in the linear geometric perspective of western realism. To show relative distance from the observer, Plains artists usually used

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stacked perspective, in which images are placed successively higher in a composition, usually without any foreshortening, to denote those that are further away. The result is often quite confusing for a western observer, who fails to comprehend the relationship between components of a scene that sit one atop the other. For instance, in the scene shown in Figure 0.20a, an observer unschooled in stacked perspective sees a riderless, saddled horse surmounted by a horse with rider who has a long line extending out from his shoulder area, and who in turn has a small cluster of seven short, sideby-side lines (five with small drilled dots at their upper end) placed far above his head. To this presumably untrained observer, the composition makes no sense, other than a possible assumption that the two horses are somehow interacting. But by understanding stacked perspective, the observer can see the unmounted horse and behind it (just slightly further away) a second horse with a rider who reaches out to touch the saddled horse with a long rod (likely a coupstick). The seven lines are then seen as flying bullets (fired either by the dismounted rider of the saddled horse or his comrades who are not pictured) that have flown wide past their intended target—the horseman. Combined with two standard Biographic art conventions—(1) the fusillade of fire and (2) claiming ownership of a riderless horse in battle by being the first to touch it with a coupstick or similar implement—the stacked perspective here renders this readily understandable as a horse capture scene, almost identical to others in ledger drawings (Figure 1.8).

Figure 1.8. Tie Creek ledger drawing showing a man capturing an unseated cavalry horse while braving enemy fire. The line from the warrior’s mouth runs to a bison drawn as a name glyph above his head. His horse has a feather fan tied in its tail. Image courtesy of Michael Fosha, Black Hills State University, Spearfish, South Dakota.

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Bird’s-eye/aerial view perspective is found exclusively in Biographic art, where it is used only occasionally, but particularly to illustrate large-scale battle scenes, some camp circles, and entrenched war parties. It is also common in a particular type of sexual “capture” scene showing both the man and woman as complete people with the woman lying on her back as the man crawls up to touch (i.e., capture) her vulva (Keyser, Sundstrom, and Poetschat 2006:59). Merging to a slight degree with stacked perspective in some cases, bird’s-eye/ aerial view perspective can range from a steeply angled bird’s-eye view to a straight down plan view featuring “flattened” perspective. In some cases, several angles can occur in a single composition. Thus, a battle scene at DgOv-43 at Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park (Figure 1.9) has a horse, guns, and humans

Figure 1.9. Several perspectives are evident in this battle scene. Humans defending villages are shown in side view, tipis in the camp circles are shown in steeply angled bird’s eye view, with the central structure in the lower village shown from directly above. Weapons of both forces are shown in side view, but the man in front of the horseman is shown upside down. Tracks of horses and pedestrians are shown in plan view. Drawing by James D. Keyser.

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depicted almost as if seen in side profile or front view by an observer on the same level ground line, but tipis in the camp circle under attack are shown both as if seen from a very shallow bird’s-eye view angle and as an asterisk-like form as though seen from directly above. Another nearby battle scene at the same site is reduced to its basic elements, showing a gun, horse tracks, and human footprints as if seen from directly above (Figure 1.10). In another example, a dance scene at the Joliet site (24CB402) shows two women, each with their dress pulled up to expose their genitalia. One interpretation has one or both of the women squatting as if “giving birth” to the Crow Hot Dance (McCleary 2008b:43–44), but it appears a second artist visiting the site understood the scene and added a man with an exaggeratedly erect phallus reaching up to touch the larger of these women’s vulva (Figure 1.11— see also Chapter 5, “Reading the Narratives”). When we compare the modified scene to other Biographic art scenes of sexual capture (Keyser, Sundstrom, and Poetschat 2006), it is clear the later artist structured his sexual “coup” with the woman shown in plan view as if lying on her back with her knees pulled up. This is the pose typical of other sexual capture scenes, which are shown from above with the man who is capturing the woman illustrated as if crawling up to her to reach under her dress and touch her genitalia (Figure 1.12). Finally, groups of entrenched combatants encircled by a line are, by definition, seen as if from directly above. Some of the combatants themselves,

Figure 1.10. In this red-painted battle scene, the participants have been reduced to two ranks of short dashes and their tracks and horses’ hoofprints. A single gun fires a shot at a horseman circling in front of a group of combatants. Drawing by James D. Keyser.

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Figure 1.11. This elaborate Hot Dance petroglyph commemorates the 1882 transfer of the dance from the Hidatsa to the Crow. Regalia, face paint, and sound lines combine to narrate a complex story. Note the elk (in grey in center) superimposed by the dance scene. Drawing by the authors.

Figure 1.12. Sexual capture, shown by a man reaching out to grab a woman’s breast or genitalia, was the forceful co-opting of a captured woman’s reproductive potential into the captor’s group. Drawing by the authors.

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Figure 1.13. Groups of entrenched combatants are shown encircled by a line representing some form of fortification. They are, by definition, seen as if from directly above. However, while some combatants might be lying down, horses are always shown in side profile, creating a multiplane twisted perspective. Attackers in (a) are shown as a stacked array of generic weapons. Both humans and horses are shown inside fortifications in (b), but attackers have breached the defenses and fight inside the circle at right. Drawing by the authors.

either within or outside the fortification, might be lying down, but horses— when shown—are always in side profile (Figure 1.13). In later ledger art, sometimes a group of entrenched enemies was shown in a more realistic, relatively shallowly angled bird’s-eye view (Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997:118–19). Flattened Perspective is a special type of twisted perspective used with bird’s-eye/aerial view layouts. With tongue firmly in cheek, this is sometimes termed “road-kill” perspective because such drawings reduce everything to an unrealistically flat, two-dimensional surface as if the illustrated objects had been run over by a steam roller. Thus, a camp circle has all the tipis lying flat and positioned to point either inward or outward in a circular arrangement (Figure 1.14) rather than being shown as a group of structures seen from the side while organized in a circular group (Figure 1.15).

Figure 1.14. Camp circle arrangements can show tipis facing either inward or outward. This view shows the tipis in a flattened perspective facing outward. Drawing by the authors.

Figure 1.15. Camp circles feature a defined perimeter. Here the tipis are portrayed in a shallow bird’s-eye view perspective. Drawing by the authors.

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Hierarchical perspective occurs when the size of a figure or an item, or its position in the composition, was used to indicate its relative importance. In the stylized hierarchical perspective of Medieval European art, the evident hierarchy was often based on religious importance. But in battles, important generals are sometimes shown larger-than-life and in a central position in the fight, and in Egyptian art royal figures are shown larger than those serving them. The hierarchy in Biographic art can reflect several different things, including (1) spiritual power (such as an outsized shield looming over a combat scene that attests to the spiritual potency of the owner’s vision in which he obtained the heraldic design); (2) superior killing ability (hence, an outsized spear or its metal point to indicate its greater efficacy as a killing implement); (3) the centrality or the exaggerated size of the artist’s self-portrait (which designates him as the originator of key actions in the scene); or (4) the relative importance of a person or item to the storyline of the narrative (hence, an outsized gun that emphasizes it was taken by the protagonist in hand-to-hand combat and represents one of the four major coups). One other aspect of hierarchical perspective deserves mention: Plains Biographic rock art routinely shows combat between two participants, one or both of whom wield a weapon of greatly exaggerated length (Figure 1.16). While such elongation might reflect superior killing power or spiritual potency, in some cases it simply appears that the weapon’s length was exaggerated in order to explicitly “connect” the two participants who are being drawn some distance apart so they do not overlap or otherwise interfere with one another. Sometimes this occurs with both participants on a single ground line, but other times it occurs in stacked perspective. Some scenes of sexual intercourse show two people in front-view pose on an inferred ground line sexually connected by a man’s greatly elongated penis looping down below the figures and turning back up to the woman’s vulva (Figure 1.17).

Figure 1.16. Hierarchical perspective shows an object or participant in a scene with an exaggerated size to denote its importance. Here this outsized spear is used by the horseman to count coup on his pedestrian foe. Drawing by the authors.

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Figure 1.17. Exaggerated length can indicate an object’s importance, or act as a way to connect elements of a scene. In these scenes of sexual intercourse, the man’s elongated penis extends down and curves upward to the woman on the right. The explicit hierarchy of the participants in (b) is shown by the larger size of the man and his weapons. Note the visual pun where his penis is “fletched” like the arrow he holds. Drawing by the authors.

The last type of perspective occurring in this art is what we term the expanded space/empty center organization (or for an easy mnemonic, the “donut-hole” perspective). This perspective derives largely from the fact that Biographic art has a nonlinear depth perception and is essentially nonrealistic in specific proportions for the actors, while at the same time using continuous narrative. The donut-hole perspective combines an expansion of space required to illustrate all the actors in a complex scene (most or all of whom are essentially equal sized, and some of whom are often mounted) while focusing the real action in a limited central space, which includes only key action elements such as flying projectiles, trails of human footprints and/or horse tracks, and/or sometimes synecdochical capture hands or floating weapons. The result is that a fight scene will often be drawn so that it appears to occupy a broad field of battle with participants riding or running toward one another, and shooting at one another, from what seem to be great distances, when in fact, the artist well knew (and fully intended to depict) that this was hand-tohand combat at close quarters. So, to illustrate just such a fight, while remaining true to the principles of illustrating complete details of weaponry, costume, horse tack, and sequent actions, the artist directs and focuses an observer’s attention to this central area by marking it with clusters of flying bullets and/ or arrows, paths of humans and/or horses, and/or a capture hand or floating weapon. Thus, what the observer first notes is the actors drawn in great detail but spread out at the margins of the scene. Only secondarily can the viewer truly understand the full extent and actual nature of the actions these combatants are undertaking when she or he closely observes the seemingly almost empty space in the composition’s center and comprehends the relationship

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of the much simpler marks there to the greater whole. When combined with an understanding of the various conventions that characterize Biographic art, this enables an observer to understand a composition in detail. Several intricately detailed Biographic art compositions clearly show the donut-hole perspective. One of the simplest (Figure 1.18) is the Castle Butte (24YL418) combat scene, in which two warriors engage one another without touching, although a very detailed flintlock rifle (shown twice) and a bow and flying arrow occupy a space (the donut-hole) between the two warriors that is large enough to contain the bodies of two additional men drawn to the same dimensions as the combatants. The floating flintlock at the top of the scene is clearly a gun taken by the victor (the warrior on the right) and then turned around to strike his foe—all in hand-to-hand combat after he shot an arrow at the man. Certainly, this weapon capture and coup-strike happened at close quarters. But had the artist tried to illustrate the hand-to-hand struggle, the ensuing take-away of the flintlock, and then its reuse to strike the foe, as it actually happened, the resultant tangle of bodies, arms, and weapons would have been an unintelligible mishmash of lines in this type of art. Instead, by leaving the protagonists at the margins of the scene and having the weapons move about in a continuous narrative in the “donut-hole,” the action is fully understandable, and the artist was able to illustrate all the salient details of participants and their weaponry. Another extreme example of illustrating the donut-hole spatial organization is the Rocky Coulee battle scene (DgOv-57) at Writing-on-Stone (Figure Figure 1.18. This combat scene tells 1.19—see also Chapter 5, “Reading the a complete story using many convenNarratives,” The Rocky Coulee Battle tions with a minimum of images. It is composed with expanded space where Scene). This battle composition is one characters exist on the periphery and of the premier examples of Biographic action occurs in the largely empty rock art narratives on the northern center. Showing the winner’s tracks Plains (Keyser 1977b, 1987; Keyser, and the gun a second time are two of Dobrez, Hann, and Kaiser 2013; Kai- several factors creating a simultaneous ser and Keyser 2015:174–75), showing narrative in which a series of events from the past and future are appended detailed combat between five pedes- to the central scene of the two fighting trian warriors attacking four mounted warriors. Stuart Conner, photographer; warriors who ride out to defend their drawing by the authors.

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Figure 1.19. The Rocky Coulee battle scene at Writing-on-Stone is a classic example of the “donut-hole” perspective. The “empty” center, marked by the light grey circle, is the area where nearly all the action took place, as indicated by the clustering of more than thirty bullets there and the tracks of three participants running into that part of the scene. The only actors entirely within the empty center are the swordsman and his opponent on whom he has counted coup in addition to scalping and taking his gun. All images are drawn with red ochre crayon. Drawing by the authors.

camp. In this scene, the concentration of “bullets” and human footprints in the upper center of the actual combat composition focuses the observer’s attention on this otherwise unoccupied area of the drawing, and clearly indicates this is where the action involving five of the nine participants really took place. At the scale of this drawing, there simply was insufficient space to illustrate all five fighters in a continuous narrative of close-quarters combat with the detail required for this type of composition. Thus, the five men were drawn surrounding this central area and their bullets and footsteps show where the actual action occurred.

Synecdoche—The Implied Actor One of the most common Biographic art conventions is the use of synecdoche, in which a part of something symbolizes the whole object or action. Biographic art is replete with examples of synecdoche, where a floating weapon stands for the person wielding it, flying bullets indicate unseen guns firing, hoofprints stand for a horse’s path into the fight, and busts of enemy warriors touched by floating weapons tally vanquished enemies. And although we can often see the development of these shorthand depictions in the evolution of this art (Figure 1.20), where recognizable things gradually get more abstract over time, these are still paired with fully explicit depictions in most scenes. This practice continued into the latest Biographic art (including Historic period ledger and robe drawings) produced as late as the first decades of the 1900s.

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Figure 1.20. The development of the capture hand in Blackfoot Biographic art from a full human figure through various stages to a small trident. All images are identified as Blackfoot except (c), but its capture hand mimics others in early 1800s Blackfoot art. Stippling in (c) is abrading. Drawing by the authors.

In this synecdoche convention the narrative’s protagonist often does not appear as a complete physical being. Instead, in such compositions, we see an abbreviated version of the character or object, such as a floating capture hand to stand in for the entire protagonist (Figure 1.21), or the holding of a quirt symbolizing the riding of an unseen horse (Figure 1.18). Elsewhere, the protagonist is not depicted at all, only the results of his actions, which can be ascribed to him only because we recognize his weapon performing an action or his tracks or those of his horse moving through a scene (Figure 1.22).

Figure 1.21. Two women wearing fringed leggings are recognized by their breasts, emphasized hips, and vulvas drawn just beneath the waistline. Floating capture hands, with a short arm attached, reach toward their genitalia or breast to indicate sexual capture. Drawing by the authors.

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Figure 1.22. This painting is a progressive narrative showing a sequence of coups counted. Beginning at upper right the artist shows himself (represented by his horse’s tracks and his spear) moving downward to count coup on a heavily armed, shield-bearing pedestrian foe. Just below the horse tracks is another pair of hoofprints combined with footprints (indicating the hero dismounted to run across the composition to an enemy). These footprints lead left to a Missouri war axe that counts coup on a second human. Between the two humans are three arrows taken by a capture hand. At the top left is a scalp pole with a suspended scalp at its upper end. Drawing by the authors.

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Structurally, much narrative art can be viewed in terms of subject, verb, and direct object, such as “I stole a horse.” In the grammar of null-subject languages, such as Spanish or Russian, an independent clause is permitted to lack an explicit subject if said subject is retrievable from context. In Biographic art, the protagonist in such a null-subject structure is only implied—as if he were “offstage.” Thus, we see the horse that was stolen or the enemy that was struck but not the actor who performed these actions. Like the footprints of the iconic invisible man, in some scenes we see only the hero’s tracks or his horse’s hoofprints guiding us through the action. In others, a floating weapon is held by his unseen hand to strike coup upon a foe.

Narrative Detail The use of synecdoche and the removal of explicitly depicted subjects or actions are key components in the structure of Biographic art. However, this is often a point of confusion for the reader, who must often “fill in the blanks” to complete the narrative. This need to read such narratives intertextually leads to their classification into three levels—Explicit, Implied, and Inferred narratives (Keyser, Dobrez, Hann, and Kaiser 2013; Keyser, Kaiser, and Dobrez 2015)—based on the portrayal of movement and interaction between figures, the association of elements and their placement in a composition, and the use of standardized and repeated conventions. Explicit Narrative. Sometimes the images and actions in a composition are sufficiently uncomplicated and arranged clearly enough so it is obvious to any observer that a narrative story is being depicted. In its most direct form, events and actors in an explicit narrative are so unambiguously portrayed interacting with Figure 1.23. This petroglyph of a man one another in postures showing ob- spearing another is an example of vious movement that any observer an explicit, monoscenic narrative any observer would recognize. The winner will recognize the basic storyline (Fig- leans forward while the victim doubles ure 1.23). Actions and participants are over while falling backward in a posture shown in adequate detail to be read- of defeat. Photograph by James D. Keyser.

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ily identified, and the story’s content can be understood—at least in its basic outline—without the need for additional cultural knowledge. The artist might even use simple conventions, such as track sequences to show movement through the depicted scene, adding additional detail that can be readily understood by anyone if the larger action is portrayed in a sufficiently straightforward manner. Touching an enemy with your weapon or your bare hand was the primary coup for Plains warriors, who depicted the act in multiple ways. Figure 1.24a shows an explicit depiction in which the horseback protagonist is wounded, but then (using synecdoche) we see he has dismounted and run toward his enemy, with his path represented by his footsteps. He runs up to touch the bowman who shot him and another enemy with his bare hand. Then, as he continues, we see him run by three other enemy warriors, each of whom he has stabbed with a large spear. The content of an explicit narrative can be significantly expanded if the observer has access to culturally relevant contextual information referenced earlier. But such information is “external” to the narrative composition in that it is not present in the images themselves. Such contextual information might include ethnographic, ethnohistoric, historic, or oral history information or even archaeological evidence associated with a Biographic Tradition rock art

Figure 1.24. These narrative scenes, illustrating a warrior touching an enemy to count coup, range from explicit (a) to implied (b) to inferred (c). All show essentially the same action on a spectrum of abridgement wherein the fully illustrated actor (a) moves offstage to be represented by only his footprints (a), his horse’s hoofprints and his footprints (b), and finally by only his hand (c). Drawing by the authors.

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site. This sort of information would have been possessed by the artist of the composition and his contemporaries as part of the cultures in which they participated. Thus, information as divergent as which elements of clothing and costume accessories were considered ethnic markers, the rationale behind cutting a notch in a horse’s ears or tying up his tail, and the reasons for and practices associated with slave raiding might serve to significantly increase the information about a particular composition, but today this can only be acquired through extensive study of Plains cultures. Implied Narrative. However, not all narratives are drawn at the explicit level; sometimes details of the action are missing even though there is still a strong implication that the artist meant to portray a detailed narrative. Such cases can lack explicit markers of movement or unambiguous portrayals of action between component figures, but there are associations between figures or the use of conventions that strongly hint a storyline was intended by the original artist. Figure 1.24b takes away the image of the actor, using only synecdoche to reduce him to his horse’s tracks, and then his footprints running up to the enemy, and finally his coupstick striking the enemy bowman. Figure 1.24c reduces the entire action to its two component parts, a standing enemy touched by a disembodied hand representing the scene’s protagonist. For such implied narratives the only way to flesh out their narrative content— the storyline—is through an understanding of Biographic conventions and other evidence external to the composition itself. This necessitates a familiarity with the practices of Plains Indian warfare, the objects (weapons, costume, and horse tack) illustrated by the artist, and the reasons for drawing Biographic art. For example, as mentioned above, in some scenes the protagonist himself is not shown. At other times, we may have to understand the action that took place by its end Figure 1.25. Capture of an enemy’s horse result. Both would be the case in a is often shown without depicting the protagonist himself, either by drawing the drawing showing a horse picketed animal where it was picketed in front of at a tipi (Figure 1.25a). The subject a tipi or by showing the cut picket rope. of such a horse scene is the artist, Drawing by the authors.

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and the implied action is his act of bravery in sneaking into an enemy’s camp to take one of their best horses, which were tied up at their owners’ tipis. Likewise, a horse shown with a cut lead rope also indicated such a war honor (Figure 1.25b). Taking a horse in this manner was a highly esteemed war honor among Plains tribes, but this scene could easily be misinterpreted if one saw the picture and assumed the subject was either the horses or the tipi, since the protagonist is not shown. Inferred Narrative. Just as the protagonist in Biographic rock art must sometimes be inferred from the actions he performed, occasionally the existence of the narrative itself is obscure and can only be inferred. In such cases, without specific action there is no overt narrative; however, some images are so detailed and full of symbolic associations that the viewer feels there must be more of a story associated with the image. Such inferred narratives lack any markers for storyline or any indication suggesting to an uninitiated observer (one not schooled in the cultural milieu from which this art arose) that it represents a narrative event. Winter counts—calendars often recorded on a buffalo robe—depict a single memorable incident as a marker for the entire year and often have only an iconic image that acts as a mnemonic device to remember a narrative. No clear action is shown. The narrative must be inferred. In such a case, the observer is entirely reliant on external evidence consisting of culturally specific knowledge not available to the modern viewer without extensive study. But, after study, such evidence, if carefully considered and conscientiously applied to a drawing, often can reveal incredible narrative storylines for even quite basic compositions. As an example, two small, spatially isolated compositions carved adjacent to one another at Writing-on-Stone (Figure 1.26) were completely undecipher-

Figure 1.26. Compositions using the Blackfoot Biographic art ideograms show two men’s success as horse raiders. Drawing by James D. Keyser.

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able when first recorded. Neither was suspected of being a narrative. Each shows a tipi associated with small geometric forms; Xs in one case, and small open-sided rectangles, a series of -shapes, and a vertical slash in the other. The similarities between these two compositions and the repeated occurrence of symbols in each led researchers to suspect a narrative was intended; but only after research two decades later that exposed Keyser to Blackfoot Biographic art ideograms for picketed horses, picket pins, and horse raids (Wissler 1911) was the narrative content of these two compositions revealed to be the record of two accomplished Blackfoot warriors taking enemy horses (Keyser and Klassen 2003). Another example is a portrait of a Ute warrior fully outfitted with fancy clothing and weapons (Figure 1.27). No action is shown, but we can infer that this warrior would have been readily identified by his contemporaries based on his detailed regalia and hairstyle, and it seems likely that his deeds were well known. Unfortunately, in the absence of culturally specific knowledge, we have been unable to determine this man’s identity, so the storyline associated with his portrait is now unknown to us. C

Figure 1.27. This Ute warrior shows detailed weapons, hairdo, and items of clothing. While this portrait would undoubtedly have been recognized by the artist’s peers, its biographic story is now lost. Drawing by James D. Keyser.

Narrative Structure In addition to the continuum of Narrative detail, from explicit to implied and inferred, the way the composition itself was structured varies considerably. There is no single organizing principle in the overall depiction of narratives in Biographic rock art. This same lack of universal structure is found in a variety of narrative art around the world and throughout history. This is why narrative art is often said to be interpreted rather than read, in its strictest sense.

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The study of visual narratives has been the subject of multiple disciplines, including archaeology, art history, narratology, and semiotics. These different disciplines have often created their own taxonomies and have not generally looked outside their own fields to develop more universal classifications; however, they have recognized a variety of methods used to communicate a narrative through pictures (Horváth 2016). Most pertinent to our current analysis is study of the structure of ancient Greek and Roman narrative art (Stansbury-O’Donnell 1999; Von Dippe 2007) as well as early Buddhist art (Dehejia 1990). The classification of narrative types is based on how many times the subject occurs, as well as the number of timeframes or locations depicted (Table 1.1). These different structural methods, though recognized up to this point primarily in Classical Greek, Roman, and Asian-Indian art, occur in narrative art around the world, including Plains Biographic art. However, previous classification schemes have not taken into account the use of synecdoche and implied and inferred narratives. The model therefore is not an exact fit for Biographic rock art but can be used as a guide, with a deeper abstract/implied component. Our model of narrative structure is based on a subset of the taxonomy of narrative discussed in some detail and summarized by Stansbury-O’Donnell (1999:1–6, Table 1–1). While these categories are academic classifications that would not have consciously occurred to the creator of the art, the varieties of narrative construction show that similar methods were used to visually communicate complex ideas in widely different cultures. Thus, it is not necessarily important that the reader be able to classify the structure of the pictures they are interpreting, but awareness of the different kinds of narrative structure gives clues to the organizing principles of the images and how to read them. Monoscenic Narrative. Like an explicit narrative, the simplest and most direct structural depiction of a narrative is monoscenic. This is a simple picture that depicts an action taking place in a single time and place, in which the characters are shown only once (Figure 1.23). As mentioned above, this simple, direct narrative can have additional complexity when elements are abbreviated, abstracted, or implied. However, the key feature is that a monoscenic narrative depicts a single event in time and space without duplication of subjects, objects, or action. So, there could be a Table 1.1. Types of pictorial narration. Adapted from Stansbury-O’Donnell 1999. Narrative Type

No. of Pictures Characters

Time

Space

Monoscenic

1

No Repeats

One Moment

One

Simultaneous

1

No Repeats

Multiple

One

Progressive

1

No Repeats

Multiple

Multiple

Cyclical

2+

Repeats

Multiple

Multiple

Continuous

2+

Repeats

Multiple

One Landscape

Serial

2+

No Repeats

Multiple

Multiple

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monoscenic implied narrative, such as a warrior at Bear Gulch depicted holding a spear as well as a bow with a quiver of arrows, while he is shown in a falling defeated posture with a double-spike mace hitting him on the head (Figure 0.10c). The warrior who wielded the weapon is not shown. He is only implied by his weapon and the results of his actions. However, even monoscenic narratives can be more complex than initially recognized. A single scene can be used to represent a much larger narrative in which the overall story needs to already be known by the viewer, thus acting as a mnemonic device. In rock art this is commonly found in nonnarrative Ceremonial imagery in which mythological figures, who have their associated stories, are shown. But it also occurs in Biographic art, where it has long been known that many of the specific details of any scene were left to the narrator (Wissler 1911:38–39). On the Plains, such monoscenic narratives are one of the prime features of winter counts (Figure 1.28). These incidents are sometimes iconic individual images but can also be Biographic narratives. The full details

Figure 1.28. This vignette from American Horse’s winter count is a biographic scene documenting a memorable incident for the Lakota in the year 1854–55. The scene records the killing of Conquering Bear (indicated by the name glyph attached to his head) in a fight where the Lakota killed thirty US army soldiers (indicated by the black dashes behind the hat-wearing soldier’s bust). Conquering Bear’s death is indicated by a bullet streaming from one of the four floating muzzle blasts, and the profusely bleeding chest wound. Grey indicates red pigment. Drawing by David A. Kaiser, adapted from American Horse winter count, NAA MS, 2372, Box 12:F7, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

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surrounding these winter count narratives are rarely shown; instead, they were remembered by the calendar keeper or community as a whole. Simultaneous Narrative. Some narrative rock art, upon initial viewing, seems to have little discernable structure, being a jumble of different images in which the story is obscured. This is often the case with simultaneous narrative, one of the most common narrative compositional structures found in Biographic art. Like a monoscenic narrative, this type of composition is also a single picture where the characters are not repeated. However, in a simultaneous narrative, multiple events of a single story are combined into a single picture. Often a central scene is shown to which images or events from the past and/or future are appended. The result is a sequence of narrative moments in a single event that are conflated into a single image. Different moments in time are shown simultaneously. Sometimes the order of events is clear, such as a line of footprints leading to a subject, but other times no direct order of causality is shown. The use of images from different times can show different tenses or a narrative progression in a single image. At the Manual Lisa site (24YL82) in Montana an equestrian warrior holds a decorated shield and a spear (Figure 1.29). The spear stabs or hits a pedestrian. Immediately next to this figure is another pedestrian in a leaning defeated

Figure 1.29. A Crow man’s tally of his coups. The upper scene shows two enemies vanquished with the same spear. The lineup of human busts below shows a spontoon tomahawk counting coup on four figures and a spear touching the head of the fifth. The horse and two war bonnets juxtaposed with the horseman indicate captured war trophies. Drawing by the authors.

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posture also hit by another depiction of the same lance and spear tip. However, this second depiction of the spear is abbreviated, showing only the matching spear point and part of the shaft. The narrative shows the explicit battle between two enemies to which a confrontation with a second warrior is appended. Two actions at different moments in time are shown in this single image. A more complex panel at Castle Butte (Figure 1.18) shows two fighting warriors. While each of them is shown only once, the narrative depicts actions from various times in their encounter. The warrior on the right—a bowman—has a series of footprints showing him entering the scene. However, he also holds a quirt. While this could be seen as a simple snapshot of the action, it misses the significance of the past implied action—the quirt signifying that its carrier rode to the location but then dismounted from his horse before entering the fight. In Plains warfare, giving up the advantage provided by one’s horse in such a fight was considered to add to the bravery inherent in such a deed, and hence to increase the prestige of one who engaged an enemy in this manner. As he approaches the enemy, he shoots an arrow but apparently misses. The warrior on the left is armed with a flintlock long gun and a coupstick, but he leans back in a defeated posture. His gun is the only element shown twice in the scene, indicating different points in the timeline. In one depiction it floats just out of the loser’s hand, pointed toward his attacker but not shooting bullets, since neither muzzle blast nor flying bullets are shown. The second time the gun is shown floating between the opponents but facing the opposite direction (toward its owner) and still not firing. The first position shows the gun was captured by the bowman, while the second position shows that the victor turned the enemy’s gun back on him to strike coup by using it to touch the vanquished man. Various narrative elements are conflated into this one scene. Events both before and after the central conflict portrayed are signified by synecdoche and other conventions. The main action involving the two warriors directly clashing in hand-to-hand combat functions as a synchronic fulcrum for the past (dismount, run up, shoot arrow) and future actions (take gun, turn it around, and strike enemy with it) of this diachronic narrative. This use of conflated time requires us to begin inferring parts of the narrative, as we must deduce elements of the action based on clues depicted without the full action being shown. Moreover, Figure 1.30. This vignette from a coup interpretation can be further compli- count tally shows the protagonist cated when significant elements, like the only by his footprints as he runs up to count coup with his bow and then subject himself, are only implied either grab his foe’s spontoon tomahawk, by synecdoche or the result of an action shown floating out of the defeated (Figure 1.30). man’s hand. Drawing by the authors.

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Progressive Narrative. Like a simultaneous narrative, a progressive narrative depicts multiple events within a single image, without repetition of the character(s). The difference between the two is that in a progressive narrative the events depicted can not only occur at different times but in multiple locations as well. This type of composition commonly shows a warrior’s accomplishments over a significant time span (occasionally his entire lifetime). A composition at Ten Sleep Pictographs6 in Wyoming shows such a Progressive narrative (Figure 1.22). The protagonist is identified in the scene only by his horse’s tracks, his own footprints and weapons, and the capture hand convention. In the composition, he first rides by a pedestrian warrior who is armed with a shield and spear to strike the pedestrian with his own spear. Then, in another battle action (note the tracks crossing themselves), our hero rides up on his horse, dismounts, and runs up to count coup on a second enemy with a special type of metal-bladed tomahawk known as a Missouri war axe. In still another action, the hero’s capture hand is shown taking three arrows. Finally, a scalp pole with a suspended enemy scalp drawn above the entire scene indicates the attainment of another war honor. In this composition, the protagonist is shown only through synecdoche; but his multiple deeds from different times and places—as indicated by different weapons, different enemies, and the layout of the composition—illustrate his prowess as a warrior. Sometimes the nature of a progressive narrative in Plains Biographic art is only made clear by the depiction of an unreasonable number of coups to have been counted in a single engagement (Figure 1.29); the presence of too many weapons to have been used in a single fight (Figure 1.31); or by a representative image accompanied by tallies showing similar events to have occurred multiple times. An example of the latter is shown in Vignette 1: A Mandan Warrior’s Personal History.

Figure 1.31. The Schoch war shirt is a masterpiece showing a career’s worth of war honors. Coups counted on enemies at different times and places are shown in a progressive narrative. The war honors are identified by capture hands and weapons that stand in for the artist. James D. Keyser photograph.

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⤞ VIGNETTE 1 A MANDAN WARRIOR’S PERSONAL HISTORY

Figure V1. A Mandan warrior’s illustrious career captured as a tally of coups counted. Drawing by the authors, adapted from war shirt illustrated in Maurer 1992:185.

Painted on a war shirt collected sometime in the first quarter of the 1800s (Maurer 1992:184– 85) is a Mandan warrior-artist’s career’s worth of war honors (Figure V1). The shirt’s owner is pictured at the upper left (in this orientation) astride a stallion—indicated by its penis sheath. The man’s phallus is colored red, symbolizing his own masculine power. His deeds are illustrated as a progressive narrative. The sequence begins with the hero as an unarmed horseman who, after being wounded by an arrow, dismounts to run up and touch the enemy bowman with his bare hand. This act of touching an enemy in hand-to-hand combat was considered a man’s bravest deed. Possibly in this same engagement, but certainly in some battle, he also touched a nearby gunman holding a flintlock long gun—another exceptional coup. As we can then see by the line of his footprints, he passes by six other unarmed enemies, each of whom he has struck with a decorated lance. Blood flowing from each foe’s lance wound indicates these are enemies he killed when engaged in other fights while on foot. The narrative then turns 180 degrees and begins with a horse hoofprint pierced by an arrow, indicating one fight in which his horse was wounded. Hoofprints continuing in a line just above the second rank of enemies, in a position analogous to his footprints above the upper rank, indicate his other battle actions while on horseback. Underneath this line of horse tracks (three or four of which are apparently obscured by the large quillwork rosette affixed to the shirt) are eight additional enemy fighters on whom he counted coup with a lance decorated differently than the one above. The elaborate decoration of this lance may well indicate it is an emblem of the artist’s position in one of his tribe’s military societies. The first foe in the lower row is a man carrying a feather-rimmed shield who the hero apparently touched but

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did not wound. The remaining seven all trail blood from fatal wounds inflicted by the artist’s spear, which is tipped with a powerful, red-painted point. Above one enemy warrior wearing a bison-horn bonnet is a floating flintlock long gun, whose position indicates its capture by the hero during the course of his counting coup. To wrest such a weapon away from an enemy in hand-to-hand combat was another of the bravest deeds a man could accomplish. In fact, three of these defeated enemies wear various accoutrements indicating they were warriors of considerable prowess and esteem within their own groups. One carries a feathered shield almost certainly indicating his status as a prominent warrior, and another wears a long red sash indicating he was a high-ranking member of a military society. This sash may further indicate the wearer had taken a “no-retreat” vow and was killed while trying to rally his own troops. Finally, the one warrior’s buffalo-horn headdress may also indicate his membership in a military society. In short, the owner of this shirt was a man with considerable military accomplishments, which he illustrated as a progressive narrative showing multiple acts and events that took place at different times and in different places as indicated by different weapons, different modes of travel, and different foes. Understanding the narrative structure used here, combined with the various conventions employed by the artist to detail his actions, enables us to know this man’s story nearly two centuries after he recorded it.

⤝

Cyclical Narrative. Larger compositions can show a single story with multiple pictures showing different events within the larger action. Some of the events within a cyclical narrative can even be from the viewpoint of different actors. Thus, in a cyclical narrative one or more characters are shown more than once, taking part in multiple scenes that happened in multiple locations. Such narratives are a collection of individual pictures each telling a part of a larger story. A ledger drawing from the 1880s by Elk Head, a Gros Ventre prisoner incarcerated in the territorial prison at Deer Lodge, Montana, depicts a collage of significant moments in the story his life (Bottomley–O’looney 2012:45). Within the same illustration he shows himself both as a baby being carried by his mother, who is being shot at, as well as his accomplishments as an adult warrior. At La Barge Bluffs (48LN1640) in Wyoming a large Biographic composition shows numerous warriors on horseback and assorted combat scenes, as well as objects such as a railroad train (Figure 1.32). Within this large petroglyph the distinct representation of a woman wearing a dress with a long elk-toothdecorated sash occurs three times. In one scene, as part of a larger battle, she is running from two pursuers on horseback, who capture her. Elsewhere on the panel she is being brought back to a group of dancers by one of the horsemen, and then she is shown standing in front of the line of dancers while two men, almost certainly the same who were riding her down, touch her with a coupstick or lance to recount her capture as part of her adoption into the group (Keyser and Poetschat 2005:35–37).

Figure 1.32. This scene is a cyclical narrative showing a running battle near a train and a later adoption ceremony in which a woman captured in that fight is adopted into the victorious group. Enlargements of three scenes (in ovals) show the woman wearing a distinctive elk-tooth-decorated dress and sash. Drawing by the authors.

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Continuous Narrative. A continuous narrative has the same elements as a cyclical narrative, showing multiple representations of the subject at various times, but it all occurs on a single depicted landscape. However, plants, natural features, or other landforms are rarely illustrated in Biographic rock art, so the “landscape” is often indicated by a tipi camp, buildings, or other structures. Groundlines are rarely shown, so most Biographic images appear to float, independent of their environmental context. Vegetation, such as trees, is sometimes depicted in horse stealing scenes to show the copse of trees near the enemy village where the warrior hid awaiting his chance to sneak out in the night and steal the best horse (Figure 1.33); but such trees serve more as inanimate “actors” in the story rather than background context. In other cases, location or landscape is often only implied—by the physical setting of the art or even by the topography of the rock surface itself. This continuous narrative subset was created by those studying Roman and Hellenistic art in which the landscape and architecture often featured prominently. We know of no example of continuous narrative in Plains Biographic rock art, but it occurs in some of the latest ledger drawings made by Southern Plains Indian artists incarcerated as prisoners of war. For example, Howling Wolf illustrates a horse race in which two horses compete along a winding course (Petersen 1968:54–55). The riders’ movement through the landscape of hills, trees, and open plains is shown by their horses’ hoofprints. In addition to showing the main horses in full gallop, they are also shown at the starting line. The winning horse is identifiable by its color and two horizontal lines branded

Figure 1.33. Trees, such as these shown in a horse stealing scene, are rare in Biographic art. Here they show the thicket of trees near the enemy village where the warrior hid before sneaking in to steal a picketed horse. Thus, this vegetation is part of the narrative rather than simply background landscape. Drawing by the authors.

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or painted on its hindquarters. Here we have multiple representations at different points in time, all contained within a landscape composition. Though rare in Biographic art due to the typical lack of landscape details, it shows the additional variety employed to communicate a visual story. Serial Narrative. Like a newspaper comic strip, a serial narrative is composed of individual pictures that are separate, divided episodes of a single, larger story. Each of these discreet images shows a single event from a continuous story, and characters occur only once per frame. The separation of panels in this fashion does not occur in Plains rock art but became common in later robe art where scenes were separated by lines demarcating individual panels in a larger narrative (Brownstone 1993, 2007; L. Dempsey 2007; Ewers 1983:53). These divisions were added either by the artist/authors or sometimes by Euro-Americans who annotated the art as it was described to them. Just such a painted elk skin robe was created by Big Nose, a Blackfeet warrior, around 1893 to show his various militaristic accomplishments throughout life (Brownstone 2007). Each individual scene has a surrounding line separating it from other engagements (Figure 1.34).

Figure 1.34. Painted elk skin robe by Blackfoot artist Big Nose, ca. 1893. Note the lines demarking individual scenes of this serial narrative. Image courtesy of Arni Brownstone.

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Likewise, individual images in ledger art also were sometimes demarcated with dividing lines. More often, however, each page in a ledger book contained an individual scene as part of the larger narrative of an individual’s or group’s accomplishments or experiences, with the separate pages acting as structural divisions.7 Winter counts, in which a group’s communal history was generally recorded by a single image representing a memorable event for each year, were organized in such a serial sequence (Burke 2007). Sometimes events in subsequent years were explicitly linked, such as revenge killings and punishment for crimes (Kaiser 2021:61). These images could be fully narrative or simply mnemonic devices to jog the memory, but structurally each image acts as a separate panel in a larger community history, similar to a serial narrative. While winter counts were created for use within their community, lines dividing scenes in robe and ledger art were often employed to aid interpretation for the Euro-American consumers of this commercially produced art (Ewers 1983:53). These demarcations were deemed necessary for those who were not used to deducing order out of a seeming jumble of images; in other words, someone not adept at reading Biographic art. Reading the Pictures. Unlike written languages that conform to specific utterances and have clearly defined syntax, Biographic art is a writing system that requires more inference on the part of the reader and much more interaction with the “text.” The reader must bring a detailed cultural knowledge to the task of understanding these stories. Such knowledge enables identification of objects and their associated meanings and subtext. In short, the less information explicitly depicted, the more knowledge the reader must bring to it. The varying conventions and narrative structures used, as well as their subtextual meanings, may complicate interpretation of Plains Biographic art; but through careful study, using the concepts provided here, among others (e.g., Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997:322–23; Keyser 1987; Parsons 1987; Petersen 1971:269–308, 1988:xvii), these images can still communicate specific messages across cultures and through the depths of time.

⤞ VIGNETTE 2 WARRIOR’S COUP TALLY: ELLISON’S ROCK, MONTANA A warrior carved a lifetime’s worth of coups in stone at Ellison’s Rock (24RB1019) in Montana (Keyser 2014a; Keyser, Kaiser, and Dobrez 2015). This composition (Figure V2) demonstrates how some of the various Biographic art perspectives, conventions, and narrative structures described in this chapter are used to communicate a warrior’s accomplishments across time. Synecdoche is used in the shorthand portrayal of all seven warriors depicted, some showing partial torsos, others simply as head, neck, and arms. A two-plane twisted perspective is shown throughout, seeing a frontal view of the combatants as well as a plan view

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Figure V2. This coup-count tally at Ellison’s Rock uses many conventions of the Biographic art lexicon. Numbers used in discussion of individual coups. Drawing by the authors.

of the hoofprints and footprints in a bird’s-eye/aerial view perspective. Floating coup-strike weapons and other armaments captured from enemies provide the “battle context.” Starting at upper right (1), an enemy (shown as head, arm, and upper torso) is struck by a spear with a metal point (indicated by the cross piece behind it). The spear shaft is also decorated with a tab hanging from its end. The protagonist of this coup count is unseen; his actions indicated only by his floating weapon. The victim’s upside-down position probably indicates he was killed, but he may have been dead prior to the coup strike, as he is unarmed. By itself, this portion of the composition is a simple explicit narrative. With the protagonist shown only through synecdoche, it represents a single event in one place with no repetition. The next scene (2) is similar to the first, with another shorthand enemy (though rightside-up this time) on whom coup is counted with the same floating spear. Although this might be another isolated explicit narrative, if this event were part of the same battle as the first coup (as suggested by the same weapon), these first two scenes would combine to create a simultaneous narrative, where the characters do not repeat but multiple actions take place at the same location in different times in a battle. The next scene to the left (3) again features an abbreviated enemy, shown as a head, neck, and arms only. This time the subject rides into the fight from right to left, his horse indicated only by the two hoofprints. The warrior dismounts to attack the enemy on foot, as indicated by the series of dashed footprints. Such a dismount was considered an act of great bravery. His floating coupstick (indicated by its lack of a point) stretches out from his first dismounted footprint, indicating he struck the victim and then continued running up to him to capture his bow and arrow. The enemy’s weapon floats just out of his hand in the captured weapon convention. This single scene shows multiple events occurring at the same place, without duplication, in a simultaneous narrative. A similar narrative is shown in the next scene (4), where the warrior is astride his horse (but not moving as indicated by a single hoofprint). He then dismounts and runs into the fray. This time the shorthand foe, shown with a metal or marine shell concho at the end of his scalp lock, raises as hand as if trying to fend off the blow of the attacker’s war axe shown with a cir-

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cular wrist strap. However, the attacker strikes coup and continues on to capture the enemy’s quiver, seen floating from the victim’s hand. Like the previous scene, this is another simultaneous narrative showing multiple actions occurring in this confrontation with a single enemy. In the following coup (5) a series of hoofprints indicates this attack occurred from horseback. The protagonist, again indicated only by his horse’s tracks and his floating triangular, single-lash quirt, strikes coup on his pedestrian foe by lashing him with his horse whip as he rides by. While this scene indicates a single action, the striking of an enemy, which is conceptually an explicit narrative, the hoofprint sequence indicates a ride-by action occurring over time, creating another simultaneous narrative. This vignette shows the often-blurred lines between some narrative categories. The next scene (6) shows the hero-artist attacking an enemy on foot, as shown by his footprints leading toward his foe, which he strikes with his bow. This floating weapon connects the footprints to this enemy. The defeated foe leans at significant angle, indicating a loser’s posture. His spontoon tomahawk floats out of his hand, indicating its capture by the unseen protagonist. This is another simultaneous narrative with multiple actions over time (the running into battle, striking the enemy, and capturing his weapon) all shown concurrently in a single drawing. A final shorthand human figure is shown in the lower left (7). This possibly represents the protagonist of all these scenes, here connected to scene 6 by the footprints. If so, this would be the only explicit depiction of our hero, rather than being indicated only through synecdoche. However, more likely, this represents a seventh defeated (or captured) enemy without any explicit coup action shown. This latter interpretation creates an implied narrative, in which a coup is suggested but not explicitly depicted. These individual scenes show explicit, simultaneous, and possibly even an implied narrative. However, taken as a complete composition, this is a tally of a warrior’s deeds over a long period with each scene showing only part of a wider progressive narrative, wherein events from multiple times and places are depicted via various conventions and perspectives.

⤝

Notes 1. The quality and accuracy of Denig’s observations are evident by the fact that his work comprises three major manuscripts describing the customs and cultures of five different tribes (D. Miller 2000:xiii–xviii). Furthermore, John Ewers, the preeminent northern Plains ethnologist of the late twentieth century, wrote, “Denig was both the most prolific and the most knowledgeable writer on the Indian tribes of the Upper Missouri in the mid-nineteenth century” (Ewers 1976:xxxvii). 2. Unfortunately, Wissler published only some of his informants’ explanations and apparently the rest of his material concerning this tipi cover has not survived (Brownstone 2005a). 3. A series of letters from Ewers to Keyser dated to the years between 1980 and 1995 show Ewers’ interest in the lexicon and in rock art as they related to both ethnohistoric accounts of Plains Indians and Biographic drawings in other media. Fortunately, although John never found the time to pursue that line of research directly, his encouragement offered to Keyser about his research demonstrated his graciousness and passion for the subject.

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4. We suspect Afton’s explicit presentation of these conventions was influenced to some extent by her earlier collaboration with Petersen (Schorsch, Afton, and Petersen 1990) and her long history of ledger art research (Afton 1977, 1989), in which she certainly encountered Petersen’s dictionary. 5. Within our own culture, however, we are comfortable and conversant with several different perspectives, from the Medieval use of stylized hierarchical perspective (where the size of a figure or its position in the composition was used to indicate its importance relative to other figures) to the cubism of Picasso and other artists to the “twisted perspective” in some modern-day comic strips (Keyser 2011a). Our comfort with these is probably because many of us do not consider such art to be realism. 6. The Ten Sleep Pictographs no longer exist, having been buried or destroyed by highway construction in the 1950s. However, we are fortunate to have two good photographs of the imagery there taken in about 1927. Our analysis of this site is based on those photographs. 7. A few ledger art scenes span two facing pages of a ledger book (e.g., Bates, Kahn, and Lanford 2003:284–86), but these are infrequent and still the “boundary” of the facing pages serves as a structural division from the neighboring scenes.

CHAPTER 2

THE BIOGRAPHIC ART LEXICON

⤞⤝ The remainder of this book is intended to assist the reader in deciphering the messages encoded in Biographic rock art narratives. Essentially, it is a teaching tool that provides the “instruction” that Edwin Denig indicated would be needed for those not versed in the Biographic art lexicon of Plains Indian warrior artists. As Karen Daniels Petersen said so eloquently almost fifty years ago when she authored something similar to our work, but restricted to the ledger drawings of the Fort Marion artists: [For each] of these drawings . . . the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. To arrive at the complete meaning, two steps should be taken.  First, identify the items that make up the picture. . . . Second, account for the presence in the picture of each item. The . . . connotation may provide clues, but even more useful is a large stock of curiosity, intuition, resourcefulness, and knowledge of Plains Indians’ culture. The true pictograph was selective in the items shown, including only those with significance for the message conveyed. The most heavily stressed item, the most puzzling one, or the one not usually found in similar drawings may be the key to the interpretation of the whole. Conversely, a single item takes its meaning from its relation to the other items in the drawing; it must be studied in context. (Petersen 1971:269–308)

The artists themselves corroborated Petersen’s approach to their work. For instance, the son of famous Kiowa ledger artist, Silver Horn (Haungooah), stressed that “every element his father included in a picture was there to convey information, rather than for decoration” (Greene 2009:30). And when the Piegan robe painter named “Sharp” was asked about the verity of his illustrations by Dr. Z. T. Daniel (who originally collected the robe), Sharp is reported to have replied that all the illustrations “were [true] and he called to witness any man of the tribe to authenticate its [the robe’s] truthfulness.” Dr. Daniel goes on to say that while he owned it, “it has been seen and read by a great many Blackfeet, and I have heard no question as to its accuracy” (Ewers 1983:54–56). The Biographic art lexicon has four key aspects, all of which must be understood and appropriately applied to any drawing in order to unlock the message embedded in the art:

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1. correct identification of objects, people, and animals 2. understanding and identifying the context of all objects and images 3. understanding the conventions and connotations used to structure the art 4. understanding when an object or image becomes a symbol As discussed above, we are greatly aided in understanding this art by the fact that drawings in all three primary media show the same scenes with identical structure binding together the same people, horses, and objects (Figures 0.20, 2.1, 2.2). Many drawings produced and collected for a century, from the early 1800s through the first decades of the 1900s, are carefully annotated by collectors who spoke directly with the artists, and others are captioned by the artists themselves (e.g., Bad Heart Bull and Blish 1967; Ewers 1983; Keyser 2000; Miles and Lovett 1994, 1995; White Bull 1968). These annotations document the meaning of the pictures in modern languages and—with the drawing—produce a Rosetta Stone effect, whereby the written annotations can be used to understand and verify the meanings of the Biographic picture writing.1 In this way these drawings help provide the foundation for the revival of the lexicon nearly a century after it was last in common usage. We discuss each of these four structural components in detail below.

Figure 2.1. Key narrative conventions are the same in all Biographic art media. The rock art image (a) shows the same action as the robe drawing (b). Note winner’s and loser’s posture and detailed weaponry. Drawing and photograph by James D. Keyser.

Figure 2.2. Dancers in rock art (a) and ledger art (b) show the same characteristic postures and regalia. (a) Drawing by the authors; (b) redrawn by the authors from image courtesy of Charles H. Barstow Collection, Montana State University-Billings, Library Special Collections

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Correct Identification Correct identification of objects and participants in a Biographic composition is crucial to understanding this art, and it is often more difficult than it would seem at first glance. In part, this is because many of the illustrated items are no longer in common use, and thus are not easily recognizable today. Something like a “gun worm” (Figure 2.3), which was used to keep a flintlock’s barrel from fouling by removing the burned powder residue, might simply be missed or even misidentified, and a significant part of the narrative story could be lost. Likewise, minor differences between various types of decorated bridle bits can be equally confusing to anyone not completely versed in Historic period Plains Indian horse tack. The same is true for several types of weapons, including quirts (when used to strike coup), tomahawks, and firearms. Misidentification also occurs when modern observers do not understand conventional ways in which Indian artists depicted various objects, so that a tomahawk becomes a broken rifle, a series of eagle feathers tied in a horse’s tail become a group of guns shooting at the animal, or a tally of coup-struck enemies (shown—as on many painted robes—as human busts only) becomes a series of severed heads suspended on a line or pole. The literature describing Biographic rock art compositions is filled with well-meaning but crucial misidentifications of such things as decorative weapon tabs, fortifications, various floating weapons, track sequences, and coup strikes. As authors, we were not immune to such identifications in our early efforts to understand these drawings. Thus, Keyser (1987:67) identified a shield rimmed with decorative feathers as a sun symbol.2 Similarly, other authors have interpreted a Missouri war axe as a tipi with a path leading up to it, a leather armor coat as a woman’s dress, or missed a set of footprints because it is lost in a hail of flying bullets. Any such misidentification reduces the information content of the narrative drawing and ultimately precludes our fully understanding it. While many misidentifications can be rectified, it is often necessary to carefully examine Biographic compositions several times to do so, and even those that have been previously interpreted must Figure 2.3. A corkscrew-shaped gun often be closely reevaluated, to make worm, threaded to the end of the ramsure details of weaponry, costume, and rod, was used to clean residue from setting are correctly identified so the the barrel of a flintlock. It is depicted story is complete. in Biographic art as a wavy line at Some misidentifications are also the end of a straight ramrod. Keyser photograph. the result of an observer’s preconcep-

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tions as to what the art “should” show or “should” be about. One of the most apparent (and at the same time comically absurd) misidentifications of this sort concerns a petroglyph at DgOw-29 (Figure 2.4), which shows a typical Historic period combat/coup-count composition. In this scene, the gunman on the right kills his well-armed foe (shown Figure 2.4. A pipe-carrying partisan on the left), who falls slightly backward shoots an enemy at Verdigris Coulee. while a line of bullets streams from the He also captures the feathered lance victor’s gun barrel to the killed man’s floating from the hand of his victim. head. This explicitly shows one of the Dark grey scrawls are graffiti. Drawing by James D. Keyser. fatal “kill shots” characteristic of Blackfoot Biographic pictography (Wissler 1911:40, Figure 3b). Additionally, the losing warrior wields a pogamoggan with a pendent-feathered tab in one hand while a feathered lance floats away from his other hand. If one recognizes the floating weapon convention, it is apparent that the gunman, in addition to killing his foe, also takes the feathered lance as a war trophy. The action depicted here is easily dated to the Historic period by the presence of the gun. Furthermore, it is completely consistent in terms of weapons, artistic conventions, and structural components with thousands of examples of coup counting reported in ethnographic accounts and illustrated in other Biographic narratives in several different media. In an attempt to view the rock art at Writing-on-Stone solely in the context of “mystical themes,” however, Patricia S. Barry analyzes this scene and argues that it “demands an explanation along mystical lines” (1991:55). Hence, she identifies the defeated man’s feathered lance as a “supernatural” rake, which she avers is “unrelated to any earthly object,” and she sees the feathers as “little flames” shooting out toward what appear (to her) to be drums (these circular forms are, in fact, a series of superimposed scrawls unrelated to the original composition). Additionally, for Barry, the fatal series of flying bullets becomes “a stream of [thought] power . . . [emitted] from [the] head” of the warrior on the left toward the man on the right. This leads her to suggest that the man on the left has either defeated the one on the right by virtue of the stronger “medicine” of his “spiritual [i.e., flame-shooting] weapon,” or conversely that the man on the left is magically transforming into the one on the right (Barry 1991:55–57). To anyone knowledgeable in the Biographic art lexicon, Barry has obviously misidentified key components in this scene (e.g., feathered lance, flying bullets), ignored others (e.g., gun, pogamoggan), and failed to recognize or consider at least three conventions (floating weapon, loser’s posture, flying bullets). Additionally, she has conflated unrelated scratches with actual parts of the composition. In her interpretation, there is no Biographic narrative content to this composition, and the message that its original author intended to

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express is completely lost. In fact, the composition is co-opted to serve a “New Age” purpose that denies its rightful intent. Thankfully, however, the scene has been carefully recorded and anyone with knowledge of the Biographic art lexicon can bring to light the story actually embedded in it.

Understanding Context Once one has identified various objects and actors in a Biographic composition, it is equally crucial to understand the context of these various things to correctly decode the story embedded in the drawing. For instance, once correctly identified, a quirt can mean many different things in a Biographic drawing (Figure 2.5). Shown in use whipping a horse who gallops into a fight, the quirt connotes the horseman’s speed as he rushes into battle. In another scene it is used by the protagonist to count coup on his enemy by whipping him across the face; and in a tally of defeated enemies, a floating coup-strike quirt indicates a similar action but without the event or protagonist being directly shown. In a different kind of tally showing captured war booty, two quirts represent either the artist’s war trophies taken from his enemies or horses he has given away; and in still another drawing, a pedestrian combatant holds a quirt in one hand while shooting at his enemy (and capturing his enemy’s gun) with his other hand. In this latter scene the quirt tells the viewer that the artist had dismounted to engage his enemy, a nuanced depiction of the protagonist giving up his mounted advantage to join the fight on foot. Such an act would have significantly increased the bravado of

Figure 2.5. A quirt can connote many different things in Biographic art: Speed (a), a coup-strike weapon (b–c); a stand-in for an “invisible” protagonist (c) or his horse (d), a captured war trophy (e), or horses given away (f). Drawing by the authors.

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this coup and rendered it well worth showing. Finally, eleven quirts painted in groups of two and three on a bison robe are each paired with two or four horse hoofprints (to represent animals). These whips indicate that the warrior artist had given away horses taken from enemies in order to increase his social standing and status, because among some Plains tribes a warrior-chief and leader of a successful war expedition was expected to give stolen horses to those less fortunate, and when that was done, “the whip belonging to the horse is always bestowed with the animal” (Maximilian 1906:Vol. 23:264). A similar situation occurs with horse tracks, where different contexts for essentially identical C-shaped images indicate very disparate “meanings.” For example, in the last context listed above regarding the connotation of a quirt shown juxtaposed with hoofprints, the horse tracks represent animals gifted to others to increase a man’s status (Figure 2.5f); but in another scene ten horse tracks indicate a count of animals stolen during a raid on the enemy (Figure 2.6a), and still other horse hoofprints indicate the path of an animal through a scene (Figure 2.6b). A column of single horse tracks stacked one

Figure 2.6. Hoofprints can have a variety of meanings, including stolen animals (a, d—reverse C-shapes), route of travel into the fight (b), a phalanx of just-dismounted warriors fighting an enemy (c), or horse raids participated in (d—squared tracks). Drawing by the authors.

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above the other, and each situated behind a pair of human footprints that are themselves positioned just behind a stacked column of weapons, indicates a dismounted enemy force shooting at a lone raider or a larger invading enemy group (Figure 2.6c). Finally, a squared-off hoofprint used by the Blackfoot indicated participation in, or leadership of, a horse raid (Figure 2.6d). Interestingly, prints of shod horses (and actual horseshoes worn by an animal) are illustrated in ledgers (Figures 2.7, 2.8) and winter counts (Greene and Thornton 2007:131–35) to indicate animals captured from soldiers or other Euro-Americans (since Plains Indians did not shoe their mounts). Shod horse hoofprints have so far been identified in Plains rock art only at the SA petroglyphs (48CA4121) in Wyoming (Greer and Greer 2001), but these are different from those in ledger art, and the relationship of this site to Plains Biographic Tradition rock art is not clear. Many more instances of contextual differences connoting different meanings could be described for numerous other Biographic images. Almost any weapon can be a primary killing or coup-counting instrument (whether shown in use or standing in for an unseen protagonist), a captured war trophy, or even an implication of some other action taking place offstage or “behind the scenes.” For instance, a bow-spear brandished by a warrior in a scene—

Figure 2.7. The Tie Creek ledger shows a mounted warrior using a saber to count coup on an American soldier while braving a barrage of bullets. During the action the horse also tramples the enemy underfoot, as indicated by the shod hoofprints extending on past. Image courtesy of Michael Fosha, Black Hills State University, Spearfish, South Dakota.

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but not used as a killing or coupstrike weapon—could indicate his membership in a particular military society or the use of that particular weapon to cast spells on enemies at a distance, while another bow-spear floating in a coup-count tally of vanquished enemies (Figure 0.9) can indicate either a direct coup strike or the capture of a woman by bringing her under the weapon’s supernatural power. Capture hands can indicate a coup strike, the capture of a war trophy, possession of the weapon that Figure 2.8. Horseshoes depicted on counts coup or the knife that severs a captured cavalry mount in a ledger a picket rope, the taking of a horse, drawing. Authors’ drawing adapted from or the sexual capture/conquest of a McLaughlin 2013 woman’s reproductive capability. But what is important here is not to discuss and describe every possible context and connotation of every known Biographic art image. We have attempted to do that in the lexicon’s “Dictionary” portion that forms another part of this book (Chapter 3). Instead, what we particularly want to call the reader’s attention to here is the need to understand the specific contexts of all the items in a composition so the full information potential for telling a narrative Biographic story can be realized. Often these contexts require extensive ethnographic knowledge, for how else would we know that a quirt was part of the “gift” when a stolen horse was given away, or that a bow-spear acting as the “Thunder Bow” had power to both protect its owner from harm and to cast long distance spells on enemies? Such ethnographic information can seem quite foreign to us as modern observers from a different culture, and it is definitely part of the “high context” of the message (Hall 1976), or what others (Keyser, Dobrez, Hann, and Kaiser 2013:86–87; Keyser, Kaiser, and Dobrez 2015:73) have called the “external” evidence needed to flesh out the implied narrative story in many such compositions. But we must remember that this ethnographic information, while external to the rock art drawing itself, was neither external nor foreign to the artists. This knowledge was as familiar a part of their culture as are the seemingly mundane bits of our own cultural milieu, which might include such things as Sadie Hawkins Day, “trick-or-treat,” or the understanding that an octagonal red sign means stop while a green light means go. Thus, it is obvious that in order to learn the Biographic art lexicon one must become—at least in part—conversant with cultural practices far different than our own. We have attempted to provide background for these practices when it seems

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necessary to explicate particular images, but we readily admit that we learn something new about the lexicon almost every time we investigate a complex new drawing. We suspect that as more people begin to understand Plains rock art in light of the lexicon, there will be new discoveries made every year.

Understanding Biographic Art Conventions It is not enough, however, just to correctly identify all the component images making up a scene and to identify and understand the contexts in which these images are drawn. Successful use of the lexicon also requires the reader to be conversant with the artistic conventions used to structure the art and interrelate the component parts. Some of these—such as stacked perspective and simultaneous narrative—have been previously discussed in the section on perspective, but there are many other conventions used in Biographic art. These range from concepts as simple as the war party leader being designated by the medicine pipe he carries, the telltale postures of winners and losers in combat, and the depiction of wounds, to such complexities as why a weapon “floats” in a scene or when and why we can assume the actor in certain compositions was intended to be understood as simply being offstage. Some conventions, such as the loser’s “falling-over” posture, are simple and basic. The earliest Biographic rock art combat scenes (Figure 0.8a) clearly show two warriors fighting, but the fact that both combatants are armed with the same sorts of weapon, are drawn with similar detail and in the same upright positions, and that neither weapon strikes a blow nor is any wound shown precludes our identifying a winner or a loser. Some early scenes do identify the loser by size and/or illustration of a fatal blow from an opponent’s weapon (Figure 0.8b), but the conventions here are size differences and showing the actual killing blow. For many of the more detailed Historic period compositions, the size of the actors and/or the amount of detail crowded into a tightly compacted scene precludes the use of these very simple early conventions of size and killing blow, so artists resorted to showing the defeated foe falling backward (or, much less commonly, forward) under the onslaught of their attacker. This simple depiction of posture immediately identifies the winner and loser and enables an observer to quickly comprehend the basics of the action. But other scenes, sometimes even those with few component images, require an intimate knowledge of several different artistic conventions. For instance, only by understanding the conventions relating to posture, floating weapons, and the existence of an offstage protagonist can we make sense of many coup-count scenes. As an example, one warrior oriented at an approximate forty-degree angle from upright holds a bow and arrows in one hand and wears what appears to be an odd “hat” (Figure 0.10c). This scene is not

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easily understood at first glance. It can only be fully recognized as an offstage protagonist’s coup-strike, which killed his heavily armed foe, if the observer understands the loser’s falling-over posture; recognizes that the “hat” is really a floating coup-strike, double-spike mace hitting him atop the head; and knows that the bow and quiver of arrows carried out in his front hand puts him in a “ready for war” pose. Likewise, the five weapons surrounding a standing figure at DgOw-38 at Writing-on-Stone, Alberta, (Figure 2.9) tell no obvious narrative story until the observer understands three conventions—the floating weapon, the coup-strike, and the Blackfoot “mortal wound”—that structure this into a detailed record of the defeat, death, and striking of coups on an enemy warrior. Misreading—or simply not understanding—a Biographic art convention can significantly lessen the amount of information available to the observer, and thereby preclude communication of the full story of a drawing. Some examples derive simply from an observer’s lack of familiarity with Biographic art, so that a group of combatants entrenched in a circular fortification is mistakenly identified as a shield and guns (Bethke 2016:201), but others are egregious errors of attempted interpretation, as when Samuel Strong, who annotated the Strong/Roman Nose ledger, described floating coup-strike weapons as having been thrown at the enemy (Figure 0.19). Thus, as part of the lexicon presented here, we devote an entire section to describing and explaining the various conventions used by Plains Indian warrior artists to structure their Biographic narratives.

Figure 2.9. This warrior, attacked by three guns, a tomahawk, and a spear, shows Blackfoot “kill shots” to the head and chest. The other weapons count coup. The absence of a top to his head probably indicates he was scalped. Drawing by the authors, adapted from tracing by Michael Klassen.

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When an Image Becomes a Symbol: Pictograms and Ideograms Finally, some Plains Biographic narratives include images that have symbolic rather than pictographic content. A few of these are representational forms, such as a stacked column of pipes painted on the sleeve of a war shirt (indicating war parties led), but many are geometric forms with no clearly obvious pictorial resemblance to any actual thing but which instead represent a concept or an idea. As a simple nonphonological writing system, Plains Biographic picture writing includes both pictograms and ideograms. Pictograms show recognizable, albeit often quite stylized, pictures of real things as they exist in the natural world. For Plains Biographic art these would be such things as a horse, a weapon, a pipe, or a camp circle of tipis. On the other hand, ideograms are abstracted images that do not display any obvious pictorial similarity to real entities, even though they may have derived from actual pictograms. These ideograms exist in the writing system as recurring, conventionalized symbols with standardized meanings understood by all who use the system. For example, both bcand ♂♀ are symbols used to represent “man” and “woman” in modern day “picture writing,” but the first pair are pictograms while the second are ideograms. Clearly, the pictograms resemble real people, but the ideograms bear no such pictorial resemblance. Furthermore, because ideograms do not depict actual objects, they can be used to represent concepts or ideas. For example, a red circle bisected by a diagonal slash (Ø) represents the negative, as in “no” or “do not.” In fact, many symbols in nonphonological writing occur somewhere along a continuum that runs from true pictograms to true ideograms, and the distinction between these two forms is often not clear cut. This is due in part to the fact that some ideograms developed from pictograms over time through a process of shorthand depiction, abstraction, and conventionalization. But their ultimate origin was as a real thing. The ideograms for male and female show how convoluted the process can be (Stearn 1962). Their basis lies in the traditions of medieval European alchemy and the associations of the planets with different elements and forces. In this early European cosmology, Mars was thought of as masculine and Venus as feminine, with abbreviations of their Greek names likely becoming the symbols we now know. However, a common mnemonic used today equates their shapes with pictograms: ♂ being a simplified shorthand form of the shield and spear of a male warrior, representing Mars, and ♀ being a simplified version of a woman’s hand mirror, representing Venus. In Plains Biographic art such a process of abstraction and conventionalized “shorthand” depiction has been documented for the ultimate origin of the Blackfoot symbol X, Y-, or I (Figure 2.10), meaning “stolen picketed horse” (Keyser and Klassen 2001:292–93; Wissler 1911:41). The most important aspect of ideograms, however, is that they must be understood in the same way by all who read or write the picture writing. It is

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Figure 2.10. Evolution of the horse stealing war honor ideogram in Blackfoot Biographic art. Realistic pictures (a) eventually become abbreviated (b) and finally are just ideograms (c). Drawing by the authors.

in this way that these seemingly often enigmatic signs come to encode information in a Biographic drawing. Unfortunately, northern Plains Indians had two major competing ideographic systems, and one of these exhibited two significant variants for some symbols. Luckily, however, these systems and their variants developed quite late in Historic period Biographic art and were still being used and understood when ethnographers studied and recorded various aspects of Plains Indian cultures. Thus, an X in the Blackfoot lexicon denotes the stealing of a picketed horse from in front of an enemy tipi, while for the Crow this same symbol denotes the counting of “first coup.” Hence, an observer will need to have some idea of the likely ethnic origin of an image before it can be read with any certainty. Toward this end, we describe and discuss all the symbols from both ideographic systems in the lexicon and provide a summary of how the symbol originated, when that information is known. Finally, the simplicity of many of the ideograms in the Plains Biographic art lexicon demands their context be well documented before they can be positively identified and appropriately interpreted. Simple geometric forms such as X, #, , or are easy to carve or paint and can occur in many different types of rock art, especially those with significant geometric components. But these images only denote stolen horse/first coup, fight behind breastworks, a scalp, or a tipi if they occur in a Biographic art composition. Thus, it is not enough to simply find such an image; rather, the image must be identified as part of a Biographic composition. Hence, the reader will note that it is a rare occurrence when such ideograms are recognized in Plains rock art, and even rarer still when they can be readily understood and interpreted.

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Reading from Right to Left It is widely reported (e.g., Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997:xxii; Greene 1996:29; Petersen 1971:273; Szabo 1994:31) that Plains Biographic art narratives are structured, and were thus intended to be read, from right to left—just the opposite orientation from modern Western European writing systems. At their most basic level—when no actual movement is shown—most of these drawings are organized with the protagonist/victor on the right side of the scene while his vanquished foe is positioned on the left. This is also the case with the overwhelming majority of illustrations showing hunting and horse raiding, which is not surprising since these are essentially the same sorts of actions as combat, but it also holds true for peaceful encounters between actors, including trading, negotiations with military men, and courtship. For example, in an analysis of Cheyenne ledger drawings, Greene (1996:26–29) found that between 70 and 90 percent of the illustrations showed the Cheyenne man at the right, in the dominant position, no matter what action (e.g., horse raiding, hunting, peace negotiations, courting, combat) was being portrayed. DeCost Smith (1943:116) postulated that this predominance of left-facing actions was due to the holding of weapons and shields on the left side of the body by a mounted warrior, thus allowing these instruments of war and heraldry to be clearly presented in the composition. In general, the same is true for movement—at least that associated with the dominant action in a scene. When shown, the flow of action is far more commonly depicted going from right to left. This often occurs in the form of the protagonist entering the scene from the right as indicated by his own footprints marking his path into the action, but it can also be indicated by flying bullets or arrows or travel paths of horse tracks. Sometimes an even more subtle indication is the orientation of a floating weapon that points to the left as it counts coup on a defeated enemy (Figure 0.10a). But even though this right-to-left orientation is often true, it is not a hard-and-fast rule (cf. Figure 0.20a). Initially, we note that secondary actions often move from left to right. Bullets or arrows fired at the protagonist must (by the nature of the composition in many cases) travel from left to right, and a killed enemy positioned at the left of a composition sometimes has his own footprints or his horse’s hoofprints leading into the scene from the left (Figure 1.19). Clearly, such left-toright movement needs to be understood in the broader context of the scene, and an observer often has no trouble distinguishing the protagonist from his foe in such a composition based on elaborate details of costume or horse tack, conventions denoting important actions (e.g., fusillade of fire), or other clues. But in a significant number of Biographic narratives—especially those drawn in rock art—the structure and/or action is from left to right. For instance, a count of action scenes at Writing-on-Stone shows that at least one third of them are structured to be read not from right to left but instead from

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left to right. While that still leaves more than 60 percent with a right-to-left orientation, it suggests that either the rock art medium or a different tribal origin (Blackfoot versus Cheyenne) results in a slightly less rigid structure for Biographic rock art than Greene discovered in Cheyenne ledger art. Nevertheless, careful use of the lexicon will usually enable an observer to discern the winner and loser in a scene and ultimately to read the narrative story regardless of the direction in which the action moves.

Reuse of Imagery Occasionally a previously existing Biographic composition, or parts of it, were reused or altered to change its meaning, or adapted or expanded to depict a later artist’s accomplishments. Modification into a different or augmented narrative can sometimes be identified by the later images’ different technique or artistic style—either that of an individual or culture group. Thus, the tipi flag added to a preexisting scene at 24YL1358 is recognized because of its much fresher scratches, and the four defeated enemies added by a second artist to a preexisting, seven-honor coup-count tally at Bear Gulch (Figure 0.9) are recognized by their slight stylistic differences compared to the original humans. Sometimes the additional images significantly change the meaning of the original. An earlier pedestrian shield-bearing warrior at 24GV191 was changed to show him riding an armored horse, like his opponent, and he is given a firearm (Greer, Greer, and Keyser 2019:60–61). At Joliet, the detailed image of a woman on her back with her dress pulled up has been interpreted to represent her “giving birth” to the Crow Hot Dance (McCleary 2008b:43–44). However, a second artist clearly added his own portrait in a much cruder artistic style to this preexisting image to record his sexual capture of a “thrown-away” wife (Keyser and Cowdrey 2008; McCleary 2016:120–21). At Atherton Canyon (24FR3), a series of painted footprints composed as part of a horse capture scene were reused by a later artist who scratched his images to create a different narrative (Figure 2.6a). He encircled a footprint cluster, originally indicating where the horse raiders paused on their raid, to repurpose these footprints as enemies in a fortification from which he captured a gun. Another type of reuse was a retaliatory “tagging.” At Eagle Creek (24CH757) along the Missouri river, a Crow warrior, identified by the style of horse, illustrated himself on horseback to commemorate a raid (Figure 2.11). A later Blackfoot artist, again recognized by the ethnic artistic style, saw the original composition and then placed his image of a horse directly superimposed over the first in retaliation against the enemy’s image. The second artist did not alter the original; rather, he used it to add additional meaning to his own composition.

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Figure 2.11. A Crow warrior at Eagle Creek, Montana, drew himself on horseback to commemorate a successful raid (a). A later Blackfoot artist retaliated by placing his image of a horse (b) directly over that of his enemy to create the composite. Such “tagging” reuse is fairly common in rock art, though many instances are probably not yet recognized. Drawing by the authors.

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Using the Lexicon With the preceding guidelines in mind, we now provide two sections that compose the basics of the Biographic rock art lexicon, which, when correctly used, allows a reader to decipher the messages encoded in Biographic rock art narratives. The first of these is a Pictographic Dictionary, in which we illustrate and discuss every type of object currently known to be illustrated in Biographic rock art. By perusing this section, an interested reader may be able to unlock part or all of the meaning of a Biographic drawing simply by recognizing an otherwise enigmatic image whose identity, or symbolic significance, was previously not understood. This exact situation has happened to both of us in our own studies (cf. Kaiser and Keyser 2015; Keyser and Klassen 2001; Keyser, Kaiser, Poetschat, and Taylor 2012:277–79), and others have reported similar moments of epiphany. The second section is what we think of as the lexicon’s “grammar.” This describes and discusses all the conventions used by the artists to structure their compositions and interrelate their various parts. Obviously, there will be considerable overlap between these two sections, since in one we illustrate and identify muzzle blasts of firearms and in the other we note how such muzzle blasts are key to the convention that shows the fusillade of fire faced by a warrior braving a well-armed enemy. Likewise, the floating weapon convention is a key part of the grammar section, but it must also be discussed in the dictionary in relation to several different contexts for weapons, quirts, and captured war trophies. Both sections must also be considered works in progress, however. Obviously, we have spent decades of our lives acquiring the knowledge that enables us to write this book, and as of the date of its publication, the information is as complete as we can make it. But every year we discover new items illustrated in Biographic scenes, and we occasionally come across new conventions the artists used to communicate different aspects of the narrative grammar. We fully expect to discover new components of the Biographic art lexicon in the future, and we hope that others do the same.

Notes 1. Remember that annotations of a very few ledgers are obviously in error (see Introduction, discussion of Ledger Art), but those do not invalidate the great majority that are accurate descriptions of the items and actions portrayed. 2. This misidentification was then repeated by Barry (1991:42–43), who uses it to elevate its killed owner into supernatural warrior-hero status. Yet, she identifies a remarkably similar shield drawing at a nearby site as a transformed thunderbird.

CHAPTER 3

THE PICTOGRAPHIC DICTIONARY

⤞⤝ We have organized the pictographic dictionary to make it as easy as possible for anyone to use. We recognize this will include everyone from colleagues who have years of experience recording and studying Ceremonial and Biographic Tradition rock art to interested avocationalists who attend conferences and find sites to those who have never before seen a Biographic rock art composition. We have also structured this dictionary to include a wide variety of illustrated specimens of each element under discussion, with appropriate references to reports in which specific examples are comprehensively discussed and interpreted. Some of this detail will appeal primarily to the specialist reader, so we have tried to make these descriptions as broad as reasonably possible so the greatest range of readers will find them useful. Thus, we hope an interested reader without extensive experience studying Plains Indian culture can find enough information to understand a drawing; while at the same time, a specialist reader wanting to differentiate a McClellan cavalry saddle from a Spanish saddle, a short sword from a saber, or a flintlock from a repeating rifle will have enough information to find the answer. Toward this end we have organized this dictionary not alphabetically but rather in two main parts: Items and Conventions.1 We first organize Items by categories relating to the most common subjects and activities portrayed in the art. So, because humans and horses play such important roles and are the most common subject matter across the entire region, we begin with categories for Humans and Animals (recognizing that horses are more than 95 percent of all the animals in Biographic Tradition rock art). Then we list humans’ Costume Elements and Horse Tack (each of which contains many subcategories) because these things often directly affect the identification and interpretation of the basic actors. Later come Weapons and Other Material Culture Objects, Constructions and Vehicles, and Track Sequences and Groups because these are often the details that provide much of the storyline to any Biographic art composition.

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Humans Humans are the primary subject of Plains Biographic rock art, even though they are outnumbered at a few sites by horses or a lineup of weapons (Figures 3.1, 3.2). In such cases, where horses or weapons are illustrated with few or no associated humans, the actor(s) are simply implied or offstage; but they provide a point of reference for what the horse(s) are doing or why the animals or weapons are being acted upon. In such a scenario, the horse may be illustrated but the human is understood as the raider who took it or the warrior who outfitted it in its horse-tack finery. A lineup of weapons presupposes the warrior who has taken them as battle trophies. Humans are illustrated in many forms, from stick figures to realistically detailed, photograph-like portraits (cf. Figures 1.3, 1.5, 1.21). However, until the advent of Plains artists adopting the Ledger Art style of drawing, the great majority were relatively simple depictions showing rectangular- or hourglass-body or V-neck style humans participating in narrative actions.

Figure 3.1. A herd of Mature-style horses indicates a successful horse raid. Drawing by the authors.

Figure 3.2. A Crow object tally includes captured war trophies. Weapons are a gun, spears, tomahawks, a broadsword, coup sticks, and a bow. Quirts may be captured trophies or commemorate the giving-away of horses. Circular scalps hanging from scalp poles are also shown. Below is a row of vertical war party stripes and a combat scene. Drawing by the authors.

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Some tribes typically drew certain types of human figures, as is the case with Blackfoot and Crow artists. Early in their history, Blackfoot artists drew primarily V-neck and rectangular-body style humans or shield-bearing warriors, but by the mid-1800s they had changed to mainly smaller rectangular-body, hourglass-body, and “wineglass” style humans (Figure 3.3). Crow artists, on the other hand, appear to have drawn humans similar to those of the Blackfoot in their early Biographic art but then rapidly developed a distinctive style where humans are drawn as relatively tall, thin, rectangular-body figures (some retaining a V-neck), often showing a distinctly fluid posture (Figure 3.3). Typically, these have modeled calves and thighs and pose with bent knees or bending slightly forward at the waist, which imparts a strong sense of graceful movement to the scenes they populate (Figure 3.4). This contrasts markedly to Blackfoot artists’ typically static portrayal of humans performing their various acts (Figure 3.4). Finally, in the last decades of the 1800s, Crow artists adopted the Ledger Art style that nearly became portraiture for humans, but this style was never adopted by the Blackfoot. Other tribally identifiable styles of human figures almost certainly exist (e.g., for the Shoshone, Cheyenne, Lakota, and other groups), but these have yet to be studied in detail and formalized to the same degree as for Blackfoot and Crow styles. There is a wide range of variation in how humans are actually portrayed in Biographic narratives. In scenes with an invisible actor (because he is offstage) the only thing we see are his tracks or his weapon poised to count coup on an enemy. Such scenes are akin to those showing a horse only by its tracks

Figure 3.3. Blackfoot- and Crow-style humans from various sites. Early Blackfoot artists drew V-neck and rectangular-body style humans (a–d), but largely changed to smaller rectangular-body, hourglass-body, and “wineglass” style humans (e–g) by the mid-1800s. Crow artists drew tall, thin figures with a distinctly fluid posture (h–j), modeled calves and thighs, and bent knees who often bend slightly forward at the waist. Late Crow art in the 1870s adopted a more realistic Ledger Art style (k). Drawing by the authors.

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Figure 3.4. Blackfoot combat scenes typically display humans in static postures (a, c), whereas Crow artists show combatants using more fluid lines, creating a graceful sense of movement (b, d). Drawing by the authors.

as it moves through the action. In fact, in some scenes, both the actor and his mount are offstage, but the human actor is shown by his weapon next to his “invisible” horse’s tracks. Even when the human actor is not offstage, however, he often shows just the simplest form while his tracks, weapons, and accoutrements are much more detailed in order to tell his story. In such scenes a rider might only be a small triangular or rectangular blob barely recognizable under an elaborate bison-horn bonnet and next to a decorated shield (Figure 3.5c). Another might be just a round head with long streaming hair or an elaborate headdress peeking over the top of his shield (Figure 3.5d). Still other horsemen are indicated only by their shield and decorated stake sash (Figure 3.5a). In groups of fighting warriors, some participants are only small, sketchy, X-shaped or rectangular bodies that point a detailed gun toward the enemy. In short, though the human actor is usually the principal player in these scenes, an observer is often struck by how simply he is portrayed in contrast to the importance given to his war regalia, horse, weapon, or headgear. This demonstrates that individual likenesses were not the goal of these images. Instead, individual warriors’ identities were generally indicated by a distinctive shield, headdress, or other feature. This mode of generic depiction continued even in later ledger art, where, despite the very realistic facial features (which were, in fact, often very standardized from one man to another), the

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Figure 3.5. Humans are sometimes minimally portrayed, using only their shield, weapon, headdress, or other accoutrements. (a) Rider indicated only by shield and long, red-painted sash. Horse has “bear-eyes,” tear-streak face paint. (b) Shield, sash, and headdress define the rider; horse wears stand-up bonnet. (c) Simply depicted body of rider with detailed shield and headdress. (d) Rider shown as simplified head, topped with elaborate headdress, shown above a shield. Horse wears lightning rein, Spanish chain bit, and keyhole-shaped forehead ornament. Drawing by the authors.

key individual would often have to be identified by his name glyph more than his personal likeness. By far, the large majority of humans in biographic narratives are men participating as warriors in combat and horse-raiding actions. Women are rarely pictured, and when they are illustrated, they are almost always shown as captured enemies or opponents on whom coup was counted. Only a handful of women participate as warriors (Figure 3.6), which reflects the rarity of women reported in the ethnographies to have had an active role in warfare. However, at a few sites, women are included in dance scenes and even have a major role. Still, other large groups of figures involved in warfare activities must include women, but none is explicitly identified except by their tasks (for instance, leading travois at the rear of a large group) or the fact that some of the people in a camp scene must be women (Figure 3.7). In these scenes, none of the participants have primary sexual characteristics illustrated In addition to the protagonist shown in many scenes (who we can assume is the hero/artist), these narratives often picture the hero’s foe in a subservient role. Such a role is usually indicated by the losing participant falling over and/or being hit with a weapon. However, sometimes, the enemy is portrayed while the hero is offstage, but in such cases the conventions of loser’s posture

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Figure 3.6. Women are only occasionally shown as warriors. (a) Fallen woman (at right) carries a coupstick with pendant streamers; (b) woman (at upper left) with a coupstick displaying a bear-paw flag is speared by mounted rider. Damaged rider below is hit with gun barrel and also touched by figure at bottom. Drawing by the authors.

Figure 3.7. This large battle scene includes numerous biographic conventions, including flying bullets, horse tracks, a stacked array of weapons, a tipi camp circle, and fortifications. Central tipi in camp circle is shown in X-ray style with people inside. Horses pulling travois indicate attacking force moving camp. Drawing by the authors.

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and/or floating weapon almost always make it clear that this is the enemy being acted upon (Figures 0.10c, 1.22, 1.30, 2.9). In many warfare scenes, both the enemy warrior and the hero are shown with nearly an equal amount of detail for such things as regalia, weaponry, and horse gear. This is a result of the narrative storyline, which needed to be recounted with great attention to such details to provide “proof” that the teller had actually accomplished the claimed deed. In some cases, when such detail is lacking, we have multiple weapons acting on one foe (Figure 2.9) or groups of onlookers “witnessing” the act (Figure 3.8). In both cases, one can imagine a successful warrior recounting his story in such a way to emphasize the others who could vouch for his actions. Some compositions, however, are tallies of vanquished enemies with the protagonist offstage. Usually, one can recognize these as defeated enemies by the floating weapon(s) the artist used to strike them, even though the humans

Figure 3.8. A warrior dismounts his horse to count coup on a fleeing enemy. Ranks of “wineglass” style triangular humans witness the brave accomplishment. Long sinuous lines represent boundary of painted slab. Drawing by the authors.

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often show intricate details of costume and weaponry that rival or exceed those of a protagonist in other scenes (Figures 0.9, 1.22). Often there is notable emphasis on small details that provide identification of the artist’s weapon in such tallies, and occasionally secondary weapons are added to provide the witnessing aspect (Figure 0.7).

Handprints and the Capture Hand Humans are also indicated in Biographic art by Handprints and the Capture Hand ideogram. Handprints are not common in this art, however, despite their real-life use when painted on a man’s shirt, his body, or his horse to indicate various coups (e.g., touching an enemy, taking a horse, or engaging in handto-hand combat). Among the Blackfoot, a handprint painted on both shoulders of a horse indicated the animal had ridden down and trampled an enemy (Grinnell 1910:302). In rock art, the only currently known example of such a “real” handprint in a biographic narrative is one carved on a horse’s hip at 39HN217 in the North Cave Hills of South Dakota (Sundstrom 2004b:108), but we do not know what specific coup it recounts (FigFigure 3.9. A handprint, indicating ure 3.9). a war honor, is drawn on a horse’s Plains artists did, however, use the cap- hip. Drawing by the authors, ture hand ideogram, rather than a real hand- adapted from Sundstrom 2004b. print, to signify many such deeds. As the epitome of the invisible actor, capture hands are relatively common in Blackfoot and Crow robe art, and they also occur in rock art at seven sites scattered from Writing-on-Stone to Wyoming (see Chapter 4, “The Capture Hand”).

Animals Other than horses (discussed in detail below), animals are not particularly common in Biographic rock art narratives. For instance, in the first intensive study of Writing-on-Stone, more than 280 horses were recorded in the biographic imagery there versus fewer than two dozen animals of all other species in that art (Keyser 1977b:31–38). Similar disparity is noted at several other major sites and site complexes containing primarily Biographic style art (e.g., Keyser and Poetschat 2005). The situation is slightly different in the latest ledger book drawings, where scenes of daily life began to replace drawings of warfare, so hunting various types of animals was more commonly shown. In

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addition, bestiaries illustrating more than a dozen species were sometimes drawn by Indian artists, both on paper and on animal-skin robes. Some of these were done to market the painted robes and drawings more successfully to non-native buyers (Brownstone 2004) while others recorded animals that were observed for the first time by the Indian artist (Heidenreich 1985), such as the zoo animals drawn by the Crow chief Medicine Crow after his 1880 visit to the National Zoo in Washington, DC. So far, other than some Texas depictions of longhorn cattle, we know of no true bestiary in Plains rock art. However, there are many different species of animals depicted in Biographic art (Figures 3.10, 3.11). These include a few large animals, such as bison, elk, bear, mountain sheep, and even domestic cattle, and other smaller animals, such as dogs, birds, otters, and lizards. Occasionally these animals are illustrated for their supernatural aspects—as when a bear or its track is emblazoned on a shield, or an otter-skin bag or lizard is worn as an amulet—

Figure 3.10. A variety of animals are shown in Biographic art, including dog (a), bear (b), elk (c, f), and domestic cattle (d–e, g). Drawing by the authors.

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Figure 3.11. Hunting scenes are occasionally part of Biographic Tradition rock art. Drawing by the authors.

but others are involved in action scenes. For example, barking dogs enliven a horse-stealing scene, while scenes of chasing and shooting bison attest to a warrior’s hunting prowess. In other cases, overcoming the attack of a grizzly bear (or a mountain lion in some ledger drawings) was actually recorded as a coup with similar status to fighting off a human opponent. Due to their importance, we begin by describing horses (and mules); and following that we summarize the other animals found in Biographic rock art.

Horses and Mules Other than the human participants themselves, nothing epitomizes Plains Biographic art more than horses. From one end of the Plains to the other— from Canada to Mexico—people are shown riding horses in scenes illustrating half a dozen different offensive warfare actions. But in addition, they ride horses to hunt buffalo or rescue comrades in battle, they take horses from enemies, or show them pulling carts or wagons. Plains artists even drew their horses in what are known as “showing-off ” portraits—illustrating individual animals decked out in all their finery as they would be “dressed up” for war.

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Found as pictographs and petroglyphs in Biographic rock art at sites in ten states, the Canadian province of Alberta, and the Mexican state of Coahuila; these drawings illustrate as many as two thousand horses with additional examples found each year.2 Across the Plains there are more than half a dozen major concentrations of horses in Biographic art. At Writing-on-Stone, research has now documented more than 400 horses at the 150+ sites there, and similar concentrations occur in rock art along the Musselshell and Yellowstone Rivers in Montana, the Green River in Wyoming, the Purgatoire River in Colorado, and the Rio Grande Gorge and Chaco Canyon in northern New Mexico. In the Saline Valley of central Kansas, horses are one of the most common illustrations, with only pedestrian humans more numerous. In sum, hundreds and hundreds of horses grace the Plains rock art literature from the earliest reports to the most recent studies. Biographic art horses are drawn in a number of ways, with varying degrees of sophistication and anatomical detail. The simplest, most synecdochical examples are hoofprints drawn as groups or in linear series of tracks to denote herds of animals or a horse’s path through a scene. Others are sketchlike shorthand horses, drawn as a simple “horse’s neck” ideogram comprising two curved, nearly parallel lines representing the animal’s neck and head (Figures 3.12, 3.13). Such shorthand horses were typically drawn to indicate those captured from an enemy, and often several of these “neck-only” figures would be quickly sketched to fill out a captured herd. The earliest fully representational horses—stick-figure and boat-form animals—are often recognized only because they have a rider (Figure 3.14), although some of these have a long flowing tail and an upright mane as further identification. When present, hooves are shown as ball-shapes on early depictions. The latest horses, however, are elaborately naturalistic, portrait-like animals with rounded flanks, realistic hooves, and carefully formed heads that no one could mistake for any other creature (Figures 3.13a, 3.15). These more recent horses are the epitome of ledger-style rock art drawings and are often accompanied by humans illustrated as equally realistic portraits (Figures 2.2a and b, 3.15). In between these early boat-form animals and the latest ledger-style horses (from the mid-1700s to the last decades of the 1800s), Plains Indian artists drew their horses primarily in what Selwyn Dewdney

Figure 3.12. A horse raid scene shows many shorthand horses indicated only by the outline of their head and neck. Drawing by the authors.

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Figure 3.13. Shorthand horses show minimal detail; often they are reduced to just the animal’s outline. Example in (a) is the second head and neck superimposed on the more detailed horse. Drawing by the authors.

Figure 3.14. Early horses are shown as boat-form animals (a), or stick figures, often only recognizable because of their rider (b, c). Drawing by the authors.

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Figure 3.15. Ledger style art is often quite realistic. Horses, warriors, and their accoutrements are illustrated in fine detail. Supernatural elements are also depicted in this scene, including a two-headed, “push-me/pull-you” Thunder-horse with zigzag power lines extending from its eyes, and a beaked animal reaching down from a cloud. One or both of these is likely to be the artist’s spirit helper(s). Drawing by the authors.

(1964) named the Mature style. Showing a long, sleek body with an extended neck and long, stick-form legs, the Mature style was first defined for dozens of horses Dewdney encountered at Writing-on-Stone. Often elaborated with simple ears, hook or C-shaped hooves, a mane, and a flowing tail, the generalized Mature-style form occurs widely across the northern Plains and with only a few modifications is found all the way from Canada to northern Mexico (Figures 2.1a, 2.6b, 2.11b, 3.1, 3.4, 3.5). Based on the analysis of horse images at hundreds of sites, the evolving styles in which these animals were drawn—coupled with their horse tack and the weapons and accoutrements used by their riders—provide one of the best chronological indicators in Biographic rock art (Figure 3.16). Given that they were initially an unknown animal to Plains Indian artists, and the fact riding was a completely foreign activity, early horses show a broad range of forms from quite crude stick figures to blocky square-bodied forms to somewhat sleeker boat-form animals. In these portrayals, riders usually appear uncomfortably mounted, sometimes seeming to stand atop the animal’s back.

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Figure 3.16. The evolution of horse depictions in rock art, compared to known dates for robe and ledger art is a powerful relative dating tool. Drawing by James D. Keyser.

Some early horses found from Kansas and southeastern Colorado to southern Alberta wear bulky leather armor enveloping their entire body, and occasionally so does their rider. If hooves are portrayed at all on these early animals, they are typically drawn as dots, representing the earliest effort at showing this animal’s one-toed track. But Plains warrior-artists quickly came to draw horses in the broadly similar Mature style found across the entire region. A practiced eye can often recognize different ethnic variants within the broader Mature style, and research

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has begun to show ways these differences can be measured and quantified (Keyser and Renfro 2017). Nonetheless, such Mature-style horses share a generalized form, and most can be reliably dated to the century between approximately 1770 and 1860. The only regular exception to this is among Blackfoot artists, many of whom remained very conservative in their artistic tradition and were still drawing Mature-style horses in the early 1900s—and even as late as the 1940s for ethnographer John Ewers (1983). However, even some Blackfoot artists participated in the more realistic Ledger Art style that became the Plains-wide norm sometime shortly after about 1860. Ethnohistoric evidence reports that Indian artists were fascinated by western European art style and carefully observed painters such as Catlin, Bodmer, Kurz, Alfred Jacob Miller, Nicolas Point, and dozens of others whenever the opportunity arose. Gradual changes in style and composition began in Biographic art starting in the 1830s. Such things as the development of side profile portrait-like depictions (in which features of the off-side of the face were no longer visible), as well as the omission of hidden details (like a horse rider’s offside leg), may have been influenced by the exposure of Plains Native artists to Euro-American artists’ technique and composition. Some of the earliest ledger drawings show that Mandan and Blackfoot warrior-artists were greatly influenced by their observations of Catlin and Point (Ewers 1957; Point 1967); and by the 1870s nearly all ledger drawings were done in a realistic style that comes as close to portraiture—for both horses and humans—as anything produced by traditional nineteenth-century Plains Indian artists (Figure 3.17).

Figure 3.17. Tie Creek ledger drawing showing a mounted warrior surviving a hail of bullets to count coup on a soldier, dressed in a uniform and wearing a beard. Image courtesy of Michael Fosha, Black Hills State University, Spearfish, South Dakota.

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The Ledger Art style was also adopted for rock art, and scholars have so far identified rock art horses of this style drawn by Cheyenne, Crow, Shoshone, Cayuse, Navajo, Lakota, and Blackfoot artists, but other examples recorded in New Mexico and Kansas (Fowles and Arterberry 2013; Wells 1996)—and certainly others yet to be found—were likely drawn by Arapaho, Pawnee, Gros Ventres, Comanche, Nez Perce, and other tribal artists. Due in part to their relative rarity and the limited number of Plains rock art researchers, most of these Ledger Art-style rock art horses have yet to be studied in the detail necessary to define ethnic types that can be reliably compared and contrasted to one another. But as more examples come to light and additional scholars become interested, this situation will surely change. Rock art horses also give us an unprecedented view of historic Plains Indian material culture and the belief systems centered on the horse. Given the primacy of horses in their societies, and especially in their war complex, Plains Indian horsemen invented or adopted a remarkable range of horse finery and accoutrements that added to both the utility and the beauty of these animals. To document their reliance on horses, Plains warrior-artists illustrated such accoutrements in painstaking detail and devised numerous symbols and conventions to commemorate the attributes of horses in their drawings. As stated earlier, the first horses gave their owners a distinct advantage over pedestrian enemies, and they were quickly armored with leather covers and used like tanks to crash through enemy troops. But rock art enables us to see that this armor had a long collar extending up to protect the horse’s neck and a carefully structured opening in which the rider sat so his legs and lower body were likewise protected while his upper torso and arms were free to carry and use a wide variety of weaponry. We also know this armor was decorated with feathers, either real or painted, and was effective enough to protect the rider and his mount from the weapons typically wielded by pedestrian opponents in this early Plains warfare (Greer, Greer, and Keyser 2019). Only with the coming of the gun was such armor abandoned for both horses and humans (Bohr 2014:169–70; Secoy 1992:19). But with the abandonment of horse armor and the change from tactics that stressed horses’ size and bulk for use as a tank, the horse came to embody a combination of speed and power that is clearly reflected in the Mature style of representation. Although relatively simply executed, these horses emphasize elongated bodies and necks, prominent manes, and flowing tails, with hooves drawn as hooks or C-shapes. Mature-style horses capture very effectively the speed and grace of the animal while at the same time showing its characteristic single-toed track, which sets it apart from all other native Plains ungulates. A few equine illustrations can even be identified as mules, based on their exaggeratedly long ears. In addition to their long, lean form and extended neck, the animal’s speed was indicated in Biographic art by a variety of conventionalized representations. Split or notched ears are the most common, cut this way in the belief

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that they helped the animal run fast and avoid falls or stumbles. Various other amulets, including the tip of an antelope horn suspended around the animal’s neck or a special “war bridle” medicine bundle, were thought to increase an animal’s speed and surefootedness. Lightning symbolism, in the form of body painting schemes or zigzag lines used to draw the reins or the lashes of a quirt in a rock art image, were further symbolism evoking the speed and killing power of lightning in the Plains environment. In addition to speed, a horse also embodied power, at least among some tribes. In one sense, this was expressed as a masculine ideal of virility and potency, and explicitly shown by drawing a stallion with his penis sheath emphasized. Although occasionally indicated for Mature-style horses, the emphasized penis sheath came to be a prominent feature primarily for those horses drawn in the Ledger Art style. In these later horses, such explicit depiction of stallions is three to four times more common than in earlier Mature-style animals. But this idea of power was also expressed in other ways. Sometimes a powerful war horse was painted with tear streaks, indicating “bear’s eyes,” which was a convention among several tribes (most notably the Crow, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara) to indicate grizzly bear power. One robe art illustration, drawn by Mato-tope (Four Bears), shows his horse with such bear’s eyes and a saddle blanket made of a bear skin robe. A rock art horse at Montana’s Musselshell site (24ML1049) has such bear’s eyes as face paint (Figure 3.5a). Still other warriors tied a grizzly bear’s claw around their mount’s neck to give it the power of the grizzly through imitative magic. Finally, Rock art horses in Crow country are routinely drawn with tails that would be almost impossibly long for a working horse in real life (Figure 3.18). This convention is consistent with the Crow belief that masculinity, virility, and potency is expressed by a man’s exceptionally long hair (Denig 1976:155, 194, editor’s footnote 40). Given the Crows’ strong belief in such a relationship, it is readily understandable why so many Crow rock art horses throughout their tribal homeland (from Montana’s Musselshell River to the Bighorn and Wind River basins in Wyoming) show exaggeratedly long tails to symbolize such potency and masculinity. In addition to horses themselves, two dozen categories of horse tack (many encompassing multiple different types of items) are routinely illustrated in Biographic art. These range from various sorts of reins and headstalls, bits, saddles, and even draft-horse harnesses to native-made items such as eaglefeather war bonnets, horse masks, picket pins, quirts, and various ornaments or amulets. In addition, these warriors practiced physical modification of the animal itself, including such things as split ears, bobbed tails, and face and body paint. In all, these tack items and body modifications create the detail in a rich storyline, which often enables the reader of this art to determine nuances of meaning not typically available in any other rock art. These horse tack items are each discussed separately in a section dedicated to that subject.

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Figure 3.18. This Crow combat scene uses the floating weapon convention. Both horse and rider are shown with exaggerated long hair; as is the enemy, who wears hair extensions. The horse wears a lightning rein, a Spanish chain bit, and keyhole-shaped head ornament. A scalp hangs from the spear shaft. Drawing by the authors.

But, as noted, horses are not just illustrated as animals. Horses’ hoofprints, shown most often as a C or shape, are drawn for a variety of purposes in Biographic art. Most commonly they occur in a series showing the path a horseman took into the fight (e.g., Figures 1.10, 1.19, 1.22, 2.6b). Like human footprints (shown as short dashes) these horse track paths often end at the horse who is making the tracks, but others are simply freestanding trackways showing the animal’s route of travel. This is especially true in coup-count scenes where the horse’s path helps set the stage for the actual coup (Figure 1.22). In such cases, a path of horse tracks leading up to an enemy, and sometimes passing by him, illustrates the route a victorious warrior took to count coup. Sometimes both horse and human tracks are combined to show the protagonist riding up to an engagement and then dismounting and running further into the action (Figures 1.22, 1.24b). Hoofprints can also be commonly drawn to show a group of mounted attackers, with each track representing a member of a war party observing or engaged in the action composing a scene (Figures 2.6c, 3.19). Sometimes such tracks are simply clustered together, indicating a group of mounted men, but at other times each track is paired with two human footprints placed just in front of it to indicate a group of dismounted riders participating in the fight. In most such cases, the combatants’ weapons will be drawn just further in front of the hoofprint/footprint pairing (Figures 3.19, 3.20), and often bullets C

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Figure 3.19. Ledger drawing by Flathead chief Five Crows depicting a battle where ranks of warriors are shown by their footprints and floating weapons. The group on the left have dismounted from their horses, indicated by footprints in front of hoofprints. Muzzle blasts indicate discharging weapons. Five Crows rushes into the fight to capture both a sword and shield from his Blackfoot enemies (note annotation in French at bottom center). Photograph by Keyser, original ledger drawing from the De Smetiana Collection, Missouri Province Archive, Jesuit Archives & Research Center, St. Louis, Missouri.

or arrows will stream from those weapons toward the action. In other scenes, clusters of horse hoofprints are used to indicate a group of stolen horses. Such a shorthand tally is usually part of a broader action scene. Additionally, horse hoofprints can also be paired with a quirt (Figure 2.5f) in a conventional representation indicating a horse given away by its owner to increase the man’s prestige by demonstrating his generosity. Such giveaways were typical for exceptionally successful horse raiders, who cemented their status in a group by the number of horses they gifted to others. Sometimes the quirt alone stood for the “absent” horse—sometimes one given away. This is a classic example of synecdoche used in Biographic art; but a petroglyph at Castle Butte, Montana, shows an even more subtle example of a quirt representing an offstage horse (Figure 1.18). In this scene, a pedestrian warrior runs into a fight with his foe while holding a quirt in one hand. Neither horse nor hoofprints are pictured. Initially, an observer might be confused as to what this quirt connotes (or even what it is), but once the conventions of the art are understood, it is clear that the quirt shows that the scene’s protagonist had just dismounted prior to running into the fight (his footprints show him running in from the right). Giving up the advantage provided by one’s horse to enter the battle afoot was considered an especially brave deed.

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Figure 3.20. At this Montana site a warrior wearing an antelope horn headdress defeats an enemy on horseback. The rider and horse both wear stand-up feather bonnets, and the horse has a Spanish chain bit. On the right is a stacked array of weapons in front of dismounted warriors, who are indicated by their footprints in front of hoofprints. The curved dash line represents a corner of the cliff face. Drawing by the authors from photographs by Mark Willis, tipi village adapted from Loendorf 2012.

Finally, Blackfoot artists during the last decades of the 1800s transformed a squared-off horse hoofprint—drawn as a three-sided rectangle—into an ideogram designating either a horse raid a warrior had led or a war party in which he had participated. Since the ethnographic record from the period between approximately 1870 and 1920 shows many different series of this symbol with both meanings (apparently depending on what the artist wanted to record), this may indicate its meaning was undergoing an evolutionary transition during that time. Sadly, there are no detailed annotations for most of the painted robes and muslins on which this “squared-hoofprint” symbol was used. Hence, it is not clear which of these meanings is meant for the single rock art example so far documented (Keyser and Klassen 2003:11–12), but the symbol—at site DgOw-27 at Writing-on-Stone—is clearly related to horse raiding (Figure 1.26). In sum, the horse in all its guises—from armored tank, barely recognizable as what it is, to a line of hoofprints to a freestanding quirt to a portrait of a horse drawn with lifelike realism to represent a man’s favorite mount—is as crucial to understanding Biographic art as are the human actors themselves. Without horses and their myriad accoutrements, conventions, and connota-

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tions Biographic art would never have developed the depth and nuance for which it is so justly famous.

Horse Medicine Plains Indians had all manner of beliefs that medicine, including potions, amulets, and a variety of good luck charms, could serve to protect or enhance desired qualities of their horses (Ewers 1955b:257–84; Wissler 1912a:107–11). Although rock art pictures are unlikely to contain evidence of the specific potions they applied to various parts of the animals’ bodies, many other practices—including various body modifications and the attachments of amulets and charms to the animal—are documented in pictographs and petroglyphs. Body alterations range from splitting or notching a horse’s ears or tying up its tail to painting assorted designs on various body parts. Several such body modifications (e.g., split or notched ears and various painting schemes) were also believed to impart spirit power to the animal. Amulets—typically attached to the head and neck area (usually at the throatlatch)—encompassed such things as single small objects the size of a bird claw or small bell to full-cover horse masks. Others were medicine bundles made from the skin of a small weasel stuffed with smaller items and hung with ermine tails, feathers, cloth ribbons, or small bundles of medicine. Other tack items for which there is good evidence indicating they fit in the category of Horse Medicine include the horse necktie; eagle feathers tied in the forelock, mane, or tail; and some types of bridle bit decorations (Brownstone 2002:5; Lanford 2003:183, 204; Wissler 1912a:107), but other items such as tied-up tails and the keyhole-shaped forehead ornament seem likely to have had meaning beyond mere ornamentation. Each of these items of horse tack, whether known to have been considered as horse medicine or not, is described individually below. Various ways of painting a horse were also considered horse medicine. These include lightning streaks down the animal’s legs and tear streaks below the eyes. Lightning war paint was thought to give an animal great speed,3 while tear streaks symbolized the power of the bear.

Other Animals and Spirit Beings More than two dozen different species of animal have been drawn by Indian artists in Biographic art in its various media. These include many animals common to the Plains region, but also zoo animals (such as camels, alligators, and giraffes) seen by Crow warrior-artist Medicine Crow during his 1880 visit to the national zoo in Washington, DC. Currently, we know of neither bestiary illustrations nor drawings of zoo animals in Plains Biographic rock art. Although it is possible that some of these are still to be found, we think it unlikely that such illustrations would have escaped notice until now. The closest thing to

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“foreign” animals we have been able to find in this art are illustrations of longhorn cattle at about a dozen Texas sites (Boyd 1997:128–31; Parsons 1987:260; Turpin 1989b:287) and two in Colorado (Main 2012; McGlone, Leonard, and Barker 1994:58). These are illustrated with greatly outsized horns to indicate Texas Longhorn cattle—and sometimes oxen pulling carts or wagons (Figures 3.10d, e, g; 3.21)—and they were likely depicted because as a totally new species such animals were considered powerful medicine. But Southern Plains Indians would have quickly become familiar with these animals as cattle ranching impacted that region, and very soon after seeing their first longhorn, Indians across the Plains would have been intimately familiar with the “White Man’s Buffalo.” In later Biographic art such cattle are shown as oxen pulling wagons or carts of various sorts, including on an arborglyph recorded by Ambrose Bierce in 1866 along the Yellowstone River in Montana (Figure 3.22)

Figure 3.21. This wagon train shows nine wagons pulled by oxen (identified by their horns). Drawing by the authors adapted from Boyd 1990 and Riggs 1965.

Figure 3.22. The Bierce Arborglyph shows a two-wheeled Métis Red River cart and a flatboat with a crew of White men (indicated by their hats) being attacked by an Indian war party. Attackers are indicated by stacked arrays of weapons and their route of travel by their footprints. Mountain ranges shown as rounded triangles on a groundline at left and at the source of Yellowstone (Elk) River, which is indicated by an elk name glyph. Drawing by the authors, adapted from an 1866 drawing by Ambrose Bierce on file at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

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that depicts a longhorn ox pulling a two-wheeled Red River cart (Keyser and Sundstrom 2020:153, 162). Rather than trying to illustrate and describe all the various biographic scenes in which animals other than horses are illustrated, we summarize their basic variety here and note why they might be important to a Biographic art storyline. Hunting scenes are the most common occurrence of animals other than horses in Biographic rock art (Figure 3.11). Typically, these scenes involve bison, and it seems likely some were drawn because one’s ability as a hunter was a minor means of acquiring status among Plains tribesmen. Several of these are found at Writing-on-Stone. Other “hunting scenes” may be “background” to set the stage for more complex narratives that relate directly to warfare and the acquisition of personal honors. Such is the case with a horseman pursuing an arrow-shot animal (probably a bison) in a Blackfoot scene (Figure 3.23) involving horse capture and the rescue of a comrade on whom coup is being counted by an enemy (Keyser 2007a:13, 16). What the inclusion of this hunting vignette means to the context of the whole narrative cannot be determined since we have no artist’s annotation for this scene, but its presence is like many others in Blackfoot biographic art (Brownstone 2005b). One scene at Writing-on-Stone, showing a Mature-style bear speared with an outsized lance tipped with a large triangular point (Figure 3.10b), is almost certainly not a hunting scene, as such, but rather documents an encounter with a grizzly bear. Such clashes were a relatively common occurrence for Blackfoot warriors, who treated them as equivalent to counting coup on an enemy and illustrated them in this manner on painted robes (Brownstone

Figure 3.23. At this Montana site a hunting scene is shown above a horse raid. Long, cut picket ropes indicate stolen horses, while the warrior with a fringed shield rides his own horse wearing a characteristic Blackfoot “Thing-to-tie-on-the-halter.” The scene’s hero rescues his comrade by leading that man’s horse out of danger as an enemy counts coup on it. Drawing by James D. Keyser.

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2005b:6, 2007:205; Ewers 1983:54–55). This particular site has not been as completely recorded as it needs to be, so it is unknown whether there is a human depicted in this scene, but such a pairing would seem likely. Other narrative scenes at Red Canyon, Wyoming, show bears in “combat” scenes with warriors (Figure 0.8c), suggesting that these were considered coup counts. Dogs are illustrated in several sites, both as stand-alone animals and as parts of scenes involving horse raids. The fact that dogs did sentry duty patrolling camps to warn inhabitants of invading raiders nearly guarantees that they would occasionally play a role in the storyline of some action scenes. A rabbit painted at Little Boxelder Cave (48CO287) in Wyoming as part of a coup-count tally showing one warrior touching two enemy’s heads with his detached capture hand and a bow is best explained as a name glyph. A few animals are shown as warriors’ spirit helpers in biographic scenes. Most common are animals illustrated as shield heraldry, and these include birds, bears (and their tracks), bison, bighorn sheep, and even a dragonfly. But other spirit animals are actually involved in scenes, apparently as a physical manifestation of their involvement in a warrior’s success. A small otterskin bag (or a pelt of any of several smaller animals) worn tied around the neck or attached to a warrior’s shield represents a medicine bundle worn as a good luck charm. At the Joliet site one scene shows an elk, an odd “push-me/ pull-you” two-headed creature with zigzag lines extending to one horse, and a beaked bird-like animal reaching out of a cloud toward another pair of riders. These are clearly spirit animals important to the artist who drew some of his war honors in this scene (Figure 3.15). Emphasizing the supernatural aspect of the two-headed creature is its odd rider who holds aloft a ceremonial wand with a circular end to which a feather is attached. The elk may be illustrated here to document the warrior’s acquisition of “love medicine,” a common theme in Crow rock art. Elk in other biographic scenes across the Plains from Writing-on-Stone to southern Colorado probably also document love medicine, since this general belief was common to many Plains tribes. One Cheyenne Elk Dreamer’s self-portrait shows him in the process of morphing into his elk spirit (Keyser and Sundstrom 2015). The bird-like creature with its open mouth reaches vertically down from a “cloud” of scratched lines as if interacting with the two topmost warriors riding a single horse. Based on interviews with Crow informants regarding this site and its imagery, McCleary (2016) proposes that this is a “thunder being” using its power to influence the action below, which involves horse raiding and the rescue of a de-horsed comrade under fire. We suggest that the Janus-like creature with rider is also a thunder being since it shows odd horns and teeth in one head and shoots zigzag “lightning” power lines from both eyes. Finally, one of the most intriguing Biographic rock art drawings involving spirit animals is a petroglyph drawn by the famous Lakota warrior Crazy Horse in 1876, at site 24BH658 near the location of the Custer Battle (Keyser and Bur-

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gan 2015). This single composition shows a spirit horse decorated with lightning bolts, and above it a rattlesnake stretched out in a zigzag shape (Figure 3.24). Oral tradition reported by Cheyenne tribal historian John Stands In Timber documents the site’s function in a most intimate way: Many . . . men who went out to fast for power used to make drawings of their visions in the sand rocks. The Sioux chief Crazy Horse made one on Reno Creek after the Custer Battle. . . . Whistling Elk’s father was a witness that he did it. There is a horse with a snake above it, and lightning marks. Whistling Elk’s father told him Crazy Horse had dreamed the horse was standing on a high pinnacle and he saw the snake above it and streaks of lightning moving over it. He must have had the vision back when he was a young man, and maybe he used it for power all his life afterwards. He was a religious man, and he had some reason for putting it there. (Stands In Timber and Liberty 1967:105)

Animals or animal parts are routinely used in Biographic art as name glyphs for both people and places. Personal name glyphs are common in ledger drawings (Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997:322) and winter counts (Greene 2009; Greene and Thornton 2007), where almost any animal or bird imaginable was used as a floating image generally connected by a line extending to the named individual’s mouth or head (Figures 1.8, 3.25). Although we have

Figure 3.24. According to tribal tradition, Crazy Horse carved this composition just after the Custer Battle to represent his visionary medicine. Note the lightning streaks down both of the horse’s legs and the zigzag rattlesnake. Drawing by the authors.

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Figure 3.25. Scene from the Red Dog ledger shows a horseman killing a Pawnee enemy with his gun. Note the free-floating muzzle blast and the bleeding throughand-through wound. His coup count is indicated by a coup-strike bow, even though he is otherwise armed and carries no quiver. Drawing by the authors, adapted from Keyser’s photograph of Red Dog ledger, Indianer Museum der Stadt Zürich, Switzerland.

not yet positively identified such a name glyph in a narrative scene in rock art, there are a handful of reasonable possibilities (see Chapter 4, “Name Glyphs”). Geographical features are also occasionally identified by a name glyph. For instance, today’s Yellowstone River was known to many tribes as Elk River, so on biographic maps an elk or elk head is drawn by the river to identify it. There is one candidate for the use of an elk as the Yellowstone River’s name glyph in rock art and another in the previously mentioned arborglyph (Figure 3.22).

Biological Organs Both humans and animals in Biographic art are often drawn with attention to small details that manifests itself in the depiction of various physical features and biological organs whose purpose is to enhance the narrative content of the imagery. Such features include obvious external sexual organs and secondary sexual characteristics but also the occasional illustration of internal

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organs using a type of X-ray depiction more commonly found in Ceremonial Tradition art.

Internal Organs Given the evolution of key Biographic rock art motifs from those of the preceding Ceremonial Tradition art (Keyser and Klassen 2001; Magne and Klassen 1991), it is no surprise that some of the earliest Biographic Tradition imagery uses the X-ray perspective to show real and imagined internal organs for both humans and animals (Figures 0.2g–p, 1.2, 1.3). Such internal organs, including the heart line, ribs, and kidneys or a kidney “belt,” are quite commonly illustrated for Ceremonial Tradition art humans and animals across the Plains (Francis and Loendorf 2002; Keyser 1977b; Keyser and Klassen 2001; McGlone, Leonard, and Barker 1994). In Plains Indian belief systems, all these organs were thought to be places where an individual’s or an animal’s supernatural essence resided (L. Dempsey 2007:199–200; Ewers 1958:115). Such beliefs were expressed by cosmological concepts such as animals having sacred breath and the credence that a bison bull’s tendency to urinate just prior to charging was an embodiment of his supernatural strength. Considering these beliefs, then, the fact that such organs were illustrated—even when they cannot be seen, or (like the heartline) exist only in the mind—is readily understandable. In fact, it is remotely possible that some of these portrayals are, in fact, tattoos or body paint designs instead of metaphoric internal organs shown in X-ray perspective. Among the tribes of the upper Missouri in the mid-1800s men wore various sorts of tattoos, and some of these have a resemblance to heart line designs and even heart lines with ribs (Hewitt 1937:Plates 10, 41). However, the only body designs we feel confident in identifying as body paint or tattoos are those appearing as designs offset on one side of the torso or the other, since these would not be like the ribs or heart line common to Ceremonial Tradition figures. Therefore, we do not identify any of the following three motifs, which all exhibit bilateral symmetry, as anything more than the X-ray depictions of internal organs. Heart Line. The most common internal organ shown in Biographic art is the heart line, a line that starts in a human’s or an animal’s neck and continues downward or rearward into the body to about midpoint of the torso where it typically terminates in a shape colloquially thought of as the “heart.” This shape can be almost anything, ranging from a circle or oval to a diamond or even a downward-pointing arrowhead (Figures 0.2g–o, 1.2, 1.3). Conflating the windpipe and the heart, a heartline does not correspond to an actual single organ in the body. Rather, it is used metaphorically to represent spiritual power (Mallery 1893:773) and was clearly intended more symbolically than anatomically. Although never especially commonplace, heart lines are drawn more frequently for Ceremonial Tradition humans and animals than they are for those in the Biographic Tradition (Keyser 1977b, 1987).

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Ribs. Some X-ray depictions show ribs in the thoracic region of the torso for both humans and animals. Sometimes the ribs are drawn specifically connected to the heart line. As with heart lines, ribs are more common for Ceremonial Tradition imagery (Figures 0.2j, m, o; 1.2) than for humans or animals in the Biographic Tradition, but they do occur occasionally in humans drawn in the earliest biographic scenes. Kidneys/Kidney Belt. The other internal organ regularly shown in X-ray perspective is the kidneys, drawn as double dots in the lower torso just above the human’s waist or in front of the hind legs for an animal (Figures 0.2p, 1.2a, 1.3). Some animals have their kidneys accompanied by—or replaced by—a kidney belt drawn in the rear half of the body. For some human males the kidneys are found directly above the testicles, which are typically shown as a pair of dots, one on each side of a pendent line representing his penis.

External Sexual Organs and Secondary Sexual Characteristics Both external sexual organs and secondary sexual characteristics are routinely illustrated on humans and occasionally on animals in Biographic art (Figure 0.2). These include penis and testicles for men and a few male animals and the penis sheath for male horses. For women the vulva and sometimes breasts and/or hips are indicated (Figures 1.12, 1.21, 3.26). Beards are sometimes drawn for Euro-American men—usually soldiers or teamsters (Figure 2.7). There are also two distinctive hairstyles—a “disheveled” hairdo and “side whorls” or “side buns” used in Plains Indian art as a secondary sexual characteristic to indicate women (Figures 0.9, 3.27, 3.28). Although neither is actually a biological feature (as are other sexual characteristics), both were consistently used as a gender identifier for women.

Figure 3.26. These scenes show the sexual capture of women by touching their breasts or genitalia. Women’s distinctive “disheveled” hairstyle is shown in (a). Captor in (b and c) is indicated only by capture hand with arm attached. All women shown with exaggerated hips, while (a and c) have breasts drawn as pendant line under each armpit. Drawing by the authors.

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Figure 3.27. This combat scene shows a warrior counting coup on a woman, who is identified by her dress and “side buns” hairstyle. A hoofprint sequence shows a rider’s dash in front of armed foes drawn in shorthand as a stacked array of generic weapons (horizontal lines). A small amulet dangles at the horse’s throatlatch. Drawing by James D. Keyser.

Figure 3.28. Capture hand takes a flintlock gun from a mounted warrior (identified as a woman by breasts and disheveled hair). Detailed ferrules holding ramrod are drawn underneath the weapon’s barrel. Drawing by James D. Keyser, adapted from Crow war shirt in the National Museum of the American Indian (cat. no. NMAI 17/6345).

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Penis/Testicles. As with X-ray depiction of internal organs, identifying a male actor in a Biographic rock art composition with the standard conventionalization of a penis or penis and testicles appears to be a holdover from the earlier Ceremonial art, where it is a common convention. This convention is shown as a pendent line, sometimes combined with a dot or shorter line drawn to each side (Figures 1.2, 1.3). Thus, occasional early scenes at Writingon-Stone, Bear Gulch, and a few other sites identify some humans in this way, but the overwhelming majority of participants in combat and horse stealing scenes are drawn without any indication of external genitalia. This is because warfare was almost exclusively a man’s occupation, so the only reason most artists had for indicating gender was when it had some relevance to the storyline. For instance, a woman warrior would be identified with a vulva or vulva and breasts specifically to set her apart from what the observer would otherwise assume to be a man (e.g., Figures 3.6, 3.28). For this same reason women are similarly identified when they are captives or the object of a coup strike. Likewise, when men are identified with an erect penis in these Biographic compositions, it is usually done as a part of the story. For example, the obvious erections of men reaching out to touch the vulva of one woman at Joliet and another at 39HN217 show these acts to be related to sexual capture (see Chapter 4 “The Capture Hand”). A combination of penis and breasts is used in Biographic art to indicate a berdache, a transgendered sex role occurring in many different Plains Indian societies. Such people who were not defined by their sexual organs were known in nearly all Plains tribes and were thought of as representing a third gender—neither male nor female, but more than either. One Crow berdache, described in just such a manner, had a key role in the Battle of the Rosebud in 1876 (Linderman 1972:228–30). Such depictions of berdaches occur occasionally in robe and Ledger Art (Keyser 1996:38, Mallery 1893:142), but one such individual is drawn as a petroglyph at site 24PR603 (Keyser 2005:19), and another is shown at La Barge Bluffs with both male and female genitalia. Some male animals are depicted in Biographic art with a penis, penis and testicles, or—for a stallion—the prepuce (penis sheath). The most common animals shown with a penis are bison and horses. Often bison bulls’ sex organs are emphasized far beyond what is visible in real life, reflecting a belief system in which the penis was a symbolic expression of both masculinity and male power, and metaphorically a bison bull in the rut was considered to be a powerful guardian spirit for a warrior. Thus, bison are often pictured in their typical pose preparing for the aggressive dueling with other bulls that characterizes their activities in the rut (Figure 0.2t). This pose features tongue extended (indicating bellowing), a lifted tail (as the bull urinates and prepares to charge), and sometimes even in the act of urinating, which often prefaces the charge itself (Herrig and Haugen 1969:249–55).

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Elk are widely associated with love medicine. It is therefore unsurprising that depictions show the bull elk not only with large antlers and bugling (to indicate the rut), but sometimes also detailing the penis and testes (Figures 0.2q, 3.29). In Biographic rock art, Crow, Cheyenne, and Shoshone artists made particular effort to portray their mounts as stallions by emphasizing the prepuce, or penis sheath (Figure 3.30a, d, e). In addition, a pair of horses at Atherton Canyon and a horse at Grinnvoll Rockshelter (Conner and Conner 1971:Figure 11) are all very early examples drawn with an extremely outsized penis (Figure 0.13), apparently representing an artist’s fascination with the organ itself but also likely expressing his views of both masculinity and fertility (Keyser, Kaiser, Poetschat, and Taylor 2012:90). Vulva. The most common way for an artist to identify a woman in rock art was to draw a vulva in the approximately correct anatomical position. Vulvas can range from relatively boxy symbols to more realistic depictions, but a few actually take the form of an ungulate hoofprint. These examples are a visual pun that combines the cosmological belief system relating doe deer and bison cows to female fertility with the superficial resemblance of an ungulate’s track to a stylized vulva-form depiction. Often a woman’s vulva is drawn in the more-or-less anatomically correct position above the line demarcating her waist (Figure 3.31a), but other examples are located below the waist and

Figure 3.29. Elk and bison are sometimes shown with an emphasized penis. Elk are associated with love medicine and a bison bull’s aggressiveness is often shown by his urination before charging. Drawing by the authors.

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Figure 3.30. Late Ledger Art-style horses show very realistic details. (i and j) drawn in shorthand form. Light stippling on (b) indicates portion of red-painted animal destroyed by gunfire. Drawing by the authors.

Figure 3.31. Women indicated by illustration of the vulva. Man and woman in (a) both hold ceremonial feather fans. Woman’s vulva in (b) is shown metaphorically as a deer track. Drawing by the authors.

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can then sometimes be confused with a penis (Figures 0.11, 1.21, 3.6, 3.26). In many cases the vulva is nothing more than a vertical line drawn in the appropriate position to represent the vaginal orifice; but in other instances, such as a pendent vulva drawn below the lower torso line, the vertical vaginal orifice line is flanked or enclosed by lines representing the labia majora. Figure 3.32. Shorthand sexual capture Sometimes a woman in a scene of shown only as a vulva-form coupled with sexual congress is depicted only in a capture hand. Both are probably Crow shorthand manner as a disembodied drawings. Drawing by the authors. vulva (Grant 1967:135). Occasionally, such shorthand scenes show a vulva-form and a capture hand in the ultimate synecdochical reduction of sexual capture (Figure 3.32). Breasts. After depiction of their vulva, women are most often identified in Biographic art by the depiction of breasts. In frontal view breasts are indicated either by short oblique lines or squatty triangles incised or painted just below each armpit; in side profile they are drawn as short, pointed, triangular appendages or short lines positioned high on the chest, one above the other (cf. Figures 0.11, 1.21, 3.28). In this art breasts are often combined with a vulva and/or emphasized hips and a characteristic disheveled hairstyle to clinch the identification as a woman. Hips. Women illustrated in Biographic art often show noticeably rounded hips (Figures 0.9, 1.21), sometimes drawn as single arcs or pairs of concentric arcs positioned on each side of the body just above the line that delineates the lower extent of the torso. Others are simply emphatically rounded hips obviously drawn to emphasize the shape of the lower torso (Keyser 2014b:7–8). In many cases these emphasized hips are combined with the depiction of breasts, and/or a vulva, or the disheveled hairstyle (which served as another identifier of women in the Biographic art lexicon) to create a suite of sexually identifying characteristics serving to identify a woman. Beard. American Indians did not typically have much facial hair and did not grow beards. Thus, beards serve as an ethnic marker in Biographic Tradition art primarily to indicate military men or teamsters against whom a warrior is counting coup. So far, beards (Figure 3.17) have been documented in ledger drawings (Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997:78–79, 84–85, 226–37; McLaughlin 2013:211) and on an inscribed brass bucket fragment from Montana’s Little Bighorn battlefield (Scott et al. 1997:291, 294), so it would not be surprising in the future to find them portrayed in rock art in the area where the Plains

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Indian Wars were fought (southeastern Montana, western South Dakota, eastern Wyoming, and eastern Colorado). Gender-Indicative Hairstyles. Two hairstyles were consistently used in Plains Biographic drawings to indicate a woman’s gender. Though neither is biologically determined (as are other primary and secondary sexual characteristics), both were treated as gender identifiers in the same way a vulva, breasts, or a penis was used. One is called a disheveled hairstyle and is typically shown either as a “sun-ray” arrangement of hair (either short or long) extending out all around the head or as long strands starting at the top of the head and cascading down both sides (Figure 0.9, 3.26a, 3.28). We have been unable to find any ethnographic referents for such a hairstyle, but we note that realistically portrayed women engaged in warfare activities are usually shown with hair drawn loose and flowing (Ewers 1997:192). Other, more stylized women’s busts shown in tallies of vanquished foes show the disheveled hairstyle (Ewers 1997:193, Figure 11.2B). Linea Sundstrom (personal communication 2020) knew of no ethnographic analogues to this hairstyle but opined that this hairstyle may have been a way to clearly identify the woman as not wearing a scalp lock. The second gender-indicative hairstyle for women is one showing a hair whorl or bun at each side of the head. We know of no Plains ethnographic analogues to this hairdo, but it is worn only by people also wearing a dress in both robe art and rock art (Keyser 2005:35; Maurer 1992:191). While both genders wore their hair braided in various fashions, in Biographic art a pair of braids hanging down from the sides of the head onto the upper torso is generally indicative of a woman. Wearing braids this way as a gender indicator is further confirmed by their combination with the wearing of a dress (Figure 3.33).

Figure 3.33. Detailed scene shows the adoption of a captured woman into her captors’ group. Two men bring the captured woman to the group and then are shown in a second scene recounting her capture in front of men and women in the community. The adoptee is shown twice in different portions of the ceremony as an example of a cyclical narrative. Many details of hairstyles, headdresses, and clothing are illustrated. Two men wear European-style hats, one near the left end of the lineup wears a top hat decorated with a feather. Drawing by the authors.

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Many Biographic art humans are depicted with a single long braid, usually beginning at the top rear of the head and arching back and down. This is the scalp lock hairstyle. It is usually an indicator of male gender, although a drawing by the Flathead warrior/artist Five Crows has an annotation by Father DeSmet stating that two humans wearing scalp locks are women.

Costume Elements Clothing and accoutrements are especially important in Biographic rock art because they often encapsulate so much information in such a shorthand way. For a participant in a scene, clothing (frequently in combination with type of weapon or hairstyle) can identify gender, tribal origin, rank and status (including general societal position but also sometimes membership in specific fraternal societies), and occasionally even specific war honors the wearer had accomplished. Combined with horse accoutrements and embellished weapons, these personal details of clothing signaled important social messages to both friend and foe regarding one’s prestige, status, wealth, bravery, skill set, leadership potential, commitment to group welfare, and ceremonial participation (Night Pipe 2012:136).

Clothing Clothing in Biographic art includes a wide variety of costume elements ranging from items we typically think of like shirts, dresses, necklaces, leggings, and moccasins to such esoteric items as pendants hanging from garters worn at the knees, dance bustles, Chief’s Coats, and leather body armor. The fancier items are themselves elaborated with fringe and other details, some of which can actually be useful in determining the nature of the item. Such clothing can be native-made of tanned animal skin, but other items are made of textiles— either made by the natives themselves from trade blankets or cloth or manufactured by Euro-Americans and obtained in trade or captured in warfare. Often determining the origin of a specific piece of clothing requires careful analysis; but when it can be determined, it is frequently an important factor in dating a specific drawing and understanding its full meaning. For example, textiles greatly alleviated the drudgery of Indian life (in terms of tanning hides for various uses), and so they were quickly adopted for a variety of items starting with the earliest introduction of selvedge-edged Stroud cloth and other fabrics in the late 1600s (Keyser, Kaiser, Poetschat, and Taylor 2012:200). Thus, by the last decades of the 1800s, incorporating textile items was widespread throughout Plains cultures for some things, and typical non-native clothing items included hats, woven blankets, captured military uniform parts, and even vests for warriors. As these items were gradually

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adopted into everyday Indian life, the historical record (early portraits, photographs, and ledger art) demonstrates they also precipitated a revolution in the styles of Plains Indian attire, so that painted bison robes, tanned-hide war shirts, and scalp-decorated leather leggings began to give way to woven blankets, Chief’s Coats, and capotes, and finally to vests, captured military uniform pants (cut to Indian “legging” style), and different types of non-native hats. However, formal ceremonial dress often remained traditional with women wearing elk-tooth decorated, tanned-hide dresses, and important warriors still sporting traditional tanned-hide war shirts and eagle feather war bonnets. Hence, it is important to identify items of clothing and determine—if possible—which are native-made of tanned hide and which are made of textiles. As we might expect, clothing and other items identifiably made of textiles are not particularly common in Plains rock art, primarily due to the scale of the drawings and the scarcity of images made after 1870. Most rock art images are quite small-scale carvings or monochrome paintings. Such tiny drawings of humans and horses are usually too small to provide an adequate canvas for clearly illustrating a man’s shirt or a horse’s saddle blanket. Correspondingly, most readily identifiable textile items occur in Ledger Art-style drawings, which are the latest rock art expression—dating after 1850 at its earliest— and which typically show larger, much more detailed images (Figures 1.11, 3.15, 3.33). However, at least fifty such textile items, ranging from blankets, Chief’s Coats, breechclouts, and saddle blankets to a horses’ neckties and a cloth flag bridle bit decoration are found at four sites that have large numbers of ledger art-style drawings. Nevertheless, despite the difficulty earlier Plains rock art artists had in illustrating such details as clothing and horse tack, a few pre-Ledger Art-style Plains pictographs and petroglyphs do show sufficient detail so that we can identify textile items. In these drawings we can see such things as a hat and Chief’s Coats, capes, a breechclout, a flag, and a saddle blanket. All these textile items are discussed below along with other native-made items of tanned hide. Horse tack items are discussed in that section.

Shirts, Jackets, Coats Native-made war shirts were one of a man’s most prized possessions, and only men of great distinction earned the right to wear one by their performance of brave deeds, which were often illustrated pictographically on the front and or back of the garment. Typically made from two hides of one of the smaller game animals (deer, antelope, bighorn sheep), these shirts were usually elaborately decorated with quillwork, beadwork, locks of horse or human hair, and ermine skins or long fringe cut from the hide. Among some tribes such war shirts were considered sacred and could be transferred from one owner to another through a formal ceremony (Horse Capture and Horse Capture 2001:17–20, 50). A war shirt in a Biographic rock art scene indicates

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the wearer was an accomplished warrior who would have been held in high esteem by both his own tribesmen and his enemies. In addition to Chief’s Coats and captured military uniform jackets, Indian warriors wore a variety of other types of coats and jackets of Euro-American manufacture. This was especially true in the last decades of the pre-reservation period when access to such clothing items had dramatically increased and cultural changes had made the wearing of such items more acceptable. Shirts, jackets, or coats of various sorts, usually identified in rock art by fringes illustrated along the arms of the wearer (Figure 3.34b, c), are worn by warriors at many different sites scattered from Writing-on-Stone to El Caido in northern Coahuila, Mexico (Jordan 2015; Labadie et al. 1997). Often these are paired with fringed leggings. One jacket worn by a horseman at La Barge Bluffs, Wyoming (Keyser and Poetschat 2005:42–43), is clearly illustrated with an epaulet and a vertical line representing the placket (Figure 3.34d). Worn in combination with a breechclout, this jacket was probably a type of Chief’s Coat, with the edges of the placket often faced or decorated with colorful, heavy-duty lace or woven material of a different color than the garment itself

Figure 3.34. Coats and jackets. Chief’s coat (a), identified by long coat tails, is worn with a cape. Warrior holds a pipe tomahawk with otter-skin wrapped handle and a shield. War shirts and leggings (b–c) are indicated primarily by their fringe. Horse in (b) wears a two-feather forelock decoration and ladder-like chain bit. Horseman in (d) parades before the community carrying a quirt and pistol and wearing a short chief’s coat identified by the epaulet and placket. Drawing by the authors.

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(see this chapter, “Chief’s Coat”). Not all military jackets illustrated in Plains rock art were war trophies or trade items. One of the most recent examples is a uniform jacket worn by a man identified by Crow informants as a scout working for the US military (McCleary 2016:132). Shown with long sleeves and a row of buttons down the front (Figure 3.35e), the jacket is clearly part of this man’s issued military uniform. This is consistent with a hat worn by this warrior, whose long hair arches up over it (which with stacked perspective shows the hair behind the man) and to the right. The image clearly dates to the decades after 1870, when several Crow men were employed as scouts by the US military. Another fancy coat showing emphasized epaulettes, flaring tails, and a row of buttons down the front (Figure 3.36) is worn by a grandee painted at Vaquero Shelter (41VV77) in Texas (Turpin 1988:52). Based on the

Figure 3.35. Military uniforms and priest’s vestments. (a) The victor on horseback wears striped leggings made from cut-down military trousers (note pedestrian opponent’s coat belted around the waist and shown with a wide hem). A possible “splat” is shown as a horizontal line intersecting his lower torso, indicating the bullet impact from the horseman’s pistol. (b) A priest in his vestments wearing a square biretta cap is painted at a Texas site. (c) Broad-brimmed campaign hat worn by a bugler on horseback at a Colorado site. (d) Two World War I Crow soldiers wear infantry combat uniforms and campaign hats at Joliet. Artists’ scripts memorialize participation in battles of Argonne Forest and Saint-Mihiel. (e) Crow army scout’s US military uniform shown as hat and long-sleeved jacket with prominent row of buttons (note traditional Crow warrior’s long hair). Drawing by the authors.

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Figure 3.36. Two cowboys, wearing distinctive brimmed hats, rope a Texas longhorn. In addition, a grandee holding a pipe and wearing a hat, gloves, and a flaring coat with epaulets and buttons approaches a church in this Texas painting. Drawing by David A. Kaiser, adapted from Turpin 1988.

length and style of this coat, Marcos-Marín (2013) identifies it as the uniform worn by senior militia officers of New Spain between 1796 and the start of the Spanish War of Independence in 1812. A defeated enemy in a scene carved at 39HN49 in South Dakota’s North Cave Hills wears a short coat indicated by a wide hem just below the waist (Figure 3.35a). The hem is further distinguished by a series of vertical lines spanning it. The coat is belted around the waist but higher on the chest a vertical line indicates the open placket near the garment’s top. Coats like this are frequently illustrated in Cheyenne ledger art drawn at about the same time as this petroglyph, though they often show considerably more detail. Finally, the latest military jackets shown in Plains rock art are worn by two World War I veteran Crow soldiers illustrated at the Joliet site (Figure 3.35d). Both men wear combat uniforms and campaign hats (described more fully in the following section discussing “Military Uniforms”). After returning from combat in the Great War, these soldiers continued the Crow warrior tradition by coming to this established location to record their war honors.

Chief’s Coats One special type of coat worn by Indian warriors was the Chief’s Coat. These were cheaply made, Euro-American-manufactured copies of military style dress uniforms that were the stock-in-trade of the American Fur Company and other northern Plains trading firms (Chronister 1996). Often decorated with braids, epaulets, and fancy lapel facings, Chief’s Coats entered the northern Plains after the establishment of the fur trade, starting about 1750. They reached their peak of popularity at the beginning of the 1800s, and from then to 1865 thousands of them were traded or given as gifts to prominent Indian men to secure the patronage of tribal leaders. Because of their use to designate an important man, Chief’s Coats are surprisingly well represented in rock art, being so far identified at three sites in Montana and a single Wyoming site.

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Despite the fancy epaulets and lapel facings evident in historic photographs, in rock art a Chief’s Coat is typically recognizable by the coat tails trailing behind the warrior (Figures 2.6a, 3.34a). In front view, the garment typically emphasizes sleeves and a long, A-line outline (Figure 3.37) with the warrior’s upper legs and thighs exposed in front of the garment’s hem. This contrasts to the depiction of a leather armor coat, which covers the wearer’s upper legs, often extending below his knees (cf. Figures 3.37 and 3.38). Likewise, a Chief’s

Figure 3.37. In this combat scene, the lower figure wears a chief’s coat recognized by its A-line silhouette, emphasized sleeves, and the warrior’s upper legs shown in front of the bottom hem. The attacker is shown only by his shield and weapons, and he rides a shorthand horse. The path of action is shown by footprints (top) and hoofprints (center). Both spears show “notched tang” metal points. Drawing by the authors. Figure 3.38. Leatherarmor coats shown with high collars and short sleeves. The A-line shape covers the upper legs but is partially split to allow it to drape over the sides of a horse. Warrior in (b) counts coup on a tipi. Drawing by the authors.

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Coat lacks the high collar designed to protect the wearer’s neck, as is typical of a leather armor coat. The most easily recognizable Chief’s Coat is a distinctly A-line garment with emphasized sleeves worn by a warrior at the Cheval Bonnet site (24GL1663) in far north-central Montana (Figure 3.37). Drawn almost exactly like Chief’s Coats portrayed on a war shirt from the region dated to the 1830s (Figure 3.39), this garment, coupled with the man’s elaborate stand-up bonnet, indicates a Blackfoot warrior of high standing who was defeated by his Crow enemy (Keyser 2018a). In profile a Chief’s Coat more commonly shows the coattails extending behind the warrior, but two examples at La Barge Bluffs also show a vertical line representing the placket, indicating the coat’s opening. One of these, worn by a horseman “showing-off” for a group of onlookers, has conspicuously squared shoulders and a small projection out from one shoulder to indicate a shoulder-board epaulet. This example is tailored to be a jacket. Such Chief’s Coats depicted in Biographic rock art connote an important man who was worthy of patronage from Euro-American traders. We are confident others await discovery in the rock art of the region.

Military Uniforms, Gloves, and Campaign Hats or Helmets Military uniforms and campaign hats were frequently illustrated in ledger drawings since many of those were drawn as mementos of various skirmishes

Figure 3.39. Images from the Schoch war shirt showing three defeated men wearing chief’s coats. Note the floating weapons and a capture hand. Figure on the right has a crescent-shaped powder horn and cloth shot pouch hanging from a strap. Drawing by the authors.

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and battles of the Indian Wars period between 1865 and 1876. Often uniforms and hats were used as what Petersen (1971:54) has termed a “costumesymbol” and Jordan (2015) has called an “ethnic marker” to identify vanquished enemies as members of the US military. Many ledger artists were even specific enough to include beards and other items of clothing to distinguish United States soldiers from Mexican soldiers, and the soldiers of both armies from teamsters, members of civilian militias, and hide hunters—all of whom were enemies they fought and foes on whom they counted coup (Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997; Jordan 2015; Cowdrey 1999). In addition to using military uniforms as ethnic markers, ledger artists also illustrated themselves wearing a wide variety of Euro-American apparel items. These articles of non-native dress included hats, shirts, jackets, vests, and trousers obtained in trade or taken from dead enemies on the field of battle. Among such items were military jackets and uniform pants, which were clearly shown with a yellow or red stripe down the side of the pant leg. Examples of military uniforms have been identified at rock art sites from Montana to Texas. The simplest is a flat, broad-brimmed campaign hat, worn by a bugler recorded at a site on Colorado’s South Platte River near historic Fort Saint Vrain (Figure 3.35c). In combination with his bugle, which is held up to the man’s mouth as it is being blown, this rider’s hat obviously represents military headgear. But exactly which campaign hat was intended to be illustrated cannot be determined. Site 14RU317, along the Smokey Hill River in central Kansas, shows several men wearing military uniforms (Buchanan, Griggs, and Svaty 2019:18–37). These are identified by stripes on their trouser legs and sometimes striped sleeves, belts, and one example with buttons down the front of a coat. Others in side profile show long tails on their uniform coats. Some figures wear clearly depicted high-heeled boots and several wear brimmed hats. Groups of two and three men have one member leading a horse. This combination of details, similar to that used in the Dog Soldier ledger book, seems likely to indicate Euro-American military men, teamsters, or militiamen. Comparison of the site imagery to a sketch made in 1861 suggests these petroglyphs were carved after that date (Buchanan, Griggs, and Svaty 2019:36). Lack of detailed study at the site precludes further identification, but during the 1860s this area of the central Plains saw many battles of the Indian Wars and the Smokey Hills trail was in near constant use by soldiers and militiamen (Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997:xix–xxxii). A third instance of enemy soldiers wearing uniforms is at the Hussie Miers site (41VV327), located on a tributary of the Devils River in southwest Texas. The Plains Biographic style panel at the site (Figure 3.40) was first recorded and interpreted by Turpin (1989a), who identified three enemies as US Soldiers in a five-vignette tally of one warrior’s coups. She based this on the men’s narrow waists, which she interpreted as representing “belted jackets,” and their headgear, which she identified as European-style “spiked helmets.” She then

Figure 3.40. A warrior with a long hairplate dropper is shown multiple times in this coup count tally. He is repeatedly identified by a striped shield and a long lance likely tipped with a sword blade, which act in a similar fashion to a name glyph. Many other items of clothing and weaponry are illustrated. In two scenes the artist fights uniformed Mexican soldiers wearing shako helmets. Upper row shows relationship of combat scenes at the site. These are enlarged below to show details. Drawing by David A. Kaiser.

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proposed the site dated after 1871, since that date was when the spiked helmet was adopted as part of the formal dress uniform. However, in a more recent analysis Jordan (2015:91–94) notes that these spiked, Prussian-style helmets were only worn for dress uniform use. Instead, Jordan notes that Kiowa ledger drawings from the late 1870s show engagements with Mexican soldiers who wear shakos sporting extremely tall pompoms. Additionally, Kiowa pictographic calendars record raids into Mexico, and the Comanche also raided that far south. Considering this, it seems most reasonable to identify these enemies as Mexican soldiers wearing uniforms and shako helmets. A rider in a scene at the Caballero Shelter site (41VV343) in Texas appears to travel from one Spanish mission church to another. Although not yet recorded in full detail, this rider wears a hat, brandishes a sword, and may be smoking a pipe (Figure 3.41). This constellation of elements suggests he is a military man, and further recording and analysis of this image (like that done at Hussie Miers) might provide significantly more detail. Uniform elements worn by Indian warriors include a striped pant leg illustrated on a late Historic period horseman in a combat composition at site 39HN49 in the North Cave Hills (Figure 3.35a). Drawn in the late Ledger Art style, the composition at 39HN49 would fit comfortably in ledger books collected from the Sioux and Cheyenne in the period between 1869 and 1880,

Figure 3.41. At Caballero Shelter, Texas, a horseman rides between two Spanish mission churches, shown variously as a square building topped with two flanking bell towers, and a series of stacked, downward-pointing triangles. Likely a military man, the rider wears a hat, brandishes a sword, and appears to smoke a pipe. Drawing by David A. Kaiser, adapted from Turpin 1989b.

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and striped pants like this are routinely drawn in those ledgers to represent captured military uniform pants worn by Indian warriors. For instance, the Tie Creek Ledger, found about 50 km (30 miles) southwest of the site area, has eight drawings showing Cheyenne warriors wearing such military trousers— seven with a red stripe and one with a blue stripe (Figure 3.42a). Several of these are worn in combination with military uniform jackets clearly showing button fronts. In the Tie Creek Ledger, these uniform trousers contrast sharply with blanket leggings drawn so the undyed selvedge edge extends down the outer (rear) margin of the front side of the legging as a decorative element, or rawhide leggings painted with a vertical pattern of alternating colored and blank triangles (Figure 3.42b, c). Three self-portraits carved at the Joliet site in Montana are records of the careers of Crow men who served in the US military. One of these men has been identified through Crow oral history as one of the many Crow scouts who served with the US military in the Indian Wars period. Although oral history has not revealed his name, his portrait shows him wearing a buttoned “blue coat” jacket with striped sleeves and a campaign hat, even though his long hair is also emphasized. Indian scouts from several tribes—including several famous Crow men such as Curley and White Swan—were employed by various military commands during the Indian Wars. Two other Joliet self-portraits are World War I doughboys carved by Crow men returning from their military service in the Great War (Figure 3.35d).

Figure 3.42. Images redrawn from the Tie Creek Ledger: (a) stripped leggings cut from military trousers; (b) blanket leggings showing the undyed selvedge edge extending down the leg as a decorative element; (c) rawhide leggings painted with alternating-colored triangles. Drawing by James D. Keyser.

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Using Crow oral history, McCleary (2016) has identified these two Crow men as James Cooper and Clarence L. Stevens, who also annotated their drawings with information about the battles in France in which they had participated (St. Mihiel and the Argonne Forest). Each man wears a World War I combat uniform, complete with a wide-brimmed army campaign hat. Both men wear 1910 pattern wool tunics and high-collar dress coats, one of which shows all four distinctive front pockets and the brass buttons down the placket. The front man, who also wears bloused wool trousers and boots, is a more complete portrait. He is armed with a rifle carried at the left shoulder arms position, and wears sergeant’s stripes on his left sleeve and an overseas stripe at the sleeve’s cuff. There is insufficient detail to determine what type of rifle he carries or whether it has a bayonet. Gloves are worn by one and possibly two men (Figures 3.35d, 3.36). The previously mentioned Spanish grandee painted at Vaquero shelter wears what is almost certainly a military uniform complete with brimmed hat, coat with epaulets, and gloves. The gloves are shown as flared cuffs just behind four-fingered hands. The oversized fingers of the military scout’s portrait at Joliet and the artist’s difficulty showing the right arm and hand likely represent standard military-issue leather gauntlets.

Priest Vestments At Meyers Springs (41TE9) in Texas, what appear to be two Catholic priests wearing their long cassocks are shown inside a mission church (Turpin and Eling 2011:279). Also at the site, a large image of a priest is shown wearing a wide cloak, probably representing a tunicle or chasuble, with what is likely a square biretta cap on his head (Figure 3.35b). Leggings Tubular “pantleg” type garments, called leggings, are one of the more common clothing items worn by Plains rock art warriors. These were usually made of leather, but some examples were instead made of woven fabric; and during the Indian Wars period, some men even made leggings of cut down cavalry trousers. A few women are also shown in rock art wearing leggings (Figures 0.9, 1.21). In rock art, leggings are typically recognized when they are decorated, most often with a fringe running down the side seam. This fringe could be made of anything from leather strings to ermine tails to small hanks of human hair cut from enemy scalps. Except for the most elaborate drawings, such leggings are most commonly identified when a human’s legs are fringed down one side (Figures 3.6a, 3.34c). Simple leggings like these are found at dozens of sites from Writing-on-Stone to Coahuila (Keyser 1977b; Jordan 2015:100). Since simple fringed leggings are one of the more common clothing items in Biographic rock art (e.g., Figures 1.2b, 1.3, 1.20b, 3.34b), we discuss here in

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detail only a few elaborately decorated and fringed specimens. At 48SW83, a probable shaman wears fancy leggings with horizontal fringe on the front edge coupled with parallel, nearly horizontal lines etched across his triangular thighs (Figure 3.43). These lines indicate leggings decorated with painted, quilled, or beaded stripes. Such leggings were commonly worn by Plains men, and their extensive decoration sometimes referred to the wearer’s war honors (Taylor 1994:179–207). Another pair of fancy leggings is worn by a Bear Gulch shield-bearing warrior. Fringe runs down the front side of both legs, but the leggings are further elaborated with a garter attachment just below his knees (Keyser, Kaiser, Poetschat, and Taylor 2012:Figure 2.175j). Two mounted warriors and one Hot dancer at Joliet wear stripe-decorated leggings (Figures 2.2a, 3.15), at least one of which likely portrays war honor marks. Finally, one reclining woman in the Joliet Hot Dance scene (Figure 1.11) wears tubular leggings decorated with what are probably elk teeth attached in a single vertical row down each leg. The leggings are further elaborated just below her knees with garters and intricately decorated knee tails that appear to be fabric strips on which are sewn additional elk teeth. This woman’s fine clothing, hairdo, and face paint help narrate her story as a kidnapped wife (Keyser and Cowdrey 2008:27–28). Sometimes Indian warriors cut down military uniform pants to repurpose them into leggings. One petroglyph horseman at 39HN49 (Figure 3.35a) has a distinctly striped leg, indicating he is wearing either a pair of military trousers or leggings made from such striped pants.

Figure 3.43. Shaman figure with zigzag power lines, an associated animal, and decorated and fringed leggings. Drawing by the authors.

Sashes Sashes are worn by both women and men in Biographic rock art, although they served far different purposes depending on the wearer’s gender. Women’s sashes are shown functioning as a belt (often a very decorative one) in Ledger Art-style portraits of four women at La Barge Bluffs and two at Joliet (Figures 1.11, 1.32, 3.33).4 The simplest example is just a

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line pendent from the belt at the side of a woman’s dress, but three fancier examples show a long flowing sash trailing from the belt and decorated with attached elk teeth or brass buttons. In those cases, the belt is also decorated in the same fashion. Sashes worn by men at several sites are long, narrow, flowing items attached at the shoulders, neck, or waist (Figures 3.5a, b; 3.35a; 3.44). Two of these are worn by mounted warriors carrying shields at the Musselshell site in Montana and flow far behind the man, indicating a sash nearly as long or longer than the warrior is tall. A third, equally long example trails behind a man carved at 14RU317 in central Kansas (Buchanan, Griggs, and Svaty 2019:24–25). This man is well-armed with a long lance in one hand and a Missouri war axe in the other. The fourth example is painted at the El Caido site in northern Coahuila, Mexico (Jordan 2015:100–102). Both sashes drawn at Montana sites have crossbars perpendicular to their long axis, suggesting they are made of woven striped fabric or manufactured from several smaller panels sewn together. When shown in ledger drawings, such sashes have a form notably similar to these. Sashes like these were worn as “badges of office” by warriors who accepted certain leadership positions in military societies. Sometimes this sash was known as a “stake” or “no-retreat” sash because the warrior wearing it had

Figure 3.44. Sashes were a common item of clothing. Long sashes (a, b) were usually worn by men who had taken a “no-retreat” pledge, while ceremonial sashes were also worn by dancers (c). Women’s sashes often served as belts and, as with dresses, could be decorated with elk teeth or other items. Dark circles on (d) indicate bullet damage. Drawing by the authors.

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accepted the obligation to not retreat if he and his comrades were in danger of being overrun by an enemy force. A stake-sash wearer had made a public vow that if such a situation arose in a desperate fight, he would “stake himself” by pinning the trailing end of his sash to the ground with a knife or lance. He could then be saved only by a comrade coming back to his rescue and pulling up the weapon to which he was tethered. Although such bravado sometimes meant the death of a stake-sash wearer, it sometimes also turned the tide of the fight and rescued victory from a potential rout. One of the last Cheyenne warriors to stake himself out was the Dog Soldier “Wolf-With-Plenty-of-Hair,” who was killed at the Summit Springs battle in 1869 (Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997:56–63). One sash-wearing warrior at Joliet is an enemy shield bearer in combat with a Crow horseman (Figure 3.34b). Since the Crow and Cheyenne were frequently at war with one another in the last half of the 1800s, it is quite possible this enemy sash wearer is a Cheyenne.

Belts Belts are a relatively common costume element in Plains rock art, especially in the latest Ledger Art-style drawings, which tend to show many more small details of clothing and accessories. But there is even one quite early example, illustrated on a recumbent figure who has been stabbed with a large metal knife in an early Historic period scene (ca. AD 1700–1730) at Atherton Canyon (Figure 3.45). Positioned at about the figure’s waist, the belt is a wide band with a definite crosshatching that probably represents a beaded or quilled design. However, belts are much more frequently depicted in later, Ledger Artstyle rock art. Often these are worn by women to cinch their dress at the waist (Figures 1.11, 1.32, 3.33, 3.44d). They range from simple cords to highly decorated sashes. A woman’s belt was often a sign of her social status. Such belts had a long end hanging down as a sign of her domestic skills and could be decorated with elk teeth, beads, or silver conchos. Buffalo Bird Woman, a Hidatsa,

Figure 3.45. An extensive fight scene shows a shield-bearing warrior struck with a Spanish socketed lance. Next to him, a recumbent figure wearing a decorated belt and bear-paw moccasins is stabbed with a large metal knife. To the right, a figure wears a sash showing the undyed selvedge edge of commercially produced cloth. At far right, the top of a small freestanding shield is covered by a pendant drape hanging down both sides. Drawing by the authors.

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recalled “only a very industrious girl was given such a belt. She could not buy or make one. To wear [it] . . . was an honor. I was as proud of mine as a war leader of his first scalp” (G. Wilson 1981:118). Horsemen and Hot Dancers at the Joliet site wear a variety of belts decorated with dots and lines in various patterns, representing beadwork designs and small objects like brass buttons, shells, or elk teeth sewn on the belt (Figures 1.11, 3.15). Other women and men wearing simpler belts were drawn at several sites in the last half of the 1800s, including La Barge Bluffs, Colorado’s Craig Sandrocks (5MF4306), and 39HN49 (Figures 1.32, 3.44).

Dresses Women at several northern Plains sites wear dresses. These include both straight-sided A-line garments and others belted at the waist to create an hourglass profile (Figures 3.33, 3.44). They typically have short, wide sleeves. Most hourglass profile dresses are accessorized with either a belt or a sash, the latter typically shown as a wider band with a long trailing end hanging to one side. The dress worn by the woman at 39HN217 (Figure 3.46) is undecorated, but the presence of leather body armor worn by a warrior in the same scene strongly implies this is a native-made leather dress. Dresses at Joliet, La Barge Bluffs, and Craig Sandrocks are decorated across the yoke, over their entire bodice, or on both bodice and skirt with small, drilled dots representing elk teeth, shells, or brass buttons sewn to the garment (Figures 1.11, 1.32, 3.33, 3.44). Several dresses (including two elaborately decorated examples) have a contrasting band at the hem and sometimes the end of the sleeves (Figures 1.11, 3.33). This indicates either the undyed selvedge edge of

Figure 3.46. On the left side of this panel, a woman wearing a dress is sexually captured by a man crawling up to touch her vulva. To the right, a distinctive bull’s-head shield is drawn twice, once as a large image overseeing the artist’s series of coups and also as a much smaller version connected to his head. Illustrated in this manner, the shield may indicate his name glyph. Drawing by James D. Keyser.

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Stroud cloth used to make the dress or a binding hem made of a different color material sewn on as a decorative border to prevent fraying.

Moccasins Although some have claimed Indian warriors went barefoot more often than is widely acknowledged (e.g., Lanford 2003:166), the ethnographic record is replete with references to the use of moccasins, especially on the war trail (e.g., Ewers 1955b; Lowie 1956). Thus, it is likely that many participants in Biographic narratives are wearing moccasins, but such footwear is rarely depicted with any specificity. The only common exceptions are the illustration of high-top Pawnee-style moccasins shown in several scenes, apparently as markers of ethnic identity, and “bear-paw feet,” which may represent specialized moccasins made from real bear paws (see below). The assumption that other warriors are wearing moccasins even if not specifically illustrated is supported by the presence of moccasin tails worn by warriors at several sites (e.g., Figure 3.47e–g). Unlike some ledger drawings (Bates, Kahn, and Lanford 2003:235, 240, 253, 308), we know of no Biographic rock art example where bare feet are explicitly depicted.

Figure 3.47. Moccasins are illustrated in various ways: (a–b) elaborately decorated beaded or quilled designs; (c–d) long boot-like footwear; (e–g) moccasin tails attached at the heel to show accomplishment of war honors; (h) bear-paw moccasins; (i–k) “flared-cuff” Pawnee moccasins. Drawing by the authors.

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Moccasins are worn by more than twenty humans at sixteen rock art sites. These include distinctive, high top, boot-like footgear illustrated by showing the upper shaft of the moccasin significantly wider than the warrior’s legs (Figure 3.47d). Such moccasins might well have been winter footwear. One very late Historic period Ute warrior’s self-portrait shows his boot-like moccasins stretching up just above mid-calf and “colored” in with scratches on the shaft while the vamp and toe are merely outlined. A long streamer with a feather dangles from the top rear of each moccasin (Figure 3.47c). A type of footgear that might represent a specialized moccasin is the bearpaw feet illustrated on warriors at eight sites. All but one are Late Prehistoric period shield-bearing warriors or a rectangular-body style warrior, half of whom show other bear attributes, including tear streaks and a “bear’s-ears” headdress/hairstyle (Figures 3.47h). One man wearing bear-paw moccasins at Atherton Canyon, however, is clearly shown as a participant in a Biographic combat scene in which he lies supine after being fatally stabbed with a large metal knife (Figure 3.45). For some of these “bear feet” figures (e.g., Figure 3.48), especially shield bearers and therianthropic shamans with animal body parts and other bear-related imagery (e.g., tear streaks, bear’s-ears hairstyle), the bear-paw feet might represent metaphoric bear power evidenced by their feet transforming into bear paws. However, bear-paw moccasins were actually worn by the Crow in 1859 (Ewers 1982c:45) and, along with other special accoutrements, formed the paraphernalia of a Bear Cult Warrior common to several Plains tribes (Ewers 1955a). We feel that shield-bearing warriors at several northwestern Plains sites (Francis and Loendorf 2002:165; Keyser 1984:14, 33; Mulloy 1958:126, 130) represent such bear warriors. “Stand-up cuff” Pawnee moccasins are worn by single warriors at three sites, but it is likely others will Figure 3.48. This “bear warrior” wears bear-paw moccasins, a bear’s-ears hairbe found at sites in eastern Wyo- style, and face-paint tear streaks. He holds ming and northeastern Colorado, a bow-spear and an arrow. Drawing by the closer to the Pawnee homeland in authors.

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central Nebraska. These moccasins are drawn in ledger drawings and winter counts as black footgear with distinctive flaring top flaps (Figure 3.47i–k) and are often employed as ethnic markers denoting enemy Pawnee warriors (Bates, Kahn, and Lanford 2003:311; Cowdrey 1999:23, 43–44, 65; Greene 2009:72–73; Greene and Thornton 2007:73; Jordan 2015:91; Keyser 1996:44; Petersen 1971:291).5 In several cases, an annotation from the ledger artist provides direct correspondence between such moccasins and identified Pawnee enemies (Figure 3.25). In rock art, identical petroglyph depictions (though not colored black) are worn by defeated enemy warriors at Craig Sandrocks and the Ten Sleep Pictographs. They are also the footgear of a rider astride a caparisoned horse at the Box Canyon site (5LA8464) in the Picketwire Canyonlands of southeastern Colorado (Figure 3.49). At La Barge Bluffs one man in a group observing a horseman has his lower legs and feet completely carved out in intaglio form, implying he is wearing dark-colored moccasins, while a man in another similar group of observers has decorated tops to his footwear (Figure 3.47a). Even more explicit moccasins worn by the largest Joliet Hot Dancer (Figure 3.47b) are illustrated with multiple lines crossing his feet in a pattern suggestive of beaded or quilled designs. This pattern is unlike any other footwear worn in this scene but similar to decorated moccasins worn by other Hot Dancers drawn in Crow ledger art (Figure 2.2).

Moccasin Tails Lines or fans of short lines attached to the heel area of warriors’ feet at seven sites represent “moccasin tails,” which in real life were wolf or fox tails, fox pelts, feathers, strips of cloth, or the beards of buffalo bulls attached to the heels of a man’s moccasins to denote the performance of certain war honors or

Figure 3.49. This Colorado petroglyph shows humans, horses, an elk, and a bear. Some warriors wear long hair, and one wears Pawnee moccasins. Horses are shown with zigzag reins and Spanish chain bits, as well as paired keyhole-shaped forehead ornaments. Drawing by the authors.

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attainment of a specific status. Such moccasin tails are commonly portrayed in robe and ledger art (Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997:66–67; Berlo 1996:78–79, 85; Stirling 1938:27–33; Thomas and Ronnefeldt 1976:220–21) and frequently depicted in portraits of Indian warriors painted by Catlin (1973:I:Plate64) and Bodmer (Thomas and Ronnefeldt 1976:209–19, 225, 237). In rock art, moccasin tails are more common in Late Prehistoric period imagery, where they adorn the footwear of eighteen warriors at four sites. The simplest are short single lines trailing from a man’s ankles or heels at Pinnacle Rocks (48NO231) and DgOv-2 at Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park (Figure 3.50). Both warriors are armed with special weapons (a bow-spear and a double-pointed spear), suggesting they held a leadership position in a military society. Possibly the wearing of moccasin tails was also related to such a leadership position. Moccasin tails ranging from equally simple single lines to much more elaborate fan-like groups of two to seven short straight lines or relatively longer lines with a “bulb” or “knot” and fringe at the end are worn by shield-bearing warriors at Bear Gulch and Atherton Canyon (Figure 3.47f,

Figure 3.50. This unique panel shows unusual bow-spears with a projectile point at both ends and a bi-pointed lance, all of which may indicate leadership positions in military societies. Six warriors have long lines connecting them to animals, but their meaning is unknown. Drawing by the authors.

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g). Some of these are the most elaborate examples of this item known in Biographic art. Later Historic period moccasin tails are much less common but are illustrated at Joliet, Manuel Lisa (24YL82), and 39HN217 (Figures 3.46, 3.47e, 3.51). At Joliet they are short, fan-like attachments worn by a Hot dancer as part of his regalia; at the other two sites Figure 3.51. Mature-style Crow horse they are simpler straight lines worn with realistic triangular notch cut in its by horsemen on one or both heels in ears to note the animal’s speed and action scenes. Based on ethnographic agility. The rider also wears tails on one analogy, we can confidently state that moccasin. Drawing by the authors. Historic period warriors wearing such items are announcing their acquisition of specific war honors and, thus, their achievement of particularly high status. Using the direct historical approach, it is reasonable to interpret those worn by Late Prehistoric period warriors in the same way.

Armbands and Bracelets Armbands (or armlets), worn around the upper arm, and bracelets, worn around the wrist or lower arm, are depicted in all Biographic art media, though they are most common as items of dress in ledger drawings. In the Historic period these armbands are usually wide bands made of German silver or brass, though occasionally they appear to have been formed by multiple rings of brass wire. Bracelets could also be either bands or groups of wires, but more frequently they are the latter. The fact that bracelets and armbands are worn by some shield-bearing warriors who appear to be late Prehistoric period drawings suggests these items were originally native-made of wood, bone, or rawhide. Although portrayed frequently in the latest ledger drawings, armlets and bracelets have been identified from only three rock art sites. Early armbands and bracelets are worn by a few shield bearers and other humans at Bear Gulch and Atherton Canyon. These are drawn as short, shallow, scratched grooves extending across the warrior’s upper arm or wrist (Figure 3.52d). These likely indicate native-made items. In later drawings at the Joliet site, dated to around 1880 (Lycett and Keyser 2019a), bracelets and armbands are shown either as solid bands or groups of incised lines, representing a cluster of brass wires. Solid upper arm bands worn by both warriors riding a single horse and two dancers in a Hot Dance scene are likely German silver or brass (Figures 1.11, 3.15). Clusters of brass wires are worn as both armlets and bracelets by the larger dancer and as bracelets by the larger reclining woman (Figure 1.11).

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Figure 3.52. Garters (b, c) and bracelets (d), shown as a small band scratched across the arm or lower leg, and streamers hanging from the knees (a, e–f) are typical Bear Gulch-style warrior accoutrements. Drawing by the authors.

Garters, Anklets, and Knee Pendants Garters (or leg bracelets) drawn at about the knee, anklets, and pendant streamers from the knee and elbow are all illustrated in Biographic art. These are found occasionally in ledger drawings, especially for dancers and warriors of special status, such as bow-lance carriers among the Cheyenne (Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997:68, 110–11; Berlo 1996:185, 211, 2000:41; Maurer 1992). These items are illustrated in detail in Karl Bodmer’s 1834 upper Missouri village Indian portraits (Thomas and Ronnefeldt 1976:172, 212–24). Sometimes the pendants at knees and elbows are suspended from garters or armbands. All these items were made of various materials, probably the most unique is a bear-paw anklet worn by one warrior in the Black Hawk ledger (Berlo 2000b:104–5). In rock art these items have so far been found at only three sites. Garters, shown by a small band scratched across the lower leg at the knees, are recorded on shield-bearing warriors and a V-neck human at Bear Gulch and Atherton Canyon (Figure 3.52b, c). Anklets, scratched in a similar fashion, are also worn by one Bear Gulch shield-bearing warrior who also wears garters.

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Garters and various streamers hanging from the knees or lower legs are frequently illustrated in the latest Plains rock art (Keyser 2004a:100; Keyser and Klassen 2001:22, 200). They are worn by Bear Gulch and Atherton Canyon warriors, Hot Dancers at Joliet, and a large shaman or warrior at Red Canyon (Figure 3.52e, f). Finally, knee pendants are worn by both women in the Joliet Hot Dance scene (Figure 1.11). Those on the smaller woman are just simple lines but those on the larger woman are apparently made of fabric and decorated with smaller streamers to which feathers are attached, while the pendants themselves are decorated with what appear to be elk teeth. This woman’s regalia is the most detailed of any in rock art.

Dance Bustles Incredibly detailed and complex feather-bedecked dance bustles are worn by five Crow Hot Dancers at Joliet. These bustles, referred to as a “crow belt” or “crow bustle” (but named for the bird, not the tribe) can be incredibly fancy. They utilize feathers (and sometimes skins of entire birds), upright “horns” (straight sticks) usually with hawk bells (small round bells of sheet brass or copper originally used in falconry) attached, and trailing fabric panels with feathers attached (Laubin and Laubin 1989:435–37). Streamers made of fabric, ermine tails, horsehair, and other materials, were attached to many parts of the bustle, but especially to the upper ends of the horns. The Hot Dancers at Joliet wear two types of crow belts. The more complex show all the typical attributes, including fabric panels with feathers or streamers attached, upright horns sporting more than a dozen hawk bells and terminal streamers, and large feathered “tail” panels (Figure 1.11). The simpler bustles have the form of an erect “tail” from which dangle multiple streamers or feathers. The effect for these simpler bustles is to mimic to some degree a regular horse’s tail or a bison bull’s tail erected to signal the animal’s aggressive presence. Contrary to most rock art imagery, which is usually simpler than that shown in ledger drawings, these rock art crow belts are as complex as any illustrated in any ledger drawing (Figure 2.2). Conchos/Hairplates Round hammered metal disks were used in a variety of ways by Plains Indians. One of the most common was for hairplates (Jordan 2015), where a graduated-sized set of such disks was fastened to a strap of tanned hide or trade cloth and attached to the hair as a dropper at the back of the head. The resultant portrayal in biographic drawings shows a long scalp lock-like dropper with carefully spaced circles along most of its length. In some examples, the artist has made a concerted effort to show the conchos’ graduated size getting increasingly smaller as they reach the lower end of the trailer. Such hairplates were sometimes made by the Indians themselves, who hammered them out of silver coins; others were manufactured disks of German silver.

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Concho hairplate droppers (Figures 3.40, 3.53) are illustrated in rock art at the El Caido site in northern Coahuila, at Hussie Miers in Texas, and at a site in southeastern Colorado (Jordan 2015; McGlone, Leonard, and Barker 1994:56). The El Caido example and one at Hussie Miers show the graduated sizes. At Hussie Miers, the same man wears a hairplate dropper Figure 3.53. Horseman wearing a long hairthat is as long as (or longer than) plate dropper, probably made of metal conchos, at a site in southeast Colorado. Note he is tall in five separate battle honor marks drawn on horse’s left hip. Drawactions. In two of these vignettes ing by the authors. the dropper has an added tab at its bottom. The Colorado site hairplates are illustrated in obvious fashion as small, drilled holes, even though no connecting strap is shown. Finally, a single concho disk is worn in a scalp lock at Ellison’s Rock (Keyser 2014a:6). The distribution of these rock art hairplates is consistent with the ethnographic record, which shows this regalia element to have been much more popular with southern Plains tribes (e.g., Kiowa, Comanche, Southern Cheyenne) than among those in the north. For this reason, the single Ellison’s rock concho may be made of marine shell rather than hammered silver, since such shell conchos were more popular among the Crow and Sioux than were hammered metal hairplates.

Blankets Blankets were used for a variety of purposes, from saddle blankets to capes to wrap-around garments that took the place of bison robes in the last decades of the Historic period. In Plains rock art blankets used by humans have been recorded at four sites and saddle blankets have been identified as horse tack at six sites. Here we discuss blankets worn, carried, or used by humans; blanket capes and saddle blankets are discussed in their respective sections later in this chapter. The petroglyphs at La Barge Bluffs illustrate an exceptionally rich rock art record of Indian life during the period from 1860 to 1880 (Keyser and Poetschat 2005). At this site thirty-four men and women wrapped in blankets stand in long rows watching various activities, including the recounting of an important coup, a warrior showing off, and as groups apparently waiting for a dance or other ceremony (Figures 3.33, 3.34d, 3.54). Many of these blankets are lavishly decorated with vertical or horizontal stripes, a checkerboard pattern of crossing lines, or vertical or horizontal blanket strips decorated with beaded

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Figure 3.54. A group of celebrants, wrapped in blankets, gathers at a ceremonial lodge. Drawing by the authors.

or painted lines or circles representing attached beaded rosettes or metal conchos. These blanket-wrapped spectators are illustrated exactly like those in many ledger drawings done after 1870 (Figure 3.55). Another blanket, drawn with closely spaced, slightly curved, red crayon lines and scratches (which would have been white when freshly drawn),

Figure 3.55. Groups of men and women found in rock art are similar to groups shown in late ledger drawings, like this one drawn in 1883. Image courtesy of Charles H. Barstow Collection, Montana State University-Billings, Library Special Collections.

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extends down from the slightly upraised forearm of an hourglass-body style, V-neck human at Atherton Canyon (Figure 3.56a). In his opposite hand he holds a similarly illustrated ceremonial feather fan. The scratched and painted image draped over his arm is identified as a blanket because its distinctly lined form with strong red color accents mimics an early trade blanket.

Figure 3.56. Blankets are uncommon in rock art. This V-neck human (a) holds a feather fan in one hand and hangs a blanket over his other arm. A freestanding blanket has two arrows and an unidentified object laid on it, possibly representing war trophies. Drawing by the authors.

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Two other blankets are shown as freestanding images. One is incised as a petroglyph at Castle Gardens (48FR108) and has two arrows and a vertical line laid on it (Wellmann 1979:Figure 676). The blanket itself is laid out flat and has hemlines on both ends that are decorated with short perpendicular bars (Figure 3.56b). Although Wellmann suggests this represents an Indian game of dexterity, he provides no references or other evidence for his assertion, and it seems just as plausible to us that these represent war trophies. A second possible blanket is a rectilinear design showing three compartments, each inscribed with an X, incised at 48SW82 in the Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area in southwestern Wyoming. Positioned in a tally of war honors (Keyser 2011c), it seems likely this is a blanket, parfleche, or bundle taken as a war trophy.

Capes Plains warriors occasionally wore a cloth cape fastened around their shoulders, often shown flowing out behind them as would be the case when they rode or ran into a battle action. Three such capes are worn by warriors at Montana sites. One is worn by an elaborately outfitted, lightly incised Crow-style warrior at Four Dance Cliff (24YL559) in Montana’s Yellowstone Valley (Figure 3.34a). This warrior also wears a Chief’s Coat, as indicated by the coat tails illustrated behind his leg. One human at Joliet (Figure 1.5) holds a military society staff and wears a fringed blanket suspended from around his shoulders on a cord drawn as a long zigzag line (McCleary 2016:122). Although erroneously identified as a woman wearing a dress (Conner 1980:9; Keyser, Sundstrom, and Poetschat 2006:58–62), Crow informants have identified the person’s hairstyle as a distinctive man’s style. They further asserted that this man is a military leader who has accepted his society’s staff and the responsibilities that come with it, including a no-retreat pledge in the face of overwhelming odds (McCleary 2016:121–23). The man appears to stand still, as he would if not retreating, so the blanket hangs down from about his waist to below his knees. The blanket is fringed on three sides and may be decorated with a vertically oriented zigzag line. A third warrior at Atherton Canyon is a tall, somewhat sketchy figure wearing a long rectangular cape down his back and an animal medicine bundle attached at his waist (Figure 3.57a). He has no weapon. The cape is crossed by a series of horizontal lines, suggesting that it may be made from a blanket. These blanket capes are like one worn by a warrior painted on a Crow bison robe now in the Danish National Museum in Copenhagen. That bison robe predates 1860 and, as expected given the multiple colors used in painting it, the warrior’s blanket-cape is more detailed than any rock art example. It clearly portrays a yellow-and-red striped Hudson’s Bay trade blanket on which the owner has painted a large, spread-eagled bird and a four-pointed star

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Figure 3.57. Men’s clothing and accoutrements include capes worn hanging down the back (a–c), a medicine bundle (a), a hairpipe breastplate (d), and breechclouts (e–g). Illustrations (b and c) are drawings on painted robes. Drawing by the authors.

(Figure 3.57b). Two Crow warriors, illustrated as fleeing enemies, wear capes (Figure 3.57c) in a scene on the bison robe of the Lakota warrior, His Horse Looking (Horse Capture and Horse Capture 2001:82–85).

Breechclouts Plains Indian warriors typically wore a breechclout (or breechcloth) made from a long, narrow strip of cloth often with an undyed selvedge edge at each end. Passing between the legs and held in place by a belt, the ends of the breechclout extended out in front and behind the wearer. Often such breechclouts were quite long, and photographs and ledger drawings show the cloth hanging down almost to the ground. To keep these long tails from interfering with a man’s running or walking, the hanging ends were often doubled over the belt. In rock art such breechclouts are most commonly shown as an arc shape, often with squared ends, passing across a man’s body at his waist (Figures 1.11, 3.57e, f, 3.58). Occasionally only the front or rear panel is drawn. On some examples the undyed selvedge edge is also indicated. More than fifty different warriors at sites from Castle Butte and Joliet in Montana to the El Caido site in the Rio Grande drainage of northern Mexico wear breechclouts. Two dozen breechclout-wearing warriors at La Barge Bluffs and Names Hill (48LN39) in Wyoming are the largest concentration of this item in Plains rock art.

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Figure 3.58. In this combat scene the central warrior holding his shield before him strides forward in an aggressive, winning posture, while the loser leans backward showing his defeat. Note the winner’s long breechclout. Drawing by the authors.

Breastplates Five hairpipe breastplates have been identified in Plains Biographic rock art. These were made by stringing bone and/or shell hairpipes on a cord and then assembling them into two or more vertical rows in which the hairpipes were arranged obliquely or horizontally. Hairpipes—a long tubular bead—were originally commercially manufactured in New Jersey from the lip of a conch shell and began to be traded to the Indians in the last decades of the 1700s (Ewers 1957:42). Later, in the last decades of the 1800s, hairpipes manufactured from domestic cattle leg bones were used instead. Hairpipe breastplates are quite common in ledger drawings, especially those of the Cheyenne (Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997; Bates, Kahn, and Lanford 2003; Cowdrey 1999). Hairpipe breastplates are found in rock art at Joliet, La Barge Bluffs, and on the Ute portrait at McKee Spring. All show two rows of hairpipes, but with slightly different configurations (Figures 1.11, 1.27, 3.15, 3.57c). The McKee Spring example has a round pectoral (possibly a large metal or shell concho or “Peace Medal”) attached at the bottom of the central vertical midline. At Joliet two breastplates are worn by Hot Dancers, who McCleary (2016:116–21) identifies as visiting Hidatsa men, based on Crow informants’ testimony. But a third example is worn by a Crow horseman, contradicting the assertion that Crow men did not use this regalia item (Ewers 1957:65–66).

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The nested V-shapes filling the torsos (Figures 0.2j, m; 1.2b) of occasional Late Prehistoric period V-neck warriors (e.g., Keyser and Klassen 2001:198– 200, 206, 210) almost certainly do not represent breastplates, despite occasionally being identified as such. Several of these images appear to date before AD 1700, when such items first came into the Plains Indian trade, and some are paired with heartlines and/or kidneys. Showing such internal organs in an X-ray style in this manner is a typical Ceremonial tradition art convention (see this chapter, “Internal Organs”) and is used not only for humans but also for animals (Keyser 1977b:72) who could not possibly be wearing breastplates.

Pectorals Large, graceful, cloud-shaped, or crescent-shaped ornaments, hammered out of German silver and often having small crescents hanging from one or more of the lower lobes or points, were a common accoutrement for Cheyenne and Lakota warriors during the Indian Wars period. Many are worn attached to the bottom of a hairpipe breastplate, but others are suspended from a cord around the neck. They are illustrated in many ledger drawings (Figure 3.59). So far, only two pectorals have been identified. The most incontrovertible example is a large crescent, oriented with points downward and suspended from what appears to be a necklace, worn by a dancer at El Caido (Figure 3.60D/76). This man could be Kiowa or Comanche, both of which were known to favor such pectorals in the Historic period. The second is a possible example: a large circular medallion—possibly a peace medal—suspended below a hairpipe breastplate worn by the Ute warrior at McKee Spring (Figure 1.27). Although

Figure 3.59. Ledger drawings of cloud-shaped, German silver pectorals. These often had small crescents suspended beneath. They were worn around the neck (a) or below a hairpipe breastplate (b, c). Drawing by the authors, adapted from various ledger drawings.

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Figure 3.60. This group of dancing warriors at a site in northern Mexico, are showing off captured war trophies including a headdress, swords, guns, a lance, and a shield. This is one of the most detailed Plains Biographic images. Dancer at B/4 holds a military saber adorned with otter-skin streamers and a shield with a long, feathered drape. Warrior at E/6 wears a native-made leather tunic painted red on the left side and a large crescent-shaped pectoral as a necklace. A flintlock gun held by a dancer at E/10 has strips of red cloth strung through the ferrules. Light grey is used as background to show white incisions, darker grey is red pigment, black is black paint. Image courtesy of Solveig Turpin

much simpler than the cloud-shaped pectorals common in ledger art, it is in the position where such accoutrements were worn.

Masks Masks are not commonly worn by humans in Biographic art, though a few do occur. Various members of animal “dreamer” societies are shown in a few ledger drawings wearing masks appropriate to those ceremonies (Berlo 2000b: 45–55; Sundstrom 2015:152–54). Possibly the self-portrait of an elk dreamer (Figure 1.6) carved at the Elk Dreamer site is wearing a partial mask, since the human has elk antlers and ears, but this drawing may simply be depicting the dreamer morphing into his elk spirit helper (Keyser and Sundstrom 2015:132). But elk dreamers at two other sites (39HN745 and 48PL132) have roughly trapezoidal or triangular heads bearing antlers (Figure 3.61). These represent elk dreamers almost certainly wearing masks appropriate to the ceremony (Sundstrom 2015). Two shield-bearing warriors at Bear Gulch wear bird-beak masks (Figure 3.62). Whether these were full-face masks or a partial mask on a band worn around the head is unknown, but they appear to indicate a warrior’s possession of supernatural power relating to birds.

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Figure 3.61. Elk dreamers wearing trapezoidal or triangular masks with antlers as part of a Lakota ritual. Drawing by the authors, (a) adapted from Sundstrom 2004b.

Figure 3.62. A shield-bearing warrior wears a bird-beak mask (a) and has a bird bundle tied in his hair (b). He is armed with a club and has an animal medicine bundle hanging from his shield, which is decorated with a front-view bison head design. Drawing by the authors.

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Human Body Armor A few warriors in Biographic rock art wear body armor, presumably made of tanned hide and worn primarily before the use of firearms became commonplace. Early northern Plains explorers described such armor in the late-1700s as long coats or shorter jackets made of tanned leather, sometimes multilayered and glued together with sand and small pebbles mixed into the glue for added protection (Burpee 1909:110–11; Moulton 1988:150; Secoy 1992:46). These armor coats were described as an effective defense against arrows. Such personal body armor is clearly illustrated on the Segesser I hide painting, which depicts an attack around 1700 by mounted warriors on a palisaded village somewhere in the greater Southwest (Hotz 1991). Several riders on this hide wear a long leather armor coat covering their upper body and extending below their waist (Figure 0.17D/2, D/6). These coats have short sleeves and a collar and are split partially up the midline—in both front and back—so they drape down over the sides of the horse’s body. While this painting gives no clue to the actual method of construction, the visible form (for both personal body armor and horse armor) very closely mimics what is pictured in rock art for horse armor and one type of human body armor. Each armored warrior in the Segesser painting carries a shield, and their weapons include bow and arrows, sword, knife, and spear. Some warriors even carry multiple weapons. This, too, is consistent with the armaments portrayed in Plains rock art (Figures 3.63, 3.64), where more than half of the thirteen known armored warriors

Figure 3.63. Early Plains combat featured leather armor for both men and their mounts. The shield-bearing rider has an armored horse, and the pedestrian wears a long leather armor coat. The elaborately decorated weapons include a war axe and a spear with elaborate tabs, the rider’s short sword, and the pedestrian’s bow and arrows. The flag atop the tipi appears to have been added much later than the original scene. Drawing by the authors.

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Figure 3.64. Personal body armor, shown as a long leather coat with short sleeves and a high collar (a, b). The garment was split up from the hem to lay over the back of a horse (a). Armor could also be constructed as a long, triangular, sleeveless poncho (c and d). Note the lightning reins and weapons, including swords, Spanish lances, and a gun. Drawing by the authors.

are drawn in scenes involving swords and metal axes, but only two are associated with firearms. Personal body armor would have been particularly effective against most of the “pre-gun” arms common to Plains Indian warfare. Spears and arrows (even those with metal points), would not likely have penetrated deeply enough to cause fatal wounds when forced to go through the multiple layers of specially treated leather reinforced with sand and small pebbles. Equally importantly, such armor coats would have considerably lessened the blow from stone or wooden clubs whose Protohistoric period status as a primary weapon of warfare carried over into the early Historic period (Keyser 2018c). Likewise, they must also have been effective against swords and axes since these are the weapons carried by combatants in several scenes involving armor-wearing warriors (Figure 3.63). A dozen warriors have so far been identified as wearing personal body armor in northwestern Plains rock art (Figures 3.63–3.65), and two Southern

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Figure 3.65. This combat scene shows a horse and rider (both wearing armor) attacking a tipi camp. Defenders are represented by four spears and dashes in the camp. Lines on the armor are “Crow feathers,” suggesting it was painted with symbolic feather designs. Drawing by the authors.

Plains horsemen—one in Colorado and one in New Mexico—wear similar poncho-like armor garments (Keyser 2016; Mitchell 2004:118). Two of these armored men also ride armored horses, five others are horsemen, and the remaining seven are pedestrians. Two armor-wearing pedestrians fight enemies riding armored horses, and one of these pedestrians carries a large fullbody-size shield in addition to his armor. Other riders and a pedestrian carry small, equestrian period shields in addition to their body armor. Weapons drawn in scenes involving armored warriors include (in order of frequency) spears, swords, bows and arrows, Missouri war axe tomahawks, guns, and a socketed Spanish lance. Six armored warriors are shown in obvious combat with other foes—one while engaging enemies during a horse raid. A seventh warrior counts coup on an enemy tipi by striking it with his lance, while another appears to charge a tipi. Human body armor is relatively easily recognized, and two basic forms are drawn in rock art. The most common type, with eight examples, is a leather jacket or longer coat, the latter typically drawn with a narrow to relatively wide-flaring, A-line-shaped outline (Figure 3.63). These examples show a surprising amount of detail as to their manufacture. For those where it can be determined, the coat’s hem appears to reach below the waist from about midthigh to below the knee. Seven examples show a distinctive high collar ranging from wide and boxy to tall and funnel-shaped, drawn much wider at the top. Two of these just cover the neck, but the others extend upward to cover the chin and even the lower half of the face. On seven examples a slit running upward from the garment’s hem is clearly shown, indicating it was split fore and aft to fit over the back of a horse when the wearer was mounted. In seven instances wide, short sleeves (ending just at or slightly above the elbow) are shown, and in two examples sleeves are part of a broad yoke that

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appears to be reinforced or padded to protect the shoulders. One example shows the lower portion of the garment constructed of what appear to be overlapping leather slats extending just below the warrior’s large shield (Figure 3.66). The way these slats or strips are illustrated in this pictograph suggests there may have been an underlying garment painted a different color onto which the slats were sewn. A second type of personal body armor is a long, triangular, sleeveless poncho extending downward and outward in a straight line from the man’s neck to somewhere between his waist and ankles (Figure 3.64d). Four of these appear to extend upward all the way to the wearer’s chin, so the neck is completely covered, but the fifth is only two lines approximately paralleling the rider’s body from the horse armor to the rider’s armpits. Four poncho-style armor garments are worn by horsemen, and the evidence that these were split like the long coats is found on an example from Writing-on-Stone showing the garment’s bottom hem along the side of the horse’s body, with the rider’s legs hanging below in such a way that it portrays the armor laying over the horse’s sides. Obviously, this would have necessitated such a split. The absence of sleeves on these strongly implies there were slits for the wearer’s arms, but no wearer has his arm extended. Instead, weapons merely protrude outward from the outline or are worn as if slung from the shoulder and angled back across the body. Finally, the poncho-style armor worn by the horseman at Nordstrom-Bowen (24YL419) and a pedestrian at 24ML1049 is decorated with a pattern of vertical lines that converge just below the warrior’s

Figure 3.66. Early Plains combat featured both armor and large shields. The shield-bearing equestrian rides a horse wearing armor, which has protected it from two arrows. His pedestrian opponent carries a large shield and wears body armor shown as a “skirt” of overlapping leather panels extending below. The horse armor may have been similarly constructed. The horse wears a feather bonnet, a forelock decoration, and a scalp-decorated bit. A second scalp hangs from the handle of the pedestrian’s Missouri war axe. Drawing by the authors.

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face (Figures 3.64c, 3.65). These lines mimic the “Crow feathers” decoration on the Nordstrom-Bowen rider’s horse armor, suggesting that the body armor was also either covered with appliqued feathers or (more likely) painted with a symbolic feather design, possibly as a metaphor for speed of attack. All major attributes of leather-coat body armor shown in northern Plains Biographic rock art are duplicated in the warriors’ armor painted on the Segesser I hide. The length of the Segesser I armor coats is just slightly longer than several rock art examples. The split coat is also illustrated in the same two ways as in rock art. Either the split is shown by the coattails partially draped over the horse’s hind quarters (cf. Figure 0.17D–E/2; Figure 3.64a, b) or with no express split but instead as a horizontal boundary along the horse’s side with the rider’s leg extending out below it (cf. Figure 0.17E/6; Figure 3.64d). The Segesser I hide painting has no armored pedestrians, so it provides no analogues for rock art pedestrian warriors’ split armor garments. On the Segesser I robe the high collar is drawn in several different configurations designed to protect primarily the back of the neck (Figure 0.17B/2, C/11) or the front of the neck and lower face (Figure 0.17C/6). These two variants mimic the two ways rock art artists drew their armor collars. The reinforced shoulder pad, shown as a yoke-like form in rock art (Figures 3.63, 3.64a), is shown on several Segesser I riders as an extra thickened, padded area with a distinctive border, much like an American football player’s shoulder pads (Figure 0.17C/6). Segesser I riders’ sleeves range from full length that extend to the wrist (Figure 0.17D/2, C/12) to shorter, above-the-elbow types (Figure 0.17D/11). These latter sleeves are like those shown on rock art body armor. Finally, the Segesser I attacking warriors carry shields and their weapons include spears, swords, bows and arrows, knives, and axes. These armaments so closely mimic the weaponry associated with Plains armor-wearing warriors that they all could have been outfitted from the same armory.

Necklaces Four different sorts of choker necklaces and one necklace of looped beads are worn by five people at three sites. At McKee Spring a Ute warrior’s self-portrait shows a wide choker necklace with vertical lines creating five segments (Figure 1.27). This form probably identifies a dentalium shell choker with the vertical lines representing the leather spacers. Given the scale, the artist could not have illustrated the individual dentalia, but showing the spacers was a standard convention for such necklaces (Lanford 2003:174). Two horsemen at Joliet wear a single-line choker with an abalone or conch shell disc centered at their throat (Figure 3.15). This is a typical Crow necklace, shown in historic photographs and ledger drawings (Bates, Kahn, and Lanford 2003:308). A Joliet Hot Dancer has another type of choker represented by three lines drawn horizontally across his neck (Figure 1.11). Finally, a La Barge Bluffs horseman wears a single-line choker necklace with a relatively long triangular pendant hanging from it (Figure 3.67). This pendant could be almost any long claw-shaped

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object, but we are inclined to think it is a small knife worn in a decorated sheath in this position. Such a “neck-knife” was common attire among some tribes (Taylor 2001:38–39, 49), and the size of this triangle suggests this interpretation. The looped-strand necklace is worn by the elaborately dressed Figure 3.67. A horseman wears a necklace and painted woman in the Hot with a suspended knife sheath. Drawing by the Dance scene at Joliet (Figure 1.11). authors. Just below her neck as it rises out of her elk-tooth decorated dress there are three shallow loops representing strands of a necklace. We have no way to determine what sort of beads or shells may have been strung on these strands, but historic photographs show that such multistrand necklaces were relatively common among the Crow.

Earrings Plains Indians, including both men and women, wore a variety of earrings, so it is reasonable that they are occasionally pictured in Biographic art. In ledger drawings these are primarily—but not always—long dentalium-shell droppers. Those for women were longer than those worn by men. These, and a few other styles of earrings, are pictured in various ledger drawings, usually worn by men and women participants in scenes of dance and other ceremonies (Berlo 2000b:65–70; Heidenreich 1985:1930.29 and 1930.66). Occasionally a warrior or shaman in Ceremonial or Biographic Tradition rock art will be drawn wearing earrings. These are found at more than half a dozen sites scattered from Kansas to Alberta and range from simple circles or dangling lines positioned at the ears to large rectangular dangles, which may represent dentalia droppers (Figure 3.68). Three of the men wearing earrings are shield-bearing warriors and one is a V-neck warrior in a combat scene at Bear Gulch (Keyser, Kaiser, Poetschat, and Taylor 2012:62, 150).

Figure 3.68. This bear shaman wears rectangular earrings, bear paw moccasins, and pendants at his knees. Ribs, navel, and an outsized penis are typical X-ray perspective anatomical details. Drawing by the authors.

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Accoutrements People in Biographic art wear a small number of items that cannot be considered clothing but which add significant detail to their portraits. These items are typically equipment worn or carried to show status or to be used in a particularly specialized activity. Both men and women wear such accoutrements, which are often highly specific to one sex or the other. Such things include face and body paint or tattoos, painted coup marks or honor marks, headdresses, hairstyles, strike-a-light pouches and awl cases, and medicine bundles and personal amulets.

Face Paint, Body Paint, or Tattoos Plains Indians painted and tattooed their faces and bodies with a wide variety of designs. Early artists such as Catlin, Bodmer, and Kurz drew many portraits of Plains men and a few women with various face and body painting schemes. Clearly much of this body decoration is too small-scale to be regularly illustrated on many of the relatively tiny warriors typically portrayed in Biographic rock art, but there are some cases where this level of detail was depicted by Plains artists. These examples are primarily face paint worn by shieldbearing warriors who were drawn as the artists’ self-portraits, often intended to be recognizable by their contemporaries. Sometimes these face-paint designs are notably specific to a particular type of warrior; such is the case with tear streaks common to bear warriors, who also usually wear bear-paw moccasins or have a bear’s-ears headdress or hairstyle (Figure 3.69). Others are simpler, just indicating the painting of one or more parts of the face. Some of these examples are likely to be tattoos rather than paint, but there is yet no easy way to differentiate one from the other. Researchers (Keyser, Kaiser, Poetschat, and Taylor 2012:154–156; Keyser and Poetschat 2014:10) have identified ten regularly repeated patterns of facial decoration in Plains rock art (Figure 3.70). Most, if not all, of these designs are duplicated in much later robe art and ledger drawings. Face paint is rarely illustrated for women in rock art, but there is one intricately detailed example in a Crow Hot Dance scene delicately scratched at Joliet (Figure 1.11). Another woman at 39HN165 in the North Cave Hills (Figure 0.2k) has tear-streak face paint that Sundstrom (2004b:95) says marks her as “crying for a vision.” Body painting or tattooing is less common, and usually less readily identifiable. Patterns on the torso of many Ceremonial art warriors and a few Biographic Tradition humans are typically internal organs (ribs, heartline, kidneys) shown in an X-ray style (Figure 1.2). This mode of depicting internal organs is typical of shamanic art drawn to emphasize locations of supernatural power, but the symbolism occasionally carried over into the earliest Biographic art.

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Figure 3.69. Bear warriors show their power through painted tear streaks (also shown on bear in a), wearing bear-paw moccasins (a–b), or a bear’s-ears headdress or hairstyle (d). Note rectangular wooden-slat shield (d). Drawing by the authors.

Other Biographic Tradition humans, however, have their bodies embellished in a different way, either with vertical or oblique lines across part or all of the torso (Figure 1.18). In many cases, such lines probably represent a pattern painted or tattooed on the warrior’s body. Such patterns were commonly recorded by early portraitists and photographers among several Plains tribes (Hewitt 1937:Plates 9, 10, 16, 37; Keyser 2004a:24; Thomas and Ronnefeldt 1976:209, 218, 239), and examples of body painting are illustrated in robe art and ledger drawings (Keyser and Brady 1993:9; Maurer 1992:191). Patterned

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Figure 3.70. Face-paint patterns found in rock art (left) compared to robe and ledger art (right). Drawing by the authors.

torsos, possibly indicating such body painting or tattooing (if they do not indicate clothing), occur occasionally on rock art humans in Biographic narrative compositions at a few sites scattered widely across the northern Plains (Figures 1.18, 3.71).

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Figure 3.71. This scene shows a striped-bodied man riding a stolen horse away from a village. The setting and actions are depicted from two different perspectives simultaneously, with a bird’s eye view of the camp circle (above) and a villagescape below. The “extra” line extending from the camp circle probably represents the rider’s path of escape. Drawing by the authors.

⤞ VIGNETTE 3 THE ELK DREAMER One human at site 24RB275 on southeastern Montana’s Tongue River shows the most complex body painting known in Plains rock art (Figure 1.6). This man represents an Elk Dreamer, painted and outfitted to represent a ritual participant. He has antlers and a cervid’s ears but human facial features, including two dots for nostrils, a straight-line mouth, and horizontally oriented, almond-shaped eyes. His feet are vaguely hoof-shaped to metaphorically show the dreamer’s metamorphosis into the spirit elk. But what is unique to this figure is his elaborate body paint. From each eye extends a short zigzag “lightning-bolt” tear streak. Another lightning streak is a slightly sinuous zigzag with a Y-shaped termination at each end. Beginning just to the left of his right eye, this line angles downward under his chin and then bends back up to terminate just to the right of his left eye. The figure’s neck and central chest are covered with a cloud of two dozen small, drilled dots representing hailstones. Within this cloud is a crescent-moon with points oriented upward. On his lower chest, just below the cloud of dots, is a large, nucleated circle likely representing the sun. In the figure’s central torso is the Cheyenne Hetanehao or “man-power” symbol illustrated as a narrow, vertically oriented, rectilinear form with a V-shaped indentation in each end. Below this is another upside-down arc. On both sides of his lower torso are sinuous “lightning” lines with Y-shaped terminations. The left line is distinctly zigzagged and stops at the man’s waist with a Y-shaped end only at its top. The right line is not as strongly zigzagged and has a Y-shaped terminus at each end. It starts at the same height on the figure’s chest but continues past his waist and down his left leg halfway to his knee. This man’s body painting scheme—the most complex example known in all Cheyenne art—embodies visionary power in a typical Cheyenne cosmological sense. The Hetanehao symbol is infused with masculine sexual potency and power at several levels of meaning, but it must be understood as part of the greater whole represented by the combination of the several painted elements. Cosmologically, the lighting and hail symbolize the power of Thunder;

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arcs symbolize the moon, but also at a deeper level of meaning they are a cosmic trap that can catch animals, enemies, or even entrap supernatural power; and the circle symbolizes the sun from whence all power flows (Coleman 1998; Grinnell 1972:II:96, 312–13, 328). Taken together, these symbols express both the man’s power and the power of the Elk Dreamer ritual in the Cheyenne cultural system.

⤝

Coup Marks/Honor Marks Plains Biographic art, especially in its latest iterations, had an extensive vocabulary of signs and symbols representing honor marks (Figure 0.14). These various symbols range from ones indicating a stolen picketed horse, war party leadership, or the rank order of a coup counted on an enemy to those that signified lesser honors, such as having fought behind breastworks, suffered a wound, or served as a war party scout. The meaning and intent of some of these, like the capture hand and wound symbol, are reasonably explicit pictograms showing a recognizable realistic depiction of an actual thing—often in a context where the meaning is obvious (painting a previous wound on the part of the body where it occurred or a capture hand touching a horse’s lead rope). Others are highly symbolic ideograms whose meaning can only be understood by a person who has access to culturally specific knowledge (such as the scout-service symbol, or an -X- denoting the first or second coup counted, depending on the Hidatsa or Arikara vocabulary). The evolution and meaning of these various pictograms and ideograms are described and discussed below in the “Conventions” section. Here we only note where they are typically found in Biographic art and suggest where they might be expected to be found in rock art sites. Honor marks were painted and carved on a wide variety of items. Painted robes—especially those done by Blackfoot and Crow or Hidatsa artists—often have such marks, but the same symbols were also drawn as standalone images in some ledger drawings. Such examples can show the number of times a man was accorded the honor of serving as a war party scout, the number of a man’s stolen horses, or the number of war parties he led or participated in (Figure 3.72). Likewise, some ledger drawings show these marks decorating a man’s robe (Figure 3.73), clothing, or even his naked leg, and numerous ledger drawings and historic photographs show honor marks painted on horses. Rock art illustrates honor marks in these same ways. Two compositions at DgOw-27 at Writing-on-Stone are “scripts” showing the number of horses taken from enemies and the number of war parties led for two different warriors (Figure 1.26). The Weppler site (24ST560) in central Montana’s Musselshell River drainage is a similar script using Crow-style honor marks to denote the war honors of two men. These include war-party stripes, counted coups, scalps taken, and horses captured (see Vignette 4). An X mark with three vertical strokes alongside (Figure 3.74), incised at Bear Gulch, is a Crow indicator of the fourth coup counted on a single enemy (McCleary 2016:65). Also in Montana,

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Figure 3.72. Blackfoot painted robes (both ca. 1930) show honor marks used since the late 1800s. Scout service (a, i); participation in a war party (b, f); striking an enemy with a bare hand (c); horses captured (d); weapons captured (e, g, j); war party leadership (h); and scalps taken (k). Drawing by the authors.

Figure 3.73. Robes illustrated in ledger drawings show various exploit marks. Wounded horses (a); wounds suffered by a warrior (b, c top row); and quirts representing horses given away (c bottom row). Drawing by the authors, adapted from various ledger drawings.

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Figure 3.74. Crow exploit mark denoting the striking of fourth coup. Drawing by the authors.

Figure 3.75. A horse wearing a necktie, juxtaposed with a picket pin. The “stabbertype” DAG knife drawn on the animal’s flank is most likely a painted war honor denoting a captured weapon. Drawing by the authors.

the Samsal boulder (24TL959) includes an X near a combat scene between two shield-bearing warriors and a warrior wielding a large lance, which may also indicate a stolen horse or a coup honor mark (Sturm and Keyser 2020). A knife drawn on a horse’s flank at Joliet shows a weapon captured, and a handprint on a horse’s flank at 39HN217 indicates a coup counted (Figures 3.9, 3.75). Likewise, two sites in Crow country show a juxtaposed capture hand and vulva symbol indicating the sexual capture of a woman (Figure 3.32). Given the simplicity of many of these marks, and the fact that site recorders are often unfamiliar with this vocabulary, it seems likely that other honor marks have gone unrecognized, and future research will identify additional ones.

⤞ VIGNETTE 4 DECIPHERING A CROW BAR TALLY Tucked away in a shallow rockshelter deep in a canyon in the Musselshell river drainage is the Weppler bar tally, the best rock art example of such a “score card” currently known. Bar tallies were used by several Plains groups to “keep score” of a prominent warrior’s deeds. The Crow, Mandan, and Hidatsa had the most complex examples, typically elaborated with horse hoofprints, scalps, and defeated enemies attesting to a warrior’s exemplary career. Some bar tallies also included items given away to improve a man’s social status among his own people. The site location—in the heart of Crow territory during the 1800s—strongly implies that it was drawn by a Crow warrior.

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Figure V4. A Crow bar tally uses conventionalized shorthand to document a warrior’s war honors. Drawing by the authors.

Painted with charcoal, the Weppler bar tally has forty-six vertical bars arranged in a long horizontal row (Figure V4). Twenty-six of these bars, located in the exact middle of the composition, are modified with small exploit marks to indicate raids in which the artist—or those who accompanied him—took scalps and horses and counted coup. Using the vocabulary of Crow honor marks, we can read this man’s history in considerable detail. The first ten bars likely indicate war parties led by the artist. Such leadership was one of four prerequisites for chieftainship among the Crow, and leading ten such expeditions would have been an exemplary accomplishment. The next twenty-six bars can be divided into four subsets. The first four bars indicate raids on which both horses and scalps were captured, shown by the small scalp symbol at the top and the hoofprint at the bottom. The next seventeen document the counting of coups by positioning an X above the bar and small vertical marks alongside the bar to designate first through fourth coups. There is one bar with the coup-strike X above and horse hoofprints alongside, documenting the taking of horses on a raid where the artist also counted coup. Finally, the last four bars are accompanied by horse hoofprints, indicating successful horse raids. The last ten bars were apparently painted by two different artists to document their own war expeditions, but neither man clearly identified his own accomplishments in the manner of the first artist. The first thirty-six war party stripes of the Weppler bar tally document the war record of an accomplished Crow warrior. He participated in thirty-six war parties, ten of which he led; he took scalps on four of them, captured horses on nine expeditions, and counted eighteen coups. Among these were two “first coups,” possibly the most difficult honor to perform. In sum, this warrior, though anonymous to us, would have been a well-known and wellrespected man in his time.

⤝

Headdresses Headdresses and hairstyles comprise one of the most varied categories in Biographic rock art and encode meaning ranging from officership in honorific societies, visionary experiences, war honors, and ethnic and sexual identity. Readers wishing more information than we can provide here for these types of accoutrements should investigate the cited sources.7

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Headdresses range from the simplest possible—a single feather worn in the hair—to a Euro-American top hat to incredibly complex war bonnets composed of bison-horn caps elaborated with feathered trailers and weasel tails dangling from the browband. The many types of headdresses and hairstyles illustrated in Plains rock art are simply too great to describe individually. Here we summarize some of the most common and distinctive varieties, but we urge readers to be aware that others certainly exist and might impart significant meaning to a drawing. Because headgear in general is so commonly portrayed, we only note site-specific examples that are restricted to a few sites. War Bonnets are traditional Plains headgear, made of a hide skullcap with feathers (typically, though not always, eagle tail feathers) attached at its perimeter. A headband (or browband) was sometimes elaborately decorated with beadwork or quillwork. A “stand-up” bonnet of this type has feathers set only around the perimeter, so they remain erect when worn (Figure 3.76a, b). The more traditional flowing bonnets are made so the feathers lay back when worn, and some of these have long feathered trailers at the sides of the head hanging down the back (Figure 3.76c–e). Both types used various streamers (often weasel tails) hanging from the browband at the temples. Both kinds of war bonnets had rich symbolism and typically identified the wearer as a distinguished, high-status warrior with many war honors. Despite the fact that

Figure 3.76. Headdresses: stand-up war bonnets (a, b); bonnets with feathered trailers (c–e); trailer without bonnet (f, g); bison-horn headdress (h–k); antelope-horn headdress (l); wolf-hat headdress (m, n); feathers worn in the hair (or on hat) (o–q); bear’s-ears headgear (r); other unique headdresses (s, t). Grey represents different shades of red pigment. Drawing by the authors.

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stand-up bonnets are commonly associated with the Blackfoot, they were worn by various tribes and the Blackfoot wore all sorts of different headgear (Keyser 2018b). Feathered Trailer. Some rock art warriors wear only a feathered trailer, without the skullcap and halo of eagle feathers around the head (Figure 3.76f, g). Whether this represents a type of bonnet without the upright feathers or was merely a shorthand way of showing a traditional eagle-feather war bonnet is not clear. Bison-Horn Headdresses are also common in rock art. These range from a simple bison horn sprouting from each side of a man’s head to much more complex headgear showing the short “crewcut” hair between the horns (representing the bison’s matt of head hair) and danglers at the base of each horn (Figure 3.76h–k). Some such bonnets are even elaborated with one or more feathered trailers. A special type of bonnet had only a single forward and upward pointing horn with feathered trailers. A man wore such a bonnet almost certainly to invoke the power and aggressiveness of the buffalo bull. Possibly his vision had been of such an animal. The weasel tails or other danglers hanging below each horn further indicate the wearer’s high status. Antelope-Horn Headdress. A variant of the horned headdress used pronghorn antelope horns, which were shown either more recurved than typical bison horns or with the short identifying “spur” near the base of each horn (Figure 3.76l). These typically had small fluffs (often dyed horsehair) at their tips and a row of clipped feathers standing erect between the horns. Loendorf (2013:77– 78) provides an excellent overview of such bonnets among the Assiniboine. Wolf-Hat Headdresses were worn among many tribes by warriors entrusted with scouting ahead of a war party. Ranging from a simple wolf-head-skin cap to a wolf head with cape and tail trailing down the back, such headgear was worn by many tribes (Figure 3.76m, n). In rock art it has so far been identified only on shield-bearing warriors (Keyser 2007b). Feathers Worn in the Hair were a fairly common Plains headdress and range from a single upright or a horizontal feather to several upright feathers (Figure 3.76o–q). Such feathers were marked and cut in various ways to denote different war honors, but we know of no example in rock art where such miniscule details are identified. This is likely due in large part to the small size of most human figures, and the consequently smaller size of the feathers in their hair. For some groups, a feather worn horizontally in the hair—sometimes stuck through a knot of hair bunched atop the head (Figure 1.16)—meant the wearer had counted a coup (Fossati, Keyser, and Kaiser 2010:121; Mallery 1893:433).

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Bundle Tied in the Hair. Some warriors fastened a bird bundle in their hair, usually the skin of a bird seen in their vision (Figure 3.62). Often these were further elaborated with small fluffs or breath feathers (see this chapter, “Bird Bundle”). Animal Horns or Antlers (other than those of bison or pronghorn antelope) are sometimes drawn as if being worn by a human. In most cases it seems likely that these represent “metaphoric headdresses” of a shaman or dancer transforming into his spirit being. Examples include an “elk dreamer” dancer at 24RB275 (Figure 1.6) and possibly others at 39HN745 and 48PL132 (Figure 3.61), although dancers at these latter two sites may actually be wearing elk masks (see this chapter, “Mask”). A probable shaman, whose elk antlers suggest he is transforming, is found in the Picketwire region of southeastern Colorado (McGlone, Leonard, and Barker 1994:54). Hats. The wide-brimmed hat was generally used as an ethnic signifier for a White man in various Biographic media (Figure 3.77). Among the Blackfoot, this was typically illustrated as simply a cross-shaped head to indicate a man wearing a brimmed hat. Crossshaped heads are drawn in a hanging scene and another scene with a probable wagon at DgOv-2 and at Explorers Petroglyph (24ML402) in Montana. All three scenes are likely populated by non-Indians drawn by Blackfoot artists (Figures 3.78, 3.79), so it seems reasonable to identify these actors as non-Indians.

Figure 3.77. A possible White man, indicated by his brimmed hat, rides a horse with circular stirrups and a Navajo tinkler chain bit. Drawing by David A. Kaiser, adapted from Turpin 1988.

Figure 3.78. This scene likely shows the hanging of the Blood warrior, Charcoal, at Fort McLeod in 1897. The hanged man is suspended from a flagpole. A horse pulls a wagon from the hanging toward a group of buildings and a camp circle. White men are shown with cross-shaped heads, and Charcoal’s body is shown a second time lying in a coffin. Drawing by the authors.

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Figure 3.79. Explorers Petroglyph shows a Blackfoot horse raid on William Clark’s returning party in 1806. The group travels in a canoe, including a White man shown with a cross-shaped head. Drawing by the authors.

However, Euro-Americans were not the only ones to wear such headgear. From the mid-1800s onward, Plains Indian men routinely wore Euro-American hats of various styles, including Scotch caps with short visors and top hats. Portraits by Point and Sohon in the mid-1800s, photographs from the late 1800s, and even ledger drawings show men from nearly all Plains tribes wearing such headgear (Figure 2.2b). The Indians’ use of such “foreign” headgear is easily explained, given the priority placed on headdresses by their cultures as indicators of rank and status, coupled with the use of various types of hats by important traders and military men with whom they were in contact. Three rock art examples of native men wearing hats have been identified. One is the simple cross-shaped head of a wounded warrior standing in a fortification in a scene at Rattlesnake Cave, DgOw-20 (Figure 3.80). Because this is a classic war-honors composition and the protagonist’s bloody tracks lead out of the fort to a camp and stolen horse, he has been identified as an Indian or a mixed-race warrior (Keyser, Kaiser, and Brink 2014:58). Elsewhere in Blackfoot Biographic art there are examples of such mixed-race people performing war deeds being identified in this way. Another man at DgOw-20 who is participating in a horse raid (Figure 3.81) may wear a hat, but the horizontal line through

Figure 3.80. Despite wearing a brimmed hat, the wounded man in the fortification is identified as an Indian or a mixed-race warrior due to the typical “war honors” composition. The pictographs are drawn with charcoal, but the man’s wound and his bloody trail to the tipi village and a stolen horse were added with a red ochre crayon (indicated in dark grey). Drawing by the authors.

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Figure 3.81. A horse raider escapes with three horses. The horizontal line through his oval head may indicate a hat, or it may possibly be an ethnic marker to identify him as a member of the Blood tribe. The horse juxtaposed with the small human and tipi below indicates a second horse raid. Light grey indicates surface present when recorded in 1976, but fallen off by 2012, when site was fully studied. Drawing by the authors.

his ovoid head may instead identify him as a member of the Blood tribe (Keyser, Kaiser, and Brink 2014). Two Indian men at La Barge Bluffs are illustrated wearing tall, flat-crowned, broad-brimmed top hats (Figures 3.33, 3.76q). The most obvious example is a classic stovepipe hat with a distinct brim and an erect feather rising from its top. It is worn by a man standing in a group observing the reenactment of a coup in which a woman was captured. The second example is sketchier and might not have been recognized in the absence of the first. Other hats—especially military headgear—are illustrated quite frequently in ledger drawings, but only a few examples are so far documented in rock art. Military campaign hats and helmets found at sites in Montana, Colorado, Kansas, and Texas are discussed in the “Military Uniforms” section (above). A single example of a Catholic priest wearing a biretta cap as part of his vestments is also found at Meyers Springs in Texas. There are, however, several paintings in Texas and south into Coahuila that show cowboys or Spanish noblemen wearing brimmed hats (Figures 3.36, 3.77). These include several men wearing brimmed hats alongside a Texas longhorn at Huddleston shelter, 41GR344 (Boyd 1990:132); two cowboys roping a Texas longhorn and a grandee approaching a church with his pipe outstretched, all painted in Vaquero Shelter; single riders at Ringbit Shelter (41VV339) and Caballero Shelter (Turpin 1988:51–52, 1989b:293); a pedestrian at the now-destroyed Castle Canyon site (41VV7); and one of ninety horsemen painted as polychrome pictographs at San Antonio de los Alamos in Coahuila (Turpin 2010:153–57; Turpin and Eling 2011:279–80). Some of these are certainly cowboys, but historic photographs

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show cowboys wearing all sorts of brimmed hats, rather than just the “cowboy” hat known from the movies. Others, such as those at San Antonio de los Alamos, are probably Spanish soldiers.

Hairstyles Roach. Possibly the most common hair style or headdress at these sites is the roach, which is illustrated in many different ways (Figure 3.82a). Most prevalent is a series of three to more than ten short, similar-length, and about evenly spaced lines crowning the top of a warrior’s head and often arching down over one side almost to his neck. Usually these short lines are curved, but they can be straight.

Figure 3.82. Hairstyles: roach (a); scalp lock (b–d); disheveled hair indicating a woman (e–f); bear’s ears (g–h); long hair (i–j); hair extensions (i, l); mullet (k, m); buzz cut (n); forehead “horn” (o). Drawing by the authors.

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The roach could represent either a “Mohawk” hairstyle with the sides of the head shaved and only a crest of hair left standing from the forehead back to the neck, or a roach headdress made as a crest of stiff animal hair and attached to a leather skullcap or tied into a man’s natural hair. In historic times, hundreds of ledger drawings show Pawnee men wearing roached hair. Usually, the shaved sides of their heads are painted red and they also wear a long scalp lock. Farther south, Osage, Ponca, Omaha, and men of other Prairie tribes wore roached hairstyles or detachable elk-hair roach headdresses. Likewise, roached headdresses were commonly worn by Historic period Grass dancers of many tribes. Interestingly, in some Lakota winter counts both Omaha and Ponca men are denoted by roaches. Scalp Lock. Almost as common as the roach is the scalp lock drawn as a single line, extending up and backward from the top or rear of the warrior’s head and then drooping down toward the ground (Figure 3.82b–d). These almost certainly represent a braided scalp lock extending down the warrior’s back. Occasionally the scalp lock will terminate in a small tassel, which could be either unbraided hair or a cluster of feathers or streamers. In rock art the scalp lock is combined with several other hairstyles and headdresses. Disheveled Hair. One hairstyle, shown either as a “sun-ray” arrangement with short lines coming out all around the head (Figure 3.82e, f) or as long, unkempt locks flowing down from both sides of the head represents the “disheveled hair” used frequently in Plains Indian art to represent women (Greer and Keyser 2008). For a more detailed discussion, see “Women’s Gender-Indicative Hairstyles” (above). Bear’s Ears. Bear’s-ears headgear, worn by shield-bearing warriors and a few other humans across the northwestern Plains, is drawn as a pair of short, round to slightly pointed to square ear-like knobs, one arising from each side atop a warrior’s head (Figures 3.76r; 3.82g, h). This headgear could represent either a pair of real bear’s ears tied into the warrior’s hair or his own hair, bunched up and knotted on each side of the head to mimic the ear shape. Warriors from several Plains tribes are known to have worn either real bear’s ears or hair knots if they possessed bear power (Ewers 1955a). Some authors term men outfitted with bear’s ears and bear-paw feet (or moccasins) “bear dancers” (Francis and Loendorf 2002:164–66). Warriors with this headgear are commonly illustrated from central Montana into northern Wyoming. Long Hair. Warriors at many sites from northern Montana to southeastern Colorado wear exaggeratedly long hair shown as multiple lines extending backward and downward from the head (Figures 3.49; 3.82i, j). In some cases, the hair cascades down to below the man’s feet, and based on comparison to the size of his head, the length of his hair ranges from one to five meters.

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The longest such tresses are almost certainly augmented by hair extensions, which were additional human or horsehair woven into a man’s own hair and affixed with daubs of pine pitch, clay, or some other mastic. Sometimes these hair extensions were fastened to a hide band attached to the back of the head. Some men painted their long hair a bright vermillion. Greatly elongated hair was characteristic of Historic period Crow warriors (Curtis 1909; Denig 1976:155), and one famous chief, named Long Hair, had locks that measured ten feet (three meters) in the 1830s (Denig 1976:194, editor’s footnote 40). In rock art, hair extensions can be shown with dots spaced along the long tresses or by short perpendicular spacing lines in the long hairstyle (Figure 3.82i, l). In one case at Joliet, a man’s long hair is shown carefully wrapped up into a long, club-like extension behind his head (Figure 1.5). Although the Crow are most commonly associated with the long hairstyle, its extent across the Plains and through time suggests it was worn by many groups. Mullet. Warriors at several northern Plains sites wear their hair relatively long and hanging down to each side of the head while the top of the head shows either no hair or “buzz-cut” hair (Figure 3.82k, m). This style occurs at Bear Gulch, Atherton Canyon, Newell Creek (24PR2317), and a site in the northern Bighorn Mountains. At Bear Gulch the wearers are all involved in early Biographic scenes.

Headdresses and Hairstyles as Ethnic Markers Different types of headgear were used in several media in different parts of the Plains either to identify oneself as a tribal member or to indicate an enemy’s ethnic origin. Many of these are in winter counts and Mallery (1893:377– 88) lists more than a dozen. Unfortunately, several of these are contradictory, some are mere conjecture, and others are based on single examples that may simply be an artist’s idiosyncratic style. This latter is apparently the case for the North Peigan warrior Bull Plume’s winter count and its specific symbols for various tribal groups within the Blackfoot confederacy. So here we list only those conventions spanning multiple media, and even then, we note they are not always reliable. On the northern Plains the most common group signifier is exaggeratedly long hair (often combined with an upswept forehead pompadour—and a red-painted forehead in ledger drawings) that identifies Crow tribesmen. However, nearly identical hairdos also indicate Hidatsa and Arikara men in some drawings. At Joliet a Crow drawing (Figure 1.11) commemorating the 1882 Hot Dance transfer from the Hidatsa to the Crow shows a Crow man with typically long hair and pompadour at the upper right, but the primary dancer (identified by oral tradition as a Hidatsa) has a hairstyle that in other contexts would be assumed to be Crow. Likewise, two Crow combat scenes at Wyoming’s No Water site (48WA2066) show the winning horseman and the pedestrian enemy (possibly Shoshone) both with long flowing hair.

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In various Lakota winter counts and ledger drawings Pawnees are identified by a roach hairdo with scalp lock, which has the shaved sides of the head painted red. Usually this hairstyle is paired with distinctive black, flare-tip moccasins to clinch the identification. Such moccasins are drawn in several rock art sites. Interestingly, in Lakota winter counts Pawnees are identified by pairing them with corn. Further south, Navajo warriors are sometimes identified in ledger drawings by several different headdresses in combination with fringed yellow shirts (Berlo 1996:146–47). In summary, headdresses and hairstyles are not infallible ethnic markers. Long hair occurs far outside Crow country and is worn by at least three groups in known rock art sites. Equally, roaches and scalp locks are found from one end of the Plains to the other, and all are unlikely to indicate Pawnees. Clearly, more detailed research is needed to identify all the possible ethnic markers and evaluate the extent of their usefulness.

Strike-a-Light Pouches and Awl Cases Women had the primary responsibility for domestic chores in Plains society. These ranged from erecting the tipi to preparing the food, tending the fire, and moving a husband’s shield hung on a tripod so it would face the sun during the day. The tools associated with these tasks are typically a hide flesher, a knife, an awl (with case), and a strike-a-light (flint and steel fire starter) carried in a small pouch. While each of these conferred certain status to a woman, she typically displayed only the last three by wearing them on her belt. Knife sheaths and cases for strike-a-lights and awls were often elaborately decorated with beads, quills, fringe, and tinklers to simultaneously emphasize both their presence and the woman’s skill as a craftworker. Strike-a-light pouches ranged from rectangular to round, and awl cases were more elongate. Examples of such women’s accessories are rare in rock art. The only ones so far identified are at La Barge Bluffs, where two women in a row of people observing a ceremony are shown with a round pouch attached to their belts (Figure 3.33). One is a round pouch and the other is a large dot with a long trailing line of drilled dots that may indicate either a decorated strike-a-light pouch or an awl case trimmed with elk teeth. Medicine Bundles and Personal Amulets Plains warriors wore or carried many different objects they considered to be infused with personal protective power or medicine. Some of these were quite small (e.g., a small bag filled with personal charms and fetishes and worn on a thong around the neck), while others were as large as an otter or a kit fox skin that were filled with similar fetishes and talismans (see this chapter, “Animal Bundles”). Other amulets were small bird or lizard skins tied in the hair or attached to a weapon or shield. Stuffed bird skins are quite common in ledger drawings (Figure 3.83), and bird parts (such as a crane’s head and neck or a

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Figure 3.83. Self-portraits by Medicine Crow in the Barstow ledger collection show him taking guns from enemies. His war medicine is a stuffed red-tailed hawk skin worn perched on a “cone” of hair gathered just above his forehead. A red-dyed eagledown fluff trails at the end of a thong tied to the hawk. Note wounds to Medicine Crow and his horse shown as shorthand symbols adjacent to the scenes. Annotation written by collector identifies labeled parts of drawing. Image courtesy of Charles H. Barstow Collection, Montana State University-Billings, Library Special Collections.

hawk’s claw) are well-known attachments to shields. Sometimes these amulets of small creatures were leather cutouts or small models of the medicine animal, while others were images painted on men or horses. In ledger drawings such items include lizards and dragonflies, both as models and paintings. All these medicine charms were thought by their wearers to personify the desired quality—real or metaphorical—of the animal or insect. Thus, lizards and dragonflies connoted speed and the concomitant impossibility of capturing one or hitting it with an arrow or bullet. Otter, kit fox, crane, and bear were creatures with strong supernatural power in Plains tales. Magpie was a clever camp robber, and kingfisher’s ability to penetrate water and emerge unscathed with his prey was a metaphor for a warrior’s escape from enemies. Other than medicine bundles, which are bulky enough to sometimes be illustrated in rock art scenes, most Plains warriors’ personal charms and amulets were too small to be illustrated. So far, only a few dozen medicine bundles, one bird skin tied in the hair, and one personal power amulet painted on a dancer’s body have been recorded in rock art. Animal Bundle. Animal skin “medicine bundles” have long fascinated Plains scholars (Catlin 1973:Volume I:34–37, Plates 14–19; Wildschut 1960; Wissler 1912a). Studies have shown that Plains Indians maintained two types—per-

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sonal and group medicine bundles (Keyser 2008c). Group bundles were corporate medicine cared for by a respected individual who maintained the bundle for the benefit of the entire band or tribe. In contrast, personal bundles were individually owned and usually assembled to reflect the nature of a man’s vision experience. Usually, these were made of a small animal skin and were carried by a warrior as his personal medicine. Some were simply a “scarf” or “flag” with various items of visionary medicine directly attached, while others were skin “bags” containing fetishes that embodied the supernatural power of the owner’s vision. Often these bundles had the animal’s legs decorated with beads or quillwork and dangling streamers. The size of personal medicine bundles, and the fact they were worn as scarves or attached to weapons, makes them one of the few talismans that can be readily identified in rock art. Across the northern Plains such bundles are identified at five sites, although others certainly await recognition. Most identified bundles are attached to shield-bearing warriors’ shields (Figure 3.84b–g), but a few other humans also have such a bundle tied to their waist (Figure 3.84a). These range from the simplest expression, showing only a simple stick animal (Figure 3.84b), to very carefully and clearly illustrated animals with a recognizable head and ears, a slightly thickened body, and modeled legs (Figure 3.84d, e, g). These have been found at Bear Gulch, Atherton Canyon, and No Bear (24GL1717) in Montana and the Daly Petroglyphs (48CA58) in Wyoming (Keyser and Poetschat 2014:246; Keyser, Kaiser, Poetschat, and Taylor 2012:134–35). A second type of animal skin medicine bundle is worn by five shield-bearing warriors at Bear Gulch (Keyser, Kaiser, Poetschat, and Taylor 2012:135–37). These are represented by an entire skin arched up over the shield bearer’s head and extending back behind him or as an animal skin sitting atop the man’s head or drawn in place of it (Figure 3.84h, i). Two other images are freestanding bundles, both illustrated as a weaselor otter-sized animal (Figure 3.84m). Both have an unnatural, vertical posture and what appear to be decorative streamers on one or more paws. This posture is typical of others drawn as captured war trophies on Blackfoot bison robes (Figure 3.84k, l). The final medicine bundle so far identified in rock art is a Blackfoot war-medicine bundle illustrated in a combat scene at DgOv-9 at Writing-onStone (Keyser and Klassen 2003:12–13). Such bundles were powerful war charms for the Blackfeet (Wissler 1912a:96–98) and were often liberally decorated. Representing the warrior’s visionary medicine power, wearing such a bundle was felt to give him strength, courage, and protection from enemy attack. Many such bundles are worn by warriors drawn on Blackfoot bison robes (Figure 3.84j). The bundle at DgOv-9 represents a small animal skin illustrated as a tiny geometric element located just under the coup-counting

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Figure 3.84. Animal medicine bundles are worn tied to the waist (a); attached to shields (b–g); worn over the shoulder or head (h–j); or freestanding (k–m). Rock art (a–i, m); robe art drawings (j–l). Grey is red pigment except where labeled as erosion. Drawing by the authors.

horseman’s rear arm and behind his back (Figure 2.1). Although not as realistically depicted as some such bundles are on Blackfoot painted robes, it is like the most stylized of them drawn in robe art.

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Bird Bundle. Stuffed bird skins were also used as protective charms and are frequently illustrated in ledger drawings (Figure 3.83). The two known rock art examples are drawn at the Bear Gulch and No Bear sites. The Bear Gulch example is an elongated, cigar shape with short stubby wings on each side and a short line extending farther back with small knots tied in it, worn by a shield-bearing warrior at Bear Gulch (Figure 3.62). This shape conforms to the description of a Cheyenne warrior’s belted kingfisher bundle, which had the wings bound to its sides and an eagle’s tail feather tied on a long trailing deerskin string (Grinnell 1972:II:122). This shield bearer’s bird bundle is attached to the lowest rear margin of his roach hairdo. Its identification as a bird bundle is based on the wings but also on this warrior’s bird beak mask showing the open maxilla and mandible of a raptor. Given the respective size of the bundle, it seems likely it was a small falcon. Cowdrey (2010:92–93) describes in detail how Crow chief Medicine Crow wore his bird bundle and how its trailing eagle breath-feather fluff functioned as his war medicine to protect him in battle. The No Bear example is a spreadeagled, fork-tailed bird attached to a man’s belt opposite a feather bustle (Figure 3.85). Although the forked tail is distinctive, the bird cannot be identified.

Figure 3.85. A dancer with a lightly abraded body wears an elaborate headdress as well as a feather bustle and a bird bundle attached to his belt. He holds a possible atlatl and darts. Drawing by the authors.

Hetanehao Symbol. One personal protective symbol is depicted in a northern Plains petroglyph as part of an Elk Dreamer’s body painting scheme (Keyser and Sundstrom 2015:132–33). In the man’s central torso is the Cheyenne Hetanehao, or “man-power” symbol, carved as a narrow, vertically oriented, rectilinear, box-like form with a V-shaped indentation in each end (Figure 1.6). The Hetanehao symbol identifies this man as a Cheyenne, since it was used only by that tribe. It did, however, have several levels of meaning in Cheyenne cosmology, but all relate to the potency of masculinity that comes from the sun (Nagy 1994b:15–17). Cheyenne men used it as a symbol associated with their sacred Buffalo Hat bundle,

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their Sun Dance, the sweat lodge, and as a protective element in their shield heraldry (Keyser and Sundstrom 2015:136–37). Here at 24RB275 is a petroglyph example where Hetanehao serves as a protective device for a religious participant.

Horse Tack Plains Indians were inordinately fond of horse tack and outfitted their mounts from head to tail with more than two dozen different items, most of which are repeatedly illustrated in Biographic art (Figure 3.86). Among these are several items adopted directly from foreign cultures, including saddles, bridles, bits, stirrups, stirrup hoods, and saddle blankets. Many of these were obtained directly from Spanish in the American Southwest (either by trading or raiding) and traveled through Indian middlemen from settlements in present-day Texas and New Mexico all the way north to west-central Canada. The earliest reports by fur traders in the region, during the first half of the 1700s, noted such Spanish tack items among several tribes, and rock art illustrations show some of the earliest horses wearing Spanish saddles, brands, and bridle decorations (Figure 3.87l, r). While artists from all tribes illustrated many different tack items, Crow, Lakota, and Cheyenne horsemen were exceptionally fond of drawing their horses extensively “tacked up” with multiple items. Crow horsemen were partial to Spanish tack, including chain bits and saddles, and often showed

Figure 3.86. The two dozen items of horse tack found in Biographic rock art. Drawing by the authors.

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Figure 3.87. Armored horses in rock art. Alberta (a–b); Montana (c–g); South Dakota (h–i); Wyoming (j–n); Colorado (o–q, s); Kansas (r). Drawing by the authors.

those items in historic rock art. Thus, it is not uncommon for a Crow artist’s individual rock art horse (and occasional examples drawn by other tribes’ artists) to display as many as half a dozen such tack items. In fact, two Crow horses drawn at Joliet each wear eight and nine separate tack items, making them the most tacked up examples in northern Plains rock art. Other rock art centers for depicting horse tack are the petroglyphs of central Kansas, the rock art of Texas, and Navajo rock art in the Four Corners region of the Southwest.

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Interestingly, despite their rich equestrian tradition and their emphasis on some particular tack items not commonly illustrated by other groups (the Thing-to-tie-on-the-halter bit decoration and split ears), the Blackfoot did not feature horse tack in their rock art as much as other northern Plains tribes. For example, a quick survey of published information and site reports available to us shows that Crow rock art includes almost three times as many horse tack items as do Blackfoot images. Furthermore, of the twenty-five tack items known in rock art, Crow illustrations show all but four of them, while Blackfoot images show fewer than half. Finally, more than 85 percent of Blackfoot horse tack comprises only three items—reins, split ears, and the Thing-to-tieon-the-halter. This disparity between Blackfoot and Crow artists in the amount and kinds of horse tack they illustrated is probably due in part to the overall simplicity of the Blackfoot art style, which characterizes their drawings into the last decades of the 1800s, combined with the comparative sophistication of Crow horse illustrations, especially those drawn in the late 1800s (Figure 3.88). The latest Crow rock art illustrations are closely comparable in terms of the kinds and amounts of illustrated horse tack to the ledger drawings of the 1800s by Cheyenne, Lakota, Kiowa, and Arapaho artists.

Figure 3.88. Crow horses (a–h) and Blackfoot horses (i–p) show differing morphology, including the angle of head and curvature of the neck. Crow horses typically show a more fluid, curving style whereas Blackfoot horses are generally simpler, more angular depictions. Drawing by the authors.

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Saddle Two basic categories of saddles—pad saddles and constructed leather saddles—are illustrated, albeit infrequently, in Plains Biographic art. Constructed saddles show four distinctly different types with a variety of pommel and cantle configurations with or without the addition of cinches and stirrups. Pad saddles, called “apishamores,” were used throughout the Plains. These were small, minimalist, soft, animal-hide cushions—often a buffalo robe with the fur left on and folded several times, or sewn into a rough sack and stuffed with hair or grass—and were used as a padded seat when girthed around the horse. When a traveler stopped for the night, the simple folded hide could do double duty as his blanket. A few of the more formal apishamores even had stirrups attached (Kahn 2003:74). Though not frequently shown in rock art (Figure 3.89b), pad saddles have been identified from South Dakota’s Cave Hills to Writing-on-Stone (Keyser 1977b:44, 67; Loendorf 2013:74). Rock art horses from almost the earliest to latest representations wear constructed saddles, including examples of the Estradiota, Hope, McClellan, and Mexican styles. A few cannot be so specifically identified. The earliest are Estradiota-style saddles (Figure 3.89c, d) worn by early armored horses at Arminto (48NA991) and 14RU5 (Keyser, Greer, and Greer 2005; Wells 1996:10). Both show an exaggeratedly high cantle, and the Arminto saddle also has a high pommel. Estradiota saddles were patterned after those used by Spanish cavalrymen (Figure 3.90) to brace themselves when fighting with long, socketed lances and other polearms typical of warfare during the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. The oversized, bulbous saddle horn on the Arminto example was an addition for controlling cattle when these saddles were adopted for

Figure 3.89. Rock art saddles include McClellan model 1859 cavalry saddles (a); pad saddles (b, g); Estradiota-style saddles (c, d); unidentified styles (e, h); and Hope-style cavalry saddles (f). Other horse tack includes head stalls (a, b, f); reins (a–d, f–h); stirrups (f) and tapadero stirrup-covers (a); split ears (e); tied up tails (a); Spanish chain bits (g); feather bonnets (g); brands (a, b, d, e); and armor (c, d). Drawing by the authors.

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use by New World cattlemen (Ahlborn 1980; Chavez y Gilbert 2011:Ch. 6:3). These saddles were obtained directly from the Spanish, and when combined with long lances tipped with wickedly long metal points, they were apparently put to use by early Plains Indian equestrians employing their horses as “tank-like vehicles” in the typical shock troop warfare that characterized Plains Protohistoric period battles—from the late 1600s through the mid-1700s (Keyser 2018c:96–114; Keyser and Poetschat 2014:92–118). Other constructed saddles in Biographic rock art also have emphasized Figure 3.90. Spanish Estradiota-style pommel and cantle, and some are saddle with high cantle and pommel. quite elaborate. Most are worn by ob- Drawing by the authors. viously Indian horses, but several examples may indicate non-Indian horses, at least two of which appear to be animals captured from the military. A very fancy saddle with insufficient detail for identification as to type is illustrated at DgOv-63 at Writing-on-Stone (Figure 3.89e) on a branded horse associated with a strangely detailed human. This led Keyser (1977b:44) to suggest it might represent the portrayal of a non-Indian. Another, shown at La Barge Bluffs in an 1860s-era horse capture composition (Figures 0.20a, 3.89f), shows a distinct cantle and a pommel with a flat saddle horn (like those on modern saddles), front and flank cinches, a saddle skirt, saddle blanket, and stirrup. This can be identified as a US military Hope-style cavalry saddle. Hope saddles were popular during the Civil War and throughout the Indian Wars. A third saddle, worn by a captured Army mule drawn at the Joliet site (Figures 3.15, 3.89a), has a very subtle low pommel and an arced cantle. It is full double-rigged with front and flank cinches. It has a wide stirrup fender with an elaborate pendent tapadero stirrup cover decorated with two conchos indicated by drilled holes, one of which has a trailing line representing a leather thong. Other than the tapadero, which is not the regulation military stirrup hood, this depiction represents a typical McClellan model 1859 cavalry saddle used by the US military from Civil War times to the late 1800s. A second possible McClellan saddle is drawn on a riderless horse in Canyon Pintado, Colorado (Figure 3.91c). The saddle has a high pommel and angled cantle, but their somewhat bulky size and shape might reflect a bedroll or rain poncho rolled up and tied in the traditional positions. The center-cinched saddle sits atop a large saddle blanket. There is a relatively narrow stirrup strap

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Figure 3.91. Various items of horse tack. Spanish or Mexican saddle, bilobed saddle blanket, and metal cruciform stirrups (a); horse wearing a mask and an unidentified saddle type (b); possible McClellan saddle atop a saddle blanket (c). The stirrup strap and stirrup hood show decorative leatherwork; trailing picket rope indicates a stolen horse. Unidentified saddle styles (d, e); saddle blanked indicated only by fringed hem below animal’s belly (f). Drawing by the authors.

decorated with oblique lines that ends in a sub-rectangular, regulation-style stirrup hood also decorated with oblique lines. This decorative leatherwork is unique in Plains Biographic art. The horse has a rectangular brand on its left shoulder, which locals claim identifies the mount of a Ute military scout who rode with General George Crook’s Cavalry (Anonymous ca. 2010:2, 5). However, this brand does not resemble any version of the official US brand (Faris 2013), nor does it appear to be a troop-specific letter brand (cf. McCleary 2016:126). Instead, the horse wears a headstall and trails a long picket rope. A human figure (partly destroyed by a

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mineral crust) strides just in front of the animal. This composition appears to be a typical horse stealing scene showing a raider making off with a picketed military mount. The Utes’ thirty-year history of conflict with the military in this area would have presented numerous opportunities for just such horse raids. A saddle at Eagle Creek Canyon shows a high, rounded triangular cantle and a steeply angled pommel topped by what appears to be a tall, outsized, somewhat “boxy” saddle horn (Figure 3.91a). This is clearly a Spanish or Mexican saddle, based on the higher but more angled-back profile of the cantle and the prominent pommel (Keyser and Minick 2018). Such Mexican saddles were used for working cattle in the New World from the 1600s onward (Ahlborn 1980:11, 18); and throughout the first half of the 1800s a wide variety of plainsmen—from trappers and traders to gold miners, soldiers, and immigrants—used versions of this saddle (Minick and Keyser 2019). From the late 1700s into the early decades of the 1800s such saddles were occasionally used by Plains Indians. For example, Lewis and Clark noted such a saddle among the Shoshone in 1805 (Moulton 1988:124). Interestingly, the Eagle Creek saddle is nearly identical to one illustrated by the Crow warrior-artist White Swan in two of his early ledger drawings. Two other saddles are clearly illustrated but cannot be identified as a specific type, either because they lack sufficient detail or show a configuration unlike any known example (Figure 3.91b, e). Although clearly representing constructed saddles, it is possible these are native made. Plains Indians did make saddles for their own use (Ewers 1980:76–79), and these somewhat oddly configured examples might represent such native-made tack items. If so, they may be akin to the better-known, native-made women’s saddles, which featured a high pommel and cantle that both had a “turned-out” horn shape. As the above—albeit brief—discussion indicates, identification of the type of saddle provides considerable important information for understanding the biographic narrative of a scene.

Saddle Blanket Saddle cloths, including woven blankets, leather mochilas, and tanned animal skins, are illustrated in Plains Biographic art. Blankets are either rectangular or bilobed and vary considerably in size from just larger than the saddle itself to a covering that spans much of the horse’s body. Sometimes the edges are fringed. Some of the more colorful examples in ledger drawings are identified as Navajo blankets used for this purpose (Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997:220–21). Mochilas were more durable saddle cloths or saddle covers made of tanned leather. They were in common use by Spanish horsemen and mountain men throughout the American west, and sometimes served as a sort of “soft armor” for horses (Keyser and Minick 2018:35). Finally, American Indian horsemen occasionally used tanned animal hides, including the skins of

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mountain lions and bears, as saddle cloths. One famous illustration by Mato-tope shows his horse decked out with a grizzly bear hide as a saddle cloth (Figure 3.92). Rock art saddle blankets are quite rare, occurring at fewer than a dozen sites, and no example of a tanned animal hide saddle cloth has yet been recorded. The sadFigure 3.92. Drawing by Mato-tope showdle blankets at La Barge Bluffs and ing his horse with a grizzly bear saddle Canyon Pintado are associated with cloth, split ears, a horse mask with tearclear representations of commerstreak face paint, and a feather tied in its cially made saddles with stirrups tail. Photograph by James D. Keyser. (Figures 3.89f, 3.91c). The configuration of the blanket at La Barge Bluffs shows lines implying it was a heavy blue wool blanket with a yellow or orange-yellow marginal stripe—the standard issue cavalry saddle blanket of the mid-1800s. The most elaborate rock art saddle cloth is used as a pad saddle on a native horse at Horned Headgear (24ML508) (Loendorf 2013:74). Though an uncolored petroglyph, it clearly represents a striped blanket, almost certainly a gaudily colored Hudson’s Bay or Navajo Blanket, with red, green, and/or blue stripes (Figure 3.89g). Sometimes a saddle blanket is shown only by its fringed hem hanging below the horse’s belly (Figure 3.91f). Two examples are horses lacking saddles but which have this fringe indicated (Keyser and Klassen 2001:225; Keyser and Minick 2018:17–18). Two examples of a distinctive bilobed saddle blanket (Figure 3.91a) are worn by Crow horses at two Montana sites (Keyser and Minick 2018). Although neither petroglyph shows any decoration, real lobed saddle cloths were typically highly decorated with beads or quillwork. A much larger than normal saddle blanket or mochila is worn by several horses. One on the Plains is at Colorado’s Box Canyon site (FigFigure 3.93. This horse wears a large ure 3.93). This animal’s covering is saddle blanket or mochila, lightning reins, rectangular with a conspicuously a Spanish chain bit, and two keyholepointed rear corner filled with a fan shaped forehead ornaments. The rider of lines representing some decorawears Pawnee style moccasins. Drawing tive scheme. Obviously, this is much by the authors.

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Figure 3.94. Spanish soldiers riding horses (large animal in center and one just above) outfitted with leather mochilas at Blue Bull Cave, Canyon del Muerto, Arizona. Note how the mochila covers the saddle and the riders’ upper legs with only the lower leg visible below. Image courtesy of Rupestrian CyberServices, Evelyn Billo and Bob Mark.

more than a mere saddle blanket, since it covers the horse from withers to flank and drapes below its belly. We cannot determine whether it is a woven blanket or leather mochila, but its size suggests it might have served as body armor for the horse. If so, it is nothing like the much earlier horse armor commonly found throughout the Plains region, which has a typical shape and method of construction (Greer, Greer, and Keyser 2019; Mitchell 2004). On this Colorado horse, the blanket is worn in combination with lightning reins, a Spanish “wavy line” chain bit, and a pair of keyhole-shaped face ornaments, demonstrating the artist’s considerable effort to document his mount’s finery. Other horses drawn in the Navajo homeland clearly show Spanish soldiers riding horses wearing mochilas (Figure 3.94).

Pack/Saddlebag Although packs and saddlebags are occasionally illustrated in ledger drawings, they are rare in rock art, probably because of the general scarcity of scenes depicting daily life and secular subjects. The only examples so far identified are on the backs of two horses in a scene at the White Mountain petroglyphs (48SW302) in Wyoming (Figure 3.95). In this composition, a human standing

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Figure 3.95. A person holds the reins of two horses, each wearing a pack strapped to its back. Drawing by the authors.

between two inward-facing horses holds each animal’s reins. Both horses wear large, humped packs with vertical bands illustrating what might be the ties securing them on the animal. This scene’s narrative is not obvious. It might be a woman holding pack horses as part of moving camp, but what appears to be an upright headdress suggests the human is a man. If so, it might represent a workaday scene involving packing meat or other products; but given the personal self-aggrandizement typical of Biographic narratives, it might instead represent a raider’s capture of pack horses—possibly from traders, trappers, or the military.

Stirrups and Stirrup Hoods Plains Indians occasionally used stirrups, including both native-made examples and those acquired with Euro-American-manufactured saddles. In a few instances such stirrups also employed stirrup hoods called tapaderos. Stirrups and stirrup hoods are most frequently illustrated in ledger drawings where such horse tack is shown about evenly for both the protagonist and his enemy. In rock art, however, these items are relatively uncommon and are usually illustrated to identify captured military horses or non-Indian actors. Stirrups are known from seven sites. At La Barge Bluffs a triangular stirrup suspended below a saddle identifies the horse being claimed by an Indian rider touching it with his coupstick as a military mount (Figure 3.89f). At Joliet, a large tapadero at the end of the wide stirrup fender on a McClellan model 1859 saddle (Figure 3.89a) identifies a mule as a US cavalry mount (confirming the “corrupted” US brand on its left shoulder), and a more regulation tapadero is drawn on a stolen cavalry mount at Canyon Pintado (Figure 3.91c). A pair of circular stirrups worn by a horse at Ringbit Shelter (Figure 3.77) coupled with the rider’s brimmed hat were apparently ethnic markers identifying a non-native horseman (Turpin 1989b:293). At Conant Springs, New Mexico, a charcoal-drawn horse with a rider is tethered to an anthropomorphized Spanish Mission church. This horse wears

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a saddle and a mochila, below which hang two cruciform stirrups (estribos de cruz) shown as H-shapes representing the stirrup bar and pendent cruciforms (Figure 3.96). Such wrought iron cruciform stirrups—many locally manufactured in northern Mexico (New Spain)—were popular with Spanish cavalry troops and other horsemen from the eighteenth century into the mid-1800s. While the identity of the rider is unclear, as no ethnic markers are shown, the horse wears a triangular forehead ornament, suggesting native tack. However, the mochila, saddle, and cruciform stirrups match that of a Spanish soldier’s horse shown in the Segesser II hide painting, also originating from New Mexico (Chavez 1990:100–101); therefore, it seems possible that the horse, at least, originates from the Spanish cavalry. The only rock art stirrups clearly representing horse tack used by a native rider is a pair of metal cruciform stirrups worn by a petroglyph horse at Eagle Creek, Montana (Keyser and Minick 2018). Illustrated as long triangles below both feet of the Crow rider (Figure 3.91a), these mimic almost exactly how Spanish cruciform stirrups (Figure 3.97) were illustrated by early Euro-American artists (Minick and Keyser 2019:48). Obviously, this Crow warrior had obtained a pair of estribos de cruz from the Spanish southwest.

Figure 3.96. A scene in New Mexico depicts a horseman whose animal is tethered to a Spanish Mission church. A pipe smoker sits nearby. The horse wears a forehead ornament, a saddle, a mochila, and metal cruciform stirrups. Hoofprints across church are part of a second scene. Authors’ tracing from photograph provided by Jeff LaFave.

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Figure 3.97.  Spanish estribos de cruz cruciform stirrups. Front view showing cruciform shape, toe of boot would be inserted into pentagonal opening in crossbar (a); side view revealing the pendants hanging below (b); front view with cruciform arms removed (c). Drawing by the authors.

Reins Reins, identified at more than one hundred sites from Canada to Mexico, are the most common item of horse tack illustrated in Plains rock art. Some are clearly attached to various headstalls, bridles, or bridle bits (curb or snaffle), but most are simply lines looping from the horse’s nose to the rider. Many simple examples likely represent what Ewers (1955b:75–77) describes as a war bridle: a single rawhide rope with a small honda loop at one end. The end with the honda served as the short rein, the rope was looped around the horse’s lower jaw and came back to serve as the second rein when passed through the honda (Figure 3.98). Such a rein was long, so it was coiled and inserted under the rider’s belt. Such long reins are Figure 3.98. A “war bridle” made of worn by some rock art horses involved a single rawhide rope with a honda loop serving as a rein. The long end of in horse-capture scenes, suggesting the rope tucked under the rider’s belt. they are animals being captured after Drawing by the authors, adapted from their rider has been unseated. A scene Ewers 1955b.

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Figure 3.99. Cut picket ropes indicate stolen horses. A capture hand grabs a horse’s picket rope (a); hanging picket rope of stolen horse indicates capture by an implied raider (b–c). Drawing by the authors.

in Turner Rockshelter (Keyser 2007a:13, 17) shows a horseman leading a second horse and rider while pursuing a horse dragging a long rein (Figure 3.23). The story here is a complex one but appears to tell how the hero rescued a comrade and caught an enemy’s horse in the same fight. Another example is at DgOw-32 where a capture hand grabs the long rein of a horse (Figure 3.99a). One specialized rein, drawn as one or two zigzag lines, represents the “lightning rein,” which was a conventionalized way of connoting a fast horse or one racing into action (see Chapter 4, “Lightning Symbolism”). Some reins even have small attachments (feathers, an amulet). A good example of feathers tied on the rein is at El Caido in northern Mexico.

Lead Rope/Picket Rope Horses are often shown trailing a line downward and/or outward from their nose or neck (Figures 3.23, 3.99). While some of these might represent a long trailing rein, others almost certainly represent the picket rope used to secure a prize horse at its owner’s tipi to prevent it from being stolen (Keyser 1996:38).

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Figure 3.100. A raider (shown at arrow) cuts the picket rope tethering a horse’s leg to its owner’s tipi on this panel replete with horse raid imagery. Drawing by the authors.

The same rope, when severed, can be used by a successful raider to lead the now stolen animal away from its picket. Occasionally a picket rope will be shown attached to the lower leg of a horse standing at a tipi, indicating the prize animal tethered to the picket pin. Usually, a picket rope in this situation is shown being cut by the horse raider. Trailing picket ropes are recorded at several sites, including Verdigris Coulee, Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park, Two Medicine River (24GL1718), and 39HN486 in the North Cave Hills (Keyser 2018b; McCallister, Keyser, and Kaiser 2021; Sundstrom 2004b:110). These provide a key clue to identifying a stolen horse. One scene at DgOv-80 (Figure 3.100) shows a man in the act of cutting a picket rope tethering a horse’s lower leg to its owner’s tipi (McCallister, Keyser, and Kaiser 2021).

Lariat Lariats or lassos are frequently shown in ledger art and winter count horsestealing scenes (e.g., Petersen 1971:82–83). In Lakota winter counts a lariat is used specifically to represent the capture of wild horses or pastured animals taken from the enemy (Kaiser 2021:61). Some winter count images use a floating lariat convention, while in others a rope trails from around a horse’s neck. At La Vista Verde (LA75747) in northeastern New Mexico, a petroglyph shows a horseman near a herd of horses (Figure 3.101), three of which have lassos dangling from their necks, and a fourth with an arrow piercing its shoulder.8 Using ethnohistoric clues and native informants’ understanding of the scene, Fowles identifies it as the capture of feral horses (E. Powell 2014). His Fight, a renowned Lakota warrior, illustrated himself carrying a lasso in several drawings of horse stealing—including one where he is stalking picketed horses (D. Smith 1943:114). Whether His Fight’s rope was intended as a lasso or

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Figure 3.101. A New Mexico scene shows the capture of feral horses. A horseman (upper left) is shown near a herd of horses, three of which have lassos hanging from their necks, and another with an arrow in its shoulder. A natural cupule represents a water hole, surrounded by horse hoofprints. Image courtesy of Severin Fowles, Barnard College.

a war bridle (which, as Ewers [1955b:75–76] notes, was named because it was frequently taken on horse raids to help a raider control a newly stolen animal) is not obvious. Therefore, other ropes trailing from horse’s necks could be identified as cut picket lines or, equally, as a dangling lariat or a war bridle. Nonetheless, they all signify horse raiding. Additionally, Plains warrior-artists were also well aware of how lariats could be used in the close-quarter running battles common to their warfare (Meadows 2010:136) and illustrated them in ledger drawings being used both by other Indians and also vaqueros to lasso enemies (Berlo 2000a:38; Calloway 2012:138–39). Indian artists also had a distinct interest in domestic livestock—the White Man’s Buffalo—when they first encountered these animals. Along with this interest (which also focused on the newcomers’ different clothing and permanent architecture) they began to record foreign items in rock art. At Vaquero Shelter in Texas two cowboys wearing hats are shown roping cattle (Figure 3.36). The lariat, held by one cowboy, extends from the coil in his hand to the horns of a longhorn bull, explicitly showing the act of steer roping. This is the only unmistakable lariat drawn in Plains rock art, but a remarkably similar narrative scene was painted around 1850 on a bison scapula from northwest Texas. Although interpreted somewhat fancifully by both Schoolcraft (1854:IV:253,

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Plate 32) and Mallery (1893:206), the scene clearly shows an Indian attack on a pair of cowboys, while one is roping a longhorn bull (Figure 3.102).

Headstall Several Plains rock art horses wear a headstall. Seven of these animals are drawn in the Ledger Art style and date after 1860. As one would expect, their headstalls are illustrated with the most detail and are often only one item of an entire assemblage of horse tack worn by these animals (Figures 3.15; 3.89a, b, f; 3.103a–c). Two other horses date slightly earlier in the 1800s and show simpler headstalls (Figure 3.103d, e). Most of the animals so far identified with headstalls are Indian ponies that also have bridle bit decorations, which include a cloth flag, two different types of Spanish Chain bits, a feather cluster, and a double Figure 3.102. Bison scapula from Texas painted with a scene showing line decoration. One other Indian horse an Indian attack on a pair of cowhas what might be a simple hackamore boys, one of whom is roping a longtype headstall. The other two animals are horn bull. Drawing by the authors, a cavalry horse shown in the act of being adapted from Schoolcraft 1854 and captured and an army mule (identified by Mallery 1893. the US brand on its left shoulder) that has apparently been captured. The cavalry horse has a simple headstall, insufficiently detailed to identify as to type, but the mule has what appears to be a hackamore headstall with the rein (or a picket rope) extending far out in front of its nose. The most complex rock art headstalls so far identified (Figure 3.103a, b) are found at Joliet in Montana and Goodbar Cave (LA190489) in New Mexico (Lycett and Keyser 2019a:639; M. Miller et al. 2019:492). Both are elaborated with large silver conchos attached to the cheek strap, and the Joliet example has a circular ring of the snaffle bit at its mouth. Similar headstalls are drawn in Cheyenne ledger art. Even though headstalls frequently illustrated in Lakota, Cheyenne, and Crow ledger drawings (Figures 3.103f–h; 3.104) are more elaborate than those so far found in rock art, the more elaborate German silver headstall (showing a distinctive L-shaped metal element at the junction of the brow band and cheek piece) has not yet been identified in rock art. One curb bit is identified at a site on the Musselshell River but has not yet been fully recorded. How-

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Figure 3.103. Horse headstalls in rock art (a–e) and ledger art (f–h). Silver conchos are shown attached to the cheek strap (a, b); the circular ring(s) of a snaffle bit are shown (a, h). Bridle bits are decorated with cloth flags (a, f); a scalp (g); and Spanish chain bits (b–e). Horses also wear feather forelock decorations (a, f, g) and a keyhole-shaped forehead ornament (d). Drawing by the authors.

Figure 3.104. Combat scene in ledger drawing by the Crow warrior “Above” in which the rider dismounts and strikes the Blackfoot enemy with this quirt. The horse wears a curb bit, identified by the metal rings on the shank hanging below its jaw. The upper ring is part of the headstall. Redrawn by authors from image courtesy of Charles H. Barstow Collection, Montana State University-Billings, Library Special Collections.

ever, the Central Plains area of northeastern Colorado, western Nebraska, southeastern Wyoming, and western Kansas where the Cheyenne and Sioux were primarily resident in the last decades of the 1800s, and where one would expect to find such images, has not yet been well explored for rock art.

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Bridle Bit Decorations Other than reins, decorated bridles are the most common horse tack illustrated in Plains Biographic art. Painted and incised as rock art from northern Mexico to southern Alberta, decorated bridles demonstrate the emphasis placed on horse finery by all Plains groups and constitute a significant element of the Biographic art lexicon. Generally connoting a horse dressed up for war (or sometimes hunting), several distinctive types of bridle decoration express specific meaning, and one—used primarily by the Blackfoot—served as powerful horse medicine because it was imbued with magical qualities protecting the animal and its rider from harm (Ewers 1955b:277–78; Wissler 1912a:107). In some instances, decorated bridles also provide clues to the ethnic identity for rock art drawings and demonstrate the extent of trade networks and intertribal alliances that linked Plains tribes and surrounding groups to one another. Plains rock art contains more than seventy decorated bridles illustrated at more than fifty sites. In addition, dozens more examples are drawn at sites scattered throughout the Colorado Plateau and in Navajo rock art of the Four Corners region. Given their popularity in Biographic art, bridle bit decorations have long been a subject of interest (e.g., Brugge 1976; Keyser 1991, 2007a; Keyser and Mitchell 2001), and as a result seven types are now recognized: scalp, a Thing-to-tie-on-the-halter, feather/streamer cluster, Spanish chain bit, Navajo tinkler chain bit, flag, and double line. Two of these types have several distinctive varieties portrayed in different ways.

Scalp A human scalp frequently adorns a horse’s bridle in Biographic art. Most are drawn in ledger art, where the flap of cranial skin is often partly or completely colored red (Figure 3.103g), but there are several known monochromatic rock art examples. Among some tribes, displaying scalps this way indicated the horse so embellished had trampled an enemy underfoot (Taylor 2000:51; see also Chapter 4, “Conventions,” “Trampling or Riding Down an Enemy”). Scalp-decorated bridle bits have been identified at nine rock art sites scattered from Writing-on-Stone to El Caido, Mexico (Figures 3.105a, b; 3.106). These range from the simplest sorts of depiction, such as at DgOw-32 at Verdigris Coulee, Alberta, which shows the scalp as four long lines in a fan shape pendent just below the horse’s nose, to an obvious scalp illustrated as a fan of five lines hanging from a circular flap of cranial skin suspended from a short line hanging down from the horse’s nose at the Goffena Rockshelter (24ML408). Identifying this as a scalp is easy, given the nearly identical item suspended from the handle of a Missouri war axe wielded by this rider’s pedestrian opponent (Figure 3.66).

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Figure 3.105. Decorated bridle bits: scalps (a–b); the Blackfoot Thing-to-tieon-the-halter (c–f); feather or streamer clusters (g–i); Spanish chain bits (j–l); triangular Navajo tinkler chain bits (m–o); double lines indicating side chains (p–q). Drawing by the authors.

Figure 3.106. Scalps shown suspended from horses’ bridle bits in rock art. This highly decorated Ledger style horse (a) wears a double keyhole-shaped forehead ornament, feathers tied in its forelock and tail, an unguiform amulet hanging from the throatlatch, triangular notches splitting its ears, a brand, a lightning streak painted down his front leg, the scalp, and zigzag lightning reins. A more simply depicted horse (b) has a scalp hanging from the horse’s bridle bit. Drawing by the authors.

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A Thing-to-Tie-on-the-Halter One specialized bridle bit decoration, common in Biographic art, is a characteristic Blackfoot item, named by them a “Thing-to-tie-on-the-halter” (Wissler 1912a:107). Biographic drawings show this decoration in four forms (Keyser 1991:261; Keyser and Mitchell 2001). The most common version is a vertically oriented comb-like image (Figures 3.23; 3.105c) with short forward-projecting “teeth” positioned directly in front of the horse’s nose. Two other variants are rake-like forms shown with either a horizontally oriented bar suspended on a short line hanging down from the horse’s nose (Figure 3.105f) or as a vertical bar attached to a line projecting horizontally out in front of the nose (Figure 3.105e). Finally, the rarest variant—known only from a single example painted on a decorated bison robe—is shown as a complete, horizontally oriented weasel skin bundle suspended on a short vertical line directly below the horse’s nose (Lycett and Keyser 2018:780–81). Based on detailed ethnographic information, coupled with museum specimens and good drawings (Brownstone 2002; L. Dempsey 2007:71–75; Ewers 1955b:277–78; Wissler 1912a:107–8, 1913:437), we have an accurate description of how the first three variants of this item would have been constructed and what they would have looked like. All would have been formed of a bar, or “‘cross fringe stick’ made to be tied to the ‘jaw strap of a horse bridle’” (Brownstone 2002:5). The short appendages perpendicular to the cross stick represent dangling feathers, cloth streamers, small bags of medicine, and strips of white weasel skin or weasel tails showing their black tips (Brownstone 2002:cover; L. Dempsey 2007:73; Ewers 1955b:277–78; Wissler 1912a:107). We also know that such decorations functioned as horse medicine bundles in themselves and were wrapped separately as bundles when not in use (Ewers 1955b:277–78). Such bundles were part of a powerful horse medicine cult, and these bridle decorations (as the visible amulets of such medicine) were believed “to protect [the horse] in warfare, and to increase its speed and sure-footedness on the buffalo hunt” (Brownstone 2002:5; Wissler 1912a:107). Correspondingly, rock art drawings of such bridle charms are shown in both warfare and buffalo hunting scenes. A dozen Thing-to-tie-on-the-halter bridle charms have been identified from seven rock art sites scattered from Writing-on-Stone to the North Cave Hills. Ten have been reliably identified as the product of Blackfoot artists, based on their association with other distinctive Blackfoot motifs and their location in the heart of the Historic period Blackfoot homeland. However, historic photographs document that other groups, including the Flathead and Kutenai, used similar horse accoutrements, and one example is illustrated on a Cheyenne robe (Keyser and Mitchell 2001:197). Likewise, both the horse in Wyoming and the armored horse in South Dakota are far outside historic Blackfoot territory and could only be considered Blackfoot if they represent “calling card” petroglyphs (Keyser 2019). Hence, newly discovered examples of this motif require detailed analysis to determine their cultural affiliation.

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Feather or Streamer Cluster Eight Plains sites, found from Writing-on-Stone to northern Colorado, show bridles decorated with either a cluster of lines hanging directly from the horse’s nose or bit (rather than from a small flap of cranial skin or a horizontal bar that would identify the image as a scalp or a Thing-to-tie-on-the-halter) or as a “starburst” cluster of short lines suspended at the end of a line pendent from the horse’s nose (Figure 3.105h, i). Although some of these could represent a scalp or a Thing-to-tie-on-the-halter, most seem likely to represent feathers or streamers such as weasel tails or other strips fastened directly onto the bit, bridle, or reins. Many tribes suspended various feathered banners from a horse’s lower jaw (e.g., Jenness 1963:103, 323), and it is likely that weasel tails and other streamers were also included in these. In addition, individual feathers are occasionally tied in this position in ledger and robe art drawings (Keyser and Mitchell 2001:199, 205). One artist’s use of the same short lines to illustrate both a Thing-to-tie-on-the-halter and a pendent cluster at 39HN210 in South Dakota’s North Cave Hills convinces us that these were equivalent feather-embellished decorations. Outside the Plains, in the Colorado Plateau and the Four Corners region of the Southwest, a distinctive type of halter decoration occurs at several sites. This type typically shows an outsized fan of long lines extending outward from the horse’s nose (Figure 3.105g). Although we suspect this item represents feathers, they might be a way of rendering some other type of decorated bridle. A conclusion awaits further study of Colorado Plateau rock art (Keyser 2011b). Spanish Chain Bit Spanish chain bits (Figure 3.107) have a long use history on the Plains, first appearing in the 1600s with the advent of Spanish cavalry, who attached long bit chains and other noisemakers as decorative devices to the bottom bar of a specialized ring bit in common use at the time (Ward 1958:189–92). Suspended from this bottom bar are two or more rows of short metal chains, often with additional metal “tinklers” or “jingles” (coscojos in Spanish) attached to the chains’ lower ends. As many as two dozen chains can be suspended in any one section. Another type of chain bit has linked coscojos, forming “jingle chains” suspended directly from the bottom bar. A third type, the Navajo tinkler chain bit, is discussed separately below. Spanish chain bits were first recorded on the northern Plains by the Verendrye expedition, who noted Crow horsemen using this tack in 1739 (G. Smith 1980:100), and throughout the 1800s these bits were noted among the Crow, Shoshone, and Hidatsa. Furthermore, robe and ledger drawings by Lakota, Cheyenne, and Blackfoot artists document use by those tribes, and archaeological finds of chain bit elements occur in Ute, Apache, and Navajo country. Even today, heirloom Spanish chain bits are used for showing-off parades during Crow Fair, the annual Crow tribal powwow, attesting to the importance this high prestige item has retained for nearly three centuries.

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Figure 3.107. Spanish chain bits (a, c), Navajo tinkler chain bit (b, d). The coscojos hanging from the bottom bar in c were often attached in much longer chains. (d) shows positions of side chains (1) and coscojos (2 and 3), as worn. Drawing by James D. Keyser.

Spanish chain bits are illustrated in four ways in rock art (Keyser and Mitchell 2001). Most common is a fan of zigzag lines extending downward and outward from the horse’s nose (Figures 3.5d; 3.18; 3.105k, l; 3.108). Other somewhat similar versions are drawn on painted bison robes and in ledger drawings by Crow, Mandan, Cheyenne, and Lakota artists (Figure 3.109). Another way of illustrating a chain bit was to show the jingle chains as paired groups of straight lines or single straight lines at both ends of the bit’s mouthpiece. These Figure 3.108. Spanish chain bits are often represent the long side chains or illustrated as a cluster of zigzag lines rein chains characteristic of many hanging directly from the horse’s nose, types of such bits. Chain bits were resembling lightning, to emphasize their reflective qualities. Drawing by the authors. also illustrated as straight, ladder-

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Figure 3.109. Spanish chain bits (a, b, d) and Navajo tinkler chain bit (c) in ledger drawings. Note spit ears and bell hung from throatlatch (b, d). Horse in (b) also wears a mask and feather horse bonnet. Other horses wear a keyhole-shaped forehead ornament (a) and feathers tied in the forelock (c). Drawing by the authors, adapted from various ledger drawings.

like arrangements of several sections of chains suspended directly under the horse’s chin (Figure 3.34b, 3.105j, 3.109a), and one detailed ledger drawing example even shows individual coscojos attached to the end of the bottom chains. Finally, several examples are shown as a clearly illustrated, curved bottom bar sitting just below the horse’s nose from which straight lines fan out to represent the jingle chains of linked coscojos (Figures 3.20, 3.109d).

Navajo Tinkler Chain Bit One very specialized type of chain bit is the Navajo tinkler, which has linked coscojos forming jingle chains attached to a triangular chin plate suspended just behind the bottom bar of such a bit arrangement (Figures 3.107d, 3.109c). Illustrations feature only two or three linked coscojos, but ledger drawings and rock art examples indicate that these jingle chains could be considerably longer (Figure 3.105m–o). Horses in Texas rock art at Ringbit Shelter (Figure 3.77) and the Ward site (41GR282) wear Navajo tinklers (Boyd 1990:131; Turpin 1988:50–51), and Navajo style horses at Chaco Canyon and Canyon de Chelly routinely wear such tack (Brugge 1999:32–34; Kolber and Yoder 2005:342). In

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the Comanche rock art of La Vista Verde, these Navajo tinklers are more simply drawn as a prominent triangle just below the horse’s nose. The absence of Navajo tinkler chain bits from rock art sites north of Texas and Arizona/New Mexico suggests they may not have been popular on the central and northern Plains until the late 1800s, when they were commonly illustrated in Lakota and Cheyenne ledger drawings (Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997; Berlo 1996; Keyser 1996) but when rock art was rarely made (Keyser 1996; Keyser and Mitchell 2001).

Cloth Flag One common bridle decoration in dozens of ledger drawings is a cloth “flag” suspended from the horse’s bit or headstall (Figure 3.103a, f). In ledger drawings, these are often brightly colored with patterns and a selvedge line along the bottom edge. Such flags are known to have been used by Lakota, Cheyenne, and Blackfoot warriors (Keyser and Mitchell 2001:203–4), but we suspect their use was much more widespread. Three such flags are known in rock art, all on very late-style horses drawn in the last decades of the 1800s. One, decorating the bridle bit of a horse at the Joliet site, shows a horizontal line decoration like others in ledger art. Two others are small triangular appendages drawn just below the horse’s chin at La Barge Bluffs. Their small scale precludes showing any decorative elaboration, but these horses clearly date after 1860. Double Line Rock art horses at DgOw-32, 39HN49, and 48BH4275 have clearly illustrated bridle decorations that consist of single lines hanging from each end of the bridle bit (Figure 3.105p, q). While these lines could represent nearly anything, from feathers or ermine skins to strips of Stroud cloth, given the popularity of chain-decorated bits among the tribes living in this area of the northern Plains, it seems likely that they represent jingle chains hanging from the bridle bit. Bit Hardware Although Spanish chain jingle bits were used throughout the Plains as long ago as the mid-1700s, and were illustrated in rock art from their earliest use until the 1880s, the hardware for most other horse bits is rarely seen in rock art. The exception is the Navajo tinkler frequently illustrated in the southern Plains and Navajo country; but both types of jingle bits were probably so carefully illustrated because their external jingles were the important attribute. In contrast, ledger drawings regularly show several other types of bits, including both snaffle and curb bits. A curb bit has a shank or cheek piece on each side of the horse’s face used to amplify the pressure placed on the animal’s mouth as the rider uses reins to control his mount. The two cheek pieces increase leverage to the bit’s mouth-

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piece, and each has a metal ring on both ends to which the headstall and reins are attached (Figure 3.110). Identified in Biographic art (Figure 3.104) by the emphasized terminal rings on the long shank, such bits have a long history of use, first by Spanish riders and later by Americans. They occur commonly in ledger drawings, usually dating late in the Historic period, but the one rock art example currently known is at an incompletely recorded site on central Montana’s Musselshell River, where it is used by an early horseman wearing poncho-style armor and carrying a sword (Figure 3.111). A snaffle bit is hardware more commonly shown in Biographic art. Con- Figure 3.110. Curb bit with distinctive sisting of a mouthpiece with a ring on metal rings to which the headstall and either side to which the rein is attached, reins are attached. Drawing by the a snaffle applies direct pressure to the authors. horse’s mouth, rather than the curb bit’s amplified pressure. Recognized in many ledger drawings by the metal ring situated just outside the rear of the horse’s mouth to which the reins are attached (Figure 3.25), the only example so far noted in rock art is at Joliet

Figure 3.111. A horse with a curb bit showing circular rings on the shanks. The rider wears poncho-style armor and carries a sword. Drawing by the authors.

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(Figure 3.103a), where a Ledger Art-style horse wears an elaborate headstall detailed with three circles arrayed along its cheek. The upper two circles are concho decorations, but the lowest, slightly ovoid one apparently represents a snaffle bit ring, even though the rein is not directly connected. Like curb bits, snaffle bits were obtained in trade; but with so few known rock art examples, we do not know when they were first drawn as pictographs or petroglyphs.

Forelock Decoration War horses were routinely decorated with a single feather, cluster of feathers, or some other object tied in the animal’s forelock—the part of the mane that grows atop the head and falls forward between the ears onto the forehead. Found from Writing-on-Stone to El Caido, more than a dozen horses have forelock decorations (Figures 3.34b; 3.103a; 3.105a, l), which include single and double feathers and three examples of a fringe of short lines curling downward from the horse’s ears and over its forehead (Figures 3.66, 3.112). We do not know what this fringed item represents, but its occurrence at three sites separated by more than 650 km (400 miles) indicates Figure 3.112. This fringed forelock decoration is it was a specific decorative found at multiple sites. It is unknown what exactly attachment known to differit represents. Drawing by the authors. ent artists. Often forelock decorations are combined with other horse headgear, including a feather bonnet, a keyhole-shaped forehead ornament, a necktie, and various decorated bits. One is part of a horse mask. The presence of a feather and one of the fringe-type decorations on armored horses indicates these have a long history of use, at least on the northern Plains.

Keyhole-Shaped Forehead Ornament One noteworthy horse tack item is the keyhole-shaped face ornament, a triangular attachment drawn on a horse’s forehead to represent a colorfully beaded and fringed decoration made in the form of an old-time keyhole with an upper circular part and a pendent tab in the shape of an elongate trapezoid (Figure 3.113). In use the ornament is attached to the horse’s headstall, so the circle lies flat on its forehead just above the eyes while the pendent tab lays down between its eyes on the horse’s broad nose. In rock art these ornaments are shown in side view as triangles extending out obliquely from the horse’s

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Figure 3.113. Beaded keyhole-shaped forehead ornament for horse decoration. Image on left is attached to headstall that also features a Spanish chain bit. Images from the collection of Dr. Helene Sage.

forehead. This odd convention is used in all known rock art and ledger art examples of this ornament and was necessary to illustrate such an item since it is worn flat on the horse’s forehead and therefore not visible unless the animal faces the viewer—a perspective not seen in rock art. So far found at six sites from Writing-on-Stone to New Mexico’s Conant Springs, nine rock art horses wear these ornaments (Figures 3.5d, 3.18, 3.49, 3.96, 3.103d, 3.106). While no rock art example shows the upper circular part (as does one ledger drawing), all but three examples have short fringe around some sides of the triangle. One fully fringed specimen has two lines crossing the triangular area to represent beadwork or quillwork and make this the only rock art example showing their typically fancy decoration. Three animals wear double triangles unlike any ethnographically known specimen. Three horses at Wyoming’s No Water site combine the keyhole-shaped ornament with a zigzag-line chain bit, while three other ornament-wearing horses at Colorado’s Box Canyon site wear a similar bit with a distinctly circular piece at the nose that might identify these as scalps rather than chain bits. Four animals also wear zigzag lightning reins in addition to their forehead ornament and decorated bit.

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Although such keyhole-shaped face ornaments have been popularized by the Crow (Horse Capture and Her Many Horses 2006:35, 45, 92, 96; Taylor 1994:105), there are historic photographs of horsemen and ethnographic specimens with Blood, Blackfoot, and Gros Ventres/Assiniboine provenience (Sage 2012:34–37, 52, 74). Likewise, the presence of these at the Box Canyon site in southeastern Colorado and Conant Springs in eastern New Mexico indicates they were also used by Southern Plains tribes.

Horse Armor More than two dozen horses drawn at about twenty rock art sites scattered from southern Alberta to southwest Texas, central Kansas, and northeastern New Mexico are caparisoned in full-body armor made of tanned leather (Figures 3.87, 3.114). Used before firearms were common in Plains warfare, such armor was observed firsthand on both the northern and southern Plains. In 1805 Meriwether Lewis described Shoshone horse armor as being made from multilayered tanned antelope skins held together with glue mixed with sand (Moulton 1988:150).9 He noted its efficacy as a defense against arrows. To the south, horse armor is illustrated on the Segesser I hide painting (Figure 0.17E/10–13). In the pictured attack by mounted warriors (ca. AD 1700) on a group of heavily armed village defenders (Hotz 1991), the two lead horses in a group of nine wear full-body armor and are deployed like “tanks” to crash through the pedestrian enemies to create an opening in their ranks for the rear horsemen to storm through and annihilate them. The riders of these armored horses both wield long lances, but the following horsemen, who wear only their own personal body armor, are armed with bow and arrows, knives, swords, and axes, while defenders use spears, bows and arrows, and clubs. Rock art horse armor is illustrated as a large, crudely triangular or trapezoidal, tent-like covering draped over the animal’s entire body. Some coverings extend to the ground, hiding the animal’s legs; but for others, the horse’s legs and feet are visible below the bottom edge. Occasionally the armor cover is drawn with X-Ray perspective, so part or all of the horse’s and/or rider’s bodies can be seen (Figure 3.87k, l, q, s). These rock art illustrations reveal a surprising amount of detail as to how horse armor was constructed. When not obscured by the rider or his shield, there is frequently a shallow, U-shaped notch atop the triangular form that represents an intentionally prepared opening in which the rider sits. Multiple lines on two rock art examples may even show this opening’s reinforced rim, like those shown on the Segesser I hide painting. Additionally, an even more common attribute of this armor is a sheath or collar extending out to envelop the horse’s neck, since that would be one of the animal’s most exposed areas in close-quarters combat (Figure 3.87b–e, h–j, p–r). A few of these are “halfcollars” positioned just under the animal’s neck to protect only its most vulnerable underside, but most collars are box-like projections enclosing the entire

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Figure 3.114. The armor coverings worn by four horses in this scene in New Mexico are less carefully executed than horse armor found further to the north. Image courtesy of Severin Fowles, Barnard College.

neck to just behind the jaw. Full armor collars are illustrated on both Segesser horses (Figure 0.17). A half-collar on one Verdigris Coulee horse is held in place by a strap looping up over the crest of its neck. Rock art horse armor often appears to be decorated. Seven examples at six sites scattered from southern Alberta to central Kansas show a pattern of vertical lines spanning the armor (Figure 3.87). On two Montana horses those lines are drawn in the Crow feathers convention that represents feathers in other contexts (Figure 3.87e–f). One shows two rows of such “feather lines.” This suggests that all these armor coverings were decorated with feathers, but since the feather lines are much longer than real feathers (even eagle tail feathers), we suggest the lines represent either artistic license exaggerating the feathers’ length or—more likely—painted feather designs. However, an actual feather covering for some of this armor is suggested by the fringe of short lines drawn along the rear edge of four other examples, which we suspect represents actual attached feathers fluttering out from the armor as the horse galloped into the fight. Attaching feathers or painting feather symbols on horse armor was almost certainly done as sympathetic magic to imbue the animal with the metaphoric speed of a bird, thereby protecting it in battle. Similar use of feathers in other ways because they were thought to protect the horse and increase its speed and sure-footedness is well documented for later historic horse tack (Brownstone 2002:5; Ewers 1955b:99–101; Wissler 1912a:107). Other decorative schemes on rock art horse armor include a vertical column of five large circles painted on the front shoulder of one example (Figure 3.87e) and a crosshatch design on another.

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One Montana pictograph of horse armor shows alternating vertical red and unpainted stripes. This could represent a painted design, possibly something akin to the feather motif; but it might instead indicate the manner of construction, using separate hide panels sewn together to make the “tent.” It is also plausible that vertical line patterns on some horse armor might also indicate edges of sewn-together panels, as they apparently do on one Segesser I horse (Figure 0.17E/10). Armored horses are often outfitted with other tack items. More than half of them have either bridle reins and/or decorated bridle bits of several types. One armored horse, identified as a Crow drawing, wears a feather war bonnet and has a smaller feather decoration tied in its forelock. Three examples wear a saddle, two of which are unmistakably early Spanish Estradiota style saddles typical of those used by Spanish cavalry troops. Obviously, outfitting one’s horse with the finest available tack was an important factor from the earliest introduction of the animal. In addition to revealing methods of armor construction and the use of early horse tack, these armored horses also provide a detailed glimpse into the armaments of Protohistoric period warfare. Horsemen in the Segesser I battle scene are all well-armed, each carrying some combination of a shield and one or more weapons, including bow and arrows, sword, knife, axe, or spear. This mimics almost exactly the armaments of horsemen riding armored mounts and the weaponry of their pedestrian opponents in rock art scenes (Figure 3.87). For armored horse riders, spears are their most common weapon—carried by two-thirds of them. But other horsemen wield metal axes and a sword. More than half of the riders carry shields, and two wear their own personal body armor. Half of these armored riders are engaged in combat with similarly armed pedestrian foes (Figures 3.63, 3.65, 3.66, 3.115). Six of these pedes-

Figure 3.115. This early Historic battle scene shows a variety of weapons, metal spear points, large, full-body-size and smaller-sized shields, and armored horses (the two upper animals). Two pedestrians are shown leaning backward in a defeated posture. Drawing by the authors.

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trian enemies carry a shield, two wear personal body armor, and the weapons they wield are spears, a knife, an axe, and a gun. Based on these drawings, ethnohistoric evidence from the Segesser I painting, and Lewis’s observations, we clearly see that horse armor was effective against most of the “pre-gun” armaments common to Plains Indian warfare as they were employed in the close-quarters combat characteristic of the early Historic period. Spears and arrows (even those with metal points) would not likely have penetrated deeply enough through the multiple layers of specially treated leather to cause fatal wounds to the animal. But the fact that horse armor was not recorded after Lewis and Clark, despite the presence of dozens of artists and other observers, coupled with the absence of such armor in later Biographic art and ethnographic collections, indicates it was abandoned after guns became commonplace. This is due in part to the greatly increased penetrating power of firearms and the fact that musket balls (unlike cutting or piercing projectile points) dragged bits of clothing and armor into the wound, which increased the risk of wound infection. This combination quickly rendered such armor obsolete (Bohr 2014:130, 169–70).

⤞ VIGNETTE 5 SURVIVING THE FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH A THUNDERSTICK

Figure V5. Early encounters with firearms must have been awe inspiring. Drawing by the authors.

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The single example of combat involving horse armor and a firearm (Figure V5) deserves special mention. This scene, at 24GV191, originated when an artist drew himself astride his own armored horse adjacent to a preexisting shield-bearing warrior incised on the cliff face. The artist shows his own horse with a crudely triangular armor cover and a half-collar protecting the underside of the horse’s neck. The shield-bearing rider sits in a prepared opening at the apex of the triangle and brandishes a long lance embellished with an elaborate tab at its proximal end. The horse’s simple, straight-line legs lacking hooves protrude below the armor cover’s bottom. To the left of the armored horse and rider is the standing shield-bearing warrior. Based on the direction the feet of this standing warrior point, he faces away from the armored horse, but the later artist incorporated this man into his scene by transforming him into a rider. He did this by surrounding the pedestrian with the unmistakable outline of horse armor. Thus modified, the armor “outline” extends from the sides of his shield downward to encase his lower body and legs in a tent-like covering. This makes it appear that he is now a horseman sitting in what would be the prepared rider’s opening. After thus changing this preexisting pedestrian into a horseman, the artist then added a flintlock gun (identified by the ferrules for its ramrod) and showed it firing a bullet from the transformed shield bearer toward the artist who rides away on his armored steed. This is a typical Biographic art combat scene where a man illustrates a close encounter with a more heavily armed enemy to demonstrate his own bravery in the face of overwhelming firepower. Known as the fusillade of fire convention, such scenes occur from the earliest Biographic drawings to late ledger drawings. That a warrior would commemorate his first encounter with a firearm at the hands of another who was also riding an armored horse is powerful testimony to the changes brought about by both the horse and gun during a few decades of the Protohistoric period in Montana’s Musselshell River country.

⤝

Amulets Robe and ledger drawings illustrate a variety of small amulets dangling at a horse’s throatlatch—where the neck meets the head just behind the jaws (Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997:66–67, 96–97, 134–35, 220–21; Keyser 2000:42– 43). Often, though not always, these are shown suspended from a thong looped around the horse’s neck (cf. Keyser 2004a:71). Although some of these may have been more decorative than magically imbued, many were considered sympathetic magic designed to augment a horse’s speed, or for protection by helping it avoid stumbles or falls or making it impervious or invisible to enemy bullets and arrows. Such amulets identified in other Biographic art media include a small bell (Figures 3.109b, d; 3.116a; cf. Thompson 2000:46– 63), small bags (presumably containing protective medicine), cloth flags, a Navajo tinkler from a chain-decorated bridle bit, and an antelope horn. Three such amulets are identified in rock art. One is a small, obviously male, stick-figure human effigy attached to the reins of a horse drawn in a combat scene at Craig Sandrocks in northwestern Colorado (Figure 3.117). We know of no directly analogous effigy amulet elsewhere in Biographic art, but

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Figure 3.116. Throatlatch amulets shown in robe and ledger drawings. Bell (a); antelope horn or bear claw (b, c); unknown (d). Note also split (a, c, d) or pierced (b) ears; feather bonnet, mask, and chain bit (a); headstall decorated with silver conchos (d); and German silver headstall (c). Drawing by the authors, adapted from various ledger drawings.

similar small effigies of animals, humans, lizards, and birds were tied onto clothing and into warriors’ hair in other Biographic drawings. Two other examples are small lines suspended at the throatlatch of Crow horses at Joliet and 24PR2382. The example at 24PR2382 is a short, straight line projecting from the throatlatch area (Figure 3.27), which went unrecognized until we recorded the small, curved claw-shape worn by the Ledger Artstyle horse at Joliet (Figure 3.106a). This Joliet amulet is almost identical to one Figure 3.117. Stickfigure human amulet attached to the lightning reins of a horse at Craig Sandrocks, Colorado. Pedestrian wears Pawnee moccasins. Drawing by James D. Keyser.

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such item worn by the horse of a defeated Crow enemy in a Cheyenne ledger drawing (Figure 3.116b), which has been identified as both the tip of an antelope horn (Bates, Kahn, and Lanford 2003:242) and a bear claw (Lanford 2003:183). Nearly identical unguiform amulets (Figure 3.116c) are illustrated in several other Cheyenne drawings (Berlo 1996:103; Calloway 2012:152), but none is identified. If these two rock art examples are antelope-horn amulets, we can reasonably infer they were intended to magically increase the horse’s fleet-footedness, since the Assiniboine used the short prong of an antelope horn tied around a racehorse’s neck for this purpose (Ewers 1982b:46; Kennedy 1961:161). Although these refer specifically to racehorses, the same sort of sympathetic magic would likely have been applied to war ponies. Conversely, if the amulets represent a grizzly bear claw, the horse’s owner probably viewed its magic as imparting the strength, tenacity, and spirit power attributed to the grizzly bear by all Plains tribes. In either case, the inclusion of this amulet with other special tack items on this Joliet horse (keyhole face ornaments, notched ears, feathers in forelock and tail, body paint) shows it to be a prized animal. For the drawing at 24PR2382 the horse wearing the amulet is an enemy’s mount, drawn much as the Cheyenne artist did for his Crow enemy.

Necktie War horses were decorated with a special “necktie” made of a cloth tied around the upper neck at the throatlatch. In ledger drawings this necktie—often made of red Stroud cloth—loops around the neck and hangs downward just behind the animal’s jaw (Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997:87, 221; Bates, Kahn, and Lanford 2003:288). Ledger art neckties range from a simple tie draped over the animal’s neck (Figure 3.118) to much fancier expressions, showing a knot and

Figure 3.118. Tie Creek ledger drawing showing a horse wearing a cloth necktie. Image courtesy of Michael Fosha, Black Hills State University, Spearfish, South Dakota.

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Figure 3.119.  Horse wearing a cloth necktie at a site in Montana. Women shown on the left, identified by “disheveled hair” and a dress for the smaller one. Drawing by the authors.

both ends of the cloth tie. Three similar neckties are illustrated in rock art, all worn by Crow horses. One is on a Ledger Art-style horse at Joliet (Figure 3.15) and shows the hem, indicating it is made of Stroud cloth. The other two neckties are a slightly different form, showing a large crescentshape suspended below the neck just behind the throatlatch. These are too large to be an antelope-horn or unguiform amulet like those worn by horses in other Biographic drawings (cf. Figure 3.116), so we identify them as cloth neckties. One is drawn on a horse at Joliet (Figure 3.75); the other, on a horse at the Ryegate South site in the Musselshell River valley, clearly shows the cloth looped around the horse’s neck (Figure 3.119).

Picket Pin Plains Indians used a variety of devices to picket a prized horse in front of its owner’s tipi in the obviously oft-foiled attempt to keep it safe from horse raiders sneaking into camp during the night in pursuit of one of the primary Plains war honors. In early historic times picket pins could have been anything from a log to a wooden stake pounded in the ground, but by the late 1800s some men used metal picket pins captured from the US military. Given that capture of such a prized horse was a key honor, the picket pin plays a small but important role in Biographic art (McCallister, Keyser, and Kaiser 2021). In some scenes it is illustrated to show the picketed horse in front of the tipi (Figure 3.120), but by the last decades of the Historic period, the picket pin itself came to be used by some tribes as a shorthand symbol representing the stolen horse. As such, the stand-alone picket pin had become an ideogram for this specific act of bravery (Wissler 1911:41). Given the simplicity of any representation of a picket pin, most of the rock art examples have only recently been recognized, but several have been identified at Plains rock art sites. Writing-on-Stone sites DgOv-2, DgOv-130, and DgOw-32 show horses picketed with a straight vertical line, certainly illustrated as prize animals that were stolen. At DgOw-27, two tallies of stolen horses,

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Figure 3.120. Horse raids are frequently indicated by animals picketed next to a tipi. Note raiders cutting the picket rope (b, d) and foot tracks and an “action hand” using a knife to cut the picket rope (c). Picket pins can be straight or X-shaped. Blackfoot robe art drawings (a–c); petroglyph at Writing-on-Stone (d). Drawing by the authors, (a–c) adapted from various Blackfoot robes.

each next to a single tipi, utilize picket pin ideographs (Figure 1.26). In one, it is a row of seven X-shapes—the most common Blackfoot symbol for picket pin— and in the other it is a prominent vertical slash with eight hoofprints aligned next to it. These tallies show the artists had taken seven and eight picketed horses in their war careers. Another picket pin is drawn at Joliet, standing just in front of a horse decked out in typical Crow accoutrements, including a necktie, keyhole face ornament, and a DAG knife painted on its flank (Figure 3.75). The T-shaped top and a short line coming from the pin toward the horse’s nose illustrates a metal picket pin with a rope cut by the successful horse raider. As such, the scene apparently shows a horse stolen by a Crow raider who then outfitted it with a suite of typical Crow horse finery.

Conchos In addition to use as personal ornaments, hammered silver conchos were also used as horse finery. At Joliet and Goodbar Cave two such conchos are attached to the cheek strap of the animal’s headstall (Figure 3.103a, b), and at

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Joliet another pair of ovals incorporated into the tied-up tail of a second horse may be conchos. Similar headstalls decorated with hammered silver conchos are illustrated in many Cheyenne ledger drawings (e.g., Figure 3.116d) and were used somewhat similarly as tail ornaments in a ledger drawing by a Crow warrior named “Above” (Figure 3.104).

Tied-Up Tail Plains Indian horsemen modified their mounts’ tails in various ways to show it was ready for war. This includes braiding the tail or tying it up in a knot, docking it, wrapping most or all of it with Stroud cloth or some other material (this sometimes left a frizzy “fluff” of short hair at the tail’s end), and attaching various feathers and other streamers to it. Ledger drawings show all these treatments (Figures 3.17, 3.25, 3.92, 3.118), often in exquisite detail. More than two dozen Plains rock art horses at more than a dozen sites from Writing-on-Stone through Montana, Wyoming, and South Dakota and into central Kansas have their tails tied up in a variety of ways. Tied-up tails are currently recorded in rock art in five primary forms. Most common shows a tail wrapped with something that leaves a fluff of short hairs at the end (Figure 3.121k–m). These are different than those termed “pinnate” tails (e.g., Figures 3.88e, 3.91a, 3.115), which is simply one style of showing an unmodified horse’s tail. Instead, the ones we can reasonably infer are wrapped show a single line extending from the rump to a fluff of multiple lines at the end. One at the Joliet site (Figure 3.121k) has either two circular conchos attached to the wrapped area or shows the conventionalized way otter-skin wrapping is shown (see this chapter, “Otter-Skin Wrapping on Weapon Shaft”). We favor the conchos interpretation given its similarity to a Crow ledger drawing showing circular attachments to a horse’s tail (Figure 3.104). Almost as common are bobbed tails, wrapped with no fluff or cut short (Figure 3.121d–g). One of these shows two short projections, suggesting the tail was folded back on itself with the doubled portion wrapped to leave two short “appendages,” but this might instead represent a wrapped-up tail with a feather tied in it as shown in other images. Tying three or four feathers spaced out down the tail was popular among Crow warrior-artists. Examples recorded at Joliet, Eagle Creek, and site 48HO9 (Figure 3.121a–c) show both realistically shaped feathers and distinctive triangular-shaped plumes. Other tails—some of which are bobbed—are decorated with a single feather (Figure 3.121d). No rock art example yet recorded shows a full feather fan tied in the tail, as occurs in some ledger drawings (Figure 1.8). Using streamers of cloth or some other material is illustrated at Wyoming’s Register Cliff (48PL132) and site 14RU304 in Kansas (Figure 3.121n–o). Finally, tying the tail near the middle, either with a cloth or other wrap, or tying it in a knot is found at three sites (Figure 3.121h–j).

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Figure 3.121. Plains warriors decorated their horses’ tails in a variety of ways, referring to them as “tails tied-up for war.” Examples show feathers spaced out along the tail (a–c); bobbed tail folded back on itself and wrapped (d–g); knot tied or cloth wrapped near the middle of the tail (h–j); wrapped tail leaving a fluff of hair at the end (k–m); cloth streamers or other material tied to tail (n–o). Note Crow feathers motif used in (b) and (c) and conchos attached to tail in (k). Drawing by the authors.

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Split Ears Men of various American Indian tribes split or notched their horses’ ears “to mark an animal possessing the special qualities required of a warhorse or a buffalo runner” (Lanford 2003:184). Such qualities included speed, stamina, aggressiveness, intelligence, and fearlessness. Thus, in Biographic compositions, horses with split ears can confidently be identified as special animals used in warfare, for hunting buffalo, and for racing (Keyser 1987:54; McLaughlin 2013:72; Petersen 1971:293).10 Often the same animal participated in all three activities. Thus, the split ears convention in rock art connotes a man’s own favorite horse when it is being ridden during the commission of some war honor, and an enemy’s prized horse being stolen when it is picketed in front of a tipi or its picket rope is being cut. When such a horse is simply shown with a rider, it could be a man’s own favorite mount or a prized enemy horse being ridden home. Split ears are illustrated in two different ways in rock art. The simplest is found on Mature-style horses, where the ears are typically shown as short straight lines. For these, a split ear is illustrated as a Y-shape. These are quite common in Blackfoot Biographic art (Figures 2.1a, 3.89e, 3.105f) at Writing-onStone (Keyser 1977b), but they also are found at La Barge Bluffs in southwestern Wyoming, where Ledger Art-style animals are thought to be of Shoshone authorship (Keyser and Poetschat 2005:50–51). Many other examples are drawn in ledgers (Figure 3.116d) and on robes. For more realistic horses, split ears are sometimes shown with a notch in the top or a rectangular or triangular notch cut lower down along the outside of a more lifelike ear. These are often drawn in ledger art, but also on some robe paintings (Figures 3.92; 3.109b, d; 3.116a, c). In rock art, the only examples currently recorded are on a late Crow horse at Joliet and at the Manuel Lisa petroglyphs, where a Crow Mature-style horse has a variation of such notched ears (Figures 3.51, 3.106).

Horse Mask The horse mask is the rarest item of rock art horse tack, with only one example so far positively identified and a second tentatively recognized. The unambiguous example is at site 5LR293 in north-central Colorado (Figure 3.122), while another possible one is at the Hussie Miers site in south Texas. Horse masks, made of cloth and hide and decorated with feathers, buttons, beads, and quillwork, were made by several Plains and Columbia Plateau tribes (Cowdrey, Martin, and Martin 2006; Horse Capture and Her Many Horses 2006:13, 19–20). Surviving examples are usually quite colorful and often extremely elaborate. They were originally worn as part of a horse’s “war outfit,” which included any of several other tack items, but today they are exhibited

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Figure 3.122. A horse mask, made of cloth or hide and decorated with feathers, beads or quillwork, and other items is depicted on this Colorado horse. Drawing by the authors.

primarily at powwows and parades. Decorative elaborations are often highly symbolic and frequently represent the power of thunder and lightning or various underground monsters. Often these masks were designed to mimic the head of a bison or other animal (Cowdrey, Martin, and Martin 2006). Colorfully elaborate horse masks are drawn in both robe art and ledger drawings. Mandan warrior-artist Mato-tope illustrated his horse on three different robes wearing a headstall type mask of red cloth in combination with a feather horse bonnet (Figures 3.109b, 3.116a). Shown decked out for war, his horse also has split ears, wears a Spanish chain bit, and has a small bell amulet suspended on a ribbon at its throatlatch. Ledger drawings of horse masks are known from Comanche, Assiniboine, Blackfoot, Nez Perce, Hidatsa, and Lakota artists. Although drawn as a scratched petroglyph, the clear-cut horse mask at 5LR293 is nearly as elaborate as any drawn elsewhere in Biographic art, and it would undoubtedly have been quite colorful in real life. It is a full bisonhead mask with neck drape showing erect bison horns with the conventional tuft of hair between them, two eyes, a long triangular “flag,” and a longer ribbon-like “curlicue” projecting outward from the horse’s forehead. The eyehole outlines are emphasized so as to suggest eyeholes surrounded by some sort of applique—possibly colored cloth, or a cloth strip augmented with reflective material such as small metal bells, buttons, or bits of mirror, like those used on ethnographic examples (Cowdrey, Martin, and Martin 2006:9–19). Colored cloth and reflective elements symbolized the lightning that shot from the eyes of the Underworld Bison, with the resulting reflections creating metaphoric lightning flashes in real life. Located just behind and above the horse’s downward-pointing nose is a strap with a fringe of short lines projecting above, indicating the mask’s lower

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margin. The horse’s jawline, from the mask’s lower margin up past the throatlatch, is solidly scratched, indicating the open area where the sides of the mask would have been tied together to secure it over the animal’s head. The termination of the mask’s drape is indicated by a prominent line perpendicular across the animal’s neck. Along the crest of the neck, atop this drape, is a fringe of short lines that normally would indicate a roached mane, but instead, these apparently represent clipped feathers or bison hair included as part of the mask. In addition, the animal is outfitted with a simple Spanish chain bit, lightning reins, and a saddle with high cantle and pommel. The possible horse mask at Hussie Miers (Figure 3.40d) is worn by a horse in a warrior’s coup-count tally comprising five small painted vignette scenes. Although damaged by serious erosion of the painted surface, the horse in the fourth couplet of fighting men has what appears to be a mask over its upper face and forehead. There is also a prominent line across the neck just behind the ears, suggesting a neck drape. The ears on this animal are slightly longer than on other horses in this artist’s composition and may be connected by a crossbar. There is also indication of a forehead ornament, but the photographs we have do not show enough detail to verify this. The horse wears a simple Spanish chain bit with coscojos extending from the bottom bar. In-person recording may reveal more details and enable a positive identification.

Horse Bonnet One of the most striking items of horse tack in northern Plains rock art is the feather horse bonnet (Keyser 2012). Although illustrated in robe art only by Mato-tope, who drew such a bonnet on all three of his extant painted robes (Figures 3.109b, 3.116a), there are a dozen rock art examples so far identified at seven Montana sites. Additionally, there are three historical illustrations by George Catlin of one such bonnet worn by the horse of a noted Crow warrior visiting at a Hidatsa village on the upper Missouri in 1834 (Catlin 1973:192). Consistent with their scarcity in the Biographic art record, feather horse bonnets are one of the rarest horse tack items to be captured by Historic period photography. Despite extensive research, we have found only two photographs showing horses wearing feathered bonnets. In addition, we know of only one somewhat comparable ethnographic specimen—a “crown” of stripped owl feathers—integrated as part of a Crow “headstall horse mask” (Cowdrey, Martin, and Martin 2006:22–25). The dozen rock art horse bonnets are all illustrated in similar fashion, each represented as a tall, more-or-less triangular fan of lines (or a solidly abraded shape) crowning the top of the horse’s head (the poll). The length of the feathers in these renditions strongly suggests they represent eagle feathers, or long wing or tail feathers of similarly large-sized birds (Figures 3.5a, b; 3.20; 3.66; 3.123). Although such a bonnet would require a strap to fasten it in

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Figure 3.123. Feather horse bonnets are worn by horses at several rock art sites. Drawing by the authors.

its position at or just forward of the animal’s ears, no rock art example shows a strap, headstall, or horse mask equivalent to those illustrated by Mato-tope and Catlin. The Razor Creek (24YL578) horse bonnet is drawn using the “Crow feathers” convention that illustrates feathers as a straight line with a Y- or trident-shape top termination (Figure 3.124). Four bonnets show component feathers with either a bulbous tip or small dot positioned just above the upper end of each feather and two others have short lines trailing up and back from the top of each feather. These elaborations represent attachments akin to the brightly colored decorative “fluffs” made from horsehair or eagle down “breath feathers” seen on bonnets illustrated by Mato-tope and Catlin.

Figure 3.124. A warrior with an elaborately decorated bear-paw shield leads a branded horse whose feather bonnet is illustrated with the Crow feathers motif. Drawing by the authors.

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The known horse bonnets seem to be a plausibly specific ethnic marker in Plains Biographic rock art. Of all known examples in the wider Biographic art sphere, only two horse bonnets documented in photographs and Matotope’s drawings come from tribes other than Crow. In contrast, Catlin’s paintings and the single ethnographic specimen all appear to be Crow items (Catlin 1973:192; Cowdrey, Martin, and Martin 2006:22–23). Additionally, of the dozen northern Plains rock art examples, all but the two carved at Cheval Bonnet are located in Crow territory in Montana. Found in the area from the Musselshell to the Middle Yellowstone Rivers, all these horse bonnets are associated with a suite of attributes diagnostic of Crow rock art, including Crow style horses and humans, the Crow feathers convention, and other Crow horse tack. And, based on a broad spectrum of evidence, the Cheval Bonnet horses and associated imagery have been identified as a calling card drawn by Crow warriors on the war path to taunt their Blackfoot enemies (Keyser 2018a). In fact, the only rock art example so far plausibly identified as being drawn by anyone other than a Crow artist is the product of an Assiniboine artist, who used it as an ethnic marker for his Crow enemy (Loendorf 2013). A suite of attributes, including the co-occurrence of horse armor and large sized pedestrian shields, enables us to date the earliest horse bonnets to the initial decades of the Historic period, shortly after 1730, when horses were first introduced into central Montana. More recent examples were drawn by Mato-tope in 1834, and a Crow example was seen by Catlin that same year; however, there are no horse bonnets illustrated in later Crow rock art or robe art. And finally, the only ethnographic example is considerably different than those drawn in rock art. Taken together, this evidence suggests the Crow used horse bonnets from approximately 1730 into the early-1800s, but apparently abandoned them after about 1850. Other horse bonnets are illustrated in Ute horse-and-rider rock art in western Colorado and eastern Utah. Most are simply rendered charcoal pictographs (Figure 3.125), showing a fan of straight lines projecting upward from

Figure 3.125. Horse tack on these Ute charcoal drawings in Colorado includes both feather war bonnets and bridle bit decorations drawn as fans of straight lines. Drawing by the authors.

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the horse’s head in a manner like the simplest Crow examples. Often these are associated with horses wearing a simply illustrated type of bridle bit decoration that shows the same fan shape extending out in front of the horse’s nose, and occasionally a single horse will wear both accoutrements. Although we have no Ute horse bonnet with which to compare these illustrations, their basic shape suggests they likely were generally similar to, though possibly simpler than, the Crow type.

Brands and Painted Designs As they did with their faces and bodies, Plains warriors also painted their horses in a variety of ways for several purposes. Such horse painting takes five basic forms. Most common was for a horse to have a brand or painted symbol on its flank (or less frequently on its shoulder). Ewers (1955b:35) reports that Indians did not hot-iron brand their own horses, but they frequently captured horses from the US military and other non-Indian sources that had been branded in this way. Some Indians did, however, paint various brand-like symbols on their horses in the same positions used for hot-iron branding. Because it is often impossible to differentiate in rock art between a hot-iron brand and a similarly placed painted symbol, all these are termed brands in discussion of Biographic narratives. However, if the design is a recognizable object (knife, handprint) or a recognized honor mark, it is assumed to be painted. In Plains rock art, brands (Figure 3.121b–d, f, j) are drawn on more than a dozen horses from Writing-on-Stone to central Kansas and the Picketwire canyonlands of southeastern Colorado (Keyser 1977b:71, 77; McGlone, Leonard, and Barker 1994:56; Wells 1996:15–20). These branded horses date throughout the Historic period, from a probable three-letter, serif-embellished Spanish brand on one of the earliest known horse illustrations (Keyser, Greer, and Greer 2005:25) to others postdating AD 1880 (Lycett and Keyser 2019a). Several brands are drawn in the same form on multiple animals illustrated in rock art, robe art, and ledger drawings (Figure 3.126a–e). Of these, only the official “US” brand, which was rendered by Indian artists as a variety of different (but obviously related) forms to indicate animals captured from the US military (Figure 3.126e–j), can be confidently identified as to origin. Such US brands have been tentatively identified on one horse at Joliet and another at 14RU10 (Figure 3.15). The horse at Joliet also is branded with an H on its flank, which McCleary (2016:131) suggests is a troop brand of one of Custer’s companies, strengthening this assertion. Another suggested troop brand is on the left shoulder of a horse at Canyon Pintado in Colorado (Figure 3.91c). Although the brand has been suggested to be associated with General George Crook, there is no verification of this. Regardless, there does appear to be a boxy rectangular brand on the horse.

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Figure 3.126. Horse brands found as repeated examples in Biographic art. Though repeated in several instances, the meanings of several brands (a–c) are unknown. The paired lines (d) have two possible meanings. The official “US” brand was rendered in a variety of ways (e–j) by native artists. Drawing by the authors.

Other brands found multiple times across Biographic art media include back-to-back squared C-shapes ( ][ ), a somewhat similar, though curvilinear design with two variants ( C or IC), double lines ( = ), and a “flying” triangle with small wing-like projections at its top (Figure 3.126). The first of these ( ][ ) is strongly associated with Cheyenne artists, having been illustrated in two Cheyenne ledgers (Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997:79; Berlo 1996:120–21) and painted on an early (ca. 1835) “upper Missouri” bison robe that is plausibly of Cheyenne authorship (Maurer 1992:195). In rock art it has been identified on a late Ledger Art-style horse at 39HN49 in the North Cave Hills in the heart of late Historic period Cheyenne territory. Two other designs ( C or IC, and the flying triangle) are drawn on Crowstyle petroglyph horses at five sites in their home country. McCleary (2016:134) has suggested that the flying triangle might represent the “T hanging triangle” brand registered to a ranch in the north of Crow country, thus indicating animals stolen from this ranch. However, examples of both brands are also illustrated on a Blackfoot bison robe firmly dated prior to 1850, which is several decades before this ranch was established and the brand registered (Lycett and Keyser 2018:780, 782). Therefore, the origin and meaning of this brand remain in doubt, and we cannot even identify whether it represents a brand or a painted mark. Finally, the parallel lines ( = ) occur frequently on Cheyenne horses in ledger drawings (Cowdrey 1999:22). In his discussion of these, Cowdrey (1999:22– 23) identifies this mark as “connot[ing] speed and a wish for the mount’s sure-footedness.” This interpretation is reinforced by its appearance on the C

C

C

C

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winning horse in a race depicted in the Howling Wolf ledger (Petersen 1968:54– 55). Others, however, identify this mark as “battle honors or coup marks” (Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997:188–89). A petroglyph showing these is found at an unidentified site in the Picketwire region (McGlone, Leonard, and Barker 1994:56). This horse’s rider wears a long dropper of hair plates, supporting Cheyenne authorship of this petroglyph (Figure 3.53). Other letter-like designs, occurring as single rock art examples positioned where a brand should be on a horse (Figure 3.127), have been suggested to represent historically registered brands (Keyser 1987:56; McCleary 2016:134; Wells 1996:15). However, none of these have counterparts in other media, and none has yet been verified. Additionally, the example at Joliet has otherwise been plausibly interpreted as a DAG knife painted on the horse’s hip to indicate a weapon taken from an enemy. A second way for a man to paint his horse was to draw pictures on the animal representing his various war honors (Figure 0.15). In fact, one Lakota military society, the “White Horse Riders,” was composed of experienced warriors who rode white horses specifically to show off their war honors painted on them (Densmore 1918:330). Historical photographs show the most common of these to be a handprint stamped on a horse’s flank or shoulder to indicate various brave deeds (e.g., touching a live enemy, trampling an enemy) for different tribal groups. Other war-honor images show captured war trophies (knife, gun, tomahawk) painted on the animal’s flank, often in a tally composition, but entire Biographic narratives are also found. The only two rock art examples yet known of such war deed paintings are a sketchy petroglyph horse at 39HN217, which has a handprint scratched on its right flank (Figure 3.9), and a horse at Joliet with a large “stabber-type” DAG knife painted on its left flank (Figure 3.75). Another Joliet horse has an asterisk mark on its left hip that may be an X with a vertical line cutting entirely through it to indicate the striking of second coup. Typically, such an exploit mark has short vertical dashes at the top and bottom between the arms of the X, but this more resembles that mark than any brand so far identified. Likewise, a horse at DgOv-63 appears to be a stolen animal with an X on its left hip (Figure 3.127). Since it is in a horse-stealing

Figure 3.127. Branded horses in one Alberta scene. The X on one horse may be a painted exploit mark, rather than a brand. Drawing by James D. Keyser.

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scene, possibly it is a Crow horse with an X painted for first coup that was stolen by a Blackfoot raider. Cheyenne, Lakota, Crow, and Arapaho ledger drawings indicate their most common form of horse painting was long zigzag “lightning” streaks down the animal’s front and/or rear legs. Extending from high on the shoulder or hip often as far down as the animal’s knee or hock, these zigzag lines symbolized lightning and imparted metaphoric speed and power to a man’s horse. In combination with other attributes, such as bison horns and eagle talons, such lightning lines indicated the mythical “Thunder Horse.” Although common in ledger drawings, only two Plains rock art examples are known. At Joliet one exceptionally well-decked-out horse has both a brand on its left hip and a lightning line painted down his front leg (Figure 3.106a). At site 24BH658, near the Custer battlefield, the famous Lakota chief Crazy Horse drew the horse he saw in his vision. Decorated with lightning streaks down both legs (Figure 3.24), this horse is posed beneath a rattlesnake, whose sinuous zigzag shape also metaphorically symbolizes lightning (Keyser and Burgan 2015). One specialized horse war paint motif is found among the Blackfoot and Hidatsa, who painted their warhorse in one of two ways if it had trampled an enemy underfoot. Such level of detail is probably too small to be drawn on rock art horses, but we discuss this particular horse war paint in Chapter 4 (see “Conventions,” “Trampling or Riding Down an Enemy”). The final horse war paint put a tear streak below each eye, just as a bear warrior painted his own face to mimic the convention of a grizzly bear’s eyes in Plains art (Figure 3.5a). Such tear streaks occur occasionally on rock art bear warriors (Figures 3.48, 3.69), and Mato-tope, whose name translates as Four Bears, painted them in blood-red on his horse in addition to outfitting it with a bear-skin saddle blanket (Figure 3.92). The one known example of rock art tear-streak horse face paint is a Crow horse at the Musselshell site. This animal has “keyhole” eyes showing triangular tear streaks pendent from two round eyes drawn on the same side of the head. The keyhole eye convention is an ethnic marker for Crow art (Keyser 2005). While neither a brand nor painted mark, some horses are shown covered with a variety of straight or curved lines creating curvilinear or rectilinear areas on the horse’s body. Although these are sometimes mistaken for applied designs, what they actually represent—in an often very stylized way—is the partitioning of pigmented and unpigmented patches of hair on a piebald or skewbald horse (Figure 3.128). A similar representation is done for cattle in some biographic scenes. Such coat patterning was worthy of note for Plains Indian artists because among large Plains animals only horses, and later cattle, routinely exhibit such patchy coloration. Indicating piebald markings like this is more common on early painted robes, and it sometimes has the different segments filled in with color, but it does occur on rock art animals throughout the Plains.

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Figure 3.128. Stylized body markings indicate differing pigmented patches of hair on piebald or skewbald horses. Blackfoot robe ca. 1885 (a–b), petroglyphs (c–d). Drawing by the authors, (a, b) adapted from Merriam bison robe, Canadian Museum of History, Hull, Quebec (cat. No. V-B-5360).

Collar and Harness Draft horses and oxen were not commonly encountered by Plains Indian artists until late Historic times, so Biographic art illustrates few draft animal harness parts. The major exception is late ledger art in which Lakota and Cheyenne warriors fought with and count coup on teamsters driving wagons. In those drawings, draft horses and their many different harness assemblages were routinely illustrated (Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997:207; Bates, Kahn, and Lanford 2003:262). Harnesses, traces, collars, and related equipment are illustrated at five sites from Writing-on-Stone to northern Mexico. These are DgOv-2, 48PA3478, 39FA58, 41GR51, and La Tinaja de Acebuches in Coahuila. Images at these sites include lines across the animal’s neck to represent the collar; lines on the body for the breeching strap, girth, crupper; or traces stretching from the wagon tongue assembly to the draft animal. The most clearly illustrated and readily identifiable rock art draft animal harness assembly is drawn at 48PA3478 in the northern Bighorn Basin (Bies 2018:23). There, a petroglyph horse associated with a circa-1813 keelboat wears a decorated bridle bit and what appears to be a combination of a full collar with a breast-collar strap and neck strap forming a rear-facing V-shape terminating in a triangular tug attachment for the traces, which are not illustrated (Figure 3.129). The animal is not pulling

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Figure 3.129. A horse faces a large keelboat in this Wyoming scene. It wears a decorated bridle bit and a detailed draft harness featuring a breast-collar and neck strap terminating in a triangular tug attachment, with reins laying over its back. Image courtesy of Mike Bies.

the keelboat, since he faces toward it, and instead appears to be shown at a fort (indicated by vertical lines representing a pole stockade) where he is being either hitched or unhitched. Reins and other harness elements are bunched and laying over his back. The scene at DgOv-2 is a hanging scene in which a horse pulls a wagon from a gallows (on which a hanged man is suspended) toward a group of buildings (Figure 3.78). The wagon has one driver standing on the singletree assembly while a second man on the ground drives the horse by long-lining it from the side. Lines from the horse include reins going down and back from the animal’s nose to the long-lining driver and others extending back along the horse’s body that represent the wagon shaft and traces. Harness components at the other three sites are mostly reins and traces, but there may also be a wagon tongue connecting the draft animal to the large wagons at Acebuches and 41GR51 (Boyd 1990:128). There also appears to be a second example of a horse collar on the horse and wagon at 41GR51 (Riggs 1965:12) and a collar, saddle and belly band, and loin strap on the horse at Acebuches.

Weapons and Other Material Culture Objects To provide a Biographic narrative with its storyline, the artist must illustrate a variety of material culture objects. We have already seen the emphasis on headdresses, clothing and other accessories, and horse tack—all of which are key to many sites. But equally important are weapons, structures, and vehicles, for these must be illustrated to set the scene in which these narratives occur. Weapons and related objects are needed to show the action—either being used directly or taken from enemies—or provide a tally of war trophies. But

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they also provide much of the backstory. A rider wearing a long sash, a pedestrian holding a quirt, or a warrior clutching a pipe have deep meaning that is not readily apparent unless one understands what these objects signify. As Petersen (1971:169) noted many years ago, “the whole [of these drawings] is greater than the sum of its parts.” Thus, more than forty different weapons and related objects (such as medicine bundles, pipes, and scalps) are shown in Plains Biographic art. These weapons range from native-made bows, arrows, lances, war clubs, and coupsticks to Spanish polearms, European trade guns, and metal knives and axes that revolutionized Plains warfare.

Bows and Arrows The weapon most identified with Plains Indians is the bow and arrow, and its use is documented in rock art from the Late Prehistoric period throughout the Historic period. In all their guises, bows and arrows are one of the most common Biographic rock art weapons, occurring at dozens of sites scattered across the entire region from Canada to Mexico. Chronologically, even though the gun had replaced bows and arrows as the primary weapon of war after the mid-1800s, many of the latest ledger drawings show warriors using bows and arrows, and well-dated rock art sites such as Castle Butte, Joliet, and 24GV191 all show this weapon in use into the 1880s. In rock art bows and arrows can be illustrated together or separately. Often a combatant will have an arrow nocked and ready to fire (Figures 2.1, 3.130) or

Figure 3.130. Combat scenes at Verdigris Coulee. Arrows are shown nocked and ready to fire (b–d) and flying through the air to hit the target (c). A capture hand takes a bow from a warrior (d), and a vertically oriented gun indicates the capture of the weapon (c). A rake-like scalp floats by the mounted warrior (b). Drawing by the authors.

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the arrow will be shown having just left the bow flying toward its target (Figure 1.18). Arrows flying across one scene at DgOw-32 (Figure 3.130c) are the only example where they are like bullets streaming from a gun, but another scene shows twenty-two arrows as a fusillade of fire surrounding a shield bearer in a coup-count tally. Other warriors carry a bow in one hand accompanied by a cluster of vertically oriented arrows in the same hand just in front of and approximately parallel to the bow stave. This characteristic pose denotes a man fully armed and ready for battle (see Chapter 4, “Arrows Held Vertically in Front of Bow”). Bows are also shown as floating coup-strike weapons at sites from Writingon-Stone to Verbena (41GR52) in the Texas Panhandle (Figures 0.7, 3.131), but occasionally they are drawn simply as freestanding weapons. One scene at DgOw-32 shows a capture hand taking a bow from a warrior (Figure 3.130d), and tallies of captured weapons at Nordstrom-Bowen in Montana and Mujares Creek in the Texas Panhandle each include a bow (Figures 3.2, 3.132). Though

Figure 3.131. A Texas battle scene shows opposing forces indicated by arrayed guns, spears, and a floating coup-strike bow. Movement through the scene is shown by participants’ hoofprints and footprints. Drawing by the authors, adapted from Parsons 1987. Figure 3.132. This tally of captured weapons includes spears, bow spears, a bow, a spontoon tomahawk, and a long gun. Notched tang metal points are shown on several weapons, and ferrules are clearly depicted on the gun. Decorative tabs are shown on multiple weapons. Drawing by the authors, adapted from Parsons 1987.

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generally depicted as a single solid line, the thin bow string is sometimes indicated by a dashed line. In Ceremonial and the earliest Biographic art, bows are invariably long single-curve weapons, and although these continue into the Historic period, later scenes more commonly show double-curve bows. In fact, double-curve bows are a reliable indicator of the Historic period. Arrows often have fletching and sometimes a Y-shaped nock in addition to a triangular or V-shaped point (Figures 1.18, 1.22). In some instances the point is clearly metal, as indicated by the cross piece on the shaft just behind it. Arrows are shown piercing humans, horses, and sometimes other animals in hunting scenes, and in Missionary Shelter (41VV205) one is shot through an anthropomorphized church (Turpin and Eling 2011:279). They are also used to count coup at Bear Gulch and shown as captured weapons taken together with a bow floating away from the vanquished foe at Ellison’s Rock. Arrows are also sometimes shown as freestanding isolates.

Quiver Given the prevalence of bows and arrows, it is somewhat surprising that quivers are so uncommonly portrayed. For instance, although there are bows or arrows at twenty sites at Writing-on-Stone, only two quivers have been identified, while at Bear Gulch and Atherton Canyon only two quivers are recorded despite more than three hundred bows and arrows. Conversely, of the few quivers illustrated, single examples are shown being taken from an enemy in coup-count tallies at Ellison’s Rock and 48SW82 (Figure V2, see also “Reading the Narratives,” below). Quivers are generally shown as tapering rectangularto triangular-shaped cases, sometimes filled with arrows shown in an X-ray style. When used by a warrior, they are usually worn draped across the torso or held out with the bow, similar to a handful of arrows ready for combat.

Spears and Lances Spears or lances were a common weapon in Plains Indian warfare and are pictured in all Biographic media. Rock art examples range from those wrapped with ermine skins or otherwise elaborately decorated with feathers, human scalps, shaped flags, streamers, and beaded tabs (Figure 3.133) to much simpler weapons showing just a point. Lance points are often depicted as a large metal blade, identified as notched-tang or quillon-barbed points based on specifics of their form (see this chapter, “Metal Projectile Point”). The simplest lance-like weapons are drawn as a relatively long straight line with no point, and we infer their identification depending on how they are portrayed in use in combat scenes. Some of these simple-line weapons, however, might instead represent coupsticks. Plains Indians decorated their war lances in countless ways, using everything from bear intestines and ermine skins to human scalps and bird feathers.

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Figure 3.133. Spears show a variety of forms from simple to elaborately decorated. The banner lance (n) has a cloth strip attached to the underside of its shaft with feathers (drawn as the Crow-feathers convention) sewn on. A variety of flags, fluffs, feathers, scalps, and wrapped shafts are illustrated. Drawing by the authors.

Some were hung with manufactured flags and banners. Most often the decoration symbolized the owner’s spirit power or showed off his warrior ethos. Some uniquely shaped or decorated lances were military society “badges” of office, and in some Biographic narratives such lances are drawn carefully enough that their decorative scheme specifically identifies them, but there has been little effort to make such identifications in rock art. One common way to illustrate a decorated lance in rock art is to show the shaft with a series of short lines extending perpendicularly or obliquely out from it (Figure 3.4a, c). These represent feathers, which were routinely attached to such weapon shafts. Tabs are typically shown as triangular attachments or fans of lines along the shaft’s proximal third or even at its end, while weapon flags are drawn in a variety of shapes and sizes at the distal end of the weapon (Figure 3.134), usually close behind the point (Fossati, Keyser, and Kaiser 2010; Keyser, Kaiser, Poetschat, and Taylor 2012:126–29). Most flags apparently signified meanings we no longer understand, but one circular type is recognized as a clipped crow-feather whorl attached as protective medicine (Jordan 2015:94–97). Lances are among the most widespread Biographic rock art weapons, with elaborately decorated examples found at dozens of sites from Writing-

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Figure 3.134. Weapon flags decorate the shafts of various weapons, often near the point. They occur in several standard shapes. Note quillon-barbed metal points on (a), (e), and (g). Drawing by the authors.

on-Stone to sites in northern Mexico. At Hussie Miers one distinctive lance, decorated with crow-feather whorls and streamers and tipped with an exaggeratedly long, narrow, metal point probably made from a sword blade (Figure 3.40), floats over five separate combat scenes to identify the specific warriorartist of this panel (Jordan 2015; Turpin 1989a). Although this appears to have been the protagonist’s weapon used for killing or counting coup, it may also have served somewhat the same function as a name glyph to identify this man. Scalps decorate long lances used by a shield bearer riding an armored horse at 24GV191 in Montana and on a Crow horseman’s floating weapon counting coup on an enemy warrior at the No Water site (Figures 3.18, 3.87d). Lances are also shown being captured in hand-to-hand combat (Figures 0.8d, 3.135), as weapons held by shield-bearing warriors, as weapons arrayed in war trophy tallies, and as freestanding weapons. Many of these are the most elaborately decorated rock art examples (Figures 3.132; 3.133f, i).

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Figure 3.135. This early fight scene shows opposing forces of shield bearers and warriors without shields. The capture of a lance with an oval flag in hand-to-hand combat is shown at right. Drawing by the authors.

The Banner Lance One distinctive type of lance identified in two rock art scenes almost certainly served as a badge of office for the artists who drew them. These are banner-lances, made with a long narrow strip of cloth (sometimes multiple panels sewn end to end) attached so it runs along the spear shaft. The cloth strip served as a base on which eagle feathers were sewn. Banner lances were used as officers’ emblems in various military societies for several Plains tribes (Murie 1914:562, 578; White Bull 1968:42, Plates 8–11; Wissler 1912b:26, 68; 1913:392–94) and are often illustrated without an obvious point. Two banner-lances are drawn in northern Plains rock art (Figure 3.136; see also Chapter 5, “Reading the Narratives”). One is a floating weapon counting coup on an enemy in a war honor tally at site 48SW82 in far southwestern Wyoming. A shield-bearing warrior at 48FR2508 uses the other to kill or count coup on an enemy.

Figure 3.136. A warrior with a rectangular wood-slat shield counts coup on an enemy with his banner lance. Drawing by the authors.

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Polearms Although not common, Plains Indians had limited access to European (especially Spanish) polearms, and they adopted some of these in whole or in part into their warfare complex. Polearms include long, socketed Spanish lances and partizan blades (Stone 1961:483), typical of those used on pike polearms from late Medieval times through the 1600s (Figure 3.137). Figure 3.137. Partizan blades attached to pikes wielded by European foot soldiers were used to block an enemy’s slashing blow and hook an opponent’s weapon. Primarily used by the Spanish, they were captured by and traded to Plains Indians. Drawing by the authors.

Spanish Socketed Lance Long Spanish hardwood lances, assembled in sections and possibly weighted for balance when used primarily as thrusting weapons in Spanish warfare, were obtained by Southern Plains Indians as early as the late 1500s. They were in common use by the late 1600s through the mid-1800s on the Southern Plains. Such weapons were also known as “socketed” lances because the killing point was attached to a short foreshaft that fit neatly into a socket on the main shaft; and thus, replacement points could be carried and quickly “reloaded” when the original broke or detached from the spear. Spanish lances were greatly outsized, often reaching over three meters (nine feet) in length. Although used by several different Plains tribes, Spanish lances were especially popular among the Comanche, who were well-positioned to obtain them in trade directly from the Spanish or through other Indian middlemen along the Spanish frontier. Spanish lances are drawn at three northwestern Plains rock art sites. A crudely drawn example is shown in a combat scene involving three warriors at Atherton Canyon (Figure 3.45), but petroglyphs at Wyoming’s Tolar site (48SW13775) and Castle Park in Utah’s Dinosaur National Monument show much more detailed weapons (Figure 3.138). The Tolar example shows a mounted warrior carrying one complete lance and a replacement foreshaft (Loendorf and Olson 2003). These specimens are nearly identical to one illustrated in a mid-1850s ledger drawing by the Comanche warrior-artist Yellow Wolf (Figure 3.139). Surprisingly, such Spanish lances have yet to be identified in Southern or Central Plains rock art, but many sites in those regions are not yet investigated in detail.

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Figure 3.138. Spanish socketed lances. (a) shows a mounted warrior with a socketed lance and a replacement foreshaft. The lance has a large triangular tab hanging near the shaft’s proximal end, which also shows a smaller fluff at its terminus. (b) shows a simpler socketed lance used by the lower horseman. Drawing by the authors.

Figure 3.139. Part of a ledger drawing by the Comanche warrior Yellow Wolf shows him using a Spanish socketed lance in combat. Drawing by the authors, adapted from the Yellow Wolf ledger drawing, Rochester Museum & Science Center, Rochester, New York (cat. No. 2890B).

Partizan Blades Large points illustrated on the lances of two shield-bearing warriors at Bear Gulch and two others at the Watson Petroglyphs (35ML1019) in far southeastern Oregon are drawn as an outsized, triangular blade with obvious “wings” projecting out from each side near the base (Keyser, Kaiser, Poetschat, and Taylor 2012:122; Loubser 2012:54–55). These points (Figure 3.140) are so care-

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Figure 3.140. Indian use of metal partizan blades at the Watson Petroglyphs, Oregon (a, b), and Bear Gulch, Montana (c). Feather tabs shown on spontoon tomahawk (c) and spear (d) at Watson. Drawing by the authors, (a–d) adapted from Loubser 2012.

fully drawn that they certainly represent something different from the simpler, quillon-barbed or DAG-type metal points (e.g., Figure 3.37) so frequently illustrated in Biographic art. These are partizan blades (cf. Figure 3.137), which were commonly used in “Pike and Shot” warfare that characterized European battles of the 1500s and 1600s, and they were brought to North America and used by both the Spanish in the American Southwest and the English along the Eastern Seaboard. Along with contemporaneous Spanish chain mail and sheet metal armor, which is known among Plains Indians (Gelo and Jones 2009; Wedel 1975), these elaborate partizan lance heads could easily have been traded north from the Spanish Southwest or west from Virginia to reach the northern Plains and the Snake River plain by the late 1600s to early 1700s.

Atlatl The atlatl, or spear thrower, was used to propel a short spear or dart with more force than can be generated using just your arm. The weapon has been used in North America for thousands of years, and archaeological specimens are found in Archaic-age deposits more than five thousand years old in western North America. However, Inuit hunters still used atlatls in Historic times.

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Figure 3.141. Shield bearer shown using an atlatl with an oval weight on its proximal end and two short spurs on the other. Two additional darts, with fletching and Y-shaped nocks, are held out before him, ready to re-arm and fire again. His quarry is partly obscured by a mineral wash. Drawing by the authors.

Atlatls were apparently in common use during the Archaic period on the Plains but rapidly fell out of favor after the bow and arrow were introduced about 1,500 years ago. However, some men may have continued using the weapon into the Late Prehistoric period. There is one pictograph of an atlatl in use by a Plains shield-bearing warrior at 24JT86 in the Little Belt Mountain foothills of central Montana. The figure is shooting an enemy who is largely obscured by a mineral wash (Figure 3.141). The relatively long atlatl has a large oval weight on its proximal end and two short spurs at the distal end. The warrior thrusts it outward as if he had just launched a dart, and he carries two additional darts in his outstretched hand. This is a typical pose of a man ready to re-arm and fire again, which is usually seen with Biographic art bowmen. Both darts have fletching and a Y-shaped nock similar to other illustrated arrows. A second possible atlatl and dart are held by a dancer drawn at No Bear (Figure 3.85).

Firearms After humans and horses, several different types of guns are the most common items depicted in Biographic art. Firearms occur in four (and possibly five) distinctively recognizable forms at more than sixty sites from central Alberta throughout at least seven Plains states to the Mexican state of Coahuila. Additionally, guns are occasionally illustrated in Biographic compositions in Idaho, Oregon, Utah, and New Mexico. Firearms occur in Biographic art in the form of pistols, flintlock long guns, probable caplock guns, repeating rifles, and a lone double-barreled example (probably a shotgun).

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Pistol Two types of pistols are identified primarily by their small-sized handgrip and short barrel. Currently, revolver pistols have been identified only when drawn as components of late Biographic style scenes dating to the last half of the 1800s at the Joliet site, 39HN49, and at La Barge Bluffs (Figures 3.15, 3.34d). Given their late date and lack of flintlock firing mechanism and ramrod, they are identified as revolvers. Two flintlock pistols have been identified. One petroglyph at Canyon Pintado in northwestern Colorado (Figure 3.142a) is identified by its characteristic rounded-end hand grip, a flintlock firing mechanism, and a ramrod slung under the barrel. The pistol floats just out of the hand of a small shield-bearing warrior. A second example is painted at El Caido (Figure 3.142b). This gun has the characteristic curved hand grip of a flintlock pistol, a flintlock firing mechanism, and small strips of cloth strung through its ferrules. Although the barrel seems longer than is typical, some flintlock pistols had extended barrels to improve accuracy. The care with which the El Caido artists drew other material

Figure 3.142. Flintlock pistols are recognized by their curved, rounded-end hand grip. Lock mechanism, trigger and trigger guard, and ramrod beneath the barrel are shown on this shield-bearing figure’s pistol (a). In (b) the front rider wearing a cape and holding a shield with a long, feathered drape hanging down both sides rescues a comrade wearing a horned headdress and a cape. Small cloth strips are strung through the pistol’s ferrules as part of this scene. Drawing by the authors.

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culture items supports the identification of this as a pistol based on the hand grip morphology. Given the long history of Spanish interest in exploring Colorado’s western slope, and the Dominguez-Escalante expedition’s entry into this area in 1776, it is plausible that early flintlock pistols would have gotten into the Indian trade in that area. The El Caido pistol may date significantly later than the Canyon Pintado example; but across the Plains, Indians still used flintlock firearms until quite late in the Historic period.

Flintlock Long Gun Identifiable flintlock long guns show a distinctive cock and frizzen and usually a trigger guard. Occasionally flintlocks will also be illustrated with either or both the ramrod and the metal ferrules to hold it. The most elaborate example yet recorded (Figure 1.18) is at Castle Butte in Montana,11 which clearly shows the hammer with the actual flintlock mechanism complete with cock screw. Ferrules are shown on flintlock guns either as short, often paired, pendent lines hanging below the barrel (as on this Castle Butte example) or as small, rectangular, box-like attachments with two compartments that angle slightly forward toward the gun’s muzzle, as on the elaborate flintlock at the Benjamin Hill site in Montana (Figure 3.143).12 This drawing also shows the ramrod run through the ferrules. One flintlock held by a dancer at El Caido has strips of cloth, illustrated with red pigment, strung through the ferrules (Figure 3.60E/10).

Figure 3.143. These combat scenes show classic Crow motifs and conventions dating to the 1860s: shorthand stacked array of simple lines with only one gun fully illustrated (note rectangular ferrules, ramrod, and trajectory of the bullet to the defeated enemy) (a); two warriors wrestle in hand-to-hand combat as the victor takes a weapon with his outsized capture hand—the weapon is shown above as a sword, turned to strike his disarmed foe (b). Drawing by the authors.

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On one flintlock illustrated at No Water, the Y-shaped frizzen is a nearly photographic rendering of the actual frizzen form, which snaps forward to allow the spark to fall into the powder pan below it (Figures 3.144, 3.145).

Escopeta One particular type of flintlock musket commonly used by Spanish “Soldados de Cuera” serving on the northern frontier of “New Spain” in the American Southwest was the escopeta. These were smoothbore, muzzle-loading muskets whose key defining features are the distinctively shaped Catalan-style stock and the miquelet lock used to hold the flint. Miquelet locks have a characteristically large circular ring atop the jaw screw. At least one escopeta (Figure 3.145e) is drawn at a site in New Mexico’s Rio Grande Gorge. Caplock Gun Some long guns show notably shorter and simpler hammer and nipple (a cone that holds the small percussion cap), strongly suggesting they represent caplock firearms. Unfortunately, we know of no infallible means to distinguish a caplock gun from a poorly rendered flintlock, so such identifications remain simply a best guess. Turpin (2010:177) identifies a long gun at the El Caido site in Coahuila, Mexico, as a Springfield model 1863 trapdoor caplock rifle (Figure 3.60B/10), but we cannot identify any distinguishing characteristics that led her to this identification. Repeating Rifle Repeating rifles, illustrated with bulkier stocks and barrels and simpler hammer and trigger mechanisms, are positively identified only at Joliet. There, one

Figure 3.144. A horseman wearing an elaborate headdress faces a fusillade of fire from the enemy force who are armed with guns and a bow spear. Dashed lines leading to the bullet indicate the projectile’s path. The horse is elaborately tacked out with lightning rein, headstall, Spanish chain bit, wrapped tail, and forehead ornament. Drawing by the authors.

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Figure 3.145. Long guns and their firing mechanisms. Flintlocks are shown with hammer and frizzen (a–d, i), and sometimes depict the jaw screw and ferrules beneath the barrel (d); some examples are too simply depicted to differentiate between flintlock and caplock guns (f, h). Escopetas feature miquelet locks, identified by the large circular ring on the jaw screw (c); a double-barreled long gun has paired flintlock hammers (j); repeating rifles have bulkier stocks and barrels, with simpler hammer and trigger mechanisms (g). Drawing by the authors.

warrior fires a repeating rifle at an enemy and a Hot Dancer brandishes one in a display of warriors’ prowess (Figures 1.11, 3.34b). A tally of two captured guns at DgOw-9 are likely to represent repeating rifles (Figure 3.145g), and almost certainly some guns illustrated in Late Biographic style compositions at La Barge Bluffs, Names Hill, and Verdigris Coulee also represent such rifles. The Wyoming images date to the period between approximately 1860 and 1880, when many Plains warriors had repeating rifles. These guns lack the cock and frizzen mechanism typical of flintlocks, but they are too simply depicted to be identified with certainty.

Double-Barreled Long Gun Double-barreled long guns were not common among the Plains Indians, but some—including shotguns—are noted in ethnohistoric records and found as archaeological specimens (Scott et al. 1989:182). Such guns, used throughout the 1700s and 1800s, were often cheap Belgian examples sent to North America specifically for the Indian trade. They were also occasionally found among Mountain Men (Rudy 2008) and thus could easily have passed into Indian hands. One, illustrated at Craig Sandrocks (Figure 3.145j), is identified by double flintlock hammers.

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Simplified Gun Despite the care taken to draw many guns illustrated in Biographic rock art scenes, dozens are simply illustrated as relatively straight lines with a small triangular buttstock or as a straight line with a slight downward angle representing the buttstock. Still others are nothing more than a straight line held at a warrior’s shoulder in a characteristic position of a rifleman. Occasionally these simpler weapons will have a muzzle blast portrayed or show a flying projectile to verify the identification as a firearm (Figures 3.4c, 3.7). Cannon The US military used cannons in its wars with various Plains groups during the nineteenth century. These large-caliber guns, usually shown with long barrels and outsized spoked wheels used to transport the heavy weapons, were often illustrated in ledger art, and even World War I examples were painted on the Blood Indian soldier, Mike Mountain Horse’s, calfskin warrior’s robe in the 1930s (L. Dempsey 2007:164–71). However, no rock art example of artillery is yet known. Ramrod When illustrated in Biographic art, a flintlock weapon’s ramrod is usually shown inserted in the ferrules and thus aligned just below the gun barrel (Figures 3.142a, 3.146). But occasionally Plains Indians pictured themselves counting coup on an enemy with their weapon’s ramrod or wiping stick (Figure 3.147). This is consistent with the idea of displaying one’s bravery by using a nonlethal weapon to count coup rather than standing off at a distance and killing an enemy with a gun or bow and arrow. When a ramrod/wiping stick can be identified in such a situation, it is because it shows the gun worm attached to one end. The barrel of a flintlock gun quickly fouled with the accumulation of solid residues produced by burning black powder. Likewise, incomplete combustion sometimes left an unspent charge in the gun’s barrel. In either case it was necessary to clear the barrel of this debris. To do this the gunman used a gun worm, which was a short, corkscrew-like device made from one or two twisted tines threaded onto the end of the wiping stick or ramrod (Figure Figure 3.146. Shield-bearing war2.3). A gun worm could be used alone or rior with a flintlock long gun shown combined with a fabric patch to clean the with ramrod beneath the barrel. barrel. In Biographic art, the gun worm is Ramrod flag is unique. Drawing illustrated as one or two wavy lines at the by James D. Keyser.

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Figure 3.147. Ramrods being used to count coup in ledger (a, b) and robe (c) drawings. Ramrods are identified by the gun worm shown as one or more wavy lines at the end of a straight rod. Writing in (a) is annotation in French by the collector Fr. PierreJean DeSmet. Photograph (a) by Keyser, original ledger drawing from the De Smetiana Collection, Missouri Province Archive, Jesuit Archives & Research Center, St. Louis, Missouri. Drawings (b, c) by the authors, adapted from His Fight ledger drawing in D. Smith 1943 and Lakota robe in Schoolcraft 1854.

end of a long straight rod. So far, ramrods with a gun worm being used to count coup in this manner are identified only in ledger drawings and on bison robes (Figure 3.147), but we suspect they occur in rock art and have been unrecognized so far because they differ only subtly from other lance-like weapons.

Shooting Cross Sticks A pair of crossed sticks held in one hand were used by some frontier shooters to create a cradle to brace the barrel of a long gun in various hunting scenes found in Cheyenne and Kiowa ledger art (e.g., Petersen 1971:30, 43, 217, 308; Viola 1998:34, 50). This type of crossed support allowed more accurate aiming over a long distance and was used by both Indian and Euro-American hunters. The sticks could have been used exclusively for this purpose, but the hunter may have paired his ramrod and bore-wiping stick to use as an expedient. It was not uncommon for an Indian hunter to have both a ramrod and wiper, as is documented in a painting by Bodmer (Thomas and Ronnefeldt 1976:157). Only a single example of shooting cross sticks has been identified in rock art, at La Vista Verde in New Mexico (Figure 3.148b). Likely composed by a

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Figure 3.148. A rectangular shot pouch with strap and powder horn indicated by a curved line across the bottom third of the pouch is shown as a captured war trophy (a). Freestanding shooting cross sticks brace the barrel of a hunter’s long gun (upper left) in a New Mexico scene (b). Drawing (a) by James D. Keyser; image (b) is courtesy of Severin Fowles, Barnard College.

Comanche artist, the image shows a bison hunting scene in which a hunter rests a rifle on a pair of sticks to aim at the animal. Unlike ledger art examples, the shooter in this image does not hold the sticks in one hand, but uses both hands to aim the rifle, with the supports being freestanding.

Powder Horn/Shot Pouch Given the number of flintlock firearms illustrated in Biographic art, powder horns obviously must have been almost equally common. Handmade from the horn of a domestic cow or bison, a powder horn served both as a container and dispenser of gun powder before the advent of self-contained metal cartridges. In robe and ledger art, powder horns are usually slung over a warrior’s shoulder on a long strap and are often illustrated in combination with a leather or cloth shot pouch, which was used to carry the supply of musket

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balls (Figures 0.16, 1.31, 2.1, 3.39). In such drawings the powder horn is portrayed as an elongated crescent with one flat end, and the shot pouch is typically colored red. There is one powder horn/shot pouch combination illustrated in rock art at DgOw-31 (Keyser and Klassen 2003:9), carved as a captured war trophy floating between a victorious horseman and the “falling-back” pedestrian gunman from whom he took it (Figure 3.148a). The sketchy powder horn is indicated only by a curved line drawn across the bottom third of the shot pouch—a roughly rectangular bag fringed along its bottom with a double carrying strap running from one upper corner to the other. Another shot pouch is worn bandolier style by a horse raider at La Barge Bluffs.

Knife and Knife Sheath Plains Indian men and women wore various tools of their trades on their person not only because each had a definite use in daily life, but also because such items were infused with symbolism announcing an individual’s skills and earned accomplishments and proclaiming their ability to fulfill particular social roles (Sundstrom 2002). Prime examples are knives and tomahawks worn by men, and knives, strike-a-light cases, and awl cases worn by women on their belts. Men’s knives, used to cut a picket rope to steal a prized horse or as the ultimate weapons of close-quarters warfare, were often imbued with supernatural power and status, and some—like the Bear-knife—required elaborate rituals for transfer from one man to another. As such powerful symbols, a man carried his knife in a fancy, decorated sheath attached to his belt and sometimes even wore one in an equally fancy sheath hung around his neck to indicate high rank (Taylor 2001:38–43). Tomahawks had similar symbolism; hence, various types are probably the most frequent prop used by warriors in historical photographs and painted portraits (Taylor 2001:22–35). A woman’s knife or awl was also a badge of honor announcing to everyone that she was an industrious worker and productive member of her cohort. To that end, awls and other items could be decorated with marks representing a woman’s tally of worked hides. Rock art tomahawks are quite common, but knives and knife sheaths are less so. Knives have been documented in use at several sites in Montana and Wyoming. Most of these are shown as short stabbing or piercing weapons, which probably are metal blades of various shapes, but three others are specialized knives. One of these is a large, “stabber-type” knife with a bulky handle piercing the body of a dead man lying supine in a group of combatants at Atherton Canyon (Figure 3.45). Another is a volute-handled knife with a distinctive split handle and roundels with attached streamers held by a horseman at La Barge Bluffs, and the third is a DAG stabber wielded by a Seedskadee style warrior killing an enemy at White Mountain (Figure 3.149).

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Figure 3.149. Knives are commonly shown in combat scenes. DAG stabber used to kill an enemy (a); volute-handled knife with split handle and roundels with streamers attached (b); triangular bladed knife (c); and freestanding knife with a decorative tab on the handle and its sheath adjacent (d). Drawing by the authors.

There are other knives not shown in combat. One man at La Barge Bluffs wears a choker-type necklace with a large knife sheath suspended straight down across his chest (Figure 3.67). This probably indicated his high status. Finally, a freestanding knife with a large triangular blade and a tab on the handle is carved beside its sheath at Bear Gulch (Figure 3.149d). Women’s knives are much rarer in rock art. The only example we know of is represented by a knife sheath worn on the belt of one woman in the adoption scene at La Barge Bluffs (Figure 3.33).

Club Several kinds of clubs were common weapons in the close-quarters warfare characteristic of pre-horse Plains warfare, but their use continued into the Historic period (Ewers 1955b:202). Many of these (Figures 3.62, 3.150) were wooden baseball-bat-shaped weapons (Geib 2016:55–57; Keyser, Kaiser, Poetschat, and Taylor 2012:115–16), but others had more triangular blades or a

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Figure 3.150.  Clubs, varying from triangular to baseball-batshaped, held by shield warriors. Note wolf hats (c, d) and feather bustles (d, e). Drawing by the authors.

large knob on the end of a long wooden handle. One highly stylized, Historic period type is the eponymously named gunstock warclub (Figure 3.151), but this has not yet been found in rock art. Clubs are common weapons for shield-bearing warriors, illustrated at more than thirty northern Plains sites. In contrast, clubs other than the pogamoggan are rarely illustrated in Historic period rock art combat scenes. The Pogamoggan is a specialized type of Historic period warclub made of a small, grooved, stone maul attached to a flexible wood or sinew handle by bending and fitting one end around the groove. Often

Figure 3.151. Gunstock warclubs, with one, two, or three inset metal blades, were named for their resemblance to the stock of a musket. These were used like spike maces. (a) is from a ledger drawing, (b) is an ethnographic specimen. Drawing by the authors.

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part or all of the stone club head is wrapped in rawhide, which sometimes extends completely down to also wrap the handle. Such flexible weapons could deal a deadly blow but also serve to disarm an enemy in a hand-to-hand fight. Pogamoggans are shown in combat at DgOw-29 and La Barge Bluffs (Figure 2.4).

Mace Differentiated from clubs by the one or two sharpened spikes set perpendicularly into the weapon’s business end, maces are typically close-quarter weapons used primarily in pre-horse warfare, although some are drawn in early scenes of horse-period conflict and an occasional example is preserved in early ethnographic collections (Figure 3.152). Maces occur as both single-spike and double-spike varieties; but so far, the gunstock warclub upgraded with a DAG “stabber” or knife blades inset into its working end has not yet been identified in rock art. Maces are illustrated at more than fifty sites, mostly used by shield-bearing warriors (Figure 3.152), but two are shown in early Historic period combat scenes at DgOv-2 and DgOw-32 and one is a floating weapon counting coup at Bear Gulch (Figures 0.10c, 3.115).

Figure 3.152. Maces were clubs with one or two sharpened spikes at the distal end. Used primarily in pre-horse warfare, they are most commonly associated with shield-bearing warriors (a–c), but they are also found in early ethnographic collections, such as the weapon in (d) with its single spike carved in the form of a bird’s head. Drawing by the authors; (d) is adapted from drawing by Bodmer in Thomas and Ronnefeldt 1976.

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Swords and Sabers Both sabers and broadswords (aka short swords) occur in Plains Biographic narratives. Swords were popular prestige weapons obtained in trade by Plains Indians from the early 1700s onward, with many entering the Indian trade as war surplus both before and after the Napoleonic wars and the US Civil War. Still others were captured from US and Mexican cavalrymen during the Indian Wars. In rock art, two basic types have been identified. Sabers show a long, slender, upcurved blade, and while some are unelaborated, a few show a circular or Dshaped knuckle guard, and others have straight or forward-swept quillons extending out on both sides of the blade. Broadswords have a straight blade that is significantly wider at its base, giving it a more distinctly elongate, triangular shape. Rock art examples emphasize the knuckle bow, and in three cases this is Figure 3.153. Two types of swords are found in rock art. A broadsword has a straight blade significombined with forward-swept cantly wider at its base (a–e). Sabers have a slenquillons, which end in spher- der, curved blade (f–l). Knuckle guards or quillons ical finials on one highly de- extending from both sides of the blade are shown tailed example. Two broad- on several examples. Feather tabs often hang swords are further decorated from the hilt (b, c), while streamers made from a split otter skin are sometimes illustrated, like the with long feathered tabs hung ledger drawing in (l). Drawing by the authors. from the handles. Currently more than a dozen swords, split among both types, are known from eleven sites scattered from southern Alberta to Coahuila (Figure 3.153). At these sites we have identified five straight-bladed broadswords and ten sabers. The longest sabers, especially those found on the northern Plains, seem likely to be US or Mexican cavalry sabers, which could have been obtained either in

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trade or captured from enemies. Otter-skin streamers that frequently adorn sabers illustrated in ledger drawings have been identified in rock art only at El Caido (Figure 3.60C/3). A Mexican origin seems almost certain for the sword pictured at Caballero Shelter in Texas (Figures 3.41, 3.153k). The extreme curve for this weapon’s blade coupled with the configuration of the knuckle bow and quillons is unlike US cavalry swords. Likewise, one early specimen, wielded by the rider of an armored horse who engages an armor-wearing pedestrian (Figures 3.63, 3.153i), has a distinctly curved blade that is relatively much shorter and wider than cavalry sabers. The weapon’s handguard consists of a pair of forward-swept quillons on each side of the blade, much different than a cavalry saber. Given the early date sometime between AD 1720 and 1750 for this image, coupled with its distinctive configuration, we suggest it represents a European trade saber. Broadswords illustrated at four sites in Crow country (one in a tally of captured weapons at Nordstrom-Bowen) and another at Writing-on-Stone are strikingly like one painted on a Crow war shirt (Figure 3.153a–e).

Tomahawks Metal tomahawks are among the most recognizable weapons depicted in Biographic rock art (Figure 3.154). Currently, more than thirty examples are identified, representing four distinctive types of tomahawks. In order of frequency, these are simple trade hatchets, spontoon tomahawks, Missouri war axes, and a pipe tomahawk (each described below). Examples of each kind are illustrated with a wrist strap drawn as a small circle at the proximal end of the handle. Tomahawks are shown in use to count coup, as captured weapons in tally compositions, as floating weapons striking enemies, and as the weapon of choice for a warrior decked out in all his finery. As metal weapons, such tomahawks ultimately originated in the Indian trade, and from the late 1600s onward these weapons made their way into the region through Indian middlemen before the establishment of the earliest fur-trading posts. By the mid-1700s they were being made by blacksmiths at Plains trading posts. Three Protohistoric period scenes document their early entry into the region. In these scenes, warriors and their horses wear leather armor, and some pedestrian warriors carry full-body shields. This evidence demonstrates that metal tomahawks were first used on the northern Plains between AD 1650 and 1750. But not all tomahawks were obtained through trade. They were also prized war trophies, as evidenced by their presence in many coup-count tallies of war booty. One rock art example shows two tomahawks drawn in such a tally, and it seems certain that some of those shown in use were originally taken from vanquished foes.

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Figure 3.154. Metal tomahawks are shown in four distinctive types: simple trade hatchets (a–e); spontoon tomahawks with diamond-shaped blades (f–h); Missouri war axes with distinctly broad, triangular blades (i–k); and pipe tomahawks with a pipe bowl opposite the blade (l). These weapons often feature a circular wrist strap, a furwrapped handle (c, e, f, l), and a scalp (i) or feather or beaded tab hanging from the handle (b–f, h, k). The pennant extending beyond the blade at the distal end (e, f, i) was another decorative attachment. Drawing by the authors.

Most trade hatchets show blades significantly longer than they are wide. In outline these range from nearly rectangular to triangular to long and trumpetshaped, but none show the profile of the Missouri war axe, whose broadly triangular blade is almost as wide as it is long. More than half of these trade hatchets are elaborated with one or more features, including a tab on the handle’s proximal end, a fur-wrapped handle, or a projecting pennant extending out past the blade at the handle’s distal end. A Bodmer painting of a Missouri war axe illustrates these pennants as horse or human hair and an ermine skin. One highly detailed hatchet (Figures 3.2, 3.154e) in a Crow coup-count tally of captured weapons at Nordstrom-Bowen shows all three elements. Spontoon tomahawks have a distinctively pointed, diamond-shaped blade, sometimes with additional decorative curved spikes curling back from its base (Figure 3.154g). The name derives from the espontoon, a polearm common in European warfare in the 1700s with a blade shaped somewhat like that of the spontoon tomahawk (Taylor 2001:27). Like simple hatchets, half of the spontoon tomahawks have some combination of a tab, a wrapped handle, or distal pennants; and a spontoon tomahawk paired with a hatchet in the Nordstrom-Bowen coup-count tally also shows all three elements (Figure

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3.154f). Spontoon tomahawks seem localized in Crow country and in the Rocky Mountain foothills between Denver and Laramie. Missouri war axes have a distinctive profile with a triangular blade almost as wide as it is long (Figure 3.154i–k). Though historic photographs often show a decorative cutout in the blade, this feature has not yet been identified in rock art. All five identified examples are drawn in Montana’s Crow country at sites in the drainages of the Yellowstone and Musselshell Rivers. Their concentration in that area may be due in part to their common use among upper Missouri River tribes, including the Hidatsa and Mandan who maintained close trading relations with the Crow. One of the most detailed rock art Missouri war axes shows a scalp suspended from its handle and a distal pennant (Figure 3.154i). This weapon is remarkably like one carried by the Hidatsa chief Addih-Hiddish (Figure 3.155), who posed at Fort Clark in what is now North Dakota in 1834 for a portrait by the Swiss artist Karl Bodmer (Goetzmann et al. 1984:315). There is a single pipe tomahawk (Figure 3.154l) portrayed with a pipe bowl attached at the poll, opposite the blade. Between the oval pipe bowl and the distinctly triangular blade is a roundel like that shown on one Missouri war axe (Figure 3.154k). This weapon’s handle is wrapped (probably with ermine pelts), and a wrist strap is drawn at its proximal end. We have no way of knowing whether the tomahawk handle was a functional pipe stem, but this seems likely since functional pipe tomahawks were widely used, and examples notably similar to this are shown in numerous historic photographs and occur in collections of historic weaponry (Taylor 2001:31–34). Interestingly, there is currently no Plains rock art example of a gunstock warclub tomahawk (Figure 3.151), although such weapons are illustrated in ledger drawings and commonly occur in other historic contexts such as photographs, painted portraits, and collections of historic weaponry (Taylor 2001:22–35).

Figure 3.155. Missouri war axe redrawn from a portrait of Hidatsa chief Addih-Hiddish by Karl Bodmer, with a scalp suspended from its handle and the decorative distal pennant. Drawing by the authors, adapted from a painting by Bodmer in Thomas and Ronnefeldt 1976.

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Coupsticks The coupstick, a weapon used not to kill or injure a foe but rather simply to touch him to count a coup as a war honor, is illustrated relatively frequently in Biographic art (e.g., Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997:219; Barbeau 1960:88–162; Berlo 1996:103, 218; Maurer 1992:189, 223, 253). Carrying such a “weapon” into battle was an expressly brave act, specifically because it was nonlethal. Four different types of coupsticks have been identified in rock art. The most common rock art coupstick is the crook-neck form, shown with the general shape of a shepherd’s crook (Figures 3.2, 3.6) and often decorated with feathers or streamers—and in one case a stylized bear-paw flag—spaced along the shaft. Crook-neck staffs were officers’ emblems in military societies among some tribes (Lowie 1913:158–60, 254–55). Eight crook-neck coupsticks are recorded at five sites scattered from central Montana to southern Colorado. The earliest are simple crook shapes, but later examples found in Wyoming and Colorado are more highly decorated (Figures 3.6, 3.156). Two crook-neck examples are floating weapons striking a warrior and one is a captured war trophy in a Crow coup-count tally. At two Wyoming sites, less than 130 km (80 miles) apart, lone women warriors each wield a decorated crookneck coupstick (Figure 3.6). Due to the rarity of both women warriors and coupsticks, it is tempting to speculate that the drawings represent the same person, though there is no direct evidence of this. Three other types of coupsticks include a short, straight stick with a feather at one or both ends, a plain straight stick, and a shaft fringed with multiple feathers but lacking a projectile point. Approximately a dozen of these are recognized in rock art scenes scattered across the Plains from southern Alberta to Texas. The seven short, feathered-stick examples cannot be mistaken for any weapon

Figure 3.156. A bowman leads a group streaming out to defend their tipi camp but is struck with a crook-shaped coupstick decorated with pendant feathers or streamers in this scene. Both footprints and hoofprints show the path of defenders leaving the village to engage the attackers represented by the single coup stick. The 1878 date is superimposed on the petroglyph. Drawing by James D. Keyser.

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other than a coupstick. Two are held by Crow Hot Dancers in a scene carved at Joliet (Figure 1.11) that is strikingly like ledger drawings of dancers from the late 1800s (Figure 2.2). Others are shown in battle at La Barge Bluffs (Figure 1.32). Undecorated coupsticks are identified as such only when they have no lance point and strike enemies without inflicting any wound (Figure 1.24b) or when they are held by a warrior who also holds a second detailed weapon (Figure 1.18), sometimes even a lance with an obvious point. At La Barge Bluffs one plain coupstick is identified because it is used by a warrior recounting his coup—the capture of a woman—that is illustrated elsewhere on the same panel as the actual chase scene, in which the warrior’s coupstick is a short staff feathered on both ends (Figure 1.32). Some of the longer, fully feathered shafts illustrated in a few rock art scenes are undoubtedly coupsticks, but others are equally likely to be lances.

Quirt Although the word quirt derives from the Castilian Spanish “cuarda” or cord (via the Mexican “cuarta” or whip), it is unclear when New World Spanish horsemen began using such whips. By the late 1700s, however, we know these horsemen were using the “romal,” a whip formed by a ring with two or three strips of attached leather connected to the end of their reins. By the early 1800s actual quirts are documented. These usually have a braided rawhide handle with a couple of lashes and a loop to either attach the whip to the reins or use as a wrist strap when the quirt was detached. Indians in the American Southwest almost certainly observed such quirts in use and adapted this piece of horse tack to their own equestrian tradition. The earliest Indian horsemen did not use the quirt, however, since there is no example of a rider using one on any of the more than three dozen horses we know were illustrated in the earliest styles across the region. While this absence may be partially explained by the prevalence of leather horse armor during this period (which would have rendered the quirt essentially ineffective), about half of these early horses are not armored, so quirts could have been used. Instead, across the Plains, quirts are uniformly employed only with Mature-style or Ledger Art-style horses, which have been dated between 1780 and 1880 (Figure 3.16) using a variety of seriation studies, stylistic criteria, and superimposition studies (Lycett and Keyser 2017, 2019a). This suggests the quirt was not part of the original horse “package” when the animals entered the Plains, but rather came into the area after horses had been fully integrated into Plains cultures. Regardless of whether the first Plains Indian quirts were Spanish items obtained in trade or raiding, or native-made copies of those seen in use, or even an independent invention, many Plains quirts were clearly native-made following designs specific to the region. Three different kinds of quirts are illustrated in Plains rock art: lightning quirts, triangular-handled quirts, and a simple line, which often bifurcates into

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two or three lashes at its working end (Figure 3.157). Lightning quirts, whose symbolism is discussed in detail elsewhere (see Chapter 4, “Lightning Symbolism”), occur as two variants. The more common are elongate, triangular handles with multiple lashes at the distal end depicted as zigzags symbolizing lightning as a metaphor for speed. The wrist strap is shown as an oval to circular element at the proximal end. The handle was probably made from an elk antler, as are numerous, similarly shaped examples in ethnographic collections, and the wrist strap is a simple loop cut from a hide. So far, three of these lightning quirts are known, all in Crow drawings dating from approximately 1830 to 1880 (Figure 3.157f, o, p). A second version of the lightning quirt is shown with a serrated, saw-edge blade (whose zigzag shape symbolizes lightning) and two lashes from its distal end. Such saw-edge quirts, made of wood, are known in ethnographic collections and were emblems of office in military societies of some tribes (Bad Heart Bull and Blish 1967:104–9; Wissler 1912b:26). They were popular as dance society regalia. Only a single rock art example is so far recorded, at 39FA79 (Figure 3.157s), south of the Black Hills, which shows a series of war honors from the Indian Wars period between 1850 and 1880. A more common rock art quirt type shows a distinctly triangular handle (often long and narrow) with a single lash extending from its wide end (Figure 3.157a, c, d, e, g, h). All examples have an oval or circular wrist strap. These are used by riders, drawn as floating weapons counting coup on enemies, and aligned in a tally of war honors at the Nordstrom-Bowen site where they rep-

Figure 3.157. Quirts are illustrated in three primary forms: a simple line, often bifurcated into two or three lashes; a triangular handle ending in one or two lashes from its wide end and with a circular wrist strap on the narrow end; and lightning quirts shown with zigzag lashes or a sawedged handle. Examples (m) and (n) are from robe and ledger drawings, respectively. Drawing by the authors.

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resent either captured weapons or horses given away to increase the artist’s prestige. The triangular, often quite elongate, handle was probably manufactured from a section of elk antler. The simplest quirts in rock art are drawn as lines extending from a rider’s hand to near his mount’s rump (Figure 3.157b, i–l, q–r). Usually these line-style quirts split into two or three lashes, and one even has a wrist strap indicated by the proximal circle. Several of the half-dozen known rock art examples are at sites at Writing-on-Stone, but others are drawn in ledger art. Given their simplicity, it seems likely that other rock art examples await identification. When a quirt is drawn in a Biographic narrative, it may connote many different things depending on its use and position in a scene. A discussion of these connotations is presented in Chapter 2, “Understanding Context.”

Bullet Bullets, shown as small dots, are always an adjunct to a fired gun. In some cases, a single dot bullet will be drawn at the end of a solid or dashed line extending from a gun barrel (Figures 1.10, 3.144), sometimes coming out of a muzzle blast (see Chapter 4, “Muzzle Blast”). Others are shown as small dots

Figure 3.158. In this combat scene dashes indicate bullets streaming from the flintlock gun in the center to the defeated enemy. A second man below spears this same enemy. Two warriors riding a single horse at left show the battle continued with the upper horseman while a rescue was being effected. Drawing by the authors.

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with “tails” or as a cloud of dots to show the fusillade of fire (Figures 0.20a, 1.19, 3.7, see also below), and still others are dots or short dashes streaming from a gun barrel to the human who has been shot (Figures 2.4, 2.9, 3.158) to indicate the weapon has inflicted a fatal wound. In these several guises, flying bullets occur from Writing-on-Stone to 5LA5563 and 5LA5569 in the Pinyon Canyon Maneuver Site in Colorado, but they are most frequent in Blackfoot rock art at Writing-on-Stone, where they occur at five sites, two with more than thirty-five and three hundred bullets indicated both in clusters and lines streaming from guns. Elsewhere they are drawn at 24GV191 in Montana, and Gyp Spring (48BH3987), No Water, and La Barge Bluffs in Wyoming. They were also drawn at Montana’s Bierce Arborglyph. We have not included the person shooting a line of bullets from his gun at the Dorward Ranch site because there is question about his authenticity.

Shield Rock art evidence indicates that hide and wooden-slat shields have been used on the Plains since the Late Prehistoric period and possibly earlier. The earliest verifiable examples are carried by shield-bearing warriors dating to the last few centuries before contact, but a single warrior carries his shield while using an atlatl, suggesting shields may have been in use more than two thousand years ago. A few images in Foothills Abstract tradition paintings resemble shield bearers (Keyser et al. 2021), but these images do not carry weapons and there are other equally plausible interpretations to explain them. Verifiable shields come in two forms: circular hide shields of various diameters and rectangular shields that appear to be of wooden rod-and-slat construction (Figures 0.8, 3.69d, 3.136). Wooden-slat shields have been identified in the Seedskadee shield-bearing warrior style (Keyser and Poetschat 2014:43–53; Loendorf and Mark 2010:6) based on their rectangular shape and the vertical line pattern across the face of the shield. Such rectangular shields are exceedingly rare in rock art outside the Seedskadee Style, occurring only at DgOv-3 at Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park and Bernard Creek (10IH483) on the Snake River in Idaho. Despite their rarity in rock art, such shields were known ethnographically among Eastern Woodlands and northern Columbia Plateau tribes (Jones 2004:69), where they were made of wood slats (sometimes with supporting cross pieces) bound together with cordage. Seedskadee style warriors carry rectangular rod-and-slat shields at Red Canyon (48FR2508) and Castle Gardens in central Wyoming. Plains hide shields in rock art are round to sub-rectangular, presumably made of buffalo hide (as were ethnographic examples), and often elaborately decorated with heraldic imagery originating primarily in their owner’s vision (Figures 0.2a–f, 1.29, 2.6b, 3.5). Although drawn with inferred diameters ranging from more than 1.5 meters to less than 30 cm, their distribution is clearly bimodal (Keyser 2010), with one peak centered on full-body-size examples

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ranging from 80 to 125 cm and a second peak ranging from 50 to 75 cm. From the original analysis and continuing study, it is clear that the larger peak represents mostly pre-horse period, pedestrian shields (though an outlier of a few larger Historic period shields may represent warriors from village farming tribes). The smaller peak represents equestrian warriors’ shields, implying the size reduction was a response to the need for smaller, more maneuverable shields in mounted warfare. A few dozen freestanding shields have been recognized in rock art, and, of course, their diameters are unknown. When they are identified as either Late Prehistoric period full-body specimens or smaller equestrian specimens, it is based on associated imagery. Shields are decorated with hundreds of heraldic designs, and except for the simplest ones (e.g., a shield split in half with a horizontal line) it is typically uncommon for shields at multiple sites to share similar heraldry (Figure 3.159). Within a single site (or, in the case of Bear Gulch and Atherton Canyon, between two sites extremely closely related both temporally and spatially) such shared heraldry showing notably specific designs occasionally occurs. This is especially true within defined shield-bearing warrior styles (Keyser, Kaiser,

Figure 3.159. Shield heraldry includes a wide variety of geometric and naturalistic designs. These shields include both freestanding examples and those carried by shield-bearing warriors. Except in rare cases (s), equestrian period shields are illustrated as too small to show such well-crafted and detailed designs. Drawing by the authors.

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Poetschat, and Taylor 2012:320–38; Keyser and Poetschat 2014:117–26). The heraldic “vocabularies” of several styles have been defined, and some scholars have attempted to interpret heraldic designs (Keyser 2005, 2019; Keyser and Kaiser 2014; Keyser and Poetschat 2014; Loendorf 2012:48–49; Sundstrom and Keyser 1998). Interestingly, far fewer Historic period shields portrayed in action scenes show heraldic designs than do those of shield-bearing warriors. However, freestanding Historic period shields are often elaborately decorated. This may simply be a matter of size of the actual image (with those in scenes usually being much smaller than freestanding examples), but the presence of heraldry on some small Historic period shields in combat scenes indicates that designs could have been more frequently drawn. Shields of all sizes show a couple of typical decorative attributes. Feathers or fringe around the perimeter are common on both large and small shields (Figures 1.19, 3.23), and this has led some to mistake Historic period shields drawn as simple circles with lines (representing feathers) around the entire perimeter for sun images. Feather bustles and animal-skin medicine bundles are found only on full-body shields, but feathered trailers draping a horseman’s small shield and a captured small shield are shown at the El Caido site. Though sometimes shown in ledger drawings and robe paintings, no rock art shield has a carrying strap.

Shield Trailer A decorative trailer (or “dropper”) on a man’s shield is shown in Biographic narrative art in two ways. Most typically, the trailer is a cloth or leather swath with feathers attached, which is affixed to the center or along the shield’s bottom edge so it cascades downward, either hanging across the shield’s face or suspended from its lower margin (Figure 3.160a, b). A second type is shown more as a drape formed by a narrower band of cloth attached around most of the shield’s upper rim or shield cover with the two ends hanging down from each side (Figure 3.160c). When carried into battle, feathers fastened to the upper arc of this drape dangle over the shield’s face, but others fastened to the trailing ends hang obliquely outward from them. Classic examples of a shield trailer and a drape attached to a shield cover are illustrated by Nagy (1994a:38, 1994b:25). Two types of feathered trailers are drawn in rock art. Most common is a feathered bustle (Figures 3.150d, e; 3.152a, c), made of a cord or strip of material to which feathers are tied, and which is then attached to the shield. Nearly two hundred examples are drawn on shields at Bear Gulch and Atherton Canyon (Keyser, Kaiser, Poetschat, and Taylor 2012:132–34), and similar bustles are illustrated at 24GL67 in northern Montana and Bernard Creek in Idaho’s Hells Canyon (Keyser and Poetschat 2014:49, 55–56). All these are illustrated on full-body-sized shields rather than smaller, equestrian period examples. One trailer on a large shield at DgOv-85 is a wide, rectangular swath and may represent a slightly wider piece of leather to which feathers (not shown) would have been attached.

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Figure 3.160. Ethnographic examples of shield trailers and drapes. Feathered trailer (a, b), cloth and feather drape attached to the shield’s upper rim and hanging down each side (c), erected bison bull’s tail with feathers attached (d), otter skin shield cover with the tail as a pendant and feather attached (e). Drawing by the authors, adapted from drawings on robes (a), historic portraits (b, d), and ledgers (c, e).

The other feathered trailer version is a drape illustrated on two shields at the El Caido site (Labadie et al. 1997; Turpin and Eling 2011:290) and on one at Montana’s Atherton Canyon. At El Caido a scene with two riders astride one horse shows the lead man carrying a small shield with a drape that has extremely long ends trailing down both sides (Figure 3.142). These pendent ends are fringed with short lines, apparently representing something other than feathers, since obvious feathers decorating the horse’s rein are illustrated in a different form. The second Mexican image adorns a shield held by a man positioned in a group of eight warriors, all of whom hold what appear to be war trophies (Figure 3.60B/4). This man holds a saber decorated with a

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feathered tab in one hand and a small, equestrian period shield out away from his body in the other. This shield has an obvious drape with feathers hanging from the shield’s upper rim down over its face and hanging obliquely down along the inside edge of each trailing end. The human figures in the lineup appear to be dancing in a celebration, showing off captured war trophies. The Atherton Canyon example is a bit simpler, showing a freestanding, small-sized shield whose upper half is covered by the drape, which has relatively short triangular pennants hanging down on both sides. Incised lines filling both the top and trailing pennants may indicate feathers (Figure 3.45). Two other shield attachments can be mistaken for feathered trailers. Some large, full-body-size shields were cut from a bison’s hide to leave the animal’s tail along one side of the shield. In its final form, the shield maker then stiffened the tail into an erect position and sometimes attached feathers to its underside (Figure 3.160d). This mimics the raised tail position used by a bison bull to signal aggression—a desirable warrior trait. Shield-bearing warriors’ shields at Bear Gulch and Castle Gardens show these erect bull’s tails (Keyser, Kaiser, Poetschat, and Taylor 2012:133–34; Keyser and Poetschat 2014:3). Finally, one type of shield cover was an otter skin stretched horizontally across its middle with the animal’s tail hanging downward from one side to form a short pendant (Figure 3.160e). These otter-skin shield bindings are relatively common in Cheyenne ledger drawings (Petersen 1971:283), but none is yet identified in rock art.

Bow-Spear The most complex Plains Indian weapon is the bow-spear, a longbow ranging in length from five to eight feet (0.5–2.5 meters) and tipped with a long triangular lance point at one end (Figures 0.9, 3.48, 3.144). Such bow-spears were always elaborately ornamented—wrapped with animal skins, painted, and adorned with beadwork, and hung with bird skins, ermine tails, clusters of feathers, and other streamers (Keyser 2008b). In historic times the long, often wickedly barbed points were metal, often native-made from knife or sword blades. Bow-spears functioned both as weapons of war and as military society officer insignia in several tribes; and for the Cheyenne and Oglala Sioux, special bow-spears were important symbolic weapons imbued with strong supernatural Thunder power. Such bows had an elaborate system of rules and proscriptions controlling their care and use in battle. For warriors permitted to carry them, a bow-spear served in warfare both as a killing weapon and a coup striker. Their ability to kill is attested to by the metal point’s sharpened and barbed edges. However, according to early twentieth-century tribal informants, the Thunder Bow was not used to kill enemies but instead was used only to count coup by striking a foe with the flat side of the outsized point (Grinnell 1972:II:83; P. Powell 2002a:68, 2002b:57).

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The Thunder Bow was also venerated for its protective power in the face of enemy fire and its ability to strike enemies at a distance. More than twenty bow-spear drawings are known in Plains rock art. These occur from Writing-on-Stone, Alberta, to Mujares Creek, Texas. Many are elaborately adorned with streamers, fluffs, otter-skin wrapping, weapon flags, or fringe, and more than half are tipped with a metal point. The Red Canyon site complex in Wyoming has eight examples, and two of these are being used to kill or strike animals—unlike any other known rock art specimen. Four bowspears in a tally of vanquished enemies at Bear Gulch all represent the same weapon, even though each is decorated slightly differently (Figure 0.9). Two bow-spears at Pinnacle Rocks, Wyoming, have a projectile point at both ends, like a second bipointed lance held by another shield-bearing warrior in the large group of combatants (Figure 3.50). Half a dozen rock art bow-spears drawn at DgOv-2 at Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park in Alberta and at Bear Gulch, Montana, are associated with Blackfoot-style imagery. These weapons, tipped with metal points but associated with full-body-size shields, date to the Protohistoric period (ca. 1600–1730) and indicate the bow-spear was known among the Blackfoot during that time, even though this knowledge was lost by the early 1900s when ethnographers first interviewed tribal elders (Keyser 2008b:71). Two bow-spears drawn in a tally of twenty captured weapons at Mujares Creek (Figure 3.132) apparently represent Kiowa or Comanche war trophies captured in an 1837 battle in the Texas Panhandle just over 160 km (100 miles) east of the petroglyph site (Parsons 1987:263–67). In this fight, forty-two Southern Cheyenne Bowstring society warriors (including four Contraries, who adopted behavior directly opposite that of other tribal members and carried Thunder Bows as their emblems) were annihilated by combined Kiowa and Comanche forces.

Metal Projectile Point Metal projectile points are a common component of Biographic art and provide an excellent chronological marker indicating a Protohistoric or Historic period date for any drawing in which they are shown. Such points are illustrated as two distinct and readily identifiable forms in Plains rock art. Most common are the notched-tang type points characterized by a large triangular blade with deep square notches formed by one, two, or even three crosspieces drawn perpendicular to the tang just below the blade (Figures 3.37, 3.132). In their many variations, these points are completely unlike any known Plains lithic type. But their form mimics the general shape of metal projectile points—both those produced commercially in Europe for the Indian trade from the 1600s onward and those manufactured locally after forts and trading posts were established on the westward-moving “Indian frontier” beginning in the late 1500s (Keyser and Kaiser 2010).

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The second type of metal projectile point illustrated in these scenes shows a triangular to lanceolate blade with a quillon—a short metal projection extending directly out from one or both sides of its base (Figures 3.133b, k; 3.134a, e). Such quillons typically served as the cross guard of a sword or knife designed to protect the user’s hand from injury by a foe’s attacking blade. Such blades were quickly adapted as spear (and even arrow) points by natives when they reached the Plains. This point type, termed quillon-barbed, is also morphologically distinct from any known Plains chipped stone projectile point. Finally, other weapon tips in rock art—the exaggeratedly long points drawn at many sites—probably represent metal points, although they cannot be positively identified. Detailed analysis (Keyser and Kaiser 2010) shows there are numerous lance points drawn as being between fifteen and fifty-three cm (six to twenty-one inches) in length, and the only reasonable conclusion for these is that most represent weapon tips made from long metal blades, since there are very few large stone or bone spear points in either Late Prehistoric or Historic period Plains archaeological and ethnographic collections. The longest of these were probably made from cut-down sword blades—a common Plains practice. The warrior’s lance at Hussie Miers is a good example of one likely tipped with a sword blade (Figure 3.40). Dozens of metal points are illustrated across the breadth of the Plains, most often shown as the killing tips of weapons in combat scenes or tallies of captured war trophies. However, one freestanding metal projectile point is incised at the Atherton Cayon site in central Montana (Figure 3.161). This point is scratched in exquisite detail clearly showing a long straight tang extending below a triangular blade, just beneath which is a perpendicular crosspiece creating a square notch on each side of the blade. The point itself, just over four cm long, is carved adjacent to a prehorse period shield-bearing warrior who carries a spear tipped with a metal point (Keyser, Kaiser, Poetschat, and Taylor 2012:119). The Figure 3.161. Freestanding metal projectile point incised as a petroglyph is shown with a straight freestanding point duplicates tang below the triangular blade and a perpendicular exactly the form of frontier- crosspiece. Five cm scale bar indicates size of origimade bayonet DAG points nal image. Drawing and photograph by the authors.

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and was probably illustrated to document the special nature accorded it by an artist who acquired one of the earliest such metal weapons in the region.

Decorations and Elaborations for Weapons and Objects Plains Indian warriors invested much effort in decorating and elaborating their weapons. This ranged from as subtle as brass tacks hammered into a gunstock or small strips of red cloth strung through the ferrules of a flintlock to exaggeratedly long triangular beaded tabs hanging from the handles of tomahawks or swords. In Biographic art there are half a dozen different commonly used decorations, four of which are currently known in rock art.

Otter-Skin Wrapping on Weapon Shaft One occasional weapon decoration in rock art is to show the weapon’s shaft wrapped with otter skins, ermine skins, or other decorative material. Such decorative otter-skin wrapping wound around a lance or tomahawk is shown either as a series of linked ovals bisected by the weapon’s shaft or a series of short perpendicular lines spanning the shaft and extending an equal distance to each side.13 Both conventions represent the spiral wrapping of pelt strips around the weapon shaft. The linked-oval convention is drawn in several Crow and Blackfoot hide paintings and in rock art at Nordstrom-Bowen and Four Dance Cliff (Figure 3.154e, f, l). The perpendicular short lines convention is shown on tomahawk handles at DgOv-2 and DgOw-9 and the stave of an elaborately decorated bow-spear drawn four times at Bear Gulch (Figures 0.9, 3.154c). On two bow-spears, pendent lines extend from the wrapped areas. Weapon Tab Decorative tabs, usually drawn as triangular, often fringed, fan-shapes or roughly triangular fans of short lines, are probably the most common weapon decoration in Biographic art (Figure 3.154). Some are very elaborate and clearly represent a fan of feathers attached to the weapon, while others show what are certainly beaded and fringed leather attachments. Some may simply be a group of feathers bound together and suspended from the weapon. These range from elaborate feather fans almost as long as the weapon itself to two or three short lines fanning out from a tomahawk handle. Tabs decorate tomahawks, spears, bow-spears, spike maces, clubs, a socketed Spanish lance, a knife, and swords and sabers. Some of the most intricate examples are found in the tallies of captured weapons at Nordstrom-Bowen and Mujares Creek (Figures 3.2, 3.132), but individual examples from Writing-on-Stone are notably eloquent representations. One at Tolar is a detached sequence of line groups similar to several at Mujares Creek that may originally have been augmented with fugitive pigment (cf. Figures 3.132, 3.138a). In addition to the large triangular tab hanging perpendicular to its shaft, the Tolar Spanish lance has a second

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tab drawn as a much smaller fluff of lines at its extreme end. Crow rock art has some of the most stylized tabs in rock art. One specialized tab used particularly on swords is a split otter skin, often further embellished with feathers. Many ledger drawings show these pelts and indicate they were split down the spine and often had the flesh-side painted yellow (Bates, Kahn, and Lanford 2003:335; Lanford 2003:193–94; Petersen 1971:308). Otter skins were extensively used by Plains Indians for all manner of things, from clothing accessories to weapon elaborations to medicine bundles. The only rock art sword with an otter-skin tab is illustrated at the El Caido site (Figure 3.60C/3), although its form is slightly different from those in ledger drawings (Figure 3.153l).

Weapon Flag Several types of weapons are elaborated with various flag-like emblems in Biographic art (Fossati, Keyser, and Kaiser 2010; Keyser, Kaiser, Poetschat, and Taylor 2012:126–29). Such flags come in five basic shapes—oval, leaf, spade, split spade, and rectangular (Figure 3.134)—and decorate lances, bow-spears, and coupsticks. The first four shapes seem likely to be made of cut, shaped, and possibly colored feathers used to denote some specific but currently unknown accomplishment or status. These flags often have a fluff of eagleplume breath feathers or the downy barbs at the base of a feather’s vane drawn at their bottom. Flags of these shapes are found at Writing-on-Stone; Bear Gulch, Atherton Canyon, Steamboat Butte (24YL576), 24GV191, and 24RB1010 in Montana; Castle Gardens and Red Canyon in Wyoming; and the Katzenmeier site (14EW401) in Kansas. The fifth flag type is a rectangular form suspended from a weapon’s staff (Figures 3.6b, 3.162). Two of these have lines segmenting the rectangle and one of these has a generalized bear-paw shape with claws indicated at one

Figure 3.162. Battle scene between shield-bearing warriors. Arm-and-hand image is apparent supernatural “participant.” Note rectangular flag on spear of lead warrior in phalanx. Drawing by the authors.

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end. Given their shape, these flags were likely made of hide, but the one at La Barge Bluffs, hanging from a crook-neck coupstick wielded by a woman, could be fabric since it clearly dates to the Historic period by its association with horses. Rectangular flags are found at Atherton Canyon, Castle Gardens, La Barge Bluffs, and Gateway.

Red Cloth–Decorated Ferrules Given the thunder and lightning symbolism Plains Indians ascribed to early firearms, their fascination with the many brass fittings is understandable (Bohr 2014; Silverman 2016:11–12, 259–60). In rock art this is evident in their illustration of a flintlock gun’s ferrules—the small, brass tubes attached underneath the barrel to hold the ramrod. These were drawn either as carefully positioned segments along the gun barrel or as box-like attachments or paired lines positioned on the barrel’s underside and shown much larger than actual size (Figures 3.28, 3.57b, 3.142, 3.143, 3.145d). Sometimes warriors went even further and decorated their flintlocks by stringing strips of red wool cloth through the ferrules to call attention to their shiny brassy color, which when polished, glinted in the sun. As such, the ferrules came to represent the “lightning” accompanying the weapon’s “thunder.” Rock art drawings at several Crow sites (Castle Butte, Benjamin Hill, 24GV191) show the enlarged ferrules as does one scene at DgOw-31 at Verdigris Coulee (Figures 3.148, V5). Other ferrules are illustrated in different ways at Mujares Creek (Figure 3.132). The only examples of cloth-decorated ferrules currently known in rock art are the red V-shapes positioned on the underside of the black-outlined barrel of a gun held by one El Caido dancer (Figure 3.60E/10), similar red lines on a flintlock pistol in an El Caido rescue scene (Figure 3.142b), and one pedestrian’s gun at Hussie Meiers (Figure 3.40b). Fletching Arrows across the Plains are shown with feather fletching (Figures 0.7, 0.9, 1.18, 1.22, 3.48). Such fletching can be shown as an oval or triangle bisected by the arrow shaft and drawn just above the nock (when shown). Similar shapes on spears are identified as weapon flags (see this chapter, “Weapon Flag”) because they are placed much farther forward on the shaft of the weapon. Atlatl darts held by a shield-bearing warrior at 24JT86 and a dancer at No Bear show oval fletching just above a Y-shaped nock, but neither has a point indicated (Figure 3.85, 3.141). Scalps and Scalp Poles: Scalping as a War Honor Although some have suggested Plains Indians did not scalp enemies prior to learning the practice from Euro-Americans, this is demonstrably false. PreColumbian archaeological evidence from both the Plains (e.g., Crow Creek village in South Dakota) and the Southwest contains ample instances of cranial

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cut marks and scarring indicating the removal of scalps (Geib 2016:62–125; Willey and Emerson 1993:253; Zimmerman and Whitten 1980:106). However, Plains Biographic rock art was not as focused on scalps or the act of scalping an enemy as one would assume from exposure to the popular image of warlike Plainsmen. Of course, enemy scalps were taken and sometimes illustrated, often in use decorating a weapon. However, the act of scalping and the tallying of scalps is markedly less common in rock art than in robe art or ledger art. The reasons for this are not obvious. Tallies of scalps are most common in Blackfoot robe art (Brownstone 1993:40–65, 2007:199; L. Dempsey 2007; Wissler 1911:39–40) dating from the earliest to latest examples. Many Blackfoot robes also illustrate scalps as war trophies taken in individual actions. In ledger art, a very few Cheyenne drawings show the actual act of scalping (Bates, Kahn, and Lanford 2003:240, 254, 324), but scalps are more commonly illustrated as bridle decorations for dozens of war horses. Quite likely some scalps in rock art have yet to be recognized, but if they were as common in the rock art at Writing-on-Stone as they are in Blackfoot robe art, we believe many more would have been identified. Currently, freestanding scalps have been identified at three sites, and others are used to decorate various items at a dozen sites. Scalp poles—long poles with enemy scalps attached, which were used in ceremonies accompanying the return of a successful war party—are found in rock art usually as part of a tally of war honors. Scalp. Scalps are drawn in several ways for a variety of purposes in Biographic rock art. They occur in five different guises: attached to the bridles of horses (those are discussed fully in the section on decorated bridle bits); as freestanding items, presumably captured as war trophies; attached to the tops of tipi poles at one site; attached to various weapons; and displayed on scalp poles, which are discussed separately below. Freestanding scalps are portrayed in a semirealistic manner at Atherton Canyon and as a highly stylized, characteristic Blackfoot rake-like form at DgOw-32 and Pictograph Cave (24YL1) in Montana (Figures 3.130b, 3.163f). The Atherton Canyon petroglyph—a small, scratched oval with a fringe of long, closely spaced lines (Figure 3.163b)—quite closely resembles realistic scalps illustrated in ledger drawings and by early Euro-American portrait artists documenting Plains Indian life. The example at DgOw-32 is an upward-pointing, rake-like geometric form incised just under the rear-pointing, outstretched hand of a horseman who reaches down to count coup on a pedestrian bowman with what is probably a coupstick held in his other hand. Correspondingly, a second pedestrian, falling backward just behind the bowman, is headless, which is a typical Biographic art convention for a scalped enemy. Similar rake-shaped scalps are frequently depicted as war trophies in Blackfoot Biographic robe art (L. Dempsey 2007:

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Figure 3.163. Scalps are shown in a variety of ways. Hanging from the tops of tipi poles (left) in a villagescape (a), freestanding (b), attached to weapons (c–e); and as war trophies in Blackfoot ideographic form (f), in Crow bar tallies (g–h), and on scalp poles (i–j). (j) is ledger drawing; all others are rock art. Drawing by the authors.

140–41; Keyser and Klassen 2001:289). At Pictograph Cave a rake-like form with a long vertical line next to it, both drawn with charcoal, have been interpreted as a Blackfoot warrior’s record of a scalp taken (McCleary 2016:63, 109). Scalps hanging from the ends of the splayed poles atop a tipi in a Bear Gulch camp scene (Figure 3.163a) are shown as small triangular clusters of densely packed incised lines flowing from the tops of these tipi poles. These were almost certainly war trophies displayed in this very public way. Scalps are shown as small circles with trailing lines in Crow coup-count tallies at Nordstrom-Bowen and the Weppler site both in south-central Montana (Figure 3.163g–h). At Nordstrom-Bowen obvious scalps are attached by the scalp lock to six scalp poles aligned in a tally (Keyser and Cowdrey 2008). Oblique lines at the tops of five other poles in this tally probably also represent scalps. At the Weppler site scalps are shown as small circles with a trailing scalp lock juxtaposed with vertical war party stripes in a charcoal-drawn, coupcount bar tally. Scalps are drawn as weapon decorations in Biographic rock art in two ways (Figure 3.163c–e). The simplest is at No Water, where a floating coupstrike spear has a small circle with a trailing line affixed onto the shaft (Keyser and Poetschat 2009:27). Comparison with a ledger drawing by Flathead chief

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Red Feather in the Five Crows ledger folio (Keyser 2000:58–60) and identical freestanding scalps at Nordstrom-Bowen and Weppler (above) clinches the identification of this as a scalp with a trailing scalp lock. Three other scalps are somewhat more detailed. All are circles with long trailing lines suspended from weapon shafts. At 24GV191 two examples show a scalp attached just behind the large triangular point of a long lance carried by a shield-bearing warrior riding an armored horse and a similar shape attached nearer the proximal end of a pedestrian warrior’s spear (Figure 3.164). At 24ML408 a pictograph shows combat be- Figure 3.164. A scalp is attached to the lance tween a pedestrian shield bearer carried by this pedestrian warrior. Photograph courtesy of George Stoll. facing off against the rider of an armored horse. The scalp is attached to the handle end of the pedestrian warrior’s Missouri war axe in an almost identical portrayal to one carried by Hidatsa chief Addih-Hiddish in a Bodmer portrait (Figure 3.155). The rock art scene predates Bodmer’s portrait by more than a century. Scalp Pole. Scalps were taken from dead foes to serve several purposes, among which was the communal demonstration that enemies had been killed to avenge past losses of one’s own tribesmen. Among the Assiniboine, on the way home after a successful engagement, a scalp taken during the fight was stretched on a small hoop and then attached to the end of a pole. Upon entering camp, the victorious war party presented the scalp pole(s) to women who had lost relatives in past fights (Denig 2000:163). These women then dressed in their finest regalia, took up weapons, and, displaying the scalp pole(s), led the village in a formal dance celebrating victory. Similar scalp dances were performed by women in other Plains tribes. Scalp poles are occasionally illustrated in ledger drawings (Berlo 1996:31, 149; Denig 2000:Plate71), but in rock art we have representations of this item at only four sites (Figures 1.22, 3.2, 3.163h–i). Seven examples are drawn at Bear Gulch and Atherton Canyon (Keyser, Kaiser, Poetschat, and Taylor 2012:141), but these are quite simple, and none is integrated into a scene. More explicit narrative uses of scalp poles in Biographic compositions are in a tally of war

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trophies at Nordstrom-Bowen and painted in another tally of war honors at the Ten Sleep Pictographs (Keyser 2017b:40; Keyser and Cowdrey 2008:28–30). The Ten Sleep Pictographs composition documents use of the scalp pole as a war trophy chronicling the artist’s bravery in taking an enemy scalp. The Nordstrom-Bowen scalp poles are actually a type of bar tally documenting scalps taken among other deeds. Other scalps may be illustrated in Biographic art. Often they were used to fringe war shirts and leggings, which are common garments across the Plains. But because other streamers were also used to fringe these garments, we cannot definitively identify any as scalps. Lines hanging from a staff carried by a person drawn at the Joliet site have also been identified as scalps by one Crow informant who identified the person as a woman (Conner 1980:9). However, other tribal informants told McCleary (2016:122–23) this drawing represented a man, but they were apparently noncommittal as to what the lines represented.

Decorated Animal Skin Robe Among the rarest items illustrated in Plains Biographic art is the animal skin robe, typically a finely tanned and decorated bison hide, which was made and used by all Plains tribes. Such robes were created as two general types: those decorated with geometric designs and others emblazoned with Biographic paintings extolling the wearer’s war honors. Surprisingly, given the ubiquity of such robes in Historic period cultures as evidenced by the paintings of Catlin, Bodmer, and Kurz (Catlin 1973; Hewitt 1937; Thomas and Ronnefeldt 1976), and the frequency with which they were displayed for purposes of selfaggrandizement, decorated robes of either type are so far illustrated in rock art only at Atherton Canyon (Keyser 2009). A few such robes are illustrated in very late ledger drawings (Figure 3.73), sometimes worn by notable warriors (Greene 2006:75, 83) and in others shown as items being manufactured as part of larger village scenes or being traded to Euro-Americans (Greene 2006:80). To be identified in rock art, the robe must express either the basic shape of an animal pelt, showing neck (with or without a head), four legs, and a tail, or it could be illustrated being worn by a human in a way that differentiates it from a blanket worn in similar fashion. The Atherton Canyon example (Figure 3.165a) clearly shows the neck with the characteristic V-shaped notch resulting from not taking the skin of the crown of the animal’s head. It also shows a tail and a standardized depiction of a traditional “Box and Border” geometric motif typical of women’s decorated robes. Although the length/width proportions of this petroglyph robe are significantly smaller than for a typical bison robe, we cannot determine whether this indicates the skin of a smaller ungulate (deer, pronghorn) or merely reflects artistic license rather than the actual proportions of the hide. The Atherton Canyon robe appears to have been drawn with the sharp edge of a metal blade such as a knife or arrowhead. This dates the image to

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Figure 3.165. “Box and Border” geometric motifs on women’s decorated hide robes. Petroglyph robe (a) compared with examples from ethnographic collections (b–c). Drawing by the authors.

the Protohistoric period, since it is associated with a shield-bearing warrior carrying a full-body-size shield, indicative of a pre-horse age. It seems likely that this robe was drawn by the warrior to represent his captured war trophy next to his own portrait as a shield-bearing warrior. One other possible robe is illustrated at the Joliet site being worn by a person who has been identified by different Crow informants as both a woman and a man (Figure 1.5). Originally identified by a Crow informant as a woman wearing a dress and holding a spear or ceremonial “long bow” while participating in a victory dance (Conner 1980:9, Keyser, Sundstrom, and Poetschat 2006:58–62), later Crow informants have suggested the hairstyle indicates this is the self-portrait of a man accepting the role of “staff carrier,” one of the leadership positions in a Crow military society (McCleary 2016:121–22). In this latter interpretation, the person’s garment is a type of buffalo calfskin “blanket” or robe, fringed along the bottom and sides, which was worn by the person who had just accepted the honor of this position (McCleary 2016:122). The zigzag lines extending up from the garment’s margin to the shoulders of the person, are consistent with this latter interpretation. Further research into historic Crow photographs may confirm this identification.

Buffalo Tail Fly Whisk Plains Indians used the tail of a bison as a fly swatter, but more importantly they also used it as a whisk employed by Buffalo Society dancers in their various ceremonies to mimic the swishing of a bison’s tail. In fact, such whisks were included in the Buffalo Society medicine bundle (Howard 1974). One such fly whisk is drawn at No Water in the hand of a Buffalo Society dancer, who is identified by the whisk, his detailed buffalo hat headdress, and a feather bustle (Figure 0.5).

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Feather Bustle Although most feather bustles are worn by dancers or attached to shields (see this chapter, “Dance Bustles” and “Shield Trailer”), occasionally other humans are pictured wearing this item hanging from a belt (Figures 0.5, 3.85). Examples include a large Buffalo Society dancer at No Water (Keyser and Poetschat 2009:13–14) and three participants in a ceremony or dance at No Bear (Keyser et al. 2021). Pipe At first glance it might seem odd that a smoking pipe would be an important component of an art lexicon primarily concerned with warfare. However, many groups used a special medicine pipe as a “badge” of rank for the war party leader or “partisan” (who was also referred to as the Pipe Carrier—see Chapter 4, “Pipes or Hoofprints: A Partisan’s Badge”). The partisan’s pipe is shown in two primary ways in Biographic art. A war party leader is shown carrying his pipe in one robe art scene (Figure 3.166a), and another shows

Figure 3.166. Pipes indicate war party leadership. Robe art showing war party leader carrying the pipe on a war party where four enemies were killed (a). Robe drawing of a Blackfoot man killing an enemy partisan and capturing his pipe (upper) and a second trophy (b). Drawing by James D. Keyser. (a) adapted from Upper Missouri bison robe in Maurer 1992; (b) adapted from Blackfoot bison robe (cat. No. Hc478) in National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen.

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Figure 3.167. Taking a partisan’s pipe in hand-tohand combat at a Kansas site (a), and the capture of a pipe bag as part of a tally of war trophies on a Blackfoot bison robe (b). Drawing by the authors. (b) adapted from Deadmond bison robe, Broadwater County Museum, Townsend, Montana.

the capture of an enemy partisan’s pipe by a scene’s hero documenting his highly ranked war honor (Figure 3.166b). Finally, some bags drawn in Blackfoot war trophy tallies may be a third means of illustrating such pipes, since they would document the capture of such an object. One tally on the Deadmond robe (Figure 3.167b) appears to specifically show such a pipe bag (Bouma and Keyser 2004:10). Currently, only two partisan’s pipes are identified in Plains Biographic rock art. A scene carved at DgOw-29 (Figure 2.4) shows a coup count in which a gunman kills a well-armed foe and takes his feathered lance (the scene is completely described in Chapter 2, “Correct Identification”). In his off hand the gunman holds what appears to be a pipe whose vertically oriented stem has the bowl at its lower end facing away from him. This site is incompletely recorded, so the pipe has been identified only from a photograph, and further work is needed to confirm this identification. A second pipe is shown in a combat scene at site 14RU304 along the Saline River in central Kansas (Wells 1996:37). Although now submerged beneath the waters of Wilson Reservoir, a 1963-era rubbing of the image shows one warrior reaching out to take a pipe from another (Figure 3.167a). The pipe has a prominent bowl and a cluster of feathers dangling from the stem about halfway down its length—typical decoration for a partisan’s medicine pipe. Three vertically oriented long guns carved in a row between these two combatants could synecdochically represent other participants in this scene or be other trophies taken by this warrior. Pipes also provide detail at four other Plains sites. Seated humans (shown in a squatting posture) at 24ML1049 in Montana and an undocumented site in Colorado are shown smoking pipes. At 24ML1049 almost a dozen humans arranged in a crudely circular display (Figure 3.168) each smoke a long pipe, and another horseman leaving the circle holds a pipe vertically in front of him-

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Figure 3.168. This rock art scene shows humans sitting in a circle, smoking pipes, while a horseman leaves holding a pipe ahead of him. It has been interpreted as an Assiniboine Pipe Dance. Drawing by the authors, adapted from Loendorf 2012.

self. Loendorf (2012:19–21, 50) suggests this scene shows an Assiniboine pipe dance, which is consistent with the site’s location in Historic period Assiniboine territory. The Colorado pipe smoker is a figure traced from a photograph (McGlone, Leonard, and Barker 1994:54). This smoker is also shown seated, but the authors provide no other information about the context of this image on a panel. Two seated pipe smokers are also part of a narrative scene involving a tacked-up horse and rider tethered to a Spanish building (Figure 3.96), but their role in the scene remains unexplained because the site has yet to be studied in detail. Finally, pipes are used by non-Indians drawn at Vaquero Shelter and Caballero Shelter in Texas. In Caballero Shelter a horseman rides between two Spanish mission churches. He wears a hat, brandishes a sword, and smokes a pipe—all details suggesting he is a non-Indian military man (Figure 3.41). At Vaquero Shelter (Figure 3.36) a Spanish grandee wears a military uniform and hat and holds his pipe out in front of himself (Turpin 1989b:287–88). These two drawings imply that smoking pipes, especially when combined with the wearing of a hat, were used as ethnic markers in Texas rock art narratives. However, this convention was likely more widespread since it is sometimes seen in ledger drawings and other media. For instance, George Simpson, Governor-in-Chief of the Hudson Bay Company, while traveling near Salt Lake14 in Saskatchewan, described a letter written on a piece of bark by one of his indigenous guides: “He drew the figure of a man with a hat on his head and a pipe in his mouth, thus presenting . . . the well-known emblems of civilized beings and peaceable intentions” (Simpson 1847:55).

Military Insignia In a complex coup-count scene at 39FA79 in the southern Black Hills, Linea Sundstrom (2004b:110–11) has identified a US military “eagle insignia.” Sundstrom further argues that the twenty-five captured guns and more than two

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Figure 3.169. This extensive coup-count tally in South Dakota includes a few combat scenes (row above) and numerous defeated enemies and captured weapons. One unique item is the eagle finial from a flagstaff positioned at the left end of the upper row of tallied humans. Sundstrom proposes this tally shows the results of the Custer battle. Drawing by the authors, adapted from Sundstrom 2004b.

hundred enemies shown as killed in this scene identify it as a record of the Battle of the Little Bighorn (Figure 3.169). There are several possible insignias this might represent, but with the base shown as it is, we suspect it might be an Eagle finial for a guidon or other flagstaff, several of which were captured by the Indians during the Custer battle.

Bugle During their wars with the US military, Plains Indians were exposed to many different items they had rarely, if ever, encountered before. Such things included canteens, bayonets, and guidon pennons, among others. However, due to its direct involvement in the military maneuvers central to much Biographic art, one item that captured an inordinate amount of interest from Indian warriors was the bugler and his bugle. In ledger drawings bugles are shown primarily as items discarded during a military rout (Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997:266– 68; Scott et al. 1997:291, 297), but the ethnohistoric record documents that natives were fascinated by buglers and quickly came to understand that these men and their instruments were crucial to troop movements. Historic sources even report that Indians sometimes used captured bugles in their own attacks (Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997:266).

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In Biographic art, bugles are quite crudely drawn, since Indian artists obviously were not familiar with such musical instruments and illustrating the bugle’s looped tube and flared bell would have been extremely difficult with the relatively “flat” perspective of Biographic art. Nevertheless, one bugler and his instrument are identified in Biographic rock art. Across the South Platte River and within sight of the historic Fort Saint Vrain trading post, Steve Main (2012) has recorded a petroglyph showing a mounted man wearing a hat and blowing a horn (Figure 3.35c). The horn is an upcurved crescent with a markedly wider bell. The only reasonable interpretation is that this is an Indian artist’s illustration of a military bugler, complete with campaign hat, in the act of bugling. That this area of Colorado was central to the early Indian Wars campaigns involving the US cavalry and various militias against the Cheyenne/ Sioux Dog Soldiers (Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997) supports the identification of this petroglyph as a military bugler and his instrument.

Wounds Biographic art wounds are shown in several ways. Most commonly an arrow piercing a man or horse is shown in X-ray perspective where the embedded arrow point is seen even though it would be inside the body (Figure 2.1). Wounds by firearms are indicated by a “dot-bullet” inside the body of a killed or wounded man (Figure 2.9). Such a dot can represent either the bullet or the bullet hole. Sometimes the wound is secondary to the coup-count action of the weapon inflicting it, as when an “action hand” holds a weapon shown striking an enemy (Figure 3.170a). The intent of such a picture is to show the coup strike rather than the wound itself. But in most scenes, flying arrows or bullets were intended to illustrate wounding or killing the target. Some wounds show flowing blood represented by lines or a smear of red emanating from just below the projectile or the entry and/or exit mark. Matching this, a typical shorthand-form wound symbol is a small dot or circle, or a short slash for a knife wound, with lines fanning out below to represent the blood flow (Figure 3.15). Such wound honor marks were sometimes painted on a man’s war shirt, bison robe, or other piece of personal equipment to record this minor war honor (Figure 3.73). In ledger and robe drawings, bleeding wounds are typically colored red, and one pictograph site (DgOw-20) at Writing-on-Stone has black, charcoal-drawn humans and horses with wounds and bloody trails depicted in red ochre. This is the only polychrome rock art example where red paint specifically indicates bleeding wounds or bloody tracks of the actors in a scene.15 Other sites show wounds the same color as the actor. Some wounds are depicted as through-and-through (Figures 3.130d, 3.170b). That is, they represent perforating wounds where blood flows from both entry and exit wounds on opposite sides of a man’s body, leg, or arm. Such through-and-through wounds are more typical of gunshots and arrows,

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Figure 3.170. Wounds are key parts of the Biographic art lexicon. Footprints in a robe drawing (a) show a warrior’s path to where his “action hand” holds a weapon inflicting a bleeding, apparently fatal chest wound. A gunman (b) defending his tipi shoots an enemy with a pistol, causing an apparently fatal through-and-through chest wound bleeding from both entry and exit holes. (b) drawn in charcoal but dark grey indicates red pigment for blood in both images. Drawing by the authors; (a) is adapted from the Malcolm robe in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada (cat. No. 2006.79.1).

but they can also result from a spear thrust. Some fatal wounds in ledger and robe art are indicated by the victim—human, animal, or sometimes just a name glyph—bleeding from the mouth. This convention for death has yet to be identified in Biographic rock art.

Constructions and Vehicles Plains Indian artists set the stage for some narratives by illustrating various constructions and vehicles. Some of these, such as boats, trains, automobiles, wagons, wooden buildings, and Spanish mission churches, were Euro-American cultural novelties; but others, such as tipis, travois, and fortifications, were native inventions used routinely by the artist and his group. For both categories, the artists were keen observers and often drew these objects with almost photographic accuracy, enabling the reader of a scene to parse the details finely enough to differentiate a keelboat from a flatboat, a tipi from a war lodge, or a clerestory railcar from a coal tender or flatcar. We describe all the constructions and vehicles currently known in Plains Biographic rock art.

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Tipis and Other Similar Structures A wide variety of structures is depicted in Biographic art, usually to provide a backdrop setting against which some action is portrayed. Native-made structures so far identified include native-made tipis, war lodges, eagle-trapping lodges, ceremonial lodges, a menstrual lodge, sweat lodges, other conical lodges, shield tripods, buildings, Spanish mission churches, and fortification/ breastworks. In addition, simple circular symbols enclosing a group of warriors to represent a fortified war party are found at half a dozen sites. We discuss each of these structure types in turn.

Tipis The most common Biographic rock art structures are the well-known tipi—a lodge consisting of a hide cover stretched over a conical framework of poles. So far, tipis have been recorded at more than two dozen sites across the Plains from Writing-on-Stone to the Texas Panhandle. These range from simple X-shapes and triangles or multiple-pole, cone-shaped structures to nearly photographically detailed examples showing smoke flaps, poles, wooden pins securing the front seam, door covers, stakes used to pin the structure to the ground, and even decorations painted on the hide cover. Anyone wishing to decipher the messages encoded in biographic art must be aware of all these tipi variations (Figures 1.9, 1.14, 2.6d, 3.7, 3.63, 3.171), and with a bit of practice most examples are readily recognizable. The great majority of tipis in Biographic art are simpler ones. Triangles, X-shapes, and conical arrangements of multiple lines—often showing some lines extending upward past the apex of the triangle or cone to indicate tipi poles projecting above the hide cover—occur at numerous sites. The more elaborate of these sometimes show a smaller triangle at the side of the apex of the larger structure to indicate a smoke flap. A few of the simple triangular structures show a doorway. More elaborate tipis are exquisitely detailed (Figure 3.171b–d). Although we cannot discuss every one of these, suffice it to note that they include smoke flaps and sometimes even the poles used to adjust them, flags or scalps tied to the poles projecting above the structure’s apex, wooden pins that sew together the structure’s front seam, a doorway or door flap, and tent pegs securing the hide covering to the ground against the ever-present winds that are a staple of Plains life. One example at Names Hill even shows decorative designs, including a vertical zigzag line and several circles painted on the tipi cover, while tipis at Horned Headgear show the characteristically red-colored base identifying them as Assiniboine. Tipis at Montana’s Castle Butte and Elk Dreamer sites show a circular door flap with crossed sticks used to maintain the flap’s structural integrity.

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Figure 3.171. Tipis are drawn in a variety of ways. Some are simple triangular, tripod, or X-shapes, while others show poles within and projecting above. Some examples show smoke flaps (a–d, h), a door reinforced with crossed sticks (b, d), pins holding the front seam together (b–d), tent pegs securing the cover to the ground (c, d), and covers decorated with various designs (c, h). Tipis can be drawn as individuals or composed into a villagescape or camp circle. Drawing by the authors.

Villagescapes and the Camp Circle Tipis occur in various groupings. Occasionally a single tipi or a pair of tipis is portrayed, almost always as a prop in a horse raid or combat action (Figures 3.63, 3.111, 3.120). The illustration of two structures rather than a single one was probably intended to indicate that the action of taking the horse picketed in front of one of them occurred in a village setting. Occasionally, however, several tipis are drawn in a group to indicate a villagescape. At several sites

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Figure 3.172. Horse stealing scenes often involve lodges. Horse juxtaposed with a picket pin in front of a tipi implies the taking of the prized animal (a); galloping away from a single war lodge (speed shown by the use of a quirt) indicates the theft of the horse (b); riding a stolen horse away from a row of tipis representing a villagescape (c). Drawing by the authors.

such tipis are shown side-by-side in one or more rows to indicate a cluster of living structures within a landscape (Figures 3.156; 3.171a, c, g; 3.172c). In one Bear Gulch villagescape, the tipis in the rear row are shown less detailed and without their bottoms completed, much as in western perspective where they would be hidden behind the front-row structures (Figure 3.173). In a few cases the viewer has a bird’s-eye perspective, and the tipi village is shown as a camp circle, with structures arrayed in a roughly circular arrangement as if the viewer were looking down from above (Figures 1.14, 1.15, 3.7) with the tipis pointing inward toward the center of the circle or outward along the perimeter. In some instances, one or more of the tipis will be seen in a strict

Figure 3.173. A natural crack was used as a groundline for this villagescape as shield-bearing warriors assemble in front of the tipis. Drawing by the authors.

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bird’s-eye perspective with the poles forming an asterisk-like configuration (Figure 1.9). Villagescapes and camp circles are almost always the backdrop to an artist’s brave deed or other large-scale event. Camp circles are usually composed of simpler tipis, but occasionally villagescapes include one or two exquisitely detailed structures among a group of otherwise simple triangular forms (Figure 3.171c). Occasionally a camp circle will have a central lodge; the one at DgOv-81 has people sheltering inside (Figure 3.7).

War Lodges Several sites show a single multiple-pole lodge that either has no nearby imagery or that is involved in some action suggesting it does not represent a typical family dwelling. Mavis and John Greer (2018) have suggested these multipole structures represent war lodges, which were temporary constructions erected by war parties to shelter members against weather and discovery by locals in whose territories the raiders were bivouacked (Ewers 1944). Constructed in elevated timbered areas atop hills, buttes, or riverside bluffs, or in riverside thickets, these structures served as a stopping place for war parties and often as a defensive fortification when raiders were attacked by pursuing enemies. Their basic pattern was a low, truncated, conical hut covered with bark slabs and logs, often with a low, covered entryway jutting out from the structure’s doorway (Ewers 1944). Early explorers frequently noted such structures and sometimes observed several clustered together (Jones 2004:31–33). While it is far too simple to identify all multipole lodges as war lodges (after all, several camp circles and villagescapes are composed of just such lodges), when such structures are found singly or in scenes suggesting either attack or defense, the observer must consider whether such a structure represents a residential dwelling or a war lodge. We can confidently identify multipole lodges at four sites as war lodges. These are crudely scratched structures showing various combinations of the following traits that set them apart from a typical tipi: crisscrossed poles suggesting slabs of bark and sticks used to cover the basic pole structure, few or no poles projecting past the apex, a conical shape squattier than a tipi, a side extension apparently representing a constructed entryway, and a pronounced lean (Figure 3.174). At Bear Gulch and Canyon Creek (24YL1203) three of these lodges each shows a procession of C-shaped horse tracks lined up one behind the other leading up to the structure. Such an arrangement of elements illustrates a typical narrative coup count, showing a warrior’s brave deed in riding up to and touching an enemy-occupied structure or touching an enemy combatant within it. Touching an enemy’s tipi, war lodge, or fortified position (or an enemy within) was considered a particularly daring war honor quite worthy of recording in this way (Bauerle 2003:10, 59; L. Dempsey 2007:404; Linderman 1962:55, 291). Another upside-down Atherton Canyon structure shows a man walking away from it while carrying a small shield. This is a typical narrative

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Figure 3.174. Conical, multipole structures, often with crisscrossed lines to represent their pole and bark covering, identify war lodges (d–f). Sometimes war lodges are identified by their significant “lean” or squatty conical shape and possible entryway (a, e–g). Note split spade flag on war lodge (c) and hoofprints indicating ride-by coup strike (a–c). Projecting upper poles and smoke flap (b–c) suggest these are tipis. Drawing by the authors.

rendering of a warrior capturing a war trophy from enemies taking refuge within the lodge. At DgOw-32 a horse-stealing scene includes a squatty tipi-like structure covered with a crisscross pattern (Figure 3.172b).

Eagle-Trapping Lodges Eagle-trapping lodges are represented as petroglyphs in one and possibly two ways at three sites in the North Cave Hills. Two images are multiple-pole conical lodges drawn at sites 39HN209 and 39HN842 (Keyser 1984:45, Figure 16a; Sundstrom 2004b:119–24). We can be reasonably certain these represent conical eagle-trapping lodges because at both sites they are carved in association with snakes, whose exaggerated size or horned head suggests they are mythic animals (Figure 3.175c, d). Such mythic snakes are intimately associated with Hidatsa and Mandan eagle-trapping rituals, and men out hunting eagles used similar conical lodges for conducting their purification rituals before trapping eagles nearby. In fact, while staying overnight in such a lodge preparing himself for the following day’s eagle trapping, the trapper slept with his head on one of the two “snake poles” (G. Wilson 1928:145). Therefore, the snakes drawn

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in association with these North Cave Hills conical lodges plausibly refer to the belief that snakes were associated with successful eagle trapping. Several conical, pole-constructed, eagle trapping lodges have been found in western North and South Dakota (Allen 1983), the nearest in the Slim Buttes just about 50 km (30 miles) southeast of these petroglyphs (Conner and Halvorsen 1969). Possible eagle-trapping lodges occur at 39HN486, where Sundstrom (1993: 260) has recorded lightly scratched petroglyphs of slightly different lodges associated with a horse and other images. These petroglyphs show lodges as low subconical forms composed of closely spaced, nearly parallel lines with associated smaller structures of upright and crosshatched lines (Figure 3.175a, b). Each subconical lodge has a long vertical line from its top to a recognizable representation of a fish and an arrow. These almost certainly represent some sort of sacred bundle attached to the structure as a votive offering. Sundstrom (2004b:119–20) suggests these lodges are the conical “eagle lodges” associated with the eagle-trapping ceremony and the associated structures are a fish trap and the cage in which captured eagles are kept. She makes a persuasive case that these drawings closely mimic those done on paper by Mandan and Hidatsa men who had gone on such eagle-trapping expeditions (Sundstrom 2004b:119–20). She suggests the bundles shown atop the lodges are the equivalent of name glyphs identifying the sacred bundle owned by the man who sponsored the eagle-trapping expedition and constructed the lodge.

Figure 3.175. Eagle-trapping lodges and/or earth lodges are identified by their odd form (a, b). Other eagle-trapping lodges (c, d) are conical pole lodges with associated snake symbolism. Note pair of snakes, one with deeply cut grooves across it, possibly representing “snake poles” in (c). Drawing by the authors; (a, b, d) adapted from Sundstrom 2004a, 2004b.

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The only substantive distinction between the rock art images at 39HN486 and later historic drawings of eagle-trapping camps is these votive bundles. As Sundstrom notes, such bundles are not typical of eagle-trapping lodges but were typically placed in this position on Mandan and Hidatsa earth lodges, especially to show a man preparing to go to war (Gilman and Schneider 1987:99; Weitzner 1979:289). Hidatsa village scenes painted by Karl Bodmer show such bundles tied to a pole atop a man’s lodge (Thomas and Ronnefeldt 1976:228– 29). These votive bundles atop the lodges at 39HN486 has led one scholar to suggest they represent winter-season earth lodges rather than lodges for eagle-trapping camps (Cowdrey 1996). He suggests the associated structures represent a horse corral and notes that the slightly less formal shape of these lodges mimics Hidatsa winter dwellings (Gilman and Schneider 1987:98). We see validity in both the interpretations. Site 39HN486 is in the heart of Mandan-Hidatsa eagle-trapping territory, and there are other sites (including petroglyphs) known to be associated with this practice in the area. There are, however, significant differences between the structures at 39HN486 and the other conical lodge petroglyphs drawn with associated snakes. If both types represent eagle trapping, the differences between them might be due to ethnic (Mandan vs. Hidatsa) or temporal distinctions. Conversely, although there are no known Mandan-Hidatsa winter villages in the North Cave Hills region, we know both groups used the area, and their war parties often traveled through it. So it is plausible that war-related imagery from either group—possibly even showing home villages—could have been inscribed at 39HN486. Until more sites are found containing similar imagery, and more detailed study is done, we cannot confidently choose one interpretation over the other.

Ceremonial Lodges Two multiple-pole structures have been identified as ceremonial lodges. One, in a Bear Gulch villagescape, is a rectangular structure with tall poles forming both sides (Figure 3.163a). Its association with the two tipis on an inferred ground line indicates it represents a pole structure. Both side poles are ornamented with obliquely oriented, outward-flowing streamers—paired at the top and spaced down along each pole. Connecting the side poles is a horizontal cross member with a dozen closely and regularly spaced vertical poles filling the rectangular space with what appears to be an almost solid wall. This could represent any of various structures made of brush and wooden poles by northern Plains tribes. These include dance arbors, ramadas, animal traps, or shamans’ “medicine lodges.” The decorative streamers suggest a ritual function, so a dance arbor or medicine lodge seems most likely. Such structures were regularly constructed for the Sun Dance and other celebrations and were routinely depicted in historic robe and ledger drawings (Berlo 1996:126–77, 185; Maurer 1992:162–67) and shown in historic photographs. An outsized, crudely conical structure situated at one end of a procession of seven blanket-wearing humans at La Barge Bluffs is drawn as four slightly

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curving poles and a curving crosspiece (Figure 3.54). This structure closely resembles Crow Tobacco Adoption and Sun Dance lodges (Lowie 1915:38–40). Analysis of this scene in relation to others at La Barge Bluffs and other rock art sites of this period led the authors of the site report to interpret it as a Crow Tobacco Adoption ceremony (Keyser and Poetschat 2005:169–72, 178). Loendorf (2017:43–45) makes a strong case that a group of scratched lines in a conical shape at one of the Wold sites (48JO6) represents a Crow Sun Dance lodge with Spring Boy (a Crow mythic character) placed at the top of the lodge to represent a Crow folktale.

Menstrual Lodge One very squat conical lodge at Wyoming’s No Water site (Figure 3.176) is formed of six poles meeting at its apex with two other nested, inverted V-shapes apparently representing a door or entryway. Clearly this is not a tipi meant for family habitation, and it is set off from any other imagery—either domestic or war-related—at the site. Instead, nearby images are two women, each with a prominent vulva and a trident turkey track design. The juxtaposition of these women with the lodge and the track suggests it represents a menstrual hut. This interpretation is consistent with the site’s focus on women and women’s vision questing (Key- Figure 3.176. Woman associated with a squat ser and Poetschat 2009:78– conical lodge representing a menstrual hut. 83). Such “special tipis” were Juxtaposed with this is a trident “turkey track,” which is associated with women’s fertility. Drawused by both Crow and Sho- ing by the authors. shone women (Lowie 1909:214, 1912:220, 1956:45), and among Siouan-speaking tribes a young woman’s first menstruation was often a time for her vision quest (Sundstrom 2004b:94–95). Sweat Lodges The sweat lodge was a low, dome-shaped structure of thin poles covered with hides used by Plains Indians as a type of wet sauna. Water sprinkled on heated rocks inside the lodge created steam, which was used to cleanse and purify the body in advance of many activities. The structure’s low, rounded, domed shape is its primary identifying feature, but some depictions also have a buffalo skull placed nearby, which indicates an altar used during some sweat lodge ceremonies. Currently, sweat lodges have been identified only in ledger drawings and winter counts (Greene 2001:106), but they might also occur in rock art. None have so far been documented.

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Other Conical Lodges Single, freestanding, multipole lodges at Bear Gulch, Atherton Canyon, Castle Butte, and Deer Medicine Rocks (24RB401) portray conical lodges (McCleary 2016:53) of some kind, but there are no associated narrative elements to elucidate their function. One example is a crude, three-pole, conical structure drawn as part of a villagescape (Figure 3.163a), which would not even have been identified as a structure were it not in this composition. It is significantly narrower and leans more than other tipis. The type of structure it might represent cannot be determined, but tripods were used for many purposes, from a ramada to a meat-drying rack. It might even represent a “dance” pole that was the centerpiece of some Plains ceremonies. In short, without associated imagery to provide a clue to their function, these generic lodge drawings might represent any number of structures. Shield Tripods Plains warriors displayed their war shields hung from a tripod just outside their tipi. Care was taken to reposition the tripod throughout the day so the shield continually faced the sun. At night it was taken down and stored away only to be brought out the next morning for display. Often a man’s medicine bundle or other items were displayed with the shield. Such shield tripods are illustrated in several ledger drawings (Szabo 1993:7, 16–18, Plates 3, 4), but in rock art they are currently known only at the La Vista Verde site, where they occur in several scenes (Fowles et al. 2017:171–73). Typically, these also have a feathered lance suspended from the tripod (Figure 3.177).

Figure 3.177. Shield tripods are so far found only at southern Plains sites. However, throughout the Plains, warriors displayed their shield on a tripod outside of their tipi. As shown here, feathered lances, medicine bundles, and other items were often displayed with the shield. Drawing by David A. Kaiser, adapted from Fowles et al. 2017.

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Buildings Apart from Spanish mission churches, presumably constructed of adobe (described below), which are known from five Texas sites, wooden frame or log buildings have so far been recorded at three other sites. At Atherton Canyon one panel shows a remarkable cluster of wooden buildings arranged in what appears to be a crude landscape (Figure 3.178). At least four and possibly six gabled-roof buildings, each with a door and windows, are scratched on a horizontal ground line. Next to these is a tipi or lean-to of some sort situated between vertical lines that may be trees or flagpoles. The buildings’ roofs and gabled ends are partly filled with horizontal lines representing logs or milled lumber. Doors and windows are filled with horizontal, vertical, and cross-hatched line patterns. The drawing’s style, isolated location in this outof-the-way canyon, and the scratched drawing technique are conclusive evidence that this is an Indian petroglyph. Such a cluster of well-drawn buildings is unique in Plains rock art, although simpler buildings are shown at DgOv-2 at Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park, and at Dorward Ranch (41GR51) and Cowhead Mesa (41GR414) in the Texas Panhandle (Boyd 1997:129). Simple buildings at DgOv-2 (Figure 3.78) are drawn as crude rectangles with chimneys in a scratched hanging scene (Keyser 1977a:22, 30). Rectangular buildings with peaked or domed roofs and a rectangular doorway at the two Texas sites (Figure 3.179) appear to be board-andbatten constructions. At Dorward Ranch two buildings with a tipi in between them are part of a scene involving a horse-drawn wagon whose track extends from them for a long distance to the left (Boyd 1990:125–29).16 At Cowhead Mesa two wooden buildings are part of a scene involving a horseman, a pedestrian, and a track sequence along with other humans, Spanish churches, and unidentifiable elements (Riggs 1965:13). Unlike the rarity of buildings in rock art, the latest ledger drawings often include clusters of buildings representing forts, military posts, and prisons

Figure 3.178. This cluster of wooden buildings shows gabled roofs, doors, and windows. A tipi or lean-to is adjacent. Drawing by the authors.

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Figure 3.179. Various buildings are occasionally part of Biographic narratives. These include rectangular buildings with peaked or domed roofs, often showing windows or a door. The upper scene shows a small party with a horse-drawn wagon leaving a settlement of two wooden buildings and a tipi. The lower scene shows wooden buildings and Spanish mission churches. Humans among these buildings are a horseman, a pedestrian with flowing robe and foot tracks, which lead to one building, and a figure portrayed within an outbuilding next to a church at far right. Drawing by the authors.

that the Indian artists had visited (Berlo 1996:157–61, 179; Greene 2001:69, 175). In fact, buildings at Caddo, Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), and the Military prison at St. Augustine, Florida, were illustrated very similarly to the Atherton Canyon petroglyph (Viola 1998:74, 114). These rock art buildings must date to the 1800s, but they could be relatively early in that century. By the 1830s, fur trade forts Union, Clark, McKenzie, and Pierre were built on the upper Missouri River; Fort Laramie was in operation in southeastern Wyoming; and Bent’s Fort was doing business on the Santa Fe trail. By the mid-1800s there were numerous other military posts, trading posts, and even the first settlements and ranches scattered throughout the Plains. The historic record documents that Plains Indians from many tribes visited these posts and other settlements to trade or raid. The simpler buildings at DgOv-2 are later. They are part of a hanging scene that also includes a camp circle, a horse-drawn wagon, and a body in a coffin. Current research suggests this drawing documents the hanging of the Blood warrior Charcoal at Fort McLeod, Alberta, in March 1897 (H. Dempsey 1978).

Spanish Mission Churches A special type of building—the Spanish Mission church—is so far recognized in Plains Biographic rock art only in Texas and eastern New Mexico. These churches, constructed of adobe or stone, were typically built with a main building (often fronted by a walled yard) and one or two bell towers framing the façade, which typically features a cross atop the peak of the main roof and smaller crosses atop the bell towers. Such mission churches were first con-

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structed in the 1500s, and following the Oñate expedition in 1598, they were built in what is now New Mexico and Texas. The first Texas mission was established in 1630 by Franciscan priests coming from already established missions along the Rio Grande in New Mexico. So many of these were constructed in the following century in both Texas and New Mexico that historians refer to the 1600s as the “Golden Age of Spanish Missions” (Plocheck 2006). Most missions constructed in New Mexico were established near existing pueblos, but these would have been familiar to Plains Indians who traveled there to trade and raid. Missions throughout the region became a focal point of interaction between the Spanish, the sedentary Pueblo peoples (who often were enslaved by the Spanish), and the Plains tribes who visited frequently. Found as both pictographs and petroglyphs at five Texas sites scattered from the panhandle to the Rio Grande, and Conant Springs in eastern New Mexico, these illustrations show two characteristic forms. Most common are those with a two- or three-cross configuration where crosses top the paired bell towers or the nave’s peaked roof and the two flanking bell towers (Figures 3.36, 3.41, 3.96, 3.180). A second identifiable church form consists of a series of stacked, downward-pointing triangles with a cross usually perched at the top (Figures 3.41, 3.179). This configuration apparently represents the “stepped” silhouette of some false-front façades or entry portals, which symbolized various levels of “virtues” in Roman Catholic doctrine. These silhouettes were often surmounted by a cross, and a single level façade of this sort actually occurs on a church at Conant Springs (Figure 3.181). Such stylization of these uniquely stepped features is consistent with general Indian art designs from

Figure 3.180.  This church at a Texas site (at right) shows three crosses placed on top of the nave’s peaked roof and at both corners of the building. Vertical horse and rider may be associated. Photograph courtesy of Mark D. Willis.

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Figure 3.181. Mission church showing triangles and crosses on the roof, as well as what appears to be a row of people with triangular heads inside. Light grey in bodies of probable people and in band above is red pigment. Authors’ tracing from photograph provided by Jeff LaFave.

the nearby Southwest, even though the Indian artists likely did not completely understand their symbolism. These mission structures are typically part of broader scenes. For instance, at Caballero Shelter a European horseman wearing a hat, brandishing a sword, and smoking a pipe travels between a church of the stacked triangle style toward a large mission church with crosses atop paired bell towers. Other churches at Meyers Springs have people adjacent or even within. At Meyers Springs, Missionary Shelter, and possibly Conant Springs churches are anthropomorphized by conflating a priest with the church itself. The Missionary Shelter church is pierced by an arrow, strongly implying a narrative story (Turpin and Eling 2011:279). Unfortunately, most of this imagery has yet to be studied in sufficient detail to determine what the narratives are, but we feel this art would reveal much with intensive study. Two low-slung structures topped by multiple crosses and showing people inside are found at Conant Springs (Figures 3.96, 3.181). Both populate scenes showing combat or trading. The site has only been recorded in extremely preliminary fashion (Prentice 1951), but scenes there appear to show detailed narratives. The low-slung structures could represent forts or pueblos with associated Spanish missions. Until there is a more detailed recording of this site, the elaborate narratives provoke more questions than answers.

Fortification/Breastworks Plains Biographic art often shows a fortified war party seeking shelter from an attacking force. Such defensive actions were commonplace in the “hit-andrun” warfare characterizing Plains conflicts. These fortifications could be as simple as a natural feature like a buffalo wallow or a shallow ravine that temporarily sheltered a war party to more complex constructions ranging from hastily thrown-up breastworks to pole ramparts or a carefully constructed war lodge left behind as a potential redoubt in case of pursuit.

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Such fortifications are typically drawn as a line encircling a warrior or group of warriors (and sometimes even their horses) who are being attacked by an enemy force (Figures 1.13, 3.80). The encircling line can indicate almost anything in which the besieged war party sought refuge. Often the attackers are shown in action, but this typically depends on whether the narrative illustrates the attackers’ defeat of a fortified party or the fortified party’s fending off a pursuing foe. Scenes of fortified war parties are drawn at half a dozen northern Plains sites and one site on the Colorado Plateau to show attacks by well-armed enemy forces and attacks that were apparently repulsed. Roughly circular forms drawn to represent a war party’s breastworks are found at three Writingon-Stone sites (DgOw-20, DgOw-32, DgOv-81) and Atherton Canyon, Turner Rockshelter, and Pictograph Cave in Montana. The Colorado Plateau example is drawn at 5GF1339, west of Grand Junction. The three fortifications within the camp-circle village at DgOv-81 shelter nine or eleven people and are relatively large enough to suggest something more than a simple breastwork. One Turner Rockshelter fortification and that at 5GF1339 are large enough to have horses inside. DgOw-20 shows a man using such breastworks to fend off an enemy attack. Although wounded by an arrow, he escapes from inside the fortification and his bloody tracks lead past a tipi village where he takes a horse. Breastwork fortifications similar to those in rock art were drawn in ledger and robe art by the Blackfoot and at least six other tribes. Several of the currently known rock art examples appear to be drawn by Blackfoot artists, but the Colorado example is almost certainly by a different group. The only example of a pole rampart is at the South Piney site (48SU5331) in southwestern Wyoming. At that site, a series of X and H shapes interposed between raiding horsemen and pedestrians (Figure 3.182) apparently represents a crude palisade serving as a protective barrier for defense of the

Figure 3.182. A pole barrier, depicted as a series of X and H shapes interposed between raiding horsemen and pedestrians apparently served as a defensive rampart. Drawing by the authors.

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pedestrians (Keyser and Poetschat 2005:129–30). Early explorers—including David Thompson—occasionally saw similar fortifications constructed by Indian groups under attack (McGinnis 1990:33; Secoy 1992:54).

⤞ VIGNETTE 6 ATHERTON CANYON FORTIFICATION SCENE

Figure V6. Warrior artists often repurposed previous drawings to tell their own story. Drawing by the authors.

A small cluster of twelve short, red-painted dashes originally used to represent human footprints in a Biographic narrative documenting a horse raid was later encircled by a scratched line drawn by a second artist to indicate a group of his fortified enemies (Figure V6). The cluster of painted footprints at the end of the path of footprints originally indicated the journey to an area and then the bivouac of three horse raiders (posed just to the left of their tracks). After pausing to rest, these horse raiders left camp and continued onward where they took ten horses, represented by the C-shaped tracks just in front of the men. Using a cluster of human footprints to represent a place where several people paused or congregated

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is a well-known Biographic art convention (e.g., Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997:125, 271; Keyser 1987:51, 66–67, 2000:77–80; Petersen 1968:56–57) But after the original artist had painted his horse-raid scene at Atherton Canyon, a second warrior/artist happened by and read this narrative story. He then repurposed a part of it to tell his own—entirely different—story. The second artist encircled these “footprints indicating a group’s bivouac” with a scratched line, thereby changing the cluster of dashes into a group of fortified enemies. In this man’s composition each footprint in the cluster synecdochically embodies an individual enemy warrior in a group that had fortified itself against his attack. After encircling the cluster of footprints, and thereby changing it into a group of fortified enemies, this second artist scratched his own self portrait at the right end of the path of single painted footprints leading up to the cluster. By aligning his own feet exactly with the painted footprints, there is no doubt as to what he intended to show. The line of tracks then becomes his path to the fortified enemies. He also pictures himself reaching out to grasp a gun by the end of its barrel. Shown in a vertical position, floating just below his hand, the gun illustrates a weapon taken from one of the unlucky, fortified foes.

⤝

Other Minor Constructions Gallows/Coffin A hanging scene carved at DgOv-2 in Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park (Figure 3.78), shows one man hanged from a tall flagpole and—in bird’s-eye view—a body lying in a coffin. Other accompanying images are a horse and wagon driven by two men, a third man and a horse, a cluster of buildings, and a crudely depicted camp circle. Shown as fresh incisions in an 1897 photograph by R. N. Wilson, the scene appears to commemorate the hanging of the Blood warrior Charcoal at Fort McLeod earlier that year (H. Dempsey 1978). Flags Cloth flags (made from woven material and distinct from feather or hide banners decorating weapons and some tipis) occur in all three Biographic art media. Most date to the later decades of the Historic period. In ledger and robe drawings, US flags and various pennons used as military guidons provide detail to combat scenes between the US military and Indian warriors. Some flags identify US troopers, but other scenes show the capture of a guidon as a war trophy and even the use of the captured flagstaff (with pennon attached) to count coup on a soldier. The Crow warrior-artist White Swan served as a US Cavalry scout and illustrated different colored guidons in several of his scenes. One of the most graphic (Greene 2012:54, 61) is his horseback charge on a group of fortified enemies while firing his gun and holding aloft a guidon with a US stars and stripes pattern. Cloth flags are much rarer in rock art. Three small examples are used as bridle bit decorations (see this chapter, “Bridle Bit Decorations,” “Cloth Flag”), but larger cloth flags are illustrated at two sites and in one arborglyph. The flag

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atop the gallows in the Writing-on-Stone hanging scene (Figure 3.78) has both horizontal and vertical stripes. Given the inattention of Plains warrior-artists to the specifics of fine detail for some foreign items (such as the US brand), the flag may be the artist’s attempt to represent a Union Jack or the Canadian Red Ensign, which had the Union Jack in the upper left corner. A more rectilinear flag with vertical stripes (Figure 3.22) is waving atop the flagpole of the Mackinaw flatboat in the Bierce Arborglyph (Keyser and Sundstrom 2020). Finally, a rectangular flag flies atop a tipi in the armored horse combat scene at 24YL1358 (Figure 3.63). From the photograph we have of this site, the flag appears to be a later embellishment to the scene rather than an original part of it.

Tipi Flag Tipis at two sites, 24YL1358 (discussed above) and Bear Gulch, have flags attached to the tops of one or two poles. The 24YL1358 example appears to be a rectangular cloth flag added to a preexisting scene. One tipi and a war lodge at Bear Gulch are decorated with the same sort of flags that embellish weapons at the site (Figures 3.174e, 3.183). The tipi has two flags, and the war lodge only one. Given their similarity of shape, these may have served the same purpose as flags drawn on many warriors’ weapons at several sites (Fossati, Keyser, and Kaiser 2010). Another tipi has scalps tied on the projecting poles in place of flags (Figure 3.163a), and two lodges have ceremonial bundles tied to poles projecting from their roofs (Figure 3.175a, b).

Figure 3.183. Four humans, including two women as indicated by breasts and emphasized hips, approach a tipi with flags attached to two poles extended above it. Grey is red pigment enhancing the tipi. Drawing by the authors.

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Vehicles Several sorts of vehicles are illustrated in Biographic rock art. Most are Euro-American vehicles, which attracted Indian attention because of their foreign nature. These include wagons, boats, railroad trains, and even automobiles. The only native-made vehicles are travois and Red River Carts, which may have been manufactured by Métis people affiliated with trading posts.

Automobiles Automobiles would seem to be a strange component of Plains Indian Biographic rock art, since it was only after 1890 that the first practical gasoline vehicles were built in North America, and fully two decades later that cars became readily accessible to the general population. It was not until the decade between 1910 and 1920 that cars and decent roads were found across the Plains. There are, however, two automobiles drawn as part of Bird Rattle’s traditional Biographic narrative at site DgOv-2 at Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park (Klassen, Keyser, and Loendorf 2000). The petroglyph, carved by Blackfoot chief Bird Rattle, shows two cars with six passengers arriving at Writing-on-Stone on a clearly marked track representing the cars’ tire tracks (Figure 3.184). The carving commemorates Bird Rattle’s 1924 visit to the site with a group of friends. These included Roland Willcomb, a highway engineer who organized the trip, two of Willcomb’s friends, and two other Blackfoot elders, Jack Wagner, who interpreted, and Split Ears, a contemporary of Bird Rattle. During the visit, Bird Rattle and Split Ears conducted a personal religious ceremony atop one of the prominent natural shale buttes just above DgOv-2, and then Bird Rattle recorded his trip to the site as a “significant life event.” Luckily, Willcomb photographed Bird Rattle carving the image. The shallowly but firmly incised cars are simply illustrated but show noteworthy detail. Both are boxy rectangular vehicles shown in side profile and

Figure 3.184. Piegan chief Bird Rattle carved this scene at Writing-on-Stone to document his visit there in 1923. Note both cars are complete with a steering wheel, radiator cap, and fenders with running board. Four passengers in lead car (shown in close-up photograph) are Roland Willcomb, Bird Rattle, Split Ears, and Jack Wagner. Note vehicles’ “track” showing route of travel. Drawing and photograph by the authors.

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elaborated with spoked wheels, fenders, and running boards. Both have a forward-positioned engine box showing a radiator cap. Both passenger compartments are illustrated in X-ray style, with Willcomb’s lead car carrying four passengers from the Blackfeet Reservation and the trailing vehicle, carrying Willcomb’s two friends, who met them at the Canadian border. Both vehicles show a steering wheel and driver. As important to the scene as the cars and humans is the very lightly scratched “road” upon which the vehicles sit. The two finely scratched lines begin half a car length behind the rear vehicle and run just under the wheels of both cars to end under the lead vehicle’s front wheel. These “car tracks” are analogous to horse tracks or wagon tracks used in other Biographic scenes to create a narrative of group movement, and as such, they act as a catalyst to make this an action scene, exactly as wagon tracks are used on Crazy Mule’s “Yellowstone-Milk” Biographic map (Fredlund, Sundstrom, and Armstrong 1996:15–16, Figures 9–11).

Railroad Trains Railroad steam trains, while common in ledger art, are rare in Plains rock art. Existing examples, however, are testament to the impact the introduction of this technology had on the Plains and beyond. Naturally a late addition to Biographic art, most train images occur along a wide corridor following the route of the transcontinental railroad, completed in 1869. On the Plains, a pair of detailed trains occur at La Barge Bluffs in western Wyoming (Keyser and Poetschat 2005:55–57), and a crudely scratched example occurs at No Water, further north in Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin (Keyser and Poetschat 2009:37–38). At La Barge Bluffs they accompany an extensive battle scene (Figures 1.32, 3.185). One locomotive is a simpler sketch of a train engine and cab, with a coal tender attached. The smokestack and sand and steam domes, as well as the pilot (commonly called a “cow catcher”), on the engine’s front are easily identifiable, but no wheels or track are shown. Its interaction with two nearby, simply drawn human figures is unclear. The second La Barge Bluffs train is much more realistic and detailed. The train runs on a pair of tracks, with large “driver” wheels shown on the locomotive. A diamond shaped smokestack, the pilot, a sand dome, and a steam dome (complete with a whistle) are clearly illustrated. Vertical lines on the engine represent shiny brass reinforcement bands around the boiler, which would have caught a native artist’s eye. The tender car as well as three clerestory-roofed passenger cars and a flatcar are also shown. Aside from their differences in execution, the structural and design variations, as well as composition of the trains themselves, show these to be two different trains, not just versions of the same one. Above the more detailed train are a horseman and a vertically oriented, “sitting” animal. Their association with the train is unclear, but the unusual animal might be a name glyph (see Chapter 4, “Name Glyphs”).

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Figure 3.185. A sketchy train engine and cab with a coal tender shows considerable detail, including the smokestack and sand and steam domes, as well as the pilot (or “cow catcher”). This train, along with another more detailed example at the same site, is likely related to the coming of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, only 80 km (50 miles) to the south. Drawing by the authors.

Further afield, railroad trains are carved in Utah, in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (Kolber 2001:22), and at Shearers Bridge on the lower Deschutes river in central Oregon. Two trains in Utah’s Fremont Indian State Park were carved by the Paiute artist Hunkup to commemorate his train journey east (Beckwith 1947). These detailed drawings include humans on top of the cars, which were almost certainly intended to be passengers riding in the train, in a fashion similar to early depictions of horse riders, who appear to be standing on the horse’s back. A similar convention showing three human figures on top of a train occurs in a ledger drawing by Medicine Crow (Keyser and Poetschat 2005:56). Regardless of their interaction with these trains, native artists were usually keen observers of their details, which can help date the rock art of which they are an element. As part of the Biographic art lexicon, images of these “Iron Horses” were created to commemorate a journey made, record an attack on or other interaction with this strange new “beast,” or even simply to commemorate the intrusion of this new and unusual object into their territory.

Wagons When Europeans arrived on the Plains, they brought an entirely new technology. Some items were adopted by native populations while others continued to be used primarily by the newcomers, and images showing these objects were generally used in Biographic art to indicate their presence. Wagons of various types were one such device. They occur commonly in ledger art, but a

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half dozen examples representing three types of wagons also occur in Biographic rock art and arborglyphs (Keyser and Sundstrom 2020). Icons of European western expansion, covered wagons had a large cloth covering to protect their contents. Used by settlers and freighters in the nineteenth century, they often traveled together for mutual support and protection in a long convoy. Just such a wagon train is shown at the Dorward Ranch site (Boyd 1990:125–29). Although nearly obscured by a century of graffiti, a tracing of the image (with graffiti removed) shows a train of nine rectangular wagons, each with large, spoked wheels and pulled by two oxen (Figure 3.21). Whether the two oxen represent a single team or two pairs is unclear, but only the near-side wagon wheels are shown. Single oxen in two different teams have riders, and one rider fires a gun backward toward the rear of the wagon train. However, Boyd (1990:129) suggests this rider might be more modern than the scene itself, and he was not recorded in Riggs’ (1965) drawing of the scene. Such a large wagon train, whether carrying immigrants and their possessions through Indian territory or hauling freight from one frontier settlement to another, would have been a significant event for any native witness. Another covered wagon is painted at La Tinaja de Acebuches in Coahuila in a composed scene with a man, woman, child, and turkey (Sayther 1997; Turpin 2010:165–66). The nearly square wagon has its cover decorated with a stripe and a row of upward pointing triangles (Figure 3.186a). The man walking behind with his family carries a long gun. A smaller, simpler, horse-drawn wagon occurs in a second Dorward Ranch scene (Figure 3.179a). Showing a cluster of buildings and a tipi at one end of a long road with a horse-drawn cart and a horseman almost to the other end, Boyd (1990:129) suggests this shows a small party leaving a town or fort and traveling a trail over the Caprock Escarpment, a prominent topographic feature in that area of the Texas Plains. More buildings on the road past the wagon or a cluster of tipis even further on might be the destination. This scene has striking structural similarities to one drawn in Montana’s Bierce Arborglyph, and further study might show some relationship between the horseman, the wagon, and the structures, which would help explain the scene. In the southern Black Hills, a petroglyph shows what is likely a delivery wagon (Sundstrom 2004b:28). Pulled by a single horse, this enclosed wagon (Figure 3.186b) has smaller wheels and is suggested to date from about 1830 when traders first came into the region. Early traders were of note to native populations, due both to their status as newcomers and for the goods they transported. Similar wagons drawn in Lakota winter counts (Greene and Thornton 2007:188) are illustrated for these same reasons. Another type of wagon with large wheels, elongate running gear, and a low wagon box (if any) is illustrated at two Plains sites. Such wagons were typically used for hauling freight, lumber, or hay—often around military posts. The two such uncovered flat wagons are part of the Writing-on-Stone hanging scene

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Figure 3.186. Wagons of various sorts in Biographic narratives range from elaborately painted examples (a) to very simple petroglyphs (b). An Indian attack on a lumber wagon stripped down to its running gear is shown in a Wyoming narrative petroglyph recorded by Ambrose Bierce in 1866. Unfortunately, the Bierce petroglyph has not been relocated since it was originally sketched, and it may no longer exist. Drawing by the authors. (a) adapted from Turpin and Eling 2011; (b) adapted from Sundstrom 1993; (c) adapted from an 1866 drawing by Ambrose Bierce on file at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

(Keyser and Klassen 2001:234) and part of a fight scene at a site near Fort Reno in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, which was recorded by Ambrose Bierce in 1866 (Keyser and Sundstrom 2020). The Writing-on-Stone wagon (Figure 3.78) is pulled by a single horse with a driver standing on the tongue of the running gear and a second man long-lining the horse. The Wyoming site (Figure 3.186c) shows an Indian attack on a group of soldiers or teamsters hauling goods or cutting lumber or hay. The lack of a box suggests it was a lumber

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wagon stripped down to the running gear. Attacks on such parties and the use of wagons as revetments—as in this scene—were common during the Indian Wars in this area of Wyoming (Keyser and Sundstrom 2020). The final wagon is a two-wheeled Red River Cart drawn in the Bierce Arborglyph (Figure 3.22) as part of a scene showing a war party attacking a Métis group traveling a trail toward a mountain range (Keyser and Sundstrom 2020).

Travois Constructed of two long poles either lashed together at one end to form an A-frame or lashed to the sides of the draft animal in an H-frame and with the trailing poles joined near their middle by a platform, travois were used by many Plains tribes as an efficient means of transport for household belongings (Henderson 1996). Originally hitched to the back of a dog (Henderson 1994), travois were quickly enlarged and adapted for use with the horse, thereby allowing the transport of longer tipi poles and heavier loads. Rock art travois are depicted as relatively simple V-shapes with one or two cross bars. They can be shown attached to horses or as freestanding items. Numerous examples are found at three sites at Writing-on-Stone (Keyser 1977b:43). Six horses at the rear of a large battle scene at DgOv-81 pull travois (Figure 3.7). Three of the horses have an unarmed person (probably a woman) standing in front of them holding a short lead rope, indicating this was a residential group on the move with their belongings rather than a war party. Elsewhere at Writing-on-Stone site DgOv-78 has seven horizontally oriented travois and DgOv-74 has a single upright example (Figure 3.187b, d). No horses are associated with any of these. Such freestanding travois were used in Lakota winter counts as a convention to indicate moving camp (Kaiser 2021), and they may have served the same purpose at these sites. A gravely wounded horse apparently pulling a travois, represented by lines angled down and back from just behind a saddle to an implied ground line, is drawn at the Spring Creek Petroglyphs (24BH1046) in south-central Montana (Haberman 1973:22–23). Composed as part of a scene involving a tipi and four horse hoofprints that apparently indicate a group of attackers, this scene has yet to be deciphered by anyone versed in the Biographic art lexicon (Figure 3.187a). The final rock art travois is at 39HN826 in the North Cave Hills (Figure 3.187c). An action scene there illustrates a rider astride a horse pulling a travois, shown as a horizontally oriented V-shape attached to the animal (Sundstrom 2004a, 2018:132). Although Sundstrom identifies this as a horse-raiding scene, the travois would be unusual in such an action. The rider has an arm extended backward either holding a quirt while whipping his (or her) mount for a quick getaway or exchanging gunfire with pursuers, but the lines of the drawing are insufficiently detailed to determine which. As with the Spring Creek petroglyph, this scene obviously illustrates an interesting story and warrants further study to clarify it.

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Figure 3.187. Travois can often be identified only when found in scenes. (a) shows a complete scene with a wounded horse pulling travois, horse hoofprints probably indicating group of attackers, and a lodge. (c) shows horse and rider pulling a travois. Neither scene has been adequately studied. Other travois (b, d) are freestanding but identified by the portrayal of the platform constructed between the A-frame used to transport items. Drawing by the authors; (a) adapted from Haberman 1973; (c) adapted from Sundstrom 2004a.

Boats As with wagons, European-style boats were technological marvels to Indian artists. They occur infrequently in Plains Biographic art, and all are used to document the presence of Euro-Americans in Indian territory. Often, they are a key feature of a particularly memorable military or personal encounter. Several types of boats are drawn in Biographic Tradition art media. Steamboats were drawn by several Fort Marion prisoner/artists, whose lives changed dramatically when they were taken from the southern Plains and imprisoned on Florida’s Atlantic coast. During both their journey to Fort Marion and their incarceration, steamboats were a commonly observed watercraft. Likewise, Crow chief Medicine Crow was sufficiently impressed with such boats during his trip to Washington, DC, around 1880 that he drew pictures of several. Closer to home in the Plains, however, boats are far less common and more likely to be involved in an artist’s personal exploit. The Arikara warrior-artist Too Ne illustrated Lewis and Clark’s keelboat on their upriver journey (Steinke 2014:Figures I, III), and unnamed artists drew a flatboat and a remarkably detailed keelboat, complete with men cordelling it upstream, in drawings made for Father Nicolas Point (1967:96, 97, 115). Finally, a war shirt (Anonymous 2018) illustrating the opening battle of the 1823 Arikara war

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shows the same two keelboats during sequent engagements occurring only a few hours apart. Thus, we know Plains artists were familiar with boats and what they meant to non-Indians, so it comes as no surprise they also occur in Biographic rock art and in the Bierce Arborglyph. The best-known of four examples is the vessel drawn at Explorers Petroglyph, just north of Billings, Montana (Figure 3.79). Cramer (1974) suggests this petroglyph is a Blackfoot record of a horse raid on William Clark’s returning party in 1806. The classic Blackfoot-style, hourglass-body humans and six Blackfoot-style horses support the interpretation this is as an after-action calling card drawn by Blackfoot horse raiders (Minick and Keyser 2019:59). The vessel itself is a canoe—possibly part dugout although Cramer notes it could easily have had built-up sides like those on the petroglyph. A second rock art boat is only recently discovered (Figure 3.129). This is a keelboat, found at 48PA3478, west of the Bighorn River in northern Wyoming (Bies 2018). The keelboat has a central mast, topsail, people on board, a cordelle line, and a horse wearing a collar and other harness parts that has just been unhitched. Bies (2018) makes a persuasive argument that this scene was drawn by a Shoshone artist who had seen a keelboat operated by Manuel Lisa to supply his fur-trading fort at the confluence of the Bighorn and Yellowstone Rivers between 1807 and 1813. A third rock art boat is found at Circle Rock (14RU10) in the Saline River valley in north-central Kansas (Wells 1996:17). There may be four people in what appears to be a flatboat (Figure 3.188), but this image appears to have been retouched by modern visitors, making original details difficult to determine (O’Neill 1981:26). Another Kansas petroglyph, Indian Hill (14EW1), recorded by an 1867 illustration, may be a fourth boat with one or two passengers (O’Neill 1981:25), but the site has greatly eroded, and unfortunately, it is unlikely any detail remains. Finally, another flatboat, drawn in the Bierce Arborglyph, shows a war party’s attack on hat-wearing men floating down the Yellowstone River (Figure 3.22). Figure 3.188. People ride in a flatboat carved at a Kansas petroglyph site. The middle image may be a supernatural creature, but recarving by modern visitors and recording by rubbing makes identification uncertain. Drawing by the authors, adapted from Wells 1996.

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Track Sequences and Groups Tracks—in their various guises—are possibly the most important conventionalized portrayal in Plains Biographic art; not because they record actual tracks left behind by people or animals, but instead because they are used in so many ways to provide the storyline to Biographic art. Most often, tracks in sequence show the path of an actor (typically a human or horse) into and through a scene. But tracks can also indicate places where actors paused, and they can even give a visual clue to the duration of the travel and the pause. As such they can add a sense of time (thus providing past, present, and even future tense) to what would otherwise be only static pictures. Furthermore, tracks often stand in for an offstage actor (who is therefore unseen) and are thus one of the most common synecdoches used in this art. Possibly the best and simplest example (Figure 3.189e) is the symbol =C, which represents a man (= for his footprints) just dismounted from his horse (C indicating a hoofprint). But there are others, which are only slightly more elaborate, that are just as impressively narrative (Figure 3.189). Finally, when painted red, a horse hoofprint or a man’s track shows a wounded actor, and a series of these shows the wounded actor moving through the scene. Figure 3.189. Tracks, sometimes combined with other actors or horse hoofprints, can tell various stories. Most sequences (a–f and h–j) read from right to left; (g, k, l) read from top down; (m) reads left to right. Human footprints are short dashes, horse hoofprints are C-shapes. Spear at the end of sequence (g) is weapon used to count coup; gun (j) is firing at and missing hero as he rides by; angled line (i) is edge of building into which the warrior entered to count coup. Long sequences of multiple tracks (k, l) indicate groups traveling, while clusters along a track indicate pauses. Stacked arrays of footprints and hoofprints (e, m) are participants in a battle. (a, b, f, i) are from ledger drawings, all others are rock art. Drawing by the authors.

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Figure 3.190. A Crow-style horse is juxtaposed with a cluster of thirty-three hoofprints, indicating the taking of many animals. Drawing by the authors.

Track sequences in Biographic art include both human and animal tracks. In Plains Biographic rock art only horse hoofprints, bear tracks, and human footprints have been documented in sequences; but in robe and ledger art other narrative track sequences include pronghorn antelope, bison, and dog. Some complex scenes will have several different track sequences showing the movement of different actors or a single actor at different times (Figures 1.19, 3.37, 3.156, 3.189). In other scenes, track sequences will combine horse hoofprints and human footprints to show a standing dismounted man or a man dismounting and continuing afoot. One special type of “track sequence” is a vehicle’s route of travel (Figures 3.22, 3.179, 3.184). At first glance these might seem to simply represent roads, but careful examination shows they are used to indicate the route of travel for wagons, a boat, and even cars (in the case of Bird Rattle’s petroglyph at Writing-on-Stone). As such, they are not roads or rivers in the traditional sense, but rather they serve as the path of the vehicle into and through the scene— just as track sequences do. Finally, the path of projectiles through the air, generally shown as a series of repeated bullets or arrows, acts just as other track sequences, connecting individuals or objects over a distance and through time (Figures 1.19, 3.130c). Groups of human footprints or horse hoofprints, obviously clustered together but not shown in a sequence implying movement, are also important in Biographic art. Typically these indicate a group of pedestrian or equestrian soldiers standing in place or a group of stolen horses, and the reader of a scene must understand the context of the tracks to determine the most likely explanation (Figures 2.6a, d; 3.189b; 3.190). Finally, sometimes a column of hoofprints and/or footprints indicates a phalanx of warriors participating in a fight.

Path/Group of Human Footprints A series of short dashes leading to or from a person or his weapon shows the route of travel for an individual or a group. Obviously, several nearly parallel

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lines of dashes indicate multiple people, but a single dashed line can indicate either an individual or a group, depending on how many people are illustrated at its terminus. Such a track sequence can show travel from the place of origin to an engagement, or out and back to the original starting point. Otherwise, the track sequence can show an individual’s movement within a scene. Often such footprints lead directly to or from one foot of the traveler on the demarcated path, but in some instances of synecdoche the footprints stand for the person—who is otherwise not depicted—so his tracks simply serve to bring his weapon, which floats at the end of the sequence, into play. By clustering footprint dashes along a sequence or bending, hooking, or looping an otherwise straight line, the artist was able to nuance the meanings of these sequences. Larger or smaller clusters placed at various points can indicate the camp from whence a party originated, a bivouac along the way, or simply a pause to consider and discuss options. Often, determining which of these actions is intended is a matter of understanding the context and noting how many actors are involved in the scene (Figure 3.189f, i). For instance, a cluster or a pair of footprints where a rider dismounts indicates time to survey the scene before rushing into the action. Such an “unhurried dismount” contrasts with a running or hurried dismount indicated by a single footprint starting off the sequence from the horse. Conversely, a cluster of foot tracks interrupting a sequence midway indicates a pause by the traveler(s), either to observe the action developing before them or discuss options, or to rest overnight. Multiple clusters can invoke a sense of hesitation indicating caution or uncertainty. The size of the cluster can indicate the relative amount of time spent in this place or the relative numbers of people stopping. Loops or bends in the sequence indicate false starts or turns around objects. Correctly interpreting all these possibilities necessitates careful consideration of the track sequence’s context. Human footprints and horse tracks are sometimes combined in sequences. This typically occurs with the human actor offstage; hence, the artist is indicating that he originally rode into the action but then dismounted to engage the enemy on foot. Acting in this way—and thereby forfeiting the advantage provided by one’s horse—was considered a very brave deed, and certainly worthy of depicting in this fashion. If the sequence begins with multiple hoofprints, it indicates the warrior was pursuing on horseback and dismounted to attack. A single hoofprint before human tracks simply indicates the man was a horseman before dismounting to join the fight (Figure 3.189c, d). Sometimes paired human footprints are placed behind a rank of weapons to indicate a warrior phalanx with each man holding his weapon (Figure 3.19). A further elaboration shows a single horse hoofprint behind each pair of footprints to indicate the standing men are dismounted riders (Figure 3.20). Such structures often imply fighting forces facing off against one another.

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Path/Group of Horse Hoofprints Horse hoofprints in groups or sequences are read in much the same way as human footprints. Hoofprint sequences generally show fewer variations than human footprint sequences in ledger art, but in rock art both footprints and hoofprints occur in the same sorts of sequences (Figure 3.189). Although hoofprint sequences in Lakota and Cheyenne ledger drawings often indicate large groups of horses, these primarily document fights between large tribal forces and the US military. Additionally, some ledger drawings show an elaborate path of horse tracks sweeping in front of a soldier phalanx to demonstrate a rider’s courage and the power of his protective supernatural medicine. Others show a similar path up to a building, tent, or wagon to show the rider counting coup under heavy fire. But a pause or bivouac represented by a cluster of hoofprints corresponding to a cluster of footprints is rarely shown. In rock art only a few examples of hoofprint sequences show a rider’s dash in front of a group of armed foes. Two of the best are at 24PR2382 (Figure 3.27) and DgOv43 (Figure 1.10). In contrast to early ledger drawings, horse hoofprints are only rarely structured in rows or columns in rock art to indicate a phalanx of mounted men. Hoofprint clusters sometimes also tally stolen animals (Figures 2.6a, 3.190). If the number is divisible by four, one must consider the possibility that the artist is illustrating four tracks for each single animal, but if not, each track obviously indicates an individual horse.

Ride-by Coup Strike A ride-by coup strike involves a protagonist horseman riding past an opponent while striking him, or even his tipi, with a weapon. Such a quick action allows the victorious warrior to strike coup in the thick of the fight, often without a killing blow. Such an act was considered particularly daring in Plains warfare. Shown in Biographic art as a linear sequence of horse tracks approaching and sometimes going on past the targeted individual or structure, the weapon used to strike coup is often—though not always—shown. Usually the protagonist himself is shown only by his horse’s tracks and his weapon, in the synecdoche typical of this art, though at Cheval Bonnet a shorthand horse with a small shield in place of the rider is illustrated at the start of the hoofprint sequence. This ride-by coup strike convention has so far been documented at six sites in Montana, Wyoming, and New Mexico (Figures V2, 1.22, 3.37, 3.174a-c, 3.191). Red Paint Shows a Bloody Trail Both human and horse tracks were sometimes colored red or interspersed with red streaks to indicate the path of a bleeding man or horse. This convention occurs reasonably often in robe and ledger drawings but is so far known in rock art only at DgOw-20. At that site, bloody trails are indicated for both

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Figure 3.191. A charcoal-drawn coup-count tally in New Mexico starts at lower right where the unseen warrior strikes a shield-bearing enemy with his Spontoon tomahawk. Then as a horseman, he performs ride-by coup strikes with two different war axes on two mounted enemies. Finally, he dismounts to engage a smaller, axe-wielding shield bearer and strikes him with a spear. Other coup-strike weapons (the second axe at the first rider and a bow touching the smaller shield figure) apparently represent coups by other comrades. Authors’ tracing from photograph provided by Jeff LaFave.

a wounded man and a wounded horse with streaks and splotches of red pigment showing the routes of travel for these wounded actors. Some streaks in the human’s bloody path are roughly footprint-sized, but most are not (Figure 3.80).

A Red Track Tallies a Horse’s Wound Robe artists from some tribes tallied the number of times their horses had been wounded as well as wounds to their own person (Figure 3.73), since both were considered minor honor marks. A horse’s wound demonstrated both it and its rider had been in the thick of the fight. Such horse wounds were shown as a C-shaped or squared C-shaped track drawn in two ways. Some arch upward with a central red wound mark and a fan of red lines trailing

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downward. Others show a C-shaped track drawn in its typical orientation with the fan of red lines trailing from its bottom terminus (Figure 0.14). Such horse wounds are not yet identified in Plains rock art, but they could have been easily overlooked and researchers should be alert to their presence.

Bear Tracks One Biographic rock art composition shows a sequence of bear tracks indicating the animal’s movement. Three tracks are drawn to imply such movement across the face of a shield held by the Crow warrior-hero of the main composition at the Manuel Lisa petroglyphs carved on the Yellowstone River east of Billings, Montana. While bear track sequences are known in Late Archaic Uncompahgre style rock art (Keyser and Poetschat 2015:44), these are almost certainly metaphorical rather than narrating real events (Keyser and Poetschat 2015:137). The Manuel Lisa example is the only one we know of in Plains Biographic rock art, but other bear track sequences occur in both ledger and robe art narratives. One, on an early 1800s upper Missouri region robe, shows a bear with a track sequence leading into a warrior’s coup-count tally (Maurer 1992:194– 95), but whether this represents a real or metaphorical action cannot be determined. An obviously real-life narrative is found on a ledger drawing by the Nez Perce warrior Peopeo T’olikt, documenting his close-quarter fight with a grizzly bear when he lived with the Lakota in Canada after the battle of the Bear’s Paw Mountains around 1877–79 (Minthorn 1991:26–27). In this scene involving several men, the bear’s tracks emerge from a copse of trees and mark its charge to attack T’olikt. At the fight, several other tracks cluster around the bear’s feet to show the “hand-to-paw” struggle that ensued. T’olikt’s tracks extend from his horse’s hoofprints to the wrestling match while other horsemen wheel around shooting at the attacking bear. The Manuel Lisa bear track sequence shows three right-pointing tracks crossing a Crow horseman’s shield from left to right (Figure 1.29). Clearly this track sequence had meaning for the shield owner, who we can plausibly assume was the panel artist. Possibly these tracks represent a real bear’s charge, like the encounter illustrated by T’olikt, but instead they might be the metaphorical approach of a bear to the shield owner in his vision. Similar track sequences in the Bear-Coming-Out heraldic motif painted as visionary imagery on Crow shields (Figure 3.192) lead up to a bear fending off a hail of bullets (Keyser 2004b). These track sequences have been interpreted as representing either a mother bear’s cubs she is protecting from the fusillade of fire or the bear’s path to the bullet-filled conflict (Ewers 1982c:43; Maurer 1992:120). In this petroglyph, no bear is in front of these tracks, so if the shield design represents another variant of the Bear-Coming-Out motif, it is structurally different than all others.

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Figure 3.192. The Bear-Coming-Out heraldic motif painted on a Crow shield. The series of tracks leading to a bear fending off a hail of bullets either represents a mother bear’s cubs as she protects them from the fusillade of fire, or her own path into the conflict. Drawing by the authors.

Conversely, as we see from T’olikt’s drawing and similar scenes on painted Blackfoot bison robes (L. Dempsey 2007:67–87), engaging a grizzly bear or a mountain lion at close quarters was considered the equivalent of a war honor. Other war deeds regularly documented as coups were sometimes used as shield heraldry—albeit emphasizing their metaphoric and supernatural overtones (Keyser and Klassen 2001:249)—as a bear’s charge might also have been. In short, this is a Biographic art bear track sequence; whether it represents a real or a metaphoric bear’s charge is lost to us.

Vehicle Tracks Just as Plains Biographic artists recorded the movement of people, horses, and other animals through the narrative scenes so common in this art, they indicated the movement of vehicles by showing their tracks (Figures 3.22,

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3.179, 3.184). This occurs primarily in Biographic maps (Fredlund, Sundstrom, and Armstrong 1996), but it also appears in rock art of the latest decades of the Historic period. At Writing-on-Stone, Piegan chief Bird Rattle illustrated two cars with people inside (see this chapter, “Automobiles”) and carefully placed both cars on a pair of lightly incised lines to show their “tracks” coming to the sacred site (Klassen, Keyser, and Loendorf 2000). Similar wheel tracks are drawn at Dorward Ranch. One shows a short track under the lead wagon of a nine-vehicle, ox-drawn wagon train, and the other shows a long track stretching from a set of buildings to a wagon going up and over the Caprock Escarpment, a prominent geographic feature in the region (Boyd 1990:125–29). Railroad trains at La Barge Bluffs (Figure 1.32) and No Water both show their tracks in the same fashion to indicate their movement (Keyser and Poetschat 2005:55, 2009:37). The Bierce Arborglyph artist illustrated a track for a Red River Cart much like that found at Dorward Ranch, but he also illustrated the Yellowstone River as the “track” of a flatboat, which was shown under attack by a war party (Figure 3.22). Of course, the river serves two functions in the drawing; first, it acts as a named landscape feature (identified by the elk glyph) to set the drawing in its greater context, but then the structure of the composition shows it also serves to document the path of the flatboat into the scene (Keyser and Sundstrom 2020).

Path of Projectiles While not strictly tracks, flying bullets or arrows tracing the trajectory of projectiles function in the same way, showing the path of movement and sometimes indicating the sequence of events as well (Figures 1.19, 3.7, 3.22, 3.143). Bullets are often drawn as a series of dots or dashes, showing their path from the firearm to the victim (Figures 2.4, 2.9, 3.158). Sometimes the last bullet is embedded in the casualty. Likewise, at DgOw-32 the identical convention shows a series of long dashes (representing minimally detailed arrows) stretching from a bowman’s nocked arrow (also shown as a simple line) to an arrow embedded in his opponent’s horse (Figure 3.130c). Such “paths” through the air may, in fact, show a volley of multiple projectiles, but it is equally likely they are intended to represent the same projectile multiple times as it flew to the intended victim. In either sense, the path traces one or more missiles’ journey through space and time, connecting elements of the composition.

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Notes 1. Of course, the reader can use the alphabetized index to find any item. 2. For instance, a small-scale research program near Cut Bank, Montana, recorded nineteen horses at eight sites in just more than three weeks’ worth of fieldwork conducted between 2014 and 2018 (Keyser 2017a, 2018b; Keyser and Lycett 2019). 3. Use of “lightning legs” horse paint was also sometimes combined with features of other powerful animals such as bison horns or shaggy-leg pantaloons, or eagle talons, to create a chimerical creature representing the “Thunder Horse” or a similar animal seen in a vision (Keyser and Burgan 2015; Keyser and Minick 2018:61–62). 4. Note that three of the women wearing decorated sashes at La Barge Bluffs are portraits of the same woman at different times in a cyclical narrative. 5. Petersen (1971:223, 290–91) uses annotations on one drawing written by an unknown nineteenth-century commentator to propose that black, flaring-cuff moccasins were also used to identify Osage enemies in some Cheyenne ledger drawings. However, Cowdrey (1999:44), considering the full suite of regalia for this enemy, disputes that conclusion. 6. This alphanumeric designation refers to the grid enclosing the figure. 7. Detailed sources for rock art headdresses and hairstyles are Keyser, Kaiser, Poetschat, and Taylor 2012:156–64 and Keyser and Poetschat 2014. 8. Interestingly, this scene includes a natural, golf-ball-sized dimple in the rock surface whose edge has been abraded. Following a rain storm this dimple retains water, and the site investigator posits that it represents a spring around which the horses were clustered. This is one of few biographic rock art scenes that make use of a natural feature of the rock surface to help tell the story. 9. In writing about this, Lewis notes that horse and human body armor are made in the same way. 10. Ewers (1955b:99) provides the only report contrary to this understanding, claiming Blackfoot informants said young men split their mounts’ ears “just to make them look pretty.” But this information goes against what is more broadly understood ethnographically, and the fact that split-eared horses are almost always shown in all Biographic art media as war ponies or as highly valued “favorite” horses picketed in front of enemy tipis and targeted for theft (Keyser 1987:54). 11. Some years ago, after being well photographed, the panel on which this scene is carved collapsed. Lying in this position, it is partially covered by sediment and is suffering serious erosion (Olson 1991). 12. The site number, 24RB1027, assigned to the Benjamin Hill site in Fredlund (1976), has been determined to be in error by the Montana State Historic Preservation Office, and currently the site remains unnumbered. 13. This convention with multiple short lines crossing the weapon shaft should not be confused with the depiction of feathers decorating a weapon shaft, which are shown as short lines extending out perpendicularly or obliquely from one side of the shaft, or feather fluffs on a weapon shaft, which are shown as nested downward-pointing chevrons (cf. Figures 0.20b; 1.16; 2.4; 3.133i; 3.134c, f; 3.154c). 14. Probably present-day Lake Manitou, just southeast of Saskatoon. 15. At the Conant Springs site a building is drawn with what appear to be people inside. Nine of the twelve figures have red-painted bodies and one with a black body has a red dot on his head. Sadly, these are badly defaced by someone who chalked the red paint, so it is impossible to determine from photographs what the red pigment indicates. 16. The two buildings that served as the departure point for the small horse-drawn wagon may also be the destination for the long wagon train inscribed on the panel, but extreme graffiti precludes verifying this plausible association.

CHAPTER 4

CONVENTIONS AND CONNOTATIONS

⤞⤝ Conventions and connotations are those standardized ways Plains Indian artists animated and interrelated elements of a scene to impart a meaning to it far greater than the sum of its component parts. As such, these provided a storyline for a scene and allowed an observer to both understand the action and also read nuances of meaning into what would otherwise appear to be minor details. For instance, two men, three weapons, a horsewhip, and a series of dashes tell no coherent story until the artist illustrates the humans in postures of winner and loser—draws the winner’s bow discharging an arrow, positions the loser’s gun as a floating weapon in two places, and uses the dashes to show the winner’s action of running into the fight while holding his quirt (Figure 1.18). Simply put, these half-dozen conventional ways of drawing the humans and weapons and the depiction of the winner’s quirt tie these various men and weapons together. These linkages are such that we can understand this as an archetypal Plains Indian coup-counting episode showing past action, present actions, and even the future disposition of the captured gun used to touch the vanquished enemy. As such, Biographic art conventions and connotations form the third of four key aspects needed to read this art, after the correct identification of objects, animals, and people and understanding their context (see Chapter 3, “Correct Identification” and following). In sum, it is not enough just to be able to recognize a quirt and a sequence of foot tracks. Instead, the reader of this art must understand, first, that the quirt denotes the attacker’s horse, and, second, that the same quirt is used as a convention connoting that he dismounted to run into this fight. Dismounting in such a situation, thereby giving up the advantage one’s horse provided, was viewed as the epitome of a man’s untempered bravery. In this section we discuss items with multiple possible connotations (e.g., quirt), multiple different ways of conventionally portraying a similar subject (e.g., a stolen horse), and multiple different items denoting different but related things (e.g., ethnic markers). In short, using our linguistic analogy, conventions and connotations can act as the nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, or conjunctions to

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help tell the story. Some are quite complex and can serve multiple purposes (such as a capture hand), while others are much simpler and primarily indicate one thing (a muzzle blast is always a gun shooting). However, each of these serves in its own way to help tell the story of this art.

Ethnic Markers One of the most important considerations for interpreting Biographic rock art in detail is the constellation of items used to identify the tribal affiliation(s) of a scene’s participant(s). Such ethnic identifiers include many different things or categories of items. For instance, these can be stylistic attributes (e.g., the differences between Crow, Blackfoot, and Navajo horses1 or Blackfoot and Crow humans, or the portrayal of wineglass humans only by the Blackfoot and Sarcee) that enable us to identify the artist’s likely tribal identity. But there might also be distinctive items of tribal dress and adornment, or hairstyles drawn specifically to identify participants in a scene (e.g., Pawnee style moccasins, White men’s beards, or the Crow pompadour hairstyle [see Chapter 3, “Headdresses and Hairstyles as Ethnic Markers”]). They also include specific material culture items (e.g., Crow and Ute horse war bonnets) or ways of depicting other, more common items (e.g., Crow weapon tabs and Crow feathers, Blackfoot fortification structures) whose stylization appears to have been restricted, or at least primarily limited, to the lexicon of specific groups. Finally, there are various “alphabets” of tribally specific ideograms, such as Blackfoot versus Crow capture hands (Figure 0.14) or the fighting behind breastworks symbol (#) used by the Crow, Hidatsa, Mandan, and Arikara. Often such ethnic markers can only narrow an identification down to one of a few related or affiliated tribes. For instance, on the northern Plains, various types of hourglass-style humans were drawn by all three tribes of the Blackfoot confederacy but also by artists of the affiliated Sarcee. Likewise, we know the Crow capture hand was drawn by Crow and Hidatsa artists and probably also Mandan and possibly Arikara artists. However, when we find such images, we can rule out Crow in the first instance and Blackfoot/Sarcee in the second. Other items have an even wider use but still eliminate some ethnic groups from consideration. Thus, as with the entire lexicon, it is not merely a matter of reading the image, but extrapolating from it, evaluating its associations, and comparing it to other similar examples. It takes work and requires in-depth study and analysis, but often it proves to be critical to one’s interpretation. Therefore, we have illustrated the formally defined ethnic markers typically found in rock art (Figures 0.14; 3.3; 3.4; 3.47i–k; 3.88; 3.121b, c; 3.123–3.125). Certainly others await identification since many of these we illustrate have been recognized only recently.

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Wounds Though shown relatively simplistically in most Biographic rock art, wounds convey several levels of information. When suffered by a man or his horse, wounds were a minor war honor since they demonstrated a man’s involvement in close combat. Thus, they were frequently memorialized by honor marks, so a man might paint himself, his clothing, or his horse with a shorthand wound mark to indicate being struck by enemy fire. Using the same logic, by painting or drawing a scene with himself or his horse wounded, a man documented his direct contact with the enemy. In fact, some ledger drawings show both fresh wounds and previous wound honor marks in the same image. In these drawings, fresh wounds spill red “blood,” while other wound marks are drawn in black pigment. Such “black wounds” show the same entry hole and flowing blood but painted in black to indicate they were suffered in previous engagements (Bowles 2010). Although currently known in only a few ledger drawings, further study might show the black wound was a widespread convention used in other media. Wounds can also connote bravery or courage in the face of heavy enemy fire. Such wounds are often combined with the fusillade of fire convention, where many spent projectiles are shown missing the hero while one or more hit and wound him (Figure 0.9). Often such wounds indicate an intentional

Figure 4.1. Red-painted blood (indicated in dark grey) shows wounds inflicted on an enemy and the enemy’s horse at an Alberta site. Both a rider and his horse are wounded by another horseman’s lance (a); blood flows out of both entry and exit points, indicating a throughand-through wound inflicted by a pistol shot (b). Images are drawn with charcoal accented by blood drawn with red ochre crayon. Drawing by the authors.

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charge into, or making a stand against, enemy firepower to demonstrate a man’s superior courage and the medicine-power of his supernatural helper. An artist would also draw wounds he inflicted on an enemy or the enemy’s horse (Figures 1.24, 2.9, 4.1). Again, documenting these indicated the artist was in the thick of the fight, and they help identify dead enemies or incapacitated horses, which serve to clarify the storyline. Among the Blackfoot, fatal wounds to an enemy were typically indicated to the head, the heart, or the thigh (Wissler 1911:40). The first two are obvious, but no information exists as to why a thigh wound was equated with the others. A Blackfoot petroglyph carved at DgOw-38 at Writing-On-Stone (Figure 2.9) shows the first two fatal wounds as part of a killing scene containing several coup strikes. While no Biographic rock art examples have been found, bleeding from the mouth shown in ledger and robe art often indicates a fatal wound.2 In some instances, a person’s name glyph is shown bleeding from the mouth to indicate their death (Kaiser 2021:65). In short, wounds to the artist, his mount, his enemy, or his enemy’s horse add significant information to any Biographic art scene and help us read the narrative of these personal histories.

The Headless Man In many Biographic narratives one sees occasional humans drawn without head or limbs, or with the top of the head missing (Figures 1.19, 2.9). Careful study of context often shows these are enemies, so the missing or abbreviated head might indicate a scalped foe. Likewise, figures without arms and/or legs are sometimes depicted to show dead or captured (e.g., incapacitated) participants in a narrative. While this is not a universal convention, it is one that the interpreter must consider. Conversely, it is often easier to identify a scalped enemy in ledger drawings and winter counts, since this action was often explicitly indicated by coloring the top of a scalped enemy’s head red.

Flying Projectiles One of the most common Biographic art conventions is the use of flying projectiles to illustrate specific combat action details. Such projectiles are typically bullets or arrows, although flying spears are sometimes used. Typically, these flying projectiles show the route of travel or path taken by a fatal shot, such as when a series of dots representing bullets, or a line with a dot “bullet” at its end, leaves a gun barrel and extends to a killed enemy. Sometimes the final bullet is shown in the head or heart (Figures 1.19, 2.9; see also Chapter 5, “Rocky Coulee Battle Scene”)—two of the fatal “kill areas” noted by Wissler

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(1911:40). Otherwise, such bullet paths do not go directly to a killed enemy but instead simply extend from the muzzle of a gun, or a stacked array of guns, to show fire directed toward an enemy. In other cases, a cluster of bullet dots is used to indicate and emphasize the place in a scene where the close-quarter battle actions occurred. This is most common in scenes using the donut hole perspective (Figure 1.19), where a series of actors is portrayed around a relatively empty central area of the composition. In some cases, such bullet clusters are found at the end(s) of a series of bullets representing their path into the engagement.

Fusillade of Fire A different sort of cluster of flying projectiles, including bullets (usually drawn as dots with a short tail) and/or arrows, is shown clustered around or closely bypassing a scene’s hero (Figures 0.9, 0.20a). Such clusters indicate the fusil-

Figure 4.2. Two people are fatally enveloped by outsized arrows in a likely revenge killing. Drawing by James D. Keyser.

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lade of fire, a specialized convention that documents an attacker’s bravery in facing enemy firepower. Sometimes the emphasis is on overwhelming firepower. Although far more common in ledger drawings than other Biographic art media, such fusillade of fire events occur in many rock art scenes. Occasionally the fusillade itself is depicted in rock art only by a single bullet path indicated by a line extending out from the gun’s muzzle and only narrowly missing the scene’s hero (Figures 3.144, V5). At times, one or more projectiles in a fusillade of fire will wound the protagonist—further documenting his bravery. When braving an enemy’s onslaught, the hero must survive to tell the tale. Similar compositions showing a warrior enveloped by arrows or other weapons that clearly inflict fatal wounds likely depict revenge killings and should not be confused with the fusillade of fire convention (Figures 2.9, 4.2).

Floating Weapon Another common Biographic art convention using freestanding weapons is termed the floating weapon. In this, the weapon seems to be suspended in midair—sometimes even appearing to have been thrown at an enemy (Figures 3.6a, 3.18). In the case of a spear or arrow, there can occasionally be some confusion as to whether the weapon in question is, in fact, a flying projectile or instead represents a floating weapon, so the scene’s interpreter must have a detailed rendering of the composition and must understand the differences between the two conventions. In this regard, probably the ultimate misinterpretation of a floating weapon occurs in a caption to a scene in the Strong/ Roman Nose ledger, where the uninitiated collector seeing a coup-strike bow seeming to float away from the Indian to touch the head of a horse ridden by his US cavalry opponent (Figure 0.19) wrote, “The [S]ioux Indian throw[s] his bow at the soldier.” The floating weapon is, however, quite a complex construct, used to denote five distinctly different actions/meanings in the Biographic art lexicon: (1) the counting of coup by touching an enemy with one’s own weapon; (2) the capture of an enemy’s weapon as a war trophy; (3) the “control” of enemy captives; (4) the capture of an enemy’s horse by showing a floating knife cutting the picket rope or a floating weapon touching a riderless horse; or (5) the tallying of weapons taken as war trophies. In all these, the floating weapon represents the actions of the actor, often not otherwise depicted in the scene.

Coup-Strike Weapon The first, and most common floating weapon is one shown striking a coup. Such a coup-strike weapon can be almost anything Plains Indians used as offensive

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weaponry, but the most conventionalized one is the bow—so much so that it was even used to show a counted coup in some scenes where it is obvious the protagonist could not have carried a bow into the fight. In such a scene the protagonist-artist is already armed with a distinctly different weapon and has no quiver, but a floating bow touches his enemy (Figure 3.25). Use in these situations indicates the floating bow had begun to become an ideograph for “coup counted.” While such ideographic use is fairly common in ledger drawings, it also occurs in rock art at Little Boxelder Cave in Wyoming (Figure 4.3). Other scenes we have examined show spears and various lances, bowspears, tomahawks, guns, clubs and spike maces, coupsticks (or even simple tree branches), quirts, arrows, and a knife as a floating weapon counting coup. Sometimes multiple floating weapons will count coup on the same defeated foe (Figure 0.7). Possibly the best rock art example of such “overkill” is DgOw38, where two guns deliver fatal shots to the head and heart while three other weapons—a gun, a tomahawk, and a lance—count coup (Figure 2.9). Another scene at 48SW82 shows one man struck by a banner lance, a spear, and a coupstick (see Chapter 5, “Reading the Narratives”). These multiple coup strikes were performed by different warriors each claiming first through fourth coup upon the enemy as part of the formalized system of war honors. A coup-strike weapon does not necessarily strike a fatal blow. Frequently the floating weapon itself (a quirt or bow for instance) could not deliver a fatal

Figure 4.3. In this red-painted coup count tally in Wyoming, the artist portrays himself as a shield-bearing warrior above two human heads touched by a floating bow and a coup-strike hand. The rabbit is probably the artist’s name glyph. Drawing by the authors.

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wound, but in many cases even a deadly weapon strikes the enemy in a place or in a manner that would not be fatal. In one tally of counted coups at Bear Gulch, a bow-spear strikes three different enemies—one on the legs, another on his shield, and the third around his head (Figure 0.9). Only the latter, if it hit the man’s head sufficiently hard, could have been a fatal wound. A fourth enemy in this tally is hit on the upper arm by the point of a large arrow, in another likely nonfatal blow. Other coup-strike blows, however, were almost certainly fatal. A falling warrior in another scene at Bear Gulch has both spikes of a two-spike mace buried in the top of his head—assuredly a fatal blow if the man was not already dead. As in this case, often no other indication documents whether the person on whom coup is counted was alive or dead at the time, but either was fair game and, likewise, men on whom coup had been counted sometimes lived to fight another day.

Captured Weapon The second most common floating weapon is the captured weapon; illustrated as it is being taken in hand-to-hand combat. As such, the weapon floats just out of reach of its original owner (sometimes just beyond his outstretched fingertips) in a manner that clearly shows it is not otherwise engaged in the fight (Figures 0.8d, 1.3, 1.18). Occasionally a floating captured weapon will hover just at the hand of the protagonist who has taken it (Figures 3.143, 4.4) or be held in such a way that it is obviously not being used (Figure V6). The most obvious rock

Figure 4.4. Two warriors holding fringed shields engage an enemy. The warrior on the left counts coup on the central warrior by hitting him with his gun, while the warrior on the right captures the enemy’s gun, seen floating just out of his hands. Drawing by the authors.

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art weapon capture scenes show two warriors (often in full frontal view) grappling over a weapon that floats between the two of them (Figures 1.3, 1.18). In such scenes the victor is usually the warrior who safely holds a second weapon. Sometimes weapon capture is emphasized by the winner’s hand (reaching for or touching the floating weapon) being more carefully rendered than that of his opponent. The weapon is occasionally repeated in the scene, once leaving the hand of the defeated foe and again at the hand of the victor. Rock art weapons taken in this manner include guns, spears, shot pouches and powder horns, shields, bows and arrows, quivers, tomahawks, a medicine pipe, and possibly a sword.

Weapon Controlling Enemy The control of enemy captives by a floating weapon is a specialized depiction, so far recognized only in a tally of vanquished enemies at Bear Gulch (Figure 0.9). In a series of seven enemies in this tally, the last two are women over whose heads arches an elaborately decorated bow-spear, which is shown elsewhere in this lineup counting coup by touching three other shield-bearing warriors. The bow-spear does not touch either woman; instead, it simply arches overhead to show “control” of them as war captives of the artist. Taking women captives was a frequent occurrence in Plains warfare and showing them surmounted, rather than hit, by this weapon clearly portrays a situation where the women captives are under the bow-spear’s “spell.” This corresponds to ethnographic reports from groups using the bow-spear in historic times who believed its inherent supernatural power was able to control enemies’ actions—even at a distance.

Knife Cutting a Horse In some Blackfoot robe paintings a floating knife (usually held by an action hand) is portrayed as sawing at a picket rope that tethers a horse in front of its owner’s tipi (Figure 2.10b). Representing a major coup in Plains warfare, taking such a picketed horse after sneaking into an enemy camp in the dark of night was one of a man’s proudest accomplishments. Using this floating knife to represent the man himself and his deed is the ultimate example of synecdoche in Plains Biographic art. Although this particular convention is not yet recognized in Plains rock art, details this minor are only recently coming to light at many sites.

War Trophy Weapons The last type of floating weapon comprises those found as rows of captured war trophies tallied in all Biographic art media. Most frequently illustrated on

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Figure 4.5. Beside this tally of captured guns, enemies overcome are shown as Blackfoot “wineglass” style humans at an Alberta site. Drawing by the authors from tracing and photograph by Michael Klassen.

Blackfoot painted robes, such tallies have also been recognized in rock art from Crossfield Coulee (EiPl-19) near Calgary, Alberta, to the Texas Panhandle (Figures 3.2, 3.132, 4.5). Ranging from two or three weapons to a dozen or more at Nordstrom-Bowen, Montana, and Mujares Creek, captured weapons in rock art tallies include guns, bows, lances, bow-spears, tomahawks, quirts, a sword, a coupstick, a pipe bag, and possibly a finial from a cavalry flagstaff (Figure 3.169). Even more items are found in robe art tallies.

Stacked Array of Weapons Occasionally either the attacking or defending force in a battle is shown in a shorthand manner by having only the participants’ weapons “stacked” in a column or grouped around a focal point to indicate some or all of the combatants (Figures 3.22, 4.6–4.9). In such “stacked arrays” each weapon usually stands alone (with most actors being offstage), although a few cases have one or more weapons in the array held by a fully illustrated human (Figures 3.7, 4.7b). In other instances (Figures 4.7c, 4.8) warriors using the weapons are represented by dashes drawn just behind their weapon (indicating either individuals or their footprints). Horse hoofprints in this same position represent horsemen (Figure 4.7d), and sometimes footprints and a hoofprint (=C) behind the stacked weapons indicate a force of dismounted enemies (Figures 3.20; 4.7e, f). Stacked arrays usually oppose or support a principal actor, representing either his enemies or his own force supporting his attack (Figures 3.65, 4.9). However, in rare cases all the actors are offstage so only the weapons remain. Stacked weapons are occasionally arranged in an arc partially encircling and focusing on a central actor(s), which are sometimes a group of entrenched enemies. One scene at site 48SW9532 in Wyoming shows a stacked array of simple lines, but it is unclear whether these are comrades supporting the gunman or enemies attacking him (Figure 4.9b).

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Figure 4.6. A stacked array of generic weapons on the right represents enemy warriors in combat with at least one warrior represented by a gun. Demonstrating great bravery, the tracks of a shield bearer, who is armed only with a highly decorated spontoon tomahawk, show him entering the battle where he is wounded in the leg by an arrow. Drawing by the authors.

In some cases, especially rock art scenes, such shorthand, stacked arrays are taken to the extreme, with only generic weapons shown as nearly horizontal lines, sometimes with one or two primary weapons fully illustrated (Figures 3.27, 3.87d–e, 3.143, 4.6, 4.9a). Shown in this manner, the specific weapons composing such stacked arrays usually cannot be identified, and one such array at the Horned Headgear site is composed of at least two and possibly three different types of weapons (Figure 3.20). Stacked arrays of generic weapons are sometimes overlooked in rock art reports, probably because the site recorder did not understand the meaning of such simple groups of lines. The simplest stacked arrays are relatively common in Crow country rock art from the Musselshell River south into the Bighorn Basin (Keyser 2011d; Lycett and Keyser 2019a:637), but similar arrangements also occur in the Comanche rock

Figure 4.7. Attacking or defending forces can be depicted by a stacked array of weapons. Sometimes humans hold the weapons, but other times the weapons stand for the “off-stage” troops (a). In others the combatants are shown as human footprints (c) or hoofprints (d) or a combination of these (e–f). Images in (d) and (f) are illustrated in mirror image to correspond with others. Drawing by the authors.

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Figure 4.8. A stacked array of guns with dashes behind indicates a group of armed combatants. Each gun shows the muzzle blast of black powder smoke that occurs when fired. Drawing by the authors.

art in the Rio Grande Gorge of northern New Mexico (Fowles et al. 2017:175)3 and at site 5LA5569 in the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site on the Purgatoire River of southeastern Colorado (Loendorf and Kuehn 1991:191, 206–7). Throughout Biographic art, guns are the most common stacked weapon, but lances and arrows often occur, especially in rock art. Guns are typically shown with muzzle blasts or bullets streaming from the barrel. The actual number of weapons in any array may have been intended to represent real troop strength, but examples using generic weapons seem more likely to indicate relative rather than actual numbers of individuals. Stacked arrays so far recorded include from as few as three guns to as many as twenty-five lines representing generic weapons. More than two

Figure 4.9. Stacked arrays of generic weapons (drawn as simple horizontal lines) represent enemies (a), a warrior’s own force supporting his attack (c), or a group who could be either friends or enemies (b). Drawing by the authors.

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dozen stacked arrays, with at least one third showing generic weapons, have been found at sites scattered across the Plains from Writing-on-Stone, Alberta, to Pinon Canyon in southeastern Colorado and the Verbena site in the Texas Panhandle (Keyser 1977b; Loendorf and Kuehn 1991:207; Parsons 1987:268).

Strikes an Enemy Structure Occasionally a coup-count scene shows a man using his weapon to strike a tipi, tent, war lodge, or building. Striking a structure like this with enemies inside was a coup equivalent to directly striking an enemy. In fact, Crow oral history shows they named this coup “first to strike the camp” and accorded it high honor (Bauerle 2003:10, 59). Such an action is also reflected in the Lakota warrior’s name “Got-There-First” (Figure 0.21a), whose name glyph explicitly depicts him dismounting from his own horse, approaching the enemy camp, and striking it with his bow (Mallery 1893:586).4 Striking an enemy structure is shown in several ledger drawings (Figure 4.10), in four Names Hill scenes where warriors strike a tipi with a variety of weapons (Figure 4.11), and at the nearby (but now destroyed) site 48LN18 (Figure 3.38b). In addition to scenes explicitly showing this action, a similar coup is indicated where a line of horse tracks leads up to a conical lodge tipi or war lodge. This composition is found in Montana at Canyon Creek and Bear Gulch (Figure

Figure 4.10. A scene from the Tie Creek ledger shows a horseman wearing a long hairplate dropper and striking an army tent with his lance, in a coup equivalent to directly striking an enemy. Image courtesy of Michael Fosha, Black Hills State University, Spearfish, South Dakota.

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Figure 4.11. Three scenes from the same site show pedestrian warriors counting coup on enemy tipis. Warrior (c) has just dismounted and touches the tipi with the buttstock of his gun. Drawing by the authors.

3.174a–c). One Canyon Creek structure may be a tipi with a smoke flap, but the others are likely war lodges. None of these ride-by scenes shows an obvious weapon striking the objective, in contrast to most others (e.g., Figures 1.22, 3.191), but all are simple enough that one of the apparently random marks might have been intended as the weapon.

Posture Showing an actor’s posture is one of the most versatile yet expressive conventions in Biographic art. In rock art, both pedestrian and mounted winners in combat often take an aggressive, forward-leaning (or “leaning-in”) posture while a loser falls backward, leans to the side, or doubles over (Figures 1.18,

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1.23, 2.7, 3.25, 3.115, 3.143, 3.148, 4.1, 4.9b). The winner typically shows a forwardacting posture, reaching into the fray with his hand or weapon, and sometimes using his shield to swat away a foe’s thrust (Figures 2.1, 2.4, 3.58, 3.104). Losers often throw arms unnaturally outward or into the air as if in surrender and often their weapon appears to float away from their open, extended hand (Figures 1.3, 3.20, 3.136). A dead or vanquished enemy is sometimes shown upside down, or missing arms, legs, head, or even torso (so only the bust is drawn). An enemy hit with a floating weapon striking a killing blow often leans markedly from vertical (Figure 0.10c). Sometimes a defeated enemy is shown in a distinctive and unmistakable “running-away” pose, which is occasionally accompanied by feet pointing the “wrong” way to indicate his fleeing a face-off (Figures 0.10a, 2.1). In ledger art, horses often fall down or stumble forward to emphasize their death or wounding, but we know of no example in rock art. Crow informants have suggested a horse at Joliet with its head markedly lowered (Figure 3.106a) indicates a tired animal that has just run for its (and its rider’s) life. However, Crow horses at many sites exhibit similar head-down posture, so this pose appears more likely to be a stylistic trait common to Crow horses in general (Keyser and Renfro 2017). Dancers have several characteristic poses in Biographic art. Most often they bend forward at the waist and usually bend their knees (Figure 2.2). Typically, they wear fancy costume elements including bustles and regalia items; and they often brandish weapons or dance implements including such things as feather fans, wands, or musical instruments (flutes, drums, rattles). Dancers posed like this are at Joliet and Bear Gulch in Montana and the Katzenmeier site in central Kansas (Figure 3.44c). Ten elaborately decked out dancers at No Bear (Figure 3.85) all have a more erect posture but show fancy dance regalia and many different handheld items. One dance scene at the Musselshell site shows more than a dozen stick-figure participants, some smoking pipes, sitting around a central fire. Other dancers stand erect in a row and still others have hands up in a supplicative posture.

Trampling or Riding Down an Enemy Using your horse to trample an enemy underfoot was considered an especially brave deed by several Plains tribes. Not only did it demonstrate the horse and rider’s presence in the thick of the fight, such an action also testified to a man’s training and mastery of his mount, since horses are not predisposed to overrun a human. The horse owner commemorated this act either by painting two red handprints on the horse—one on each shoulder (e.g., Figure 0.15)—or painting a front-view silhouette of the trampled human on the horse’s chest with the

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Figure 4.12. The trampling coup in rock art (e–h), ledger drawings (a, b, d), and robe art (c). (a, b) show the paint schemes used to decorate a horse that had performed this act. Drawing by the authors.

man’s arms extending back to the animal’s shoulders (Figure 4.12a, b). Both motifs, with hands up on the animal’s front shoulders, were designed to show the contact of the horse’s body with the trampled enemy (Grinnell 1910:302; Weitzner 1979:298; Wissler 1913:457). The Lakota and some other tribes documented this same action with an enemy’s scalp tied to the horse’s bridle bit (see Chapter 3, “Bridle Bit Decorations,” “Scalp”). Trampling coup war paint is not known in rock art (probably because most rock art horses are far too small to show such detail); and although scalp-decorated bridle bits are known, none has been verifiably identified either as Lakota or as representing this war honor. Instead, Historic period artists typically illustrated this coup in Biographic art by drawing the act itself in a specifically conventionalized way—to show the

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trampled pedestrian in direct contact with the horse’s chest or actually falling under the victorious horse’s front quarters (Figures 2.7, 4.12c–h). Sometimes, the triumphant horse rears slightly or tilts upward. But the vanquished foe almost always has a loser’s posture, falling, leaning, or bending backward or doubling over with arms typically outstretched or thrown up overhead. Correspondingly, he is either has no weapon, has dropped his weapon, or holds it in a position that does not threaten the horseman. In some images hoofprints from the horse’s front leg actually run over and past the trampled enemy (Figures 2.7, 4.12c). Such trampling coup imagery occurs in ledger and robe art drawn by Blackfoot, Flathead, and other artists (Keyser 2000:56–57) but it is found primarily in Blackfoot rock art at Writing-on-Stone (DgOv-2, DgOv-81, DgOw-32, DgOw-41) and 24GL1718 (Keyser 2018b).

Capturing a Weapon in Hand-to-Hand Combat Taking an enemy’s weapon (envisioned in the broadest sense so it includes a shield, a quirt, or other items), or taking a foe’s regalia (such as a headdress, a medicine bundle, or a partisan’s pipe) as a war trophy, was considered one of the primary honors for many Plains tribes. In fact, as Taylor (1994:184) notes, for the Crow, snatching a weapon in a close encounter was one of the most frequently portrayed war honors, specifically because it was relatively common and could occur repeatedly in an engagement in contrast to the striking of first coup. Hence, in both Crow and Blackfoot robe paintings, weapon capture is routinely portrayed, either by direct indication (a capture hand seizing a weapon) or by tallying the items taken (Figures 3.2, 3.130d). In rock art both portrayals occur, but it is also quite common for one or two warriors to grapple for possession of a foe’s weapon. Other scenes show weapon capture in an even more shorthand fashion with the winner’s tracks running up to a weapon floating out of a defeated enemy’s hand. Finally, there is one distinctive warrior’s pose holding a weapon in an unconventional way that has been identified as weapon capture. Thus, there are five primary ways of showing the capture of a weapon in rock art. Most common is to show one or two men struggling to wrest a weapon or other item from a foe (Figures 0.8d, 3.135, 3.143, 3.167a, 4.4, 4.13a). This is explicitly shown at Writing-on-Stone (Dgov-2, DgOv-60, DgOw-29), Red Canyon and Pine Canyon (48SW309) in Wyoming, and 14RU3 and 14RU304 in Kansas. Others illustrate a weapon floating between two combatants (Figures 1.3, 4.13c–d) or at the terminus of a man’s tracks—indicating he ran up to grab the weapon (Figure V2)—at DgOv-57, 39HN17 in South Dakota, and Castle Butte and 24RB1019 in Montana. Tallies of captured weapons occur at Crossfield Coulee, Nordstrom-Bowen, 39HN210, 14RU304, and Mujares Creek (Figures

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Figure 4.13. Taking an enemy’s weapon as a trophy was considered a primary war honor. It could be shown explicitly as a struggle between warriors to take the weapon from a foe (a), or as a weapon floating between two combatants (c, d). Captured weapons were also commemorated in tallies (b). Drawing by the authors.

3.2, 3.132, 4.13b). Capture hands shown taking an enemy’s weapon occur at DgOw-32, Bear Gulch, and the Ten Sleep Pictographs (Figures 1.22, 3.130d). Finally, one distinctive rock art depiction shows a man juxtaposed with a fight scene, holding a vertically oriented long gun out away from his body by the extreme muzzle end. In such a composition, the warrior is neither brandishing nor shooting the gun, so the only logical explanation is that his capture of the weapon is being illustrated. Two examples of this convention have been identified in rock art at DgOw-32 and Atherton Canyon (Figures 3.130c, V6).

Taking a Horse All Plains tribes valued taking an enemy’s horse as a war honor, and artists used various conventional ways to indicate this accomplishment. These diverse ways of taking an enemy’s horse were ranked differently from tribe to tribe, although sneaking into an enemy camp and taking a prized horse picketed in front of its owner’s tipi was universally thought to be the most difficult—and therefore the most highly valued—act. We have identified a dozen ways of

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illustrating the act of horse capture or illustrating the resultant captured animals in Biographic rock art (McCallister, Keyser, and Kaiser 2021). These are picketed horse, raider cutting picket rope, raider interposed between tipi and horse, leading a horse away, capture hand on rein, riding away from a tipi, riding a stolen horse to escape pursuers, horse trailing cut picket rope, creasing a horse, horse raid ideograms, portraying a group of stolen horses, and claiming a horse (Figures 4.14–4.21). We summarize these below.

Figure 4.14. Horse-raiding scenes in robe and ledger art directly corresponding to rock art scenes. (1) Horse picketed in front of tipi. (2) Leading a horse away. (3) Capture hand taking horse. (4) Taking a horse with enemies pursuing. (5) Raider interposed between tipi and horse. (6) Riding away from tipi. (7) Raider cutting picket rope. (8) Horse with severed lead (picket) rope. (9) Ideographic horse raid vocabulary. (10) Group of stolen horses. (11) Claiming a riderless horse. Drawing by the authors.

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Picketed Horse Horses can be juxtaposed with a picket pin or drawn picketed at, or standing in front of, a tipi (Figures 1.25a, 3.75, 3.172a, 4.15b–c). While no direct action is shown, drawing a horse and its picket pin thusly connotes its status as a prized animal and implies the taking of such a horse. Intensive study shows such images are more common than previously thought, implying that many more await identification. We have recognized such picketed horses at DgOv2, DgOv-130, DgOw-32,5 and Joliet.

Raider Cutting Picket Rope Only very skilled horse raiders were able to sneak into a sleeping village to take an enemy’s best horse while it was picketed in front of his tipi. Showing the raider in the act of cutting the picket rope is the embodiment of this act, and it occurs frequently in Blackfoot robe art (Figure 2.10). It is also clearly illustrated at DgOv-80 and La Barge Bluffs (Figures 1.33, 3.100, 4.15e), and shown in a slightly modified version at Porcupine Lookout, 24RB563 (Minick and Keyser 2019:56). Figure 4.15.  Horse stealing scenes were shown in a variety of ways: riding the stolen horse away from a tipi (a), sometimes pursued by the enemy (d); horses juxtaposed with a picket pin (b–c) or shown next to a tipi (f), both imply the taking of the horse. Finally, the raider can be shown in the act of cutting the picket rope (e). Drawing by the authors.

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Raider Interposed between Tipi and Horse Another graphic means to illustrate taking a favorite horse was for the artist to interpose himself between the horse he was taking and the tipi where it was picketed. In such scenes the raider’s position establishes him in the act of becoming the animal’s owner. Scenes at DgOv-45 and DgOv-2, the latter where a man extends his hand between three horses and a tipi, are clear examples of this (Figure 4.16b–c).

Leading a Horse Away Occasionally a human will be shown leading or closely juxtaposed with a horse but without a tipi to set the stage. While several interpretations are possible, some (if not many) of these scenes undoubtedly represent a man in the act of leading a stolen horse out of a village as the aftermath of cutting a picket rope. This is especially true if the man is dressed in a war shirt or other finery (e.g., moccasin tails, fringed leggings) or carries a weapon, since a weapon or clothing items such as the war shirt connote a war expedition. Good examples of this are at DgOv-2 and 39HN17 (Figure 4.16a, e). Figure 4.16.  Additional ways of showing horse capture included leading a horse away (a, e); showing the raider interposed between tipi and horse (b–c); or showing the horse near a tipi with a cut picket rope (d). Note the fringed war shirt (a) indicating the man is on a war expedition, and the footsteps and hoofprints showing the raider’s arrival at the tipi and his leading the horse away (e). Drawing by the authors.

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In some cases, the raider capturing the horse is an invisible actor, but the horse is still shown being guided away. The cut lead rope does not hang loose but floats in the air, extended before the animal as if it were being led away from the scene of a raid (Figure 3.99b–c).

Capture Hand on Rein Illustrating the act of taking a horse by showing the offstage horse raider’s capture hand grasping the animal’s picket rope is relatively common in Blackfoot robe paintings (Figure 4.17). This is an artist’s succinct shorthand message illustrating his possession of a stolen animal by pictographically saying, “I took this horse.” Though common on Blackfoot robes, the only currently recognized rock art example is at DgOw-32 (Figure 3.99a), but this drawing is nearly identical to those on Blackfoot robes. This and other uses of the capture hand are discussed more fully in “Ideograms” (“The Capture Hand”), later in this chapter.

Riding Away from a Tipi Another way of showing a successful horse raid was to draw the raider astride the captured horse riding away from a tipi or village. Such simple scenes (Figures 0.13b, 3.172b, 4.15a) have been identified at DgOv-2, DgOw-32, and DgOw-19 at Writing-on-Stone. The very schematic version at DgOw-19 shows the entire raid with the human actors offstage (see Vignette 8, “A Kootenai Horse Raid”). It includes the raiders’ tracks indicating their journey to a small tipi village, their hideout in a nearby grove of trees, their sneaking in among the tipis to cut horses, and the captured herd being driven away to a distant mountain redoubt (McCallister, Keyser, and Kaiser 2021). Another scene at Atherton Canyon shows either a war lodge or tipi superimposed by a horseman (Figure 0.13b). This structure has no poles projecting above its apex and is somewhat shorter and wider than a typical tipi shape, so

Figure 4.17. Vignette showing the war record of Piegan warrior, Shortie Whitegrass, painted on a robe by the artist Sharp in 1892. Each trailing picket rope is grasped by a trident-shaped capture hand to indicate the animal’s capture. Shades of grey indicate different colored pigments. Drawing by the authors, adapted from the Sharp robe (Blackfoot), National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC (cat. no. E165449–0).

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at first glance it appears to be a war lodge being attacked by the horseman. However, the rider seems to be striking his horse with a quirt (thus urging it to leave the scene) and the “rein” the rider clutches continues past the horse’s neck to the ground, suggesting a picket rope. If these two small clues are read this way, they imply the rider is taking a picketed horse from in front of a tipi— one of a warrior’s bravest deeds.

Riding a Stolen Horse to Escape Pursuit A slightly more elaborate version of the riding from a tipi convention is where the raiders ride their newly acquired mounts away from a group of pursuers. Sometimes the tipi or village is in the background of the action. They differ in showing pursuit by the members of the tribe from which the horses were taken. Such scenes have been recognized at DgOw-27 and Turner Rockshelter (Figures 3.23, 4.15d).

Horse Trailing Cut Picket Rope Sometimes the indication that a horse is one taken from enemies is that the animal is shown trailing a cut picket rope. These can be of various lengths and sometimes the horse is juxtaposed with a picket pin or a tipi. Regardless, they all serve to demonstrate a tethered horse that is cut loose. Rock art examples are identified at several sites including DgOw-21, DgOw-32, DgOv-130, 24GL1718, 39HN486, Brand Rock (24RB2455), Turner Rockshelter, and Canyon Pintado (Figures 3.23, 3.30e, 3.91c). A variation of the cut picket rope is a trailing lariat dangling from the horse’s neck. The lariat was used in capturing wild horses or those pastured away from an enemy encampment. While the difference cannot always be determined, since sometimes a picket rope was also tied around the neck, capturing one or more animals from an enemy’s herd was also considered a coup, though a lesser war honor. The capture of wild horses can be seen at La Vista Verde in New Mexico (Figure 3.101).

Creasing a Horse In addition to using a lariat to capture and subdue a wild horse, Plains Indians sometimes shot a wild horse in a nonlethal fashion to temporarily stun the animal, causing it to fall to the ground and allowing it to be hobbled or otherwise captured. Although this was a risky technique, as the shooter needed to only “crease” the top of the horse’s neck (since a missed shot could permanently disable or kill the animal), George Catlin witnessed such actions among the Comanche in the 1830s (Donaldson 1885:344–45). While never common, this technique became more common with the use of firearms. However, in rock art, this activity should not be confused with the wounding of horses in combat scenarios.

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Figure 4.18. Creasing a Horse. Wild horses were sometimes shot in a nonlethal fashion to stun the animal in order to capture it. In this scene a pedestrian bowman shoots an arrow at a pair of horses. Note his bow string shown as a dashed line. Drawing by the authors.

The creasing of horses has been recognized at the La Vista Verde site, where one horse is shot with an arrow (Figure 3.101) in a larger scene showing other captured wild horses with lariats dangling from their necks. A second likely example is a scene at 48SW16695 at Powder Wash, Wyoming (Keyser and Poetschat 2008:28), where a pedestrian bowman fires an arrow at a pair of horses (Figure 4.18).

Horse Raid Ideograms Various groups developed their own ideogrammatic vocabularies with symbols used as shorthand indicators of coup counting that could be understood in the absence of any realistically drawn imagery. Among the Blackfoot, an ideogrammatic picket pin was used to document a stolen horse and a squared hoofprint indicated a warrior’s participation in or leadership of a horse-raiding expedition. For the Crow, Mandan, and Hidatsa, a vertical line topped by a hoofprint showed the capture of a picketed horse or leadership of a horse-raiding expedition while a squared hoofprint indicated other horse capture. The only examples so far recognized that use horse raid ideograms are two compositions at DgOw-27 (Figure 1.26; see also “Picketed Horse Taken,” this chapter) and the Weppler bar tally (see Vignette 4). Realistic horse tracks are also used in the same way as ideograms in some instances. One composition at DgOw-27 juxtaposes eight horse tracks with a picket pin to indicate horses stolen from in front of enemies’ tipis. Often, however, groups of horse hoofprints are clustered to represent a man’s prowess in taking the animals (Figures 3.190, 4.19). Often these are juxtaposed with a quirt to indicate a man’s generosity in giving away captured horses (Figure 2.5f).

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Figure 4.19. Groups of horse hoofprints clustered together as a tally of stolen horses in these robe art drawings emphasize the warrior’s prowess in taking the animals. Note the associated quirts to imply the giving away of some of these captured horses. Drawing by James D. Keyser; (a) adapted from Upper Missouri bison robe in Maurer 1992; (b) adapted from Malcolm robe in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada (cat. no. 2006.79.1).

Such groups occur frequently on painted robes and war shirts (Brownstone 2008, 2015:14; King 2001; Maurer 1992:193–95). Three examples are known in rock art. At Atherton Canyon a group of ten tracks indicates the success of a horse-raiding party (Figure 2.6a) and at 24GV191 a Crow-style horse conflated with a group of thirty-three hoofprints indicates the success of one Crow raider (Figure 3.190). At the Weppler site, horse tracks interspersed among the war party stripes of a bar tally indicate successful Crow raids in which horses were captured (Figure V4).

Portraying a Group of Stolen Horses Portraying a group of riderless horses (or a large herd with only one or two animals being ridden) is a relatively common way of showing either the spoils of a single highly successful raid or one man’s tally of horses he took during his entire career. Both occur in Blackfoot robe art, and similar horse herds are shown in rock art at half a dozen Writing-on-Stone sites; Explorers Petroglyph, 48WA2289, La Barge Bluffs, and La Vista Verde (Figure 4.20). The large herd at DgOv-60 has more than thirty animals represented by the horse’sneck ideogram (Figure 3.12). Such shorthand horses were a particular favorite of Blackfoot artists, who used them to indicate stolen animals in many different situations, and often used them to “fill in” groups of animals being taken. At La Vista Verde quite similar shorthand horses were grouped by Comanche artists to represent horse raids (Figure 4.21) on several panels (Fowles and Arterberry 2013:74–75; Fowles and Montgomery 2019:111). One of these represents about a dozen warriors running off a large enemy herd (Fowles et al. 2017:174).

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Figure 4.20. Group of horses tallying stolen animals. Light grey images (humans and grid) in (c) are older carvings underlying horses. Drawing by the authors.

Figure 4.21. A Comanche horse raid in New Mexico. Including so many riderless animals indicates the successful capture of a large herd. In such scenes many animals are often drawn in shorthand, depicting only the horse’s head and neck. Image courtesy of Severin Fowles, Barnard College.

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Claiming a Horse Probably the least common way a man routinely captured an enemy’s horse was to ride alongside the mount of a fallen foe during a running battle and touch the horse with his weapon, thereby claiming the animal as his own. A variant of this same deed occurred when a warrior touched one or more of the horses or mules yoked in a team pulling a freight wagon or other rolling stock whose driver had been unseated or killed. The basic concept here is like all coup counting in that the first warrior to touch an enemy’s animal laid a claim of ownership to it, which was expected to be recognized and honored by his comrades after the fight. This practice is explicitly described for the Cheyenne by Grinnell (1915), who describes an 1865 siege by a war party against soldiers taking refuge in a log ranch building in western Nebraska. When the encircled soldiers ran low on ammunition, they created a diversion by releasing their horses and mules from where they were corralled. Upon release, the animals rushed away in every direction, and as hoped, the Cheyenne warriors pursued them, “each man doing his best to touch as many animals as he could . . . [for] If a man touched a horse with his whip, bow, or any other implement held in his hand, that animal belonged to him, and all the Indians recognized his claim” (Grinnell 1915:187). Because special circumstances were necessary to accomplish this act (a running battle, rolling stock, and the enemy’s loss of control of an animal), this honorific deed was not particularly common and thus is not frequently portrayed in Biographic art. However, it is depicted occasionally in all three media (Figure 0.20). Horses claimed from a defeated individual often wear detailed horse tack typical of US military mounts, including various bridle and headstall configurations (sometimes with reins and metal bits), saddle blankets, and saddles with stirrups or stirrup hoods. Horses claimed as part of a yoked team are shown still harnessed to the wagon (Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997:8–9) or trailing the trace chains and singletree. The frequent indication of captured military mounts or harnessed teams is consistent with the increase in running battles between tribes and mounted cavalry forces, various militias, and supply trains that characterized the Indian Wars period of the 1860s and 1870s in southeastern Montana, eastern Wyoming, eastern Colorado, and Nebraska. So far, the only rock art illustration of this coup is at La Barge Bluffs (Figure 0.20a). There, an Indian warrior wearing a breechclout and a shield slung over his back leans forward to touch a horse with a long coupstick. Seven bullets, fired by offstage enemies, whiz overhead. In this scene, the claimed animal wears a full complement of horse tack, including a headstall, rein (apparently wrapped around its neck in the confusion of battle), saddle blanket, and saddle with stirrups, strongly suggesting it was a military mount. A remarkably

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similar drawing from the Tie Creek ledger shows a nearly identical scene documenting capture of a cavalryman’s horse (Figure 0.20c).

Riderless Horses: A Cautionary Note Interpretation of stand-alone images of horses and horsemen requires detailed analysis and consideration of context. Elsewhere, we have made the argument that most such freestanding images are not iconic portrayals representing horse medicine or similar rituals (Keyser 2018b; Keyser and Poetschat 2015:158–59; Keyser and Minick 2018:59–65). Rather, we feel such interpretation as iconic images should be based on the presence of some of the characteristic features associated with iconic horse portrayals in ledger art (e.g., zigzag power lines, chimeric combinations of body parts, special body paint schemes, or association with other visionary imagery). Another possible indication of such iconic status might be special interaction between the artist and the image, such as adding pigment to a petroglyph horse. Currently, two instances of such iconic horse portrayals have been identified. Klassen (1998:52–53) shows three horses carved at DgOv-42, one of which is daubed with red paint. All three appear to be drawn by the same artist, and the addition of red paint suggests they were used in some ritual, such as an appeal to increase a man’s herd or a vision of success in horse raiding. The second example is Lakota warrior Crazy Horse’s petroglyph (24BH658), where we have ethnographic reporting that this commemorated his vision (Keyser and Burgan 2015). At this site, the horse displays a body-painting scheme of zigzag lightning streaks down its legs and is juxtaposed with a rattlesnake (Figure 3.24). But the absence of evidence indicating a freestanding horse is an iconic image does not automatically designate it as a stolen animal. While we believe many stand-alone horses represent animals taken from enemies, this is an inferred narrative, and without corroborating details it remains conjecture. Such isolated horses might also represent a type of showing-off portrait. Plains Indian ledger artists routinely drew themselves in such poses, where the warrior is shown decked out in all his finery and his horse is often equally tacked up. The result is a portrait of a man and his mount drawn to demonstrate his military prowess and document his acquired status as a warrior. Such portraits are also drawn in rock art. At La Barge Bluffs a warrior drew himself in the act of parading this way in front of a group of admirers (Figure 3.34d), but other showing-off portraits are more subtle. At Eagle Creek Canyon, Crow artists carved horses as calling cards (Figures 2.11; 3.91a, f) and a Blackfoot artist “tagged” one of these in retaliation (Keyser and Minick 2018). Other calling-card horses include decked-out, stand-alone, showing-off portraits of horses and riders at DgOw-9 and DgOw-51 (Keyser and Renfro 2017:20).

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Branded Horse When a horse is shown with a brand that can be differentiated from any of several native-painted honor marks, it is a reasonable assumption that it represents a stolen horse, since Indians did not use hot-iron branding. Branded horses are discussed more fully in Chapter 3 in “Brands and Painted Designs.”

Quirt A quirt connotes many different things, depending on its context. It can indicate the speed of a horseman on the attack, function as a coup-strike weapon, document a captured war trophy, or indicate horses given away as social currency to bolster a man’s status and reputation. It might also serve as synecdoche for an offstage horse, indicating that a pedestrian in a scene was mounted before the action took place. Each of these connotations occurs in rock art (Figure 2.5). They are discussed in detail in the section discussing context (see Chapter 2, “Understanding Context”).

Coup-Count Tally The coup-count tally is a warrior’s way of “keeping score.” Enemies overcome or captured, weapons or scalps taken, times a man or his horse was wounded, service as a war party scout, and horses stolen or gifted were all tallied. Brownstone (2001b:78–80) has named two types of tallies: bar tallies, which count the artist’s war parties (and other deeds accomplished on each one); and object tallies, which count goods captured—and sometimes given away. To this we would add “enemy tallies,” showing vanquished or abducted enemies (and often the weapon used to strike them), and “action tallies,” showing the number of times a warrior or his horse have been wounded in combat, the number of times he led a war party or served as a war party scout, or the number of times he took a picketed horse. All four types of tallies summarize a man’s brave deeds (or in the case of an object given away to a less fortunate tribesman, his generosity), all of which are advertised to bolster his status as an accomplished warrior and tribal leader. These four types of tallies occur in all Biographic art media, including rock art throughout the Plains. Most common are object tallies (Figure 4.13b) and enemy tallies (Figure 0.9), which are quite similar in their ultimate objective—to show close-quarter battle actions directly resulting from engaging an enemy—and so are often combined in rock art tallies. Thus, a tally might juxtapose enemy warriors overcome and captured weapons (Figure 0.7), captured weapons grouped

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with a vignette scene illustrating the artist directly taking a partisan’s pipe (Figure 3.167), or enemies overcome and—floating next to them—their possessions the artist captured (Figure 4.5). So far, both categories have been recognized at more than a half-dozen rock art sites. In summary, we see there are fewer kinds of objects illustrated in rock art tallies than are painted on robes; however, tallied rock art items do include guns, lances, coupsticks, swords, tomahawks, quirts, scalp poles, arrows, bows, bow-spears, shields, and a partisan’s pipe. The only items common on robe art tallies not yet found in rock art object tallies are scalps, bags, medicine bundles, knives, powder horns, and shot pouches. Enemy tallies show a row or group of enemies on whom the artist has counted coup or (in the case of women and children) taken captive. These frequently occur on painted war shirts and robes, and several examples are known in northern Plains rock art. The best-known examples with multiple figures are those at Crossfield Coulee, Alberta (Figure 4.5), where vanquished enemies are paired with captured guns; Bear Gulch (Figure 0.9), where a long tally comprises both coup-struck enemies and captured women shown under a bow-spear; and Ellison’s Rock (Figure V2). Other tallies with fewer enemies depicted have also been found (Figures 0.7, 0.11). Bar tallies and action tallies are rarer in rock art and correspondingly show fewer actions. Two sites have bar tallies (Figures 3.2, V4), one juxtaposed with an object tally and the other showing an extensive war record. A third site shows two warriors’ tallies of war parties led and picketed horses taken (Figure 1.26). Tallies of scout-service symbols and wounds suffered are not yet recognized in rock art, though they do occur in robe art (Figure 3.73).

Name Glyphs Name glyphs—small pictograms rendering the name of someone or something as a recognizable object (e.g., a buffalo bull shown in a “sitting” posture for the name Sitting Bull)—were used to identify people, geographic features, and ownership of things (e.g., Red Cloud’s tipi) in Biographic narratives (Figure 3.25). Name glyphs float near the subject to help the reader identify the often generically depicted image. A line often “tethers” the name glyph to the object (e.g., a tipi or river) or the human’s head where it indicates the sound of the person speaking their name. Name glyphs are not recognized in early Biographic art and may have been incorporated after exposure to Euro-American literacy. However, similar name glyphs occur as early as AD 1560 in the Matrícula de Huexotzinco, a pictorial city census from near Mexico City (Aguilera 1996). The early date and native authorship of these drawings suggests the possibility that name glyphs were an independent development in the New World, possibly one adopted by Plains artists from the Aztecs further south.

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Name glyphs identify the subject by a single iconic image or even a complex narrative scene. Almost anything, including animals, weapons, plants, geographic features, and celestial objects, could be used, and often the drawing is creatively modified to form the name. For instance, Cheyenne warrior Lousy Bull’s name is shown as a bison with lice drawn on its hide, and the Tongue River is identified by a bison head with an oversized, protruding tongue. Occasionally name glyphs are incorporated into the depiction of people themselves, generally emphasizing certain characteristics that give them their names. For instance, the name glyph for Lone Horn, a Lakota chief, is shown both as a single floating horn tethered to his image’s mouth, as well as a single horn sprouting from his head in other drawings. In themselves, name glyphs are a fascinating field of study, but here we are interested only in those that occur in rock art. Although personal name glyphs identify many individuals and an occasional tipi or geographic feature in ledger drawings (Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997:322; Petersen 1968:39, 57), so far only a few plausible candidates have been identified in rock art.6 One is a highly individualized shield, drawn at 39HN217, both as a large version overseeing one man’s series of coups and also in the main scene as a much smaller version connected to a rider’s head (Figure 3.46). The only other possible explanation of this smaller shield is that it is hung on the man’s back from a strap around his neck, but we are inclined to think it is a name glyph, since this shield’s design is typical Cheyenne heraldry (Keyser and Cowdrey 2008), and names based on “shield” (e.g., Little Shield, Red Shield, White Shield) were common in that tribe. A second possible name glyph is a rabbit drawn as part of a warrior’s pictographic coup-count tally in a Wyoming rockshelter (Figure 4.3). Names such as Sitting Rabbit and Running Rabbit are possible explanations for this animal, which is otherwise out of place in a war honors tally. The third apparent name glyph is a bear paw attached by a line to the head of a warrior in a two-person, coup-count tally at the White Rocks site in north-central Colorado (Figure 4.22).

Figure 4.22. A coupcount tally showing enemies struck with spontoon tomahawks and a spear. The victim at left has a bear paw name glyph. Drawing by the authors, adapted from a drawing by Steve Main.

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One possible name glyph at La Barge Bluffs in Wyoming is tentatively identified through comparison with another similar scene in a ledger drawing. The rock art composition shows an amazingly detailed steam train (Keyser and Poetschat 2005:55) directly above which is a specifically unidentifiable sitting animal juxtaposed with a horseman (Figure 1.32). The animal is out of place in this context. However, a remarkably similar scene of a train was illustrated as a ledger drawing by a Navajo artist named Choh, who placed a bird over the train. The bird was specifically commented on by R. W. Shufeldt (1889), who collected the drawing, but Shufeldt apparently did not make the connection between this and the fact that Choh’s name “means some kind of a bird” (Shufeldt 1889: 240). The bird in the ledger drawing is almost surely a name glyph, and we suspect the sitting animal at La Barge is likewise a name glyph identifying the rider as he “discovers” the train. Additionally, a few other rock art images may be name glyphs, though there are alternate interpretations for each. One is an out-of-place turtle floating above a warrior’s head in a Biographic scene at Mujares Creek (Parsons 1987:259), and another is a sketchy bison with red eyes, which is positioned above a horse and rider and possibly connected to them by a line, drawn at Goodbar Cave in New Mexico (M. Miller et al. 2019:492). Boyd (1990:129, 131, 141) has identified a similarly indistinct animal positioned above the head of an equestrian warrior as a name glyph. Finally, it has been suggested that one sequence of horse tracks associated with a group of four tipis drawn at DgOv81, the “Battle Scene” in Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park (Figure 3.7), is a name glyph for the camp of Piegan chief Many Horses (L. Dempsey 2007:27–29). We are skeptical of this identification because of stylistic differences between various parts of the larger composition7 and the multiple other possible interpretations for these horse tracks. Geographical features are also identified by name glyphs in biographic drawings, especially in Indian-drawn maps, usually made at the behest of Euro-American explorers (Fredlund, Sundstrom, and Armstrong 1996; Steinke 2014). Such is the case for today’s Yellowstone River, which was known to many tribes as Elk River; so on Indian maps, an elk or elk’s head with emphasized antlers is placed next to (and sometimes connected with a line to) the river to identify it. The Bear’s Paw mountains and the Bighorn, Tongue, and Musselshell Rivers are all modern names of major northern Plains geographic features identified in this way.8 There are single candidates for a Yellowstone (Elk) River name glyph in both rock art and the Bierce Arborglyph. McCleary (2016:111) suggests an elk painted in Pictograph Cave represents the nearby Yellowstone River and thereby sets the stage for an adjacent fight scene. Although some questions exist as to which parts of the two adjacent fight scenes correspond to the elk (cf. Keyser and Sundstrom 2020:160–61), its identification as a name glyph seems appropriate. A second Elk River name glyph occurs in the Bierce Arborglyph found

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not far from Pictograph Cave in 1866 (Keyser and Sundstrom 2020:160–61). The elk is drawn to identify the river just above it, on which floats a flatboat being attacked by an Indian war party (Figure 3.22).

Military Society Identifier Plains Indians used a variety of weapons and accoutrements to indicate membership in or leadership of various military societies or the attainment of a special position within the broader society. Different headdresses, hairstyles, clothing items, shields, and weapons were used as such “badges” for military societies in different groups. There is, however, great difficulty in identifying such badges due to the number of different military societies known among Plains groups and the difficulty of determining the ethnic authorship of a rock art image. Nonetheless, a few attempts have been made to identify such badges. With the help of Crow consultants, McCleary (2016:116–23) has identified officers of the Hot Dance Society in one scene (Figure 1.11) and leadership positions in the Fox and Lumpwood societies in another scene, based on their weaponry and regalia (Figure 1.5). The fact these drawings can be almost certainly identified stylistically as Crow and Hidatsa men strengthens his case. Keyser and Poetschat (2014:97) have suggested the unique, double pointed spears and bow-spears held by shield-bearing warriors at Pinnacle Rocks (Figure 3.50) might represent leadership positions in military societies to which these warriors belonged; but unfortunately, they could not identify any specific group likely to be the panel’s author. Finally, based on its characteristic Cheyenne heraldry, the shield at 39HN217 (Figure 3.46), which is shown as both a large and small version, has been suggested to identify the man carrying it as a member of the Cheyenne Bull Soldiers society (Keyser and Cowdrey 2008:24). However, a more recent interpretation posits that the smaller version of this shield is a name glyph (see this chapter, “Name Glyphs”). Possibly both are true to some extent, and the smaller shield is a generic military society identifier operating in the same way as a name glyph. Finally, men wearing long sashes are recorded at several sites from Montana to Coahuila, Mexico, and some have suggested these are stake-sashes serving to identify military society officers who have taken the “no-retreat” pledge (Figures 3.44, 3.60E/6). However, Jordan (2015:100–103) has demonstrated that such a sash does not by itself indicate a military society officer. Rather, to do so, a sash must be accompanied in the warrior’s portrait by specific weaponry and items of regalia. Nonetheless, Jordan does note that wearing such a sash serves to mark the warrior as a man of high status within his warrior society, and one who has made a no-retreat vow.

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Figure 4.23. Capotes were long, hooded coats made of a wool blanket. They were recognized by the hood, as seen on this Schoch war shirt drawing. Drawing by the authors.

Figure 4.24. A possible capote worn by a tall figure shows multiple stripes just above the garment’s hem, suggesting it is made from a Hudson’s Bay Company point blanket. Drawing by the authors.

Capote Introduced onto the Plains by French Canadian voyageurs during the fur trade, capotes were long, hooded coats made of a wool blanket. These coats were adopted by various northern Plains tribes, and the Hudson’s Bay Company widely traded examples made from the classic striped “point blankets.” Capotes in robe and ledger art (Figure 4.23) are generally recognized by their hoods and striped decoration, and Mallery (1893:321–22) notes the Lakota often wear them on war expeditions, so they can act as a symbol of war. Likewise, as it is a cold weather garment, it frequently denotes an engagement during the winter months. The only possible capote so far identified in Plains rock art is at Joliet. Worn by a tall figure in a fight scene, the garment has multiple stripes just above its hem (Figure 4.24), suggesting it is made from a blanket.

Group of Tipis Clusters of tipis were drawn to indicate both large villages and smaller camps. In some cases, even a single tipi can imply a larger group, such as in a horse raiding scene with a prize horse picketed in front of or being ridden away from

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a lone tipi (Figures 3.172a; 4.15a, f). Explicit tipi groups can indicate a specific number of structures in a small camp; or, in a more general way, a large group can signify a substantial village. The tipis themselves can vary from groups of simple X-shapes or triangular forms to detailed images showing multiple poles extending from the top of the structure and smoke flaps. Camps or villages are primarily illustrated in broad clusters, organized rows, or camp circles. Often such villages or camps are shown as an organized row of side-byside structures drawn along an implied groundline and referred to as a villagescape (Figures 1.19; 3.171a, c; 3.172c). For some larger villages, these rows are occasionally shown one above another in typical Biographic stacked perspective. Other large villages can be shown in a less organized fashion as a seemingly unorganized cluster (Figure 4.25). A much more formal organization is the camp circle. Sometimes this is shown as a loosely circular arrangement of tipis (Figures 1.9, V8), but more often they show a more clearly circular structure with the lodges—facing either inward or outward—placed around the camp’s perimeter (Figures 1.14, 1.15, 3.7). This arrangement likely illustrates the practice in large gatherings where tipis were placed in a large circular arrangement, sometimes organized by band, in which the center was left open for communal structures or other group purposes. Not only was this a practical arrangement, it also served a defensive purpose. This defensive function is emphasized in compositions where the tipis face inward with the circle surrounding them in a fashion similar to smaller entrenched fortifications shown in other combat scenes. We know of one case, at DgOv-2, where a camp circle and a row of simple tipis were both illustrated as parts of the same scene (Figure 3.71). This duplication creates a simultaneous narrative in which the same action is shown twice—each from a slightly different perspective. In cinematographic

Figure 4.25. A tipi village as background for a horse raid is shown in stacked perspective, with the upper tipis being further away. Drawing by the authors.

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terms, the scene provides a wide, “establishing” shot (the camp circle and path away from it) and then cuts to a closer image of the action (the mounted man riding away from the villagescape), to focus in on the specific action. A remarkably similar composition showing a camp circle with adjacent villagescape and stolen horses (indicated by their tracks) was recorded by Skinner (1914:484) as a Biographic narrative drawn on a Plains Ojibway breechclout (Figure 4.26).

Arrows Held Vertically in Front of Bow Bowmen sometimes carry one or more vertically oriented arrows just in front of and approximately parallel to the bow stave (Figures 3.38a, 4.27, 4.28). All are carried in the same hand. Holding arrows at the ready in this pose connotes a warrior expecting to encounter a situation in which arrows would be needed quickly to engage the enemy. It is a common convention to show a warrior prepared for combat in both ledger and robe drawings of numerous tribes (Afton, Halaas, and Masich 1997; Bates, Kahn, and Lanford 2003:294–300; Berlo 1996:103, 107, 147, 207; Maurer 1992:186). In rock art this pose occurs at Bear Gulch, 24YL1358, Joliet, and 24RB1019 in Montana, and No Water and 48SW82 in Wyoming. A somewhat similar pose occurs with a bow-spear and arrow at DgOv-2 and an atlatl and darts at 24JT86 (Figure 3.141).

Figure 4.26. A horse-raiding scene on an Ojibway warrior’s breechclout design. The top shows a flattened perspective aerial view of the camp circle, while the villagescape of tipis is shown again just below from the side view. The hoofprints show stolen horses led away from the camp. Drawing by the authors, adapted from Skinner 1914.

Figure 4.27. Two bowmen. The figure at left wears a large headdress and leather body armor with a high neck. The warrior at right carries a quiver across his body but holds arrows vertically in front of his bow, indicating readiness for combat. Drawing by the authors.

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Figure 4.28. Shield-bearing warriors often hold arrows at the ready in front of their bow while others also have an arrow nocked and ready to fire (a, c). Drawing by the authors.

Muzzle Blast To indicate a gun discharging, Plains artists drew the often very impressive flames and smoke exiting the gun barrel as a “cloud” or fan of short lines at the gun’s muzzle. Occasionally an artist used one or more floating muzzle blasts disconnected from the gun barrel to indicate a shot or series of shots as the action progressed (Figure 1.28). Some scenes show only the muzzle blast (Figures 0.21d, 3.25), which stands in for the for the gun itself as well as the person firing it. Muzzle blasts occur in rock art narratives at Pictograph Cave, Joliet, and the Custer site (24YL600) in Montana, and La Barge Bluffs in Wyoming (Figures 3.15, 3.34b, 4.8, 4.29). It is notably common at Joliet, with more than half a dozen discharging guns shown this way; and in an array of seven red-painted flintlocks at Pictograph Cave, each gun has a cloud at the muzzle representing the black powder smoke when fired.

Figure 4.29. Fight scene shows a spear wielding horseman counting coup on a pedestrian warrior whose gun shows a muzzle blast. Drawing by the authors.

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Indications of Gender Both men and women are occasionally specifically indicated in Biographic rock art scenes by the portrayal of primary and secondary sexual characteristics. These indications of gender were drawn to provide detail to some scenes and to emphasize the masculine “power” of participants in others. These are described in Chapter 3 in the section entitled “External Sexual Organs and Secondary Sexual Characteristics.”

Rubout In both rock art and on Blackfoot painted robes, artists sometimes indicated vanquished enemies and lost comrades by drawing a rubout (Brownstone 1993:46–48; Keyser and Klassen 2001:271, 2003:12–13; Klassen, Keyser, and Loendorf 2000:196–98). These can range from red slashes painted over the bodies of humans in fighting forces on Blackfoot robes to intensive deface-

Figure 4.30. Scratching over of an earlier image to tag or obliterate it is called a “rubout.” They can be random scrawls (as at left) or neatly spaced lines (as at right), and they indicate vanquished enemies or lost comrades. Drawing by the authors.

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ment of paintings and carvings at rock art sites. Rock art examples range from deep grooves cut across a human to very neatly drawn, equal length, carefully spaced lines that were used to “tag” a human to frenetic clusters of scratches that nearly obliterate the underlying image (Figure 4.30). A rubout is suspected at DgOv-9 and documented for a dancer at No Bear. Shield-bearing warriors, a few other humans, and a vulva form at Bear Gulch and Atherton Canyon have also been rubbed out. A rubout at DgOv-2 that was suspected to have been done by Bird Rattle (Klassen, Keyser, and Loendorf 2000) has been shown to be much later, and thus probably a graffito (Kaiser and Keyser 2015). The suspected rubout at DgOv-9 might be a quiver, so it should be reevaluated in person.

Split Horse’s Ears Split or notched ears (Figures 2.1, 3.51, 3.89e, 3.105f, 3.106, 3.116) on a horse (described in detail in Chapter 3, “Split Ears”) were used to indicate an exceptionally fast horse, and they often further connoted a man’s favorite mount. When drawn in rock art, split ears can indicate a man’s own favorite horse in a showing-off portrait or an action scene, but when shown on a picketed horse or one juxtaposed with a tipi, they indicate a prize animal stolen from an enemy.

Wrapped, Bobbed, or Tied-Up Horse Tail The various ways Plains warriors modified their horses’ tails (see Chapter 3, “Tied-Up Tail”) were meant to indicate a horse made ready for war when drawn in Biographic art scenes (Figure 3.121). When shown in an action scene, this connoted that the warrior had sufficient time ahead of the encounter to fully prepare his mount. In other showing-off portraits it helps signal a horse fully decked out for war or a ceremonial procession.

Decorated Horse Bridle In general, a horse wearing a decorated bridle (Figure 3.105) typically indicates one decked out for war or a showing-off portrait. Intrinsic to such decor is the understanding that the illustrated animal is a man’s best horse. In some ledger drawings, showing-off portraits display a variety of tack and body painting designs in addition to the bridle bit decoration. War scenes illustrating a variety of decorated bridles (see Chapter 3, “Bridle Bit Decorations”) signify the rider had time to fully outfit his mount before the action.

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Some bridle bit decorations had even more specific connotations. Among the Lakota, a scalp used as such a decoration indicated the horse had trampled an enemy underfoot (Figure 4.31). And among the Blackfoot, a characteristic bridle bit decoration known as the Thing-totie-on-the-halter signified either war or hunting. A petroglyph at DgOw27 illustrates a mounted bison hunt in which the horse wears this item (Figure 3.11e). In contrast to other warfare scenes and showing-off portraits with this bridle decoration illustrated (Keyser and Mitchell 2001), this scene references the belief that the Thing-to-tie-on-the-halter protected the horse from stumbling during the chase (Wissler 1912b:107).

Figure 4.31. Among the Lakota, a scalp hanging from a horse’s bridle indicated the animal had trampled an enemy underfoot, as seen in this drawing from the Red Dog ledger. The floating quirt indicates Red Dog struck coup on the Pawnee woman as he rode her down. Photograph by James D. Keyser.

Moccasin Tails Wolf or fox tails, fox pelts, feathers, strips of cloth, or a buffalo bull’s beard were attached to one or both heels of a warrior’s moccasins by various groups to denote a man’s performance of certain war honors or his attainment of a particular status (Figure 3.47e–g). Among the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara, wolf tails used this way indicated the wearer had killed an enemy. Among the Cheyenne, a buffalo bull’s beard used as a moccasin tail indicated the status of a contrary—a person who formally adopted behavior deliberately opposite of other tribal members. Given that Crow informants have identified the Hot Dancers at the Joliet site (Figure 1.11) as Hidatsa men performing the dance in order to transfer it to the Crow, the moccasin tails of the upper right figure (a “Tailfeather Owner”) probably indicate his killing of an enemy.

Wolf Hat War party scouts were known as “wolves” and had a variety of regalia made from wolf parts and behaviors mimicking the actions of wolves (Keyser 2007b). Two pieces of characteristic regalia were the wolf skin worn over the scout’s

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Figure 4.32. A wolf skin worn over the shoulder marks a war party scout, who—thus camouflaged—could peer over the crest of a hill to observe enemies while appearing as only a wolf on the prowl. Drawing by the authors; (a) is adapted from His Fight ledger drawing in D. Smith 1943 and (b) is adapted from Upper Missouri bison robe in Maurer 1992.

shoulder or his wolf hat (Figures 3.76m, n; 4.32). The function of both was to enable a scout to peer over the crest of a hill to observe enemies while giving the appearance of being nothing more threatening than a wolf on the prowl. These two regalia items are worn by Bear Gulch style shield-bearing warriors at Bear Gulch, Atherton Canyon, and Steamboat Butte, presumably to indicate their status as having served as war party scouts. In historic times, scout service was denoted by a special symbol used by Blackfoot, Sarcee, Crow, Lakota, Gros Ventres, and probably other groups (see this chapter “Ideograms,” “Scout-Service Symbol”), but this ideogram has not yet been found in rock art.

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Heads or Busts Biographic art in all media occasionally depicts people as only heads or busts (Mallery 1893:572; Maurer 1992:194–95). This is a shorthand way of showing defeated enemies or those on whom coup has been counted (Figures 3.166, V1). A classic rock art example is found at Manuel Lisa, where a row of five human heads are all hit with a coup-strike tomahawk or spear to show the means of counting coup (Figure 1.29).

Medicine Bundle Carrier Humans were portrayed in Biographic rock art wearing or carrying a medicine bundle for a few specific purposes. Initially, such a bundle announces that a man has a strong spirit helper with whose aid he has become a high-status individual. Even more importantly, though, carrying a medicine bundle in a rock art scene in combination with his weapon or shield indicates either that he is prepared for or involved in war or participating in some ritual or ceremony. Thus, a man posing with his shield, spear, and a bird bundle tied in his hair announces he is a high-status warrior prepared to go to war. A horseman who wears his medicine bundle tied around his neck while striking coup on a retreating enemy demonstrates that his powerful spirit helper aided him in overcoming a foe (Figure 2.1a). In a slightly different context, where several individuals appear to be posing or interacting but not fighting, the bundle is ritual paraphernalia associated with a dance or celebration whose purpose was to promote group unity or maintain a group’s position in their societal cosmos. Such celebrations might include ritual renewal ceremonies, a dance commemorating some triumph, or a parade to demonstrate a military society’s value to the larger group (Figure 3.85).

Weapon Brandished While a warrior shown actually using a weapon can almost invariably be identified as engaged in an act of warfare or hunting, some humans are simply shown brandishing a weapon or other object (scalp pole) without an obvious foe or quarry. Such action can indicate the excitement of a dance whose purpose was to celebrate warriors’ valor and the conquest of an enemy. But it might also be a showing-off exhibition where a warrior is announcing his successes or some ceremonial transfer of an emblem of office in a military society. Women sometimes brandish weapons or a scalp pole as participants in a scalp dance celebrating a war party’s success (Berlo 1996:31; Denig 2000:Plate 71).

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Rock art examples (Figures 1.5, 1.11, 3.34d) occur in a warrior’s showing-off exhibition at La Barge Bluffs and at Joliet in two scenes, one showing a Hot Dance and another the transfer of a military society lance (McCleary 2016:121–22). No rock art scalp dance is yet Figure 4.33. Two warriors riding a single horse indiknown. cate the rescue of a comrade in battle by one man One special weapon, riding to his friend’s aid. In this scene the rescued the bow-spear, was some- warrior brandishes an unidentified weapon at a purtimes brandished to cast a suing enemy as they flee, while the lead rider fires his rifle at an unseen enemy ahead. Drawing by the spell on a distant foe, since authors. it was believed that such a “Thunder bow” could strike down enemies at great distances. Though we know of no rock art example where this is explicitly shown, this action may have been intended by the portraits of some warriors holding bow-spears. Finally, occasionally a man escaping from a fusillade of fire or being rescued by a comrade would brandish his weapon back toward his foes to taunt the enemy with his apparent invincibility. Examples occur in ledger art (Berlo 1996:74–75, 92–93) and at Joliet where a rescued man brandishes an unidentified weapon at the enemy from whom he flees (Figure 4.33).

Riding to the Rescue: Saving a Comrade in Battle In addition to a man’s coups counted directly on enemies, and his prowess as a horse raider, a warrior who rescued a comrade in battle was permitted to record that deed as another war honor (Grinnell 1910:296–97; Lowie 1912:231; Mishkin 1940:39). Usually occurring when a man became unhorsed because his mount was killed or exhausted or when a “stake-sash warrior” was untethered (see discussion, Chapter 3, “Sashes”), the act contributed greatly to a man’s prestige and social status. In fact, among the Crow such rescues had a special name that accorded the warriors who performed them particular privileges (Jordan, Sundstrom, and McCleary 2016:13). Such Riding to the Rescue actions were recorded by a few tribes with specific marks on clothing, but across the Plains they were more frequently commemorated by drawing the specific action in detail (Jordan, Sundstrom, and McCleary 2016). Ledgers show numerous such rescue coups (Berlo 1996:75, 93), but there are at least half a dozen examples in rock art.

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Figure 4.34. A warrior carrying a shield and spear rides an armored horse to rescue a comrade. The footprint trail shows where a second man ran up to mount the horse during the rescue. Drawing by the authors.

The most common rock art examples show two riders astride the same horse (Figures 1.32, 3.15, 3.142, 3.158, 4.33). This has previously been recognized at five sites: Radonski Rock (24CT1360), Joliet (two examples), Gyp Spring, La Barge Bluffs, and El Caido (Jordan, Sundstrom, and McCleary 2016). The Radonski Rock scene is the oldest of these, showing an armored horse with two riders both carrying larger shields than those typical of the equestrian period (Figure 4.34). This scene also includes a sequence of footprints showing where the rescued man ran up to get on his comrade’s horse. Rescues at Gyp Spring and Joliet show the pursuing enemies and the one at La Barge Bluffs happens in the middle of a large group of horsemen who pursue a retreating group of enemies who have paused to return fire. Two other scenes show four riders astride a single horse. One is carved at DgOw-32 (Figure 4.35) and the other is painted at Canyon Creek Pictographs (24ST402) in Montana. Both scenes are parts of clearly Biographic narratives, and while the specifics of the story are not obvious for either one, the example

Figure 4.35. Four stick-figure riders shown astride a single horse in this large group indicate the rescue of comrades. Other horsemen in this scene could be accompanying or chasing the four riders. Other coups are the capture hand grabbing a riderless horse’s rein (upper center) and the rake-like scalp shown next to the rider counting coup on the bowman at far right. Drawing by the authors.

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at DgOw-32 is in a group of horsemen who could be accompanying or chasing the four riders. Finally, a scene at Turner Rockshelter shows a Blackfoot warrior leading a horse and rider out of danger in a fight (Figure 3.23, see Vignette 7, below). Although this is a slightly different deed than riding in to rescue an unhorsed comrade, saving a fellow tribesman in this way was considered a war honor by Piegan chief Running Rabbit, who pictured himself on his war deed tipi “sav[ing] the lives of two wounded comrades, carrying one on his own horse and leading the horse with the other” (McClintock 1923:266).

⤞ VIGNETTE 7 RESCUING A COMRADE IN BATTLE Rescuing a wounded comrade by helping him or her mount their own horse and leading them away from the fight was considered a war honor by the Blackfoot and Sarcee, who pictured it on at least two different robes (Jordan, Sundstrom, and McCleary 2016:8). There is a third example (Figure 3.23) showing this in the petroglyphs at Turner Rockshelter in Montana. At this site a Blackfoot warrior carrying a feather-bedecked shield rides his horse decked out with a Thing-to-tie-on-the-halter—a characteristic piece of Blackfoot horse tack considered a powerful war charm (see Chapter 3, “Bridle Bit Decorations”). This man, clearly the scene’s hero, pursues a horse that drags a long war bridle, while simultaneously leading a third horse with a rider wearing a standup war bonnet with feathered trailer. Although this rescued man shows no obvious debilitating wound, it is the only logical reason for his mount being led away. One of two pursuing enemy warriors counts coup on this third horse by hitting it in the rump with his bow. This action-packed narrative documents an engagement typical of the frenzied events occurring in Plains Indian warfare. Here, the shield-carrying hero has performed two honorific deeds roughly simultaneously. He is capturing an enemy horse while concurrently rescuing his comrade from the thick of a fight. While we cannot determine the exact sequence of events, a reasonable reconstruction from the drawing is that the pursuing enemy is one who had just dismounted from the horse trailing its war bridle to attack the wounded man. As the hero swoops in to rescue his wounded comrade, he also captures the attacking enemy’s horse as that enemy counts coup on his rescued comrade’s mount. Such an action would certainly be worth recounting at Turner Rockshelter.

⤝

Vocalization A variety of vocal utterances are shown in Plains narrative art, though they are much more commonly used in winter counts and ledger drawings than in rock art. Possibly the best example occurs in a Cheyenne pictographic letter circa 1880, where lines issuing from the mouth of the writer’s self-portrait

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indicate a spoken invitation to his son (Mallery 1893:363–64). Apart from this example and name glyphs, which often originate from a person’s mouth to symbolically indicate their spoken name, actual human speech is only rarely depicted in this way. Instead, lines emanating from the mouth of an animal actor indicate the howl of a wolf, bark of a dog, or bugling of an elk. Often, but not always, these are indicated when used as a name glyph, such as “Howling Wolf” (Petersen 1971:221; Mallery 1893:718). In winter counts such vocalization lines can be dashed or zigzagged to represent such attributes as the staccato nature of whooping cough (Howard 1960:389; Mallery 1886:108) or the barking of a dog versus the howl of a wolf. Finally, sometimes wavy lines emanating from the mouth of an animal or human can represent supernatural communication (Mallery 1893:462–64, 592). Other, somewhat similar conventions using twisted lines emanating from a person’s mouth or various parts of the body are commonly used in winter counts to show sickness or death by indicating coughing, moans of pain, the retching sound of vomiting, or the “whistling” made by gas issuing from the stomach or anus (Mallery 1893:588–89). Similarly, a spiral or filigree was frequently used to represent pain, dyspepsia, a gurgling stomach, or flatulence associated with sickness (Mallery 1893:298, 312, 318). Often this disease vocalization convention is paired with spots drawn on the body to indicate smallpox, measles lesions, or other pustules (Mallery 1893:300, 308, 325, 327). The only well-documented vocalization symbols in Plains Biographic rock art occur at Joliet, where a human head shown in front view has lines streaming from its open mouth and a woman lying down or squatting is apparently speaking or singing (Figures 1.5, 1.11). Juxtaposed with two elaborately dressed ledger art-style dancers holding weapons, Crow informants have identified the “talking head” as a “clan father” singing the praises of young men who have accepted the responsibility of the military society leadership positions represented by the weapons they are brandishing (McCleary 2016:122). The woman’s vocalization is discussed in detail in Chapter 5, “Reading the Narratives.” The body of a profile woman, carved in a late, ledger art-style at 5BA12, in southeastern Colorado, is covered with small circles and a small filigree vocalization line at her mouth, suggesting she represents someone suffering from disease (Renaud 1936:34, Plate 13). Unfortunately, the only published photograph of this image is badly chalked, and it has not been carefully examined and published in recent times. Finally, the vocalization convention and X-ray perspective portrayal of internal organs are two of the few conventions shared with earlier rock art. Such vocalizations occur in Late Prehistoric period Ceremonial Tradition rock art at Castle Gardens and the Elk Dreamer site, where bull elk have lines extending from their muzzles to represent their characteristic bugling call in the rut (Keyser and Sundstrom 2015:129–30). At Elk Dreamer the vocalization is actually a natural feature of the cliff incorporated into the image. A similar

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bugling vocalization was drawn by a Lakota informant who illustrated the Elk Dreamer ceremony for Wissler (1912b:87). One panel at Pinnacle Rocks (Figure 3.50) presents an interesting but enigmatic example. On the site’s main panel, in a phalanx of eight similarly sized and similarly illustrated shield-bearing warriors, six of them have long, wavy lines connecting each one’s head to a nearby bighorn sheep and unidentifiable quadrupeds (Keyser and Poetschat 2014:247). Two pairs of warriors are tethered to single animals, and the other four each to their own animal. These lines are unique in Plains rock art, and what they might represent can only be conjectural. The Greers (2002), who first noted these, suggested the lines were speech scrolls, but offered no further interpretation. But the Pinnacle Rocks shield figures do not have mouths and one line comes from the top of a man’s head rather than where his mouth would be. Similar lines in ledger drawings sometimes connect a man to his name glyph (Mallery 1893:442–60), but why pairs of warriors would be connected to the same name glyph is puzzling. If these were intended as identifications, perhaps they indicate rank or military society membership—an interpretation consistent with each warrior in both connected pairs having nearly identical specialized weapons, which were frequently indicators of military society rank. Similar wavy lines are used in Ceremonial Tradition rock art as well as ledger and winter counts to indicate spirit power. Therefore, the animals could indicate the warriors’ spirit helpers, with two of them sharing the same spirit animal. In sum, multiple possibilities might explain why these six figures are tethered to animals. These range from speaking or singing, through supernatural connection, to more secular identification of the warrior’s name, rank, or other designation. Even some combination of these—such as singing to a spirit helper—might be intended by these lines. But despite the mystery, these lines obviously symbolized something important to the artist of this composition.

Lightning Symbolism Lightning—traveling at supersonic speeds and releasing up to 500 megajoules of electrical energy (a terawatt of electrical power) with an individual bolt—was the most potent natural force in Plains Indian life. Almost always accompanied by violent storms and thunder—and often hail and tornadoes—the speed at which lightning could strike down any living thing (man, beast, and even tall trees) was rivaled only by its ferocious power to do these things. Small wonder, then, that Plains Indians believed so strongly in the power of the Thunderbird (Figure 4.36), and special “Thunder Bows” were believed to strike down enemies at great distances. In Plains rock art, lightning (or its metaphoric equivalent “power”) is illustrated as a notably angular zigzag line. Typically,

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Figure 4.36. This redpainted Thunderbird image shows zigzag lightning streaks coming from its wings and hailstones dotting its breast. The trident carried in its beak probably represents the sound of thunder. Drawing by the authors.

the zigzag is sharply angled, but sometimes—especially for body paint (Berlo 1996:109, 167, 185, 197, 207; Heidenreich 1985:Figures 1930.4 and 1930.56; Keyser and Sundstrom 2015:Figures 7, 11; Maurer 1992:209)—the “lightning” line is expressed as a more S-shaped sinuous line. Less well known, however, is how closely horses are associated with thunder and lightning in Plains belief systems. For several tribes, lightning was synonymous with horses, which embodied both speed and power, and artists carefully illustrated that association in four different ways.

Lightning Body Paint Horses, decorated for war and seen in visions, routinely were painted with zigzag streaks running from their shoulder or flank down the front and/or rear leg. (Figure 4.37). In ledger art (Berlo 1996, 2000b; Horse Capture and Horse Capture 2001; Maurer 1992), such paint schemes are identified as marking the animal’s spiritual power, which was believed to give it speed, sure-footedness, and invincibility in battle. Commenting on this motif, Berlo (1996:108) notes that zigzag lines were thought of as “lightning bolts . . . painted on the horse’s legs to give it swiftness and agility.” Horse Capture and Horse Capture (2001:75) state: “The warrior-artist’s yellow horse has been painted with a zigzag line symboliz[ing] lightning and is meant to provide the horse with protection and power.” Two rock art horses have lightning streak body paint. The most explicit is a ledger art-style horse carved by Lakota warrior Crazy Horse at 24BH658 (Keyser and Burgan 2015). Zigzags incised down both legs indicate both front

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Figure 4.37. Horses were painted with zigzag streaks running from their shoulder or flank down their leg to mark the animal’s power, speed, and agility. Images courtesy of Charles H. Barstow Collection, Montana State University-Billings, Library Special Collections.

and hind quarters were decorated, while incised just above this horse is a rattlesnake with a Z-shape mimicking the horse’s lightning streaks (Figure 3.24). Oral history identifies this petroglyph as Crazy Horse’s vision in which he saw a horse standing on a high pinnacle and above it a snake, while lightning streaks moved across the animal. Crazy Horse’s name glyphs in Cloud Shield’s winter count, as well as a ledger drawing that McLaughlin (2013:118, 211) suggests might depict Crazy Horse, show a similar body painting scheme for the man’s horse. The second example of “lightning legs” is carved across the front left shoulder and down the front leg of a horse at Joliet (Figure 3.106a). The most reasonable explanation for these lines is lightning-streak body paint, and their sinuous form mimics a similar design in a ledger drawing by Crow artist Takes Away the Enemy (Figure 4.37a). Elaborate lightning-streak body paint also decorates one human—a Cheyenne “Elk Dreamer” at 24RB275 (Figure 1.6, see also Vignette 3, “The Elk Dreamer”). This man’s face, torso, and legs have lightning lines, which are— especially in combination with other designs painted on his body—common Cheyenne symbolism for visionary power.

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Lightning Reins Bridle reins are the most common Plains rock art horse tack (Keyser and Klassen 2001:224–53; Keyser and Poetschat 2005:26, 47), and those drawn as zigzag lightning reins (metaphorically and visually representing lightning bolts) extending from the horse’s nose to the rider’s hand are the most common and widespread lightning symbolism illustrated on rock art horses (Figures 3.18; 3.40; 3.46; 3.64a, b; 3.93; 3.106a). Such reins are shown on more than twenty horses at a dozen sites scattered from Joliet in south-central Montana to the Hussie Miers site near the Rio Grande in south-central Texas (Jordan 2015:88; Keyser 2008a; Keyser and Klassen 2001:250; Keyser and Mitchell 2001:203; Loendorf and Olsen 2003). Examples also occur in New Mexico at Rio Grande Gorge and Chaco Canyon on horses drawn by Comanche and Navajo artists. Based on stylistic criteria, other than lightning reins themselves, this conventional depiction is found on horses attributed to Crow, Hidatsa, Cheyenne, Comanche, and Navajo artists, but examples were almost certainly drawn by other tribes. Interestingly, however, the Blackfoot do not seem to have used this symbol. The fact that lightning reins are repeatedly drawn at sites across such a wide area of the region by artists from several tribes indicates that it was a recognized symbol in Plains pictorial art. Given that similar zigzag lines used as horse body paint are documented to have symbolized lightning (Berlo 1996:108; Horse Capture and Horse Capture 2001:75), which was believed to give these animals speed, agility, and invincibility in warfare, it seems clear that lightning reins were used in rock art to connote this same symbolism.

Lightning Quirts Many Plains Biographic rock art horsemen use quirts to spur their mounts to greater speed in both hunting and warfare scenes (Figures 2.1, 3.20, 3.34d, 3.46), but even two pedestrians are drawn carrying quirts—one rushing into a fight carries his quirt to show he has just dismounted to join the fray (Figure 1.18), while the other apparently carries a special quirt as a badge of military society office (Figure 3.169). These “lightning quirts” were drawn as two types. Most common in rock art are those drawn by three Crow artists showing emphatically zigzagged lashes, which—like “lightning reins”—metaphorically and visually suggested lightning bolts (Figures 1.18, 3.15, 3.30d). Two of these are used by horsemen at Joliet and the third is the aforementioned quirt carried by a pedestrian to document his just-unmounted status. Given the obvious connection between a quirt’s use to urge the horse to greater speed, the “lightning lashes” convention is easily understood as a reinforcement of this speed metaphor. A similar lightning-lash quirt is painted on an upper Missouri bison robe of unknown ethnic affiliation, in combination with a lightning chain bit (Keyser and Mitchell 2001:202).

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A second type of lightning quirt occurs in Biographic art but is more commonly known from ethnographic specimens. This whip has a carefully cut saw-toothed edge handle representing the lightning bolt (Figure 4.38). Often these were further decorated along their saw edge with lines of multiple brass tacks, which when polished would catch and reflect the sun’s rays, providing the item its own mimicry of lightning flashes. Although these quirts are relatively commonly illustrated in ledger drawings, only a single example is so far known in Biographic rock art (Figures 3.157s, 3.169). This quirt is carried by a spear-wielding warrior carved as one of five protagonists in a large composition showing various combat scenes accompanied by a one-hundred-plus–person tally of defeated enemies (Sundstrom 2004b:110–11). Sundstrom believes this scene was drawn by either a Lakota or Figure 4.38. A lightning quirt carved Cheyenne warrior-artist to document with a saw-toothed-edge handle representing the zigzag lightning bolt. military actions during the “Great Sioux These could also be decorated with War,” which was centered in the Powder brass tacks, which would reflect the River Basin. Thus, the lightning-handle sun’s rays to mimic lightning flashes. quirt likely indicates the man carrying it Drawing by the authors. was a member of a specific military society. Among the Cheyenne, such quirts were carried by Elk Society members, and among the Sioux, Amos Bad Heart Bull illustrates such quirts as badges for leaders of the several societies (Bad Heart Bull and Blish 1967:103–9). We do not know if there was a corresponding military society association for the lightning-lash quirts characteristic of Crow rock art.

Lightning Chain Bits In rock art, the simplest of three types of Spanish chain bits—a type of ring bit with jingle chains of coscojos attached directly to the bottom bar of the bit assembly (Figure 3.107) and sometimes also to the cheek pieces—are often illustrated as a cluster of long zigzags pendent from the horse’s nose (Figures 3.5d, 3.18, 3.49, 3.88e, 3.108). Such bits are similarly illustrated on a Crow bison robe and in Crow ledger drawings (Barbeau 1960:113, 129; Brownstone 2001b:70). In use, such jingle chains would have created a characteristic

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aural effect, and when highly polished they would have flashed with reflected sunlight, metaphorically projecting lightning bolts as the horse and his rider whirled and feinted in combat. In the absence of such strong lightning symbolism for other horse accoutrements, the symbolic significance of drawing Spanish chain bits this way might be overlooked. However, given such consistent association between zigzag lines, metaphoric lightning, and speed, it is perfectly reasonable to understand chain bits drawn in this fashion as an apt visual metaphor symbolizing lightning and speed. This conclusion is strengthened by the co-occurrence of lightning chain bits with other lightning symbolism (lightning-lash quirts and lightning reins) on horses carved at several rock art sites and painted on at least one robe. Lightning chain bits are drawn at sites in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and Kansas. So far, most of those in Montana and Wyoming are associated with horses identified as Crow imagery, but their appearance as far afield as southern Colorado and Kansas (Figure 4.39), coupled with their existence in ledger drawings and robe paintings from other tribes, indicates this symbolism was known cross-culturally. Given the nature of the Plains Indian belief system concerning power and symbolism, depicting polished, shining bit chains swinging below the horse’s nose to catch and reflect the sun’s rays as miniature lightning bolts is perfectly consistent with the kind of metaphor typically employed. In summary, each of these four conventionalized lightning representations is repeated often in Biographic art—even when a simpler depiction would just as clearly illustrate the basic facts (e.g., this is a horse’s rein, this man holds and uses a quirt). Although we have direct ethnographic reference only to lightning-streak body paint for horses and the saw-toothed edge quirt as representing lightning and its power, we know that Biographic art depic-

Figure 4.39. Spanish chain bits were often illustrated using a series of zigzag lines, symbolizing lightning and speed. The polished, shiny chains swinging below the horse’s nose could reflect the sun’s rays like miniature lightning bolts, reinforcing the link between the horse’s speed and power and lightning. Drawing by the authors.

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tions, which routinely and consistently depart from realism in conventionalized ways, always function to tell a key part of a story. One or two examples of zigzag reins, quirt lashes, or jingle chains could simply be artistic license, but when these conventions are repeated over and over in both rock art and ledger drawings done by artists from several different tribes, we understand their clearly cross-cultural meaning. From this, through the process of analogy, we can legitimately conclude that all four conventional depictions were used to express the power of lightning embodied in the horse.

Natural Features Plains Biographic art was originally characterized by the absence of a landscape setting. Ewers (1968b:8) summarized it this way: “[the artist’s] figures float freely over the surface . . . without any attempt being made to show the geographical setting in which the battle took place.” Since the absence of geographical setting is true of most rock art and nearly all but the latest robe and ledger drawings, those instances where the natural environment is depicted as part of a narrative scene deserve some discussion. Ledger and robe drawings do not typically begin to show landscape details until the drawings of the Fort Marion prisoners, some of whom included the landscapes they traveled through on their journey to incarceration. In these drawings we see cities and towns, the fort itself, the rivers and railroads they traveled, and the ocean, which would have been completely foreign to them. And while jailed, as these artists began to draw remembrances of home, they began to put those scenes in landscapes. Thus, buffalo and the hunters chasing them gallop over hills and plains, a woman tends a carefully illustrated garden plot next to a tipi and a brush arbor, a horse race shows the riders leaving the group of spectators, crossing the river, and rounding a hill and pounding toward the finish line. Likewise, the Cheyennes’ first purchase of horses from the Kiowas is set in the Arkansas River landscape and even shows observers and a boy playing in the background (Berlo 1996; Petersen 1968). Howling Wolf was possibly the most adept at placing his images within a traditional landscape to show what pre-prison life had been, but others such as the Kiowa artist Wohaw did comparable work. Many also drew the entirely new landscapes populated with buildings, bridges, trains, the ocean, and all the trappings of Fort Marion, but these were documented in almost photographic detail by other such artists as Zo-Tom and Etahdleuh Doanmoe. But such “landscape art” was never popular for winter counts, robe drawings, or rock art, even during the last decades of the 1800s. Possibly this was because the Fort Marion prisoners quickly came to realize their drawings had value to non-Indians as art, but as such it needed the landscape setting characteristic of Western art.

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Figure 4.40. Landscape features occasionally occur in Biographic art when significant to the narrative. American Horse’s winter count for the year 1836–37, known as the “Fight on the Ice Winter,” shows an aerial view of the frozen Platte River with a rank of pedestrians on the left shore and a mix of horsemen and pedestrians on the other. Arrows and impacting bullets (shown by the T-shaped “splat”) fly between the forces. Red dashes (shown in grey) indicate warriors wounded or killed on the ice. Drawing by David A. Kaiser adapted from the American Horse winter count, NAA MS, 2372, Box 12:F7, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Lakota winter counts only occasionally illustrated landscape features where they were key to the narrative, such as the “Fight on the Ice Winter” (1836–37) where they battled the Pawnees on the frozen Platte River (Figure 4.40). The Kiowa more frequently depicted landscape features to record where battles or other significant events occurred, however this remained the exception. Likewise, Indian maps drawn on paper (Figure 4.41) routinely use natural features to set the greater landscape they are illustrating (Fredlund, Sundstrom, and Armstrong 1996). Such things as rivers, lakes, trails, and mountains are used in almost all the known maps. Given their form—a series of small U- or V-shapes usually sitting on a groundline (Figure 3.22)—mountains are the feature most likely to be identified in rock art, since they cannot be easily confused with something else. In contrast, without the assistance of name glyphs or a vehicle sitting on a trail, lines and circles would be almost impossible to verify as trails, rivers, or lakes since such shapes are common in all sorts of rock art. Nevertheless, some rock art and robe art shows landscape details. Perhaps the most convincing rock art example of a complete landscape setting is the “Indian Map” (41TE330) near Langtry, Texas (Turpin and Eling 2011:294), which has groves of trees, groups of structures apparently representing villages, and lines and shapes appearing to represent rivers and possibly other geographic features all interspersed with horse and human tracks (Figure 4.42). Unfortunately, to our knowledge, this site has never been specifically studied with the lexicon in mind, and the authors rely on a 1938 drawing of it, whose reliability has not been verified.

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Figure 4.41. Indian maps drawn on paper show natural features, such as rivers, lakes, trails, and mountains, and many narrative elements of the lexicon, including name glyphs for geographic features. These scenes are from a map drawn by Cheyenne scout, Crazy Mule. Sternwheel steamboat on Missouri River (a); Bighorn River and Crow camp indicated by name glyphs (b); wagon, forts, and tipi camps (c); Bears Paw Mountains indicated by name glyph, and wagon on trail to Bear Paw Battlefield (d). Drawing by the authors adapted from Fredlund, Sundstrom, and Armstrong 1996.

Otherwise, a few Plains Indian artists began adding solitary landscape features as embellishments to their personal narratives in the mid-1800s, and it gradually became more popular for robe art. Thus, Blackfoot artists began to show the groves of trees in which they hid on horse raids, the woods from which a grizzly bear charged before being killed, or the Rocky Mountains as

Figure 4.42. Landscape details occasionally feature in rock art, such as the “Indian Map” carved in Texas. This image shows trees, villages, and rivers, as well as human and horse tracks. Drawing by the authors adapted from Turpin and Eling 2011.

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a backdrop to a war adventure (L. Dempsey 2007:304, Plates 20, 27–31). In rock art, such landscape features are even rarer. By this, we are excluding villagescapes, camp circles, or tipis since these are essentially “actors” (albeit immobile ones) in narratives. For instance, a scene detailing “I entered a camp and took a picketed horse” is made more vivid by the illustration of the camp circle as one actor in the story, and the narrative accrues added strength and immediacy when contrasted to a scene simply showing a picketed horse. But this village of tipis does not make a landscape in the more specific sense of the word. Rock artists also occasionally used a few landscape features in their narratives. One horse-stealing scene at La Barge Bluffs documents the act at a tipi set between two trees, which likely played a role in the spoken narrative of this action even though the spoken words have not survived (Figure 1.33). Similarly, other sites from 24GL1661, near Cut Bank, Montana, to the Bierce Arborglyph to Dorward Ranch and 41TE330 in Texas include such things as trees, rivers, a road crossing an escarpment, and mountain ranges (Figures 3.22, 3.179, 4.43). One of the most expressive of these sites is DgOw-19, located in Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park in southern Alberta (see Vignette 8). Another scene at the La Vista Verde site uses a natural cupule in a flat rock to indicate a landscape feature in a different way (Figure 3.101). Here, the cupule, which is abraded around its rim and retains a small “pool” of water after a rainstorm, represents a spring around which two dozen horse hoofprints circle. Eight horses, three with lassos around their necks, and a horse and rider stand just above the spring. One horse is shot in the shoulder with an arrow. Severin Fowles, who investigated this Comanche Biographic art, uses analogy, informants’ observations, and the ethnohistoric record to interpret the scene as one where the horseman has captured wild horses by lassoing them at their watering hole (Roberts 2015). The horse shot in the shoulder with an arrow duplicates a horse-capture method recorded by Catlin (Fowles, personal communication 2020). Here the natural dimple in the rock serves as a landscape feature around which the narrative scene is structured.

Figure 4.43. Trees feature in the narrative of a tally of stolen horses and weapons. Drawing by the authors.

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Elsewhere, at Bear Gulch in Montana, a natural crack was used as a groundline for a tipi village (Keyser, Kaiser, Poetschat, and Taylor 2012:165) as shield-bearing warriors (which are drawn below the ground line in this typically stacked perspective) parade in front of the tipis (Figure 3.173). While additional examples of incorporating natural features of the rock surface in this way likely exist, the practice is much more common in Ceremonial art. In summary, Plains Biographic rock art is mostly drawn without landscapes, but occasionally artists included specific landscape features to participate as actors in these narrative stories, rather than simply scene-setting or artistic flourishes. Rarer still are entire landscapes, and the only ones of these so far studied in detail are an arborglyph recorded in 1866 (Keyser and Sundstrom 2020) and a horse-raiding scene at DgOw-19; but if the Indian Map site still exists, it may be an even more complex use of a landscape. Finally, it is equally rare that artists used natural forms of the rock surface as landscape features in Biographic narratives.

⤞ VIGNETTE 8 A KUTENAI HORSE RAID

Figure V8. This horse raid at Writing-on-Stone tells a detailed story, complete with relevant landscape features. Drawing by the authors.

Drawn with an ochre “grease paint” crayon at DgOw-19 is a horse-raiding scene documenting action by a tribe from west of the Rocky Mountains against Piegans or another group living out on the Plains (Figure V8). In this composition nine stick-figure horses are posed just to the left of a camp of ten tipis. More than forty short dashes enter the scene from the far right and another thirty-two dashes extend into the camp from a grove of eight trees, which is located just above the tipis. Each tree is drawn as a chevron with a central trunk. The dashes

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represent the raiders’ tracks as they approached the camp and then hid out in the trees nearby, awaiting the optimum moment to take horses (cf. Ewers 1955b:184–86). About a dozen tracks are scattered among the tipis, representing forays of individual raiders sneaking into the village to cut picketed animals. Finally, a few tracks lead away from the lowest tipi toward the horses, all of which face left as they are driven away from the camp toward a mountain range depicted as a column of crudely drawn triangles oriented along a vertical groundline at the scene’s far left. A near-vertical line separating the driven horses from the camp probably represents a stream, possibly the Milk River less than a mile from the site. The absence of humans indicates the actors are offstage, being represented only by their footprints. The absence of weapons and flying bullets implies this was one time when the raiders escaped without being caught in the act. And the site’s orientation on the landscape itself strongly suggests the mountains are the Rocky Mountains, which rise up sharply only 120 km (75 miles) to the west. The stick-figure horses are unlike those drawn by Blackfoot artists, but resemble simpler animals drawn by Kutenai artists living just west of the Rockies. This scene is almost certainly a calling card drawn here in the most sacred of Blackfoot places to commemorate a Kutenai horse raid against Cree or Blackfoot enemies.

⤝

Communal Events Given the prevalence of portraying individual war honors in Biographic art, the observer might get the impression that the art tradition was only about combat and horse stealing. But Biographic art is much broader than personal combat and accomplishments. Rather than combat, some individual hunting scenes—often the pursuit of bison on horseback—are drawn at sites from Writing-on-Stone to Texas (Figure 3.11). And showing-off portraits of a man’s best horse fully decked out in its finest tack are found at several sites. There is even a showing-off exhibition with spectators at La Barge Bluffs (Figure 3.34d). Other communal imagery shows events such as large battles involving dozens of warriors at DgOv-81 and La Barge Bluffs. Important events for tribal histories are also drawn, including the 1897 hanging of the Blood man named Charcoal, which is drawn at Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park (Figure 3.78), the Crow purchase of the Hot Dance in 1882 at Joliet (Figure 1.11), and various interactions with priests, Spanish grandees, and churches at sites from northeastern New Mexico to the Pecos River in Texas (Figures 3.36, 3.41, 3.96). The La Barge Bluff site may be the most communally oriented rock art site so far documented, since in addition to a large battle, it appears to show the coming of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 and scenes of adoption, horse racing, and dancing (Figures 1.32, 3.33, 3.34d, 3.185, 4.44). Some of these larger scenes, such as the DgOv-81 battle scene and those involving adoption and churches, also have a component suggesting individual glory, and the battle scene at DgOv-81 might also have historiographic value. Nonetheless, the Biographic art lexicon can help unravel the narratives in all these scenes.

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Figure 4.44. This communally oriented scene appears to be a horse race, an activity seen in some ledger drawings. The image is partially spalled away (light grey), and partially cut away in more recent times (dark grey). Images in dark grey area are reconstructed from historical photographs. Drawing by the authors.

Whereas personal accomplishments overwhelmingly predominate in Biographic ledger art, robe art, and rock art, the converse is true for winter counts. These tribal histories focus less on individual deeds and more on communal events. While battles and horse stealing narratives certainly occur, the entries also focus on episodes of epidemic disease, times of plenty, and starvation winters. Deaths of significant individuals or treaties that impacted the whole community are also frequent subjects. Unusual occurrences, such as extreme weather or celestial events like meteor showers, were also recorded. While many of these images are simply memory aids to trigger further inferred narratives, winter counts—as a part of Biographic art—greatly increase the diversity of depiction of life on the Plains.

Ideograms Discourse systems (like the Biographic picture writing discussed here) often include both pictographic and ideographic components. Unlike other pictorial art such as representational painting, this picture writing consists of recur-

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ring images with standardized meanings, which, when combined in consistent patterns, can be understood in the same way by all those using the system. Most of this picture writing consists of pictograms, which—by definition—are a recognizable picture of something in the real world. Such pictograms can be as obvious as a human, animal, or a weapon or as subtle as a muzzle flash from a flintlock firearm, a bullet flying overhead represented by a tiny dot with a short “tail” to indicate its direction of movement, or a sequence of C-shapes to indicate the path of a horseman into the action. All these and hundreds of others represent—more-or-less realistically—real-life things. But not all recurring images in Biographic art are pictograms. Some details used in these compositions are ideograms—abstract images that do not display any obvious pictorial link with the real entity they represent. For example, silhouettes of a man and womanbc are pictograms because they clearly and realistically represent those entities, but the standardized symbols ♂ and ♀ are equally well understood even though they are ideograms, which bear no pictorial resemblance to a male or a female human. However, ideograms are not restricted to representing things; they can also represent concepts or ideas. For example, a red circle crossed by a diagonal slash represents the concept of negation—that is, “not any” or “do not.” In fact, many symbols used in nonphonological writing fall along a spectrum running between true pictogram and complete ideogram, and any example can be somewhere between these two extremes. This is often the case because the ideogram developed through a series of stages by the process of conventionalized abstraction from a pictogram of a real thing to its ideogrammatic end product. Many ideograms in Plains Biographic art occur in a broad class of imagery that has been termed “Exploit Marks.” Used as a pictographic shorthand to document a wide variety of war honors and acts of generosity that helped build a man’s status, some exploit marks perfectly illustrate their evolution from realistic picture (pictogram) to symbol (ideogram), through several stages of abstraction. The best examples are probably the latest versions of the Crow and Blackfoot capture hand, one of the Blackfoot scalp symbols, and the Blackfoot symbol for picket pin (Figures 1.20, 2.10). Other ideograms, such as the scout-service symbol and symbols for fighting behind breastworks or counting sequent coups (Figure 0.14), have little or no such recorded history of development and can be understood only by reference to ethnographic information and informant reports as to their meaning. Nonetheless, knowledge of exploit marks is vital to understanding the nuances of meaning in many compositions and even to understanding some entire compositions—including several rock art scenes (e.g., Keyser and Klassen 2003:10–12; Keyser, Sundstrom, and Poetschat 2006:65, Figure 7a). Below we describe and discuss the evolution of these symbols from pictogram to ideogram and suggest the tribal origin for some of the most common ones occurring across the region.

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Exploit Marks Many northern Plains artists used various shorthand, ideographic signs and symbols to indicate their different exploits. From the Tsuu T’ina (Sarcee) in the north to the Lakota in the southeast part of the region, regular use of at least some shorthand exploit marks is well-documented for at least nine tribes.9 Various tribes had slightly different versions of some marks (e.g., scout-service symbol, capture hand), and they often used them with different levels of adherence to a strict lexicon (Figure 0.14). Additionally, some marks were specific to some groups but not used by others (e.g., the fought-behind-breastworks symbol # was used by only some groups). Of all the northern Plains tribes, however, the most highly formalized and complex lexicon of exploit marks was developed and popularized by three affiliated tribes of the Upper Missouri region (the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara).10 These people lived in the vicinity of Forts Clark and Berthold in present-day North Dakota during the period from approximately 1800 to 1880. In addition, the Crow (close relatives of the Hidatsa who broke away from that tribe in the Late Prehistoric period11) used the same exploit marks, though often not in quite as formal a manner.12 But fortunately for the study of Biographic art, this extensive vocabulary of specific exploit marks, which these tribes regularly painted on a man’s body, his bison robe, his tools, and his clothing, is routinely illustrated in Biographic art (Greene 2006:80; Mallery 1893:438–40; G. Wilson 1981:146–47). Some of these exploit marks (e.g., scout-service symbol, capture hand) were shared and used widely by other groups, but these four tribes had the most complete and best documented set of such symbols in regular use.13 These exploit marks include the capture hand and other symbols for such honorifics as wounds, the rank ordering of coups, the giving away of horses (to demonstrate a man’s generosity and thereby increase his status), and fighting behind breastworks (Figure 0.14). Because these marks are pictured and/or explained in detail in relatively few sources, and most of these show many—if not all—of the marks, we provide here a list of citations for any interested scholar (Barbeau 1960:139–57; Berlo 2000b:76–89; Bowers 1992:278–81; Cowdrey 2010; Greene 2006; Keyser and Klassen 2001:267–68; Mallery 1893:433–41; Maurer 1992:235–39; Taylor 1994:183–86; Weitzner 1979:291–301; G. Wilson 1981:146–47). Accordingly, in the following discussions of known exploit marks we will not repeat these citations in each. Rather, we will focus on any additional places where information is available, or where the exploit mark is used differently than is typical, or where it is used by a group not affiliated with the upper Missouri tribes.

The Capture Hand The capture hand is one recurring image in Biographic art that essentially shows the full spectrum of its development from a pictogram showing one per-

CONVENTIONS AND CONNOTATIONS ♦ 389

son reaching out to grab another to symbols that would be nearly impossible to identify in the absence of the intervening stages or informants’ statements (Figure 1.20). Drawn as a disembodied hand—or partial arm and hand—shown performing a variety of actions, the capture hand is probably the most versatile element in the Plains Biographic art lexicon. Although first recognized by Wissler (1911:38–41) and Vatter (1927:59, 64–65), only recently has it been understood in its full symbolic sense to encompass several different war honors in the Plains military system (Brownstone 2001a:258–59; Keyser and Brady 1993:9–10; Keyser and Klassen 2001:267; Keyser, Sundstrom, and Poetschat 2006:58–65; Maurer 1992:184; Taylor 1994:184–85). Throughout the northern Plains, the capture hand was used to indicate six distinct actions considered to be war honors: (1) capture of a war trophy; (2) the barehanded touching of an enemy; (3) the capture of an enemy’s horse; (4) the abduction of a human prisoner (almost always a woman or child to supplement the population of the captor’s group); (5) the metaphoric capture of a woman’s reproductive potential; or (6) holding a weapon that strikes coup on a foe or a knife that cuts a tethered horse’s picket rope (Keyser and Poetschat 2012:40–41). This sixth type has been termed the “action hand” (Lycett and Keyser 2018). The capture hand is also used occasionally as part of a name glyph (Mallery 1893:454, 581)—for instance “Takes-the-Gun” (Figure 0.21g)—but in these cases it represents the same action as (1) above. Due to its versatility, the capture hand is common in Blackfoot and Crow robe art as well as in robes by Mandan, Hidatsa, Sarcee, and Lakota warrior artists. The image takes several forms. Among the Lakota and Mandan, and possibly the Crow, the hand itself (Figures 3.32b; 4.45j, k, n) is sometimes

Figure 4.45. The capture hand is an abbreviated representation of a warrior used in various ways. Styles can be ethnic identifiers. Robe and ledger art examples (a–k), rock art drawings (l–r). Blackfoot (a–e, o, q), Crow/Hidatsa (f–i, n, p), Lakota (j–k), and unknown (l–m, r). Drawing by the authors.

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shown realistically, with a palm, three to five fingers, and sometimes the lower portion of the arm just above the wrist, much as if the artist were illustrating a long glove. Crow and Hidatsa artists more frequently drew a characteristic rake-like capture hand (Figure 4.45f–h, p) with a distinctly “curved-back, hitch-hiker thumb” (Brownstone 2001b:77– 78). Only rarely do these show the palm, wrist, or lower arm (e.g., Mallery 1893:581, see also Figure 4.45i). Blackfoot artists drew the capture hand in four primary configurations. The most common version shows a palm with three to five fingers and sometimes includes the wrist (Figure 4.45a–c). The simplest and second most common version is a trident of three or four straight fingers, fanned out but joined at their base (Figure 4.45d, e q). Figure 4.46. This Blackfoot capSometimes these also show the lower arm. ture hand, with a stick figure arm The Sarcee also used these first two forms. bent at the elbow, shows the The two other Blackfoot forms are an entire direct bare-handed touching of an arm and hand crudely drawn in a simple enemy. This appears to illustrate the capture of an enemy prisoner, stick-figure style, or as a slightly more realispossibly a child. Drawing by the tically modeled arm. In these last two forms, authors. the arm can be short or long and sometimes bent at the elbow (Figures 4.45o, 4.46). Most frequently the capture hand is used to indicate the taking of an enemy’s weapon, scalp, or other possession as a war trophy (Figure 4.47). Dozens of examples occur in robe art by Blackfoot, Crow, and Hidatsa artists (Lycett and Keyser 2018), and they occur occasionally in Lakota winter counts. So far, this type of capture hand has been found at only three rock art sites (Figure 4.47a, b, d). In one case it captures a shield, in another a set of arrows, and in a third a bow. In robe art and a few ledger drawings, the capture hand frequently shows the direct, bare-handed touching of an enemy—an act considered the most esteemed coup possible (Maurer 1992:184–85). Currently, this action has been positively identified in rock art only at Wyoming’s Little Boxelder Cave (Figure 4.3). However, a capture hand at Bear Gulch (Figure 4.46) shows what is either touching an enemy or his actual capture (Keyser, Kaiser, Poetschat, and Taylor 2012:269). Illustrating a capture hand grabbing the rein or lead rope of a riderless horse is used to show animals taken from the enemy. Such use is common in

CONVENTIONS AND CONNOTATIONS ♦ 391

Figure 4.47. Capture hands are used to indicate taking an enemy’s weapon or other war trophy, such as a shield (b). Rock art (a, b, d), robe art (c). Drawing by the authors; (c) is adapted from the Deadmond bison robe, Broadwater County Museum, Townsend, Montana.

Blackfoot robe art (Keyser and Poetschat 2012:46) and has been documented on one Blackfoot petroglyph (Figure 4.35) carved at site DgOw-32 (Keyser and Poetschat 2012:40–41). Similarly, other capture hands are illustrated to show the taking of an enemy prisoner. Usually these are women or children who were abducted to replenish tribal losses suffered due to warfare or disease (Figure 3.26, 4.46). Captured children were raised in their abductor’s group, and sometimes even grew up to wage war against the tribe of their birth. As an example, the prominent Cheyenne warrior Yellow Nose was born a Ute and captured as a child (Maurer 1992:202) but grew up to be “all Cheyenne.” Using the capture hand to indicate taking a prisoner occurs at Bear Gulch and Red Canyon (Keyser 2014b). One very peculiar use of the capture hand is to indicate the metaphoric capture of a woman’s reproductive potential. Termed “vulva capture” (Keyser, Sundstrom, and Poetschat 2006:65–66), this action sometimes shows two full human figures with a male reaching out to grab the breast or genital region of a woman (Figures 1.11, 1.12, 3.26a). Obviously, this is much like showing the capture of a female prisoner, and it is often simply a matter of judgement as to which is portrayed. This comes as no surprise, since abducting a woman was often done to forcefully co-opt her reproductive potential into the captor’s group. In some cases, however, vulva capture is drawn in shorthand fash-

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ion showing only a capture hand symbol touching the woman’s genitalia. This occurs at Bear Gulch (Figure 0.11); but at two other sites it is shown in its ultimate symbolic reduction, drawn simply as a stylized capture hand interacting with a symbolic vulva (Figure 3.32). Vulva capture, depicted at nine rock art sites, occurs on a spectrum of conventionalization (Figure 4.48) ranging from easily understandable narratives to somewhat sketchier, abbreviated compositions to those that have become largely symbolic pictograms and finally to ideograms that could not be understood without detailed “insider” knowledge of the Plains cultural system (Figure 4.48h). These pictogram- and ideogram-level depictions utilize the capture hand to tell the story. Interestingly, the half dozen rock art capture hands documenting vulva capture, or the sexual abduction of a woman, are nearly half of the currently known rock art capture hands, and they are more common in rock art than in all other media combined. Their prevalence in rock art is not easily explained. Finally, a capture hand can sometimes perform as an action hand (Lycett and Keyser 2018:777). Rather than signifying the capture of a weapon, horse, or even a woman, this type of disembodied, floating human hand is shown holding a weapon to perform a specific action, such as striking coup on an enemy or holding a knife to cut a picket rope to steal a horse (Figures 0.16b–c, 2.10b, 4.49). Action hands are relatively common on some Blackfoot robes, but they occur on a painted Lakota war shirt (Figure 4.49b) and even occasionally in winter counts (Mallery 1893:280, 569, 581; Figure 4.49c). Currently, the

Figure 4.48. Sexual capture, indicated by touching a woman’s breast or genitalia, is shown on a spectrum from explicit depictions (a–d) through more shorthand versions (e–f, showing pairs of women together) and finally to ideographic representations (g, h). Drawing by the authors.

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Figure 4.49. Rather than signifying the capture of a war trophy, a floating “action hand” holds a weapon to perform an action. Only one possible rock art example is known, but these robe art (a–b) and winter count (c) examples hold guns, a knife, and an arrow. Note other capture hands taking weapons, at left, in (a). Drawing by the authors; (a) adapted from the Malcolm robe in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada (cat. no. 2006.79.1); (b) adapted from the Schoch war shirt, Bernisches Historisches Museum, Bern, Switzerland (cat. no.1890.410.15); (c) adapted from Mallery 1893.

only action hand tentatively identified in rock art is at the unfortunately now destroyed Ten Sleep Pictographs. In that composition (Figure 1.22), which has a typical capture hand grabbing three arrows, a free-floating, similarly sized hand sits directly under a floating tomahawk that counts coup on an enemy in the composition. Normally if this were an action hand holding this tomahawk, it would be at or near the handle’s proximal end rather than nearer the metal blade. However, there are few hard and fast rules about the use of action hands, so by floating just underneath the tomahawk handle it seems likely to represent the absent actor holding the tomahawk. Frequently a capture hand is paired with another exploit mark or similarly ideographic element to provide narrative storylines to artworks. Such is the case with pairings of a capture hand with a scalp symbol or an action hand holding a knife at a picket pin in Blackfoot and Sarcee art (Figure 4.50), as well

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Figure 4.50. Capture hands can be paired with exploit marks, ideographic elements, and tracks to clarify narratives. Action hands are paired with human tracks (light grey), knives (dark grey) at picket pins, next to squared hoofprints (indicating war party participation) to indicate stolen horses (a) and paired with scalp symbols to show the capture of war trophies (b–c). Drawing by the authors, adapted from Blackfoot bison robes.

as examples of sexual capture in Crow art pairing a vulva form with a capture hand (Figure 3.32a).

Wound Marks Although “real-time” wounds are often illustrated in Plains Biographic art, wound marks indicating previous wounds to a man or to his horse are much less common. Nevertheless, several different exploit marks indicating wounds were painted on robes (Figure 3.73) and sometimes on a man’s horse as support for his claim of bravery in close-quarter combat (e.g., Bowles 2010). A bullet or arrow wound was a small dot or circle with a fan of lines below to represent flowing blood, while a knife wound used a horizontal slash in place of the circle. The freestanding mark for a horse’s wound was an ideogram showing a hoofprint with flowing blood (Figures 0.14, 3.73a). In some ledger drawings, Crow chief Medicine Crow illustrated his body parts (arm, leg) and his horse’s hoofprint with blood flowing from either an arrow wound or a dot/bullet. He used such marks as an adjunct to more typical narratives (Keyser 2004a:117). Wound marks occur occasionally in ledger drawings of several tribes, where they most often decorate men’s clothing. They even occur as carvings or paintings on things as varied as a bull boat paddle, a dance stick, a drumstick, and a shell gorget (Figure 4.51a). While such marks have yet to be recognized in rock art, possibly due to their extremely simple form, we suspect they occur, most likely in the myriad sites yet to be fully documented in the Crow homeland.

CONVENTIONS AND CONNOTATIONS ♦ 395

Figure 4.51. Exploit marks were painted on various items (such as these boat paddles and a dance stick) to mark the owner’s war accomplishments. Such marks include bloody footprints and hoofprints indicating wounds (a), and coup stripes on the handle (b) and back of the dance wand (d). The rest indicate various coups counted, horses stolen, and fighting behind breastworks. Drawing by the authors, adapted from Mallery 1893; G. Wilson 1981; and Lowie 1913.

Coup Stripes Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, and Crow Warriors who had successfully struck an enemy in battle were entitled to paint their leggings or their legs with two to four diagonal stripes. Colors differentiated the first coup from the following three. Examples of coup stripes are seen in several ledger drawings on the legs and leggings of dancers and men lined up for ceremonies. Such stripes occur on the legs of one dancer in the Joliet Hot Dance scene (Figure 1.11). A

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second dancer has lines across his leggings that appear to represent either coup stripes or possibly a beadwork pattern. Among the Hidatsa, stripes were also added to a weapon to indicate that it had been used to strike the enemy (Weitzner 1979:233). Other objects, such as bull boat paddles and dance sticks (Figure 4.51b, d), were also illustrated with diagonal lines to signify the owner’s counting coup in battle (Lowie 1913:262; Weitzner 1979:297; G. Wilson 1924:256–57).

Bar Tallies (War Party Stripes) One shorthand method for a Plains warrior to proclaim his war record was to paint parallel stripes on his robe, clothing, or horse, and sometimes augment these stripes with symbols for scalps taken, horses captured, and enemies defeated. Brownstone (2001b:78, 2008:16) has termed these “bar tallies” to differentiate them from “object tallies,” which are rows of various weapons and other items captured as war trophies. We also refer to these as “war party stripes” to easily distinguish them from other tallies, especially since they occur together at the Nordstrom-Bowen rock art site. Across the Plains such war party stripes are known to have been used by at least six tribes (Brownstone 2008), among which are the Blackfoot, Crow, Mandan, Gros Ventres, and Hidatsa—all of whom are known or suspected to have carved or painted Plains rock art. In such bar tallies, each stripe signified a war party, either one the artist had led or accompanied (Brownstone 2001b:78–79; Cowdrey 2010:88; Taylor 1994:184).14 When representing war party leadership, the artist was permitted by tribal convention to use all the deeds performed by members of his war party to document his leadership success (Bowers 1992:279–80). War party stripes are so far identified in rock art at Nordstrom-Bowen and Weppler. At Nordstrom-Bowen they are a row of fifteen vertical lines accompanying a tally of war trophies (including scalp poles with varying numbers of scalps attached) and a combat scene (Figure 3.2). Weppler has an extensive bar tally, showing a row of forty-six war party lines with various associated deeds (see Vignette 4). Given the prevalence of parallel lines at rock art sites in Crow country, we suspect other bar tallies have gone unrecognized, but the recorder must be aware that some rows of parallel lines are a shorthand way of illustrating a stacked array of weapons in support of or in opposition to a pictured combatant (see this chapter, “Stacked Array of Weapons”).

The Four Coups Plains Indians typically counted four coups on an enemy by hitting or touching the person (alive or dead) with everything from the bare hand, through all sorts of weapons, to a quirt. The person who counted the initial coup claimed

CONVENTIONS AND CONNOTATIONS ♦ 397

a slightly greater honor than those who followed, but all four were able to record their coup with an honor mark. In the Upper Missouri system, the coup-strike exploit mark was based on an X (Figure 0.14). Among the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Crow the X stood for first coup and dashes were added in the spaces between the arms of the X (e.g., X- or -X-, =X=, etc.) to denote three subsequent coup strikes. The Arikara used the X to denote killing an enemy and an X with one through four dashes as the four coups (Mallery 1893:438–39). Coup-strike exploit marks are relatively common in ledger art, where they are shown on the bodies and clothing of dancers. Two Montana sites have such marks. One is at Bear Gulch and shows an incised X with three vertical strokes just above it (Figure 3.74), denoting the striking of fourth coup. A second instance is a charcoal drawing along a Musselshell River tributary that shows an extensive war record in ideographic summary. In the sequence of war party stripes, several have modifying marks including an X with one to three strokes drawn below to indicate coups struck. Other modifying marks indicate taking of scalps and horses (see Vignette 4). Two other possible occurrences of such a coup mark are known. One is on the left hip of a horse at Joliet (Figure 3.15). There, an asterisk-like form resembles a mark denoting second coup, but the vertical line cuts completely through the X, rather than being short vertical dashes in the top and bottom spaces. Nonetheless, this may be a coup mark used as horse war paint. Another example is carved on the Samsal petroglyph boulder in northwestern Montana (Sturm and Keyser 2020). Among the Hoofprint Tradition petroglyphs carved on this bison-shaped boulder there is also a Biographic combat scene involving two shield-bearing warriors and a pedestrian using a lance with an exaggeratedly large point. Directly beneath this scene is a large, pecked X (Figure 4.52), which might signify first coup to an artist from some tribes, a killed enemy to the Arikara, or a stolen horse to the Blackfoot in whose

Figure 4.52. This X below the combat scene pecked on the Samsal petroglyph boulder may be a coup-strike exploit mark. Drawing by the authors.

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territory it is found. Unfortunately, it might simply be a geometric shape like many that are common in Hoofprint Tradition art. Given its close juxtaposition with the combat scene, however, we suspect it is a coup mark.15

Overhead Lines Hidatsa and Arikara ledger artists also used an exploit mark to provide added information to some combat scenes (Mallery 1893:439–40). This mark comprised one to three lines drawn just above the head of a vanquished enemy (Figure 4.53) to denote the sequent second through fourth coups (a first coup would be a scene without such lines). It is not known if the Arikara maintained the same distinction from the Hidatsa in terms of these lines as they did with the X and X- symbols (above). This exploit mark is not found in any Crow ledger drawing or painted robe, so we do not know if they used it. Currently, no mark like this is recognized in rock art, but such a mark could easily be missed. If an example is Figure 4.53. Hidatsa and Arikara artists drew lines found, it would be a key ethabove the head of a vanquished enemy to denote nic marker for the image. various coups counted. These are from ledger drawings. Drawing by the authors.

Fought-behind-Breastworks Plains Indian warfare often featured the use of hastily constructed breastworks or excavated rifle pits. These were typically used when a party of raiders was caught by pursuers and forced to make a defensive stand. Low rock walls, wooden breastworks or other structures, and shallow excavated pits or natural depressions (e.g., buffalo wallow or shallow ravine) were all used by warriors for defensive stands. Such an action was considered a brave deed because any participant who escaped such an encounter had clearly had close contact with the enemy. Among the Hidatsa, Crow, Mandan, and Arikara such a successful defensive stand came to be symbolized by a hashtag sign # (Figures 4.51c, 4.54). If a man had experienced multiple such episodes, the symbols were sometimes linked together in a row like this ## or stacked in a column (to better fit on a man’s leg or legging). The Fought-behind-Breastworks symbol occurs occasionally in ledger drawings, painted on the legs and clothing of Mandan and Hidatsa warriors and dancers. It is also shown in a rare historical photograph, painted directly

CONVENTIONS AND CONNOTATIONS ♦ 399

Figure 4.54. A successful stand against the enemy by fighting from behind defensive breastworks was symbolized by a single # or a series of them as an honor mark among the Hidatsa, Crow, Mandan, and Arikara. This sign was often painted directly on a warrior’s leg or body (b) or on his clothing (a). Drawing by the authors, adapted from a ledger drawing and an historic photograph.

on the leg of Crow warrior Bull Snake (Dixon 1913:118). This # honor mark has not yet been identified in rock art. However, the design’s simple form may mean it has been overlooked.

Scout-Service Symbol The scout-service symbol is well known from painted buffalo robes. Although enigmatically unidentifiable at first glance, it can be read if the symbolism is understood. A scout typically went ahead of a war party (especially an expedition tasked with taking enemy horses) to reconnoiter the enemy village. Once located, the scout’s responsibility was to immediately return and report back to the war party. Upon finding the sequestered war party, he made his presence known by mimicking a wolf’s howl. At that point, the raiders gathered in a semicircular arc and the scout approached them to reveal details of the enemy’s position and number of horses. The returning scout came toward the assembled group and then usually kicked over a small pile of buffalo chips or sticks as a symbolic verification of the truthfulness of his following report.16 Recognizing this model of behavior for both the scout and the war party, the symbol’s form is easily understood. Looking at Figure 4.55 we can identify dashes as the footprints of a returning scout. The arc is usually shown with individual dashes metaphorically representing assembled war party members. When the returning scout’s footprints make a zigzag trail (d, e), it metaphorically shows his typical approach sneaking up on the enemy. Hoofprints show a scout who returned on horseback (Figure 4.55a). The small triangle represents the pile of buffalo chips kicked over by a returning scout. Note the Blackfoot symbol (f) lacks the triangle. One Gros Ventres image (d) shows the scout approaching from the “arc side” of the assembled group and then exiting upward to his honorific deed drawn on the war shirt. Scout-service symbol variants were drawn in ledgers and on robes by at least five tribes, including the Sarcee, Blackfoot, Gros Ventres, Crow, and

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Figure 4.55. Scout-service symbols painted by various groups. A scout’s footprints or his horse’s hoofprints return to the war party, whose footprints show them assembled in an arc. The small triangle represents the pile of buffalo chips or sticks kicked over by a returning scout to proclaim the truthfulness of his report. (a) is the war record of Crow warrior Charges Strong, which even indicates what he observed on his scouting trips, including camps (a tipi) and horsemen or pedestrians by their tracks. The pipes above the scout symbols indicate that Charges Strong was seven times a war party leader, while the associated hoofprints and human heads document the number of horses taken and enemies killed or scalped on those expeditions. Drawing by the authors, adapted from painted bison robes.

Lakota. While the symbol has not yet been recognized in rock art, some shield-bearing warriors wear a wolf hat (see this chapter, “Wolf Hat”), which seems likely to indicate their service as a war party scout (Keyser 2007b).

Horse Given Away Upper Missouri tribes and possibly also the Crow drew a quirt to signify a man’s making a gift of a horse as “social currency” to increase his status and respect. When writing about these tribes during his 1834 visit, Prince Maximilian (1906:vol. 23:264) noted: Another mode of painting their robes is to represent the number of valuable presents they have made. By these presents, which are often of great value, they acquire respect and reputation . . . [these designs include] whips, indicating the number of horses given, because the whip belonging to the horse is always bestowed with the animal.

Drawings of quirts, especially when combined with hoofprints—as they are on one Upper Missouri robe (Maurer 1992:194–95)—almost certainly commemorate such giveaways (Figure 2.5f). Other examples of robes decorated in a similar manner are found in Arikara ledger drawings. One pair of Crow leggings

CONVENTIONS AND CONNOTATIONS ♦ 401

Figure 4.56. Crow leggings painted with war honors, including a bar tally (left) with stolen horses, scalps, and defeated enemies; and quirts (right) signifying horses given away. Drawing by the authors, adapted from Taylor 1994.

(Figure 4.56) has at least twenty quirts arranged in three rows to indicate the owner’s largesse (Taylor 1994:183). One tally of Crow honor marks carved at the Nordstrom-Bowen site in Montana includes captured weapons, scalp poles, and two quirts (Figure 3.2). The careful placement of the two quirts between a lineup of captured weapons and a lineup of scalp poles suggests these commemorate such given-away horses (Keyser and Cowdrey 2008:28–30).

Blanket Given Away Just like horses, blankets were given away as social currency (Maximilian 1906:vol. 23:264) and recorded on robes and in ledger drawings. The blanket symbol was typically a rectangle or hourglass form in various colors, often with hemmed edges indicated (Ewers 1968a:Plate 24). These are not commonly illustrated, and the only plausible rock art example is at 48SW82 (Keyser 2011c:33–36), which is discussed in Chapter 5, “Reading the Narratives.”

The “Battle Hand” One or more handprints painted on a man’s clothing, his body, or the body of his horse served to indicate a coup. The placement of the handprint painted on

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a horse could mean different things. When located on the horse’s front shoulder(s), it could indicate the animal had trampled over an enemy. Placement on the animal’s flank designated the owner’s coup accomplished by touching an enemy with his bare hand. The same bare-handed touch was designated by a handprint painted on a man’s shirt or his body. For some groups such a handprint indicated the wearer had killed an enemy. Battle hands are found in ledger drawings of dancers who have painted their body with exploit marks or decorated their horse. In rock art, a sketchy petroglyph horse at 39HN217 (Figure 3.9) has a battle hand incised on its right flank (Sundstrom 2004b:108).

Hoofprint Plains Indian artists documented their proficiency as horse raiders by drawing groups of horse tracks. Such tracks were drawn on robes but also on a person’s clothing, other possessions, and his arms or legs. Images of such body and clothing decoration occur in several different ledger drawings. Among the Upper Missouri tribes and the Crow such hoofprints could be either curved or squared. Among the Blackfoot a series of squared horse tracks painted on a bison robe or muslin sheet was used to denote either war party leadership or participation (Keyser and Klassen 2003:11–12). In rock art there are many instances of horse hoofprints, but most are used to designate track sequences showing the movement of a rider through a scene. However, groups of curved hoofprints in an ideographic composition at DgOw-27 (Figure 1.26) show the number of captured horses while squared examples apparently indicate war party leadership.17 At Atherton Canyon in central Montana, a group of ten horse tracks indicates the number of animals captured by a war party (Figure 2.6a), and at 24GV191 a group of thirty-three tracks is juxtaposed with a large horse to indicate the taking of many animals (Figure 3.190). Finally, horse hoofprints in the Weppler site bar tally apparently indicate a warrior’s prowess stealing horses (Figure V4; see Vignette 4). Tracks clustered around a “spring” at La Vista Verde (Figure 3.101) could be interpreted either as indicating the position of horses in the landscape— clustered around the spring—or as a notation showing the capture of many wild horses.

Picketed Horse Taken The picket pin, used to tether a prized horse in front of its owner’s tipi to make it more difficult to steal, was used by some tribes as a standalone sign for a stolen horse. We know it was used in this manner by the Blackfoot (Wissler 1911:38– 41), who portrayed it in several slightly different forms. In their Biographic art we can see exactly how these variant signs evolved from a depiction of the

CONVENTIONS AND CONNOTATIONS ♦ 403

actual cutting of the picket rope (Figure 2.10). Also, in their robe art, the Crow, Hidatsa, and Pawnee used a picket pin juxtaposed with a horse or its hoofprint (Figure 4.56) for the same purpose (Keyser 1996:40; Taylor 1994:183). However, other information suggests this hoof-and-pin symbol signified leadership of a successful horse raid among the Hidatsa (Brownstone 2014:62).18 In rock art we have three examples of such picket pin ideograms. Two scenes at DgOw-27 at Writing-on-Stone show such a picket pin as an X or a vertical line (Figure 1.26). Both scenes are tallies of horses stolen from in front of enemy tipis. At the Joliet site the picket pin ideogram is juxtaposed with a horse wearing some tack items and body paint (Figure 3.75). Currently, no hoof-and-pin examples have been recognized, but many Crow rock art sites in their homeland have yet to be carefully recorded.

Pipes or Hoofprints: A Partisan’s Badge The leader of a war party was called the Partisan—a descriptive name bestowed by French voyageurs. In many Plains tribes a Partisan’s position was signified by the medicine pipe he carried and consulted for omens of success on the warpath (Mallery 1893:420–21, 436). Therefore, in narrative art, illustrating a pipe was shorthand for war party leadership (Figures 3.166, 4.55a). Sometimes stand-alone pipes were painted on a bison robe or war shirt (Keyser 1996:42; Keyser and Klassen 2001:289; Lowie 1922b:317) for the same purpose. However, among the Oglala Lakota the pipe was used in Chief Big Road’s pictorial roster of the heads of families to indicate his own position as head chief and others as sub-band chiefs (Mallery 1893:420–21, 1886:174–76). Finally, in a separate system, Blackfoot artists in the last decades of the 1800s drew a squared horse hoofprint to indicate war party leadership. In addition, some Hidatsa informants indicated the hoof-and-pin symbolized war party leadership. So far, no example of a stand-alone Partisan’s pipe has been recognized in rock art, but there is an example of squared hoofprints documenting war party leadership at DgOw-27 (Figure 1.26). Partisans are shown carrying a pipe at DgOw-29 and having it captured by an enemy at 14RU304 (Figures 2.4, 3.167).

The “Hit Mark” Hoofprint Among the Cayuse Indians, a tribe living in the eastern Columbia Plateau but who regularly traveled out onto the northern Plains for extended periods, a hoofprint—either squared or rounded—was used to indicate the striking of a coup (Figure 4.57). In a 1930 linguistic text, a Cayuse informant, Gilbert Minthorn (1930), drew the squared hoofprints that designated a coup strike in battle and called them wawya in the Cayuse language. According to Minthorn

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Figure 4.57. Cayuse and Nez Perce warriors used a horse track (either square or C-shaped) to signify coups, which they called “hit marks.” (a) drawn in 1930 ethnographic notes by Gilbert Minthorn; (b) drawn with an ochre crayon at the Steiwer Ranch site in Oregon. Drawing by the authors.

such a “hit” could be a coup struck against a live or dead enemy or his horse, and the occurrence of many such marks indicated an accomplished warrior. We have just such hit marks in rock art painted at site 35WH38 in the John Day River drainage of north-central Oregon (Figure 4.57b). The rock art scene shows a group of four men, three of whom have groups of seven, nine, or ten lunate horse hoofprints stacked above their heads. Using Minthorn’s information, we can identify these three men as accomplished warriors. The fourth person in the group has no hit marks and his relationship to the others cannot be determined.

The Splat The “splat,” a horizontally oriented T-shape, was used to represent the impact of a bullet, especially in Lakota winter counts (Corbusier 1886:131; Mallery 1893:562–79, 640, 659). Such a representation is almost pictographic, though the object being impacted is reduced to a short line. In some winter count vignettes, splats are numerous and sometimes shown in various orientations surrounding a person or thing at which many shots were fired (Figures 0.21c, 4.40). It is easy to reconstruct the ultimate derivation of this symbol as a combination of the line connecting the gun barrel to a flying bullet with the surface that bullet hit. Considering the typical shorthand portrayal of a flying bullet (a dot at the end of a short line), the logical counterpart for a shot that struck the target would be the splat.

CONVENTIONS AND CONNOTATIONS ♦ 405

In rock art, there is one possible splat at 39HN49 where a short horizontal line impacts the lower torso of a pedestrian who is shot by a horseman’s pistol (Figure 3.35a). The small, short line seems too high to represent an erect phallus, and it aligns with the pistol’s barrel. While this is not a standalone splat symbol, in our opinion it likely represents the strike of a bullet in this warrior’s body.

Notes 1. There are certainly other styles of horses awaiting formal definition and segregation according to their likely tribal origin. For instance, the research of Severin Fowles (Fowles et al. 2017) shows a style of horses he identifies as Comanche at sites in the Rio Grande Gorge, New Mexico, but this style awaits detailed description and comparison with others. 2. Bleeding from the mouth has been proposed for some other rock art images and equated with shamanic trance and ritual (Loendorf 1992:74–77). 3. The authors who describe the New Mexico scene identify two opposing stacked arrays as a tally of arrows shot by the opposing forces, but we suggest they might more generically represent the opposing forces themselves. 4. The structure of this name glyph, which uses both footprints and hoofprints, indicates Mallery is mistaken when he misinterprets this name glyph as a man running home from pursuing horsemen. 5. Here, and throughout the following discussion of horse-raiding scenes, the predominance of sites at Writing-on-Stone is due to a recent publication with horse raiding as its primary subject (McCallister, Keyser, Kaiser 2021). We suspect other sites contain many similar examples not yet identified. 6. Sometimes possible personal identifiers, such as a repeated distinctive weapon or a distinctive animal, float near an individual illustrated several times at a rock art site and may signify his identity (e.g., Loendorf and Olson 2003:7; Olson and Loendorf 2003:16– 23, 32–34; Turpin 1989a), but these need not necessarily represent his name, since they could be his characteristic weapon or visionary animal. 7. The different styles are best illustrated by the different ways the tipis in the small group and camp circle are illustrated. Those in the group of four are each drawn with four or five individual poles, none is enclosed at the bottom, and each has a smoke flap. In contrast, those in the camp circle are all drawn as small, squatty, three-line, enclosed triangular structures, none of which shows a smoke flap. 8. Many other smaller streams and rivers, mountain ranges, and lakes are similarly identified on these maps, but only some of these retain the same names today. 9. Groups who we know used various exploit marks include the Sarcee (Tsuu T’ina), all groups in the Blackfoot confederacy, Gros Ventres (Aaniih), Crow, Hidatsa, Mandan, Arikara, Lakota, and Cayuse. The Cheyenne appear to have used at least one exploit mark—the black wound. Other tribes (e.g., Flathead, Cree, Assiniboine, Arapaho) probably also used such exploit marks, but so few of their Biographic art pieces have survived that this cannot be verified. We are aware of no such examples drawn by Kiowa and Comanche artists, but the great majority of Biographic art from those groups is ledger drawings in which such marks are rarely used. There are so few Biographic artworks reliably attributed to Pawnees and other tribes further south that we cannot verify whether these groups used the system. 10. Mallery (1893:437) notes that the Hidatsa claim to have originated this system of honor marks.

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11. The final break between these two tribes probably occurred after AD 1500, and, in fact, the Crow and Hidatsa are so closely related that their languages were mutually intelligible. 12. In addition to these exploit marks, the Upper Missouri groups had an equally formalized set of objects that functioned to record a man’s individual battle honors, but which were worn on his person rather than painted on his possessions (Mallery 1893:433–37; Weitzner 1979:291–301). For instance, feathers cut and painted in certain ways, and worn in a man’s hair, or small colored objects stuck into his hair or headdress documented such things as wounds received and various brave actions taken against foes. These small physical indicators of coups have yet to be identified in rock art; however, given their diminutive size (e.g., a red dot or stripe finger-painted on an eagle feather, or a small, wooden rod with a brass tack on one end stuck in a man’s hair) coupled with the simplicity of most rock art imagery, we suspect they are simply too small to translate to rock art. Many of these small items can be seen in Bodmer’s watercolor portrait of Mato-tope, or Four Bears (Thomas and Ronnefeldt 1976:192, 218). 13. The Blackfoot/Sarcee had their own vocabulary of exploit marks, but this was less extensive than that of the Mandan-Hidatsa/Crow and was used primarily for robe art. 14. As with the Blackfoot symbol used to enumerate the same honor (a squared horse track), these contrasting opinions cannot be easily evaluated, but it seems to us that the variety of instances where they are used bespeaks that both interpretations may be correct, depending on the individual artist. 15. One other site deserves mention. Tim McCleary initially interpreted an X in a sketch of a scene documenting one warrior’s war record at the Manual Lisa site as a mark of first coup (McCleary 2008a:141), but in a later work the X has been removed from the drawing and is not mentioned in the text (McCleary 2016:56, 112). After examining photographs McCleary generously shared with us, we concur that the X mark on the 2008 sketch is an error and McCleary was correct in removing this from the literature. 16. Among the Blackfoot, the waiting raiders scrambled to grab the scattered sticks and believed that the number each man could collect would reflect the number of horses he might take (Ewers 1955b:186). However, there is an even deeper metaphoric meaning to the overall structure of this symbol. In the belief systems of several Plains tribes, an arc represented a trap, and the scout’s approach mimics the enemy being drawn into the trap to annihilation. 17. We favor these as war party leadership signs, given that the artist appears to have stolen eight picketed horses—a large number for only four war parties (if the squared hoofprints simply indicated participation). 18. Exactly this same confusion occurs in Blackfoot pictography with the rectangular hoofprint, which some authors and informants claimed represented mere participation in a horse raid, while others claimed it represented leadership of a successful horse raid. Such confusion is not surprising, given that there was no formal dictionary of these symbols, and different ethnographers spoke to different men at different times.

CHAPTER 5

READING THE NARRATIVES

⤞⤝ We have spent the foregoing parts of the book laying out a case that Plains Biographic Tradition rock art embodies warriors’ (and a few other’s) narrative stories that can be read and understood centuries after they were “written.” To do this, one must use a combination of the “Biographic Art Lexicon” and the “Pictographic Dictionary,” and combine these with ethnographic and ethnohistoric clues, and even native consultants when available. Site specific information, such as its setting in the landscape, and differences in line width, depth, coloration, and erosion also help isolate a particular story from other marks made by artists telling other stories. Difference in style for various images can often further enable the researcher to discover information about the ethnic origin of a specific drawing. Throughout the book, we have provided vignette sketches detailing the interpretation of various scenes. What we do here is take a more in-depth look at four quite complex but explicit examples to show exactly how a specialist can deconstruct the actions portrayed to reveal the story the artist was telling.

Narrative One Rocky Coulee Battle Scene (DgOv-57): A War Party’s Glory On a sandstone canyon wall in Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park in southern Alberta is a well-known site named the Rocky Coulee Battle Scene (Figure 5.1). Drawn with an orange-red ochre “crayon,” this complex, stand-alone narrative shows thirteen humans, four horses, a hunters’ camp of four tipis, ten weapons, several sequences of human and horse tracks, and more than forty flying bullets and arrows. All these images are carefully composed in such a way they tell an explicitly narrative story of one group’s raid on the hunting camp of an enemy tribe. By using a series of letters placed in a tracing of this scene (Figure 5.2) to identify the various actors and their actions, we can read this narrative with impressive clarity. First, we see a wide line of dots and dashes representing human footprints (A), which indicates the path of a war party of five pedestrian warriors who walked from their camp (the more or less circular cluster of lines

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Figure 5.1. Rocky Coulee battle scene showing a small hunting camp attacked by a war party. Photograph courtesy of Jack Brink.

at the far right). As they approached the enemy camp (B), represented by four crudely X-shaped tipis, the camp’s males (D, H, I, K) rode out on horseback to meet the approaching war party. The path of these horsemen from the village is indicated by the line of -shaped hoofprints (C) extending from the tipis to the rear leg of the nearest horse, where the final track actually forms its hoof. The “initial engagement” (Figure 5.2) in the fight was the encounter between horseman “D,” armed with a long feather-decorated spear and a featherdecorated shield (the rayed circle just behind his shoulder), who killed pedestrian raider “E.” The dots behind pedestrian “E” are flying bullets from one or both sides, illustrated here to show that this individual was running into the thick of the fight just before he was killed. Pedestrian “E’s” death is indicated both by his bent-over posture and the conventionalized wound showing blood flowing from his abdomen, near the point of the spear. He has not fired his gun; which, in fact, floats freely in front of his body although it is pointed at his killer. Dashes representing human tracks lead from the spear-wielding horseman’s feet toward his killed opponent, indicating he dismounted and ran up to take away his dead opponent’s gun (its free-floating position is a convention indicating the gun is leaving its owner’s possession). At this point, gunman “F” joins this combat (labeled secondary engagement #1) by firing at and killing horseman “D,” while at the same time gunman C

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Figure 5.2. Explanation of the lexicon elements used to narrate the Rocky Coulee battle scene. Drawing by the authors.

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“G” shoots and kills horsemen “H” and “I” in “secondary engagement #2.” Flying bullets (represented by dots) stream from the muzzles of both guns to two bullet clusters—one at the panel’s upper center (in secondary engagement #1) and the second just below (in secondary engagement #2). These two bullet clusters, and the human tracks of both horsemen “D” and “I” that lead to them, serve to indicate that both riders dismounted and ran into the action. But equally importantly, they emphasize the actual locations where the fighting and dying took place—this is the donut-hole compositional structure in this scene (Figure 1.19). Bullets streaming past horseman “I” to horseman “H” indicate that horseman “H” was shot while mounted. And, in fact, he is shown obviously leaning over, as if falling from his horse, and the absence of human tracks below him indicate he did not dismount. Wounds, drawn as bullets within the bodies of horsemen “D” and “I,” further document these two men were killed. Horseman “H” is headless, a convention indicating he was scalped. In the lower center of the composition is a scene of hand-to-hand combat, labeled the primary engagement because its placement at the center of the scene, and its illustration of primary coup-counting activities almost certainly indicates it represents the artist in action. In this encounter, pedestrian warrior “J”—the artist—is armed with a saber while his mounted opponent, warrior “K,” is armed with a gun, which floats in front of him but gives no indication it has been fired. The position of the pedestrian’s sword, above the headless body of his foe, coupled with the rider’s leaning forward falling posture shows that the swordsman struck his enemy. This swordsman has a bullet mark in his upper chest, indicating he was wounded, but it is not clear by whom he was shot. However, tracks leading from the swordsman’s feet to his opponent’s gun indicate that swordsman “J” ran up and took the weapon from the horseman. Finally, the rider’s headless body indicates he was scalped. The bowman “L” has fired one arrow that flies toward horseman “K,” and he is nocking a second while preparing to fire again. This suggests he also participated in killing the horseman. Finally, four human figures arranged in a horizontal row (M) just to the right of the tipi village are linked to the nearby tipis by series of footprints in what we term the “aftermath.” The tracks show that these four humans walked from the camp and indicate they were captives taken after the defeat of the camp’s defenders. While this illustration provides no indication of gender, it seems almost certain these four captives were the wives of the camp’s occupants who were captured by the raiders after their mates were killed defending the camp. Women were commonly taken captive in Plains warfare for a variety of reasons and quite often such captives were depicted in rock art (Keyser, Sundstrom, and Poetschat 2006; Greer and Keyser 2008). In summary, this battle shows five pedestrian warriors attacking four mounted warriors who ride out from their small hunting camp to do battle. Along with flying bullets and other Biographic conventions, the tracks tell

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much of the story. The attackers’ footprints show where they gathered and waited outside the enemy camp, and then the route they took on their raid. Hoofprints show the path the defenders rode to repel the attackers. Within the scene itself, individual warriors from both groups have nearby footprints showing three of them (two who have dismounted) rushing into the fray to try to capture enemy weapons. While one attacker is graphically killed with a spear, all four mounted camp defenders are eventually defeated and killed. The fact that four is a consistently used number in the scene (e.g., tipis, male defenders, captives exiting the tipi camp but not engaging in fighting) is compelling evidence that it is not a synecdochical representation of a larger village (as are common in some other Biographic scenes). Instead, the drawing apparently accurately depicts the camp of a small hunting party traveling separate from a larger village, which had the misfortune to be discovered and attacked by a war party of five warriors seeking war honors and horses. Evidently enjoying the benefit of a surprise attack, the raiders killed all four male defenders while losing only a single member of their party and captured four women to take back to their own camp. Such a raid is typical of many recounted in later Historic times by accomplished warriors of numerous tribes. Extensive seriation study of Blackfoot robe and rock art (Bouma and Keyser 2004; Lycett and Keyser 2017) has dated the Rocky Coulee battle scene to the years between AD 1830 and 1850.

Narrative Two Joliet (24CB402): Purchasing the Hot Dance and Stealing a Rival’s Wife Just across Rock Creek from Joliet, Montana, is a sandstone bluff containing one of the most important Plains Biographic rock art sites. Known to archaeologists as the Joliet petroglyphs, the site is also known to contemporary Crow tribal people by the name “Where-There-Are-Writings-on-the-Wall,” and felt by them to be the most important rock art site for their historic imagery (McCleary 2016:113). Among the many Biographic narratives at that site is the Hot Dance scene, which illustrates as well as any other rock art how the Biographic lexicon can be used, in combination with ethnographic information, historic information, and tribal knowledge, to maintain the vibrancy of the stories this panel was intended to convey. The dance scene is a masterpiece of Biographic art, comparable to any ledger art drawing created anywhere on the Plains (Figures 1.11, 5.3). Composed of only seven humans and a single animal, the panel’s primary focus is a group of three Hot Dancers performing just to the left of two women who squat or lay supine on the ground. The three dancers and the larger woman are elaborately dressed in ceremonial finery, and each dancer portrays the characteristic bent-forward/bent knee Plains dance posture. Each carries one

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Figure 5.3. Superimposed art episodes at Joliet, Montana, including an elk, the purchase of the Hot Dance, and the taking of a rival’s wife. The near-vertical grey line is a crack in the cliff surface. Drawing by the authors.

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or two weapons and wears an elaborate headdress and dance bustle. The smaller woman near the scene’s top, a standing man to the right of her, and a man engaged in a sex act with the larger, well-dressed woman are all much more simply drawn and lack detailed regalia. The Joliet site—and this scene in particular—has been the subject of more archaeological research than any other single Plains rock art site. At least a dozen scholars have studied this scene, but a series of sequent interpretations shows the value of combining archaeological work with tribal consultants and the rich ethnographic record for the Crow. The first serious scholar who discussed the Hot Dance scene was Stu Conner. After taking Crow consultants to the site Stu identified the dancers in this panel and posited they were drawn by Crow or Hidatsa artists (Conner 1980; Conner and Conner 1971). He also made the case that the images were late in the Historic period, based on their realism and similarity to ledger art. Loendorf built upon Conner’s work to suggest this scene commemorated a victory dance celebrating war honors with women witnessing it (Loendorf and Porsche 1985:18) About a dozen years later, Keyser (2004a; Keyser and Cowdrey 2008; Keyser and Klassen 2001; Keyser and McCleary 2008; Keyser, Sundstrom, and Poetschat 2006) began studying the Joliet site. Relying in large part on Conner’s initial recording of the site (apparently a tracing done on clear plastic, but also plaster casts of some figures made using latex “peels”) and the information he published from Crow consultants, Keyser attributed the images to Crow artists documenting their own Hot Dance and ritualized wife abduction that was part of Hot Dance activities (Keyser and Cowdrey 2008; Keyser, Sundstrom, and Poetschat 2006). He identified many regalia items, dated the site to post 1875 by reference to Lowie’s (1956) ethnographic reporting, and recognized the larger woman’s face painting as painted coup stripes. At about the same time as Keyser, Tim McCleary (2008a, 2008b, 2016) began studying Crow rock art by focusing on current tribal traditionalists’ understanding and interpretation of the imagery. Bringing to light the native “voice” about this art in a manner never before accomplished, McCleary expended considerable effort with the Joliet site and especially the Hot Dance panel. Combining ethnography and history with the knowledge of his tribal consultants, he was able to learn much more about the actual purchase of the Hot Dance, identify the dancers and larger woman as Hidatsa people by their regalia and hairstyles, date the panel to just post 1882, and understand the function of the women as they relate to the dancers in the initial formulation of the scene. He also notes that Crow informants see the earliest, heavily weathered image on the panel as a fish, further signifying the Hidatsa, since the Crow did not eat fish. Finally, he acknowledges the wife abduction component apparently added to the original scene, which is represented both by the man engaged in the sex act with the larger woman as well as by her face paint.

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As part of the process for writing this book, we investigated the Joliet dance scene further using site photographs and published material in our possession. The following discussion adds a few significant details to those interpretations that have been previously offered. Initially, in Episode 1 on this panel, an artist lightly incised a large zoomorphic figure (Figure 5.3). This creature, now represented only by its front quarters and head, is either a cervid (elk or deer) or possibly an underwater monster (a being often portrayed with antlers). In a photograph published by Gebhard (1974:44) one readily sees the lines composing the front quarters of this zoomorph, but a small part of what might be a rear leg is visible.1 Apparently much of the animal was removed by surface erosion evident in this area that occurred prior to the carving of the dancers. This antlered zoomorph is part of the Timber Creek style (Keyser 2005), a Late Prehistoric/early Historic period Crow style of drawing zoomorphs in an almost caricature-like fashion emphasizing key anatomical features (horns, heads, hooves) to identify the species portrayed. Several other Timber Creek style animals (often bears) are drawn here at Joliet (McCleary 2016:106–7) and others have been identified at many sites throughout the Pine Parklands of the Crow homeland, including 24GV191, the Musselshell site, Nordstrom-Bowen, Castle Butte, and Timber Creek (Figure 5.4). Occasionally, these animals are juxtaposed with a human in an obvious power quest relationship. Once drawn on the cliff at Joliet, this animal may have played different roles in the subsequent creation of the dance scene. A considerable time after the elk was drawn—long enough for much of its body to be eroded away—an artist drew the dance scene at Joliet as Episode 2 (Figure 5.3). The elk is clearly superimposed by the largest dancer, the larger woman, and lines flowing from the smaller woman’s vulva. The larger dancer is also incised into the eroded surface that erased the elk’s rear quarters. Because the elk is so weathered, it is less obvious to a visitor first seeing the panel, and the crosshatching in the head and throat forms the primary lines that are first recognized. Thanks to McCleary’s (2016:118–19) ethnohistorical and ethnological research we know that the scene was drawn either in the fall of 1882 or shortly thereafter. Historic sources and tribal knowledge document that 1882 was the year the Crow hosted a contingent of Hidatsa people who came to their reservation and formally transferred the rights to their dance to the Crow tribe. Crow consultants identify the scene as a text commemorating the transfer of the dance regalia and officer positions to the Crow. They have identified many details in the drawing and clarified others, thereby providing a reasonably complete and detailed interpretation of the dance scene itself. In visits to the site Crow consultants utilized several regalia items to identify the participants in the scene. The larger dancer is the “Tailfeather Chief” while the one directly above him is identified as the “Horsewhip Owner” by his

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Figure 5.4. Timber Creek style animals. Note that (a) is composed as a game-calling image. Drawing by the authors.

distinctive horsetail bustle. The third dancer represents the two other “Tailfeather Owner” positions acquired from the Hidatsa. This is a level of sociocultural specificity that is so far rivaled by only a few other Plains images, including Bird Rattle’s petroglyph at DgOv-2, Crazy Horse’s petroglyph, and the Joliet Doughboys. Crow consultants originally identified the dancers as Hidatsa men (McCleary 2016:120) based on the war honor marks drawn on their clothing, because those consultants reported that Crow men only painted such marks directly on their legs or body. However, McCleary (2020) has since found items of Crow clothing decorated with such honor marks. Nonetheless, the larger woman is identified as Hidatsa based on her hairstyle braided in a loop—because that is considered by Crow people to be a distinctive Hidatsa woman’s style. Based on this identification, her sitting posture is interpreted as a Hidatsa woman metaphorically birthing the Crow as her “children”—a metaphor for the transfer of the dance and its attendant ceremony. In support of this, the vocalization line issuing from her mouth is interpreted as her cries associated with these metaphoric labor pains.

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The smaller, more crudely drawn woman is said to show the discharge of afterbirth and blood, and thus to emphasize the scene’s birth theme, while the simpler man at the upper right is thought to represent the Crow who are acquiring the dance. He possesses the characteristically long, extended hair that typifies Crow men in rock art. Finally, the crosshatched head of the elk is seen as a fish, furthering the Hidatsa identification. In sum, given the identification of the woman as Hidatsa, it seems most reasonable to identify the dancers as members of the same tribe and to see the original dance scene as a record of the transfer of this dance to the Crow—certainly an Historic event worthy of commemorating at this important site. But other details in the composition suggest an additional part of the story for this panel that is not directly associated with the actual transfer of the Hot Dance from the Hidatsa to the Crow. A careful observer will recognize a reclining male figure drawn with markedly finer and shallower lines than the larger woman but shown engaged in a sexual act with her (Figure 5.3). This reclining ithyphallic man is clearly superimposed over the woman (best evidenced where the arm and penis overlay the hem of the woman’s dress) and thus constitutes Episode 3 of this scene. He reaches up to touch her vulva in a characteristic northern Plains pose indicating the capture of a woman’s reproductive potential. Likewise, the larger woman’s face has ten approximately horizontal stripes incised across it with fine, shallow lines matching those composing the reclining male. Thus, it appears that a second artist added significant details to the panel in Episode 3 after it was drawn as Episode 2. Both the woman’s painted face and the “reaching” posture of the man toward her vulva are classic examples of the high information content typical of such Biographic scenes, and the frequent need for an observer to have culturally relevant information external to the rock art site to understand the storyline portrayed by the imagery. In this instance, her painted face—an exceedingly uncommon trait for a female figure in this art—is the element that explains why the ithyphallic man is shown touching her genitalia and how such an action relates to the basic Hot Dance scene. The crudely drawn woman and man at the upper right present a dilemma because we cannot confidently assign them to Episode 2 rather than Episode 3 (or vice versa). Both seem much simpler than the dancers and larger woman, and though they are incised with lines more resembling the primary dance participants, they appear to us to have been drawn with a different hand than the primary figures. Neither shows the fluidity of motion nor the refinement of body form that characterizes the three dancers and the larger woman. Additionally, the simpler woman is of markedly smaller scale than the other humans. The only regalia items she wears are simple pendants at both knees and a long sash used as a belt around her mid-torso. This woman is otherwise naked, as indicated by the portrayal of her breasts (triangles extending inward

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from the sides of her torso) and vulva. Long lines extending from the vulva can be interpreted as the discharge following birth but might also have served as a metaphor for sexual intercourse. In sum, these two figures could possibly fit in either art episode, but currently we include them in Episode 2 in our illustration based on Crow consultants’ observations and the absence of any compelling reason to do otherwise. Keyser and Cowdrey (2008:25–28) explored Crow ethnography to try to understand the added parts of this scene (the reclining male, the face paint lines, and the simpler woman). They note that both women can be seen as a shift in perspective from the dancers; that is, as though they were lying supine with legs spread wide. Robert Lowie, the foremost Crow ethnographer, notes that during the early reservation period, in the first decades, the Hot Dance was the occasion for a man to “throw away” an unfaithful wife (Lowie 1912:223). Also, rival men’s societies—the Hot Dance Society versus the Crazy Dogs or the Fox Society versus the Lumpwood Society—sometimes practiced ritualized wife abduction. Concerning the throwing away of wives, Lowie (1912:223) notes: “If a wife has been guilty of adultery, that is reason for throwing her away. A special song is sung during the Hot Dance, and anyone desirous of abandoning his wife may then declare his intention.” Mutual wife-stealing was a regular occurrence (Bauerle 2003:104–8; Lowie 1912:224, 1913:169–75, 191–92) and became a substitute for war honors after the Crow were restricted to their reservation and inter-tribal warfare was prohibited (McCleary 2016:121). In fact, the famous chief Plenty Coups, a Crazy Dog, once stole the wife of a Hot Dancer. The woman was then dressed in family finery (an elk tooth dress) and had her face painted yellow with red stripes to symbolize her abductor’s coups. An almost identical story is told about the Lumpwood warrior Flat Belly abducting the wife of the noted Fox Society warrior “Longs to Die” (Bauerle 2003:107–8). Given the relatively common occurrence of throwing away an adulterous wife and the ritualized wife-stealing in the early reservation years, both of which were associated with the Hot Dance, it seems quite reasonable to interpret the addition of this ithyphallic man and the woman’s facial stripes as representing either a wife kidnapped by a Hot Dancer from a man in another society, or a wife thrown away for infidelity. McCleary (2016:121) notes that at least one modern Crow consultant has recognized the woman’s face paint as indicating such action. Finally, interpreting the smaller, simpler woman as a wife thrown-away for infidelity and the simpler man at the upper right as a member of a men’s association other than the Hot Dancers, from whom a wife was abducted, seem to be reasonable possibilities for the inclusion of these figures in the scene if they were done by a different artist than he who drew the dance. Possibly further close examination of the imagery might help evaluate this suggestion.

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So, in summary, the interpretation of the Joliet Hot Dance scene has evolved over more than a half-century, with several scholars adding details to the story and Crow people helping understand its historic import to their culture. Such research graphically illustrates how multiple lines of evidence combined with continued effort to record and understand a single scene can create an in-depth interpretation of a rock art panel.2

Narrative Three In the Thick of the Fight: Counting Coup at 48SW82 Of the four types of Plains biographic tallies, the enemy tally is the most common in rock art. Typically such tallies show a man’s defeated enemies in a horizontal lineup, though some are composed as less structured groups. Usually, each enemy is paired with the weapon the artist used to strike or kill them (Figures 0.9, 0.18, 1.22, 1.24). Found at numerous sites from Calgary, Alberta, to Fort Collins, Colorado, one such enemy tally is carved at the Lucerne site (48SW82) in southwestern Wyoming near the Green River (Figure 5.5). Although originally interpreted as hunters with superimposed “geometric designs” (Grimshaw and May 1963:8), by applying the rock art lexicon we can identify this as an enemy tally and learn the details of the original artist’s war record. The coup-count tally consists of three rectangular-body style humans drawn one above the other and numbered 1–3 from top to bottom. Their atypical vertical arrangement results from the shape of the cliff on which they are carved. Each man is posed as a realistically modeled side-view bowman holding a recurved bow out to the left with the bowstring shown as a dashed line. None wears a headdress or hairdo and all three have slightly bent knees and left-facing feet. Each man’s left arm extends down nearly parallel to his body and bends at the elbow to form a reverse L-shape. No hand is shown but each arm ends at or near the bow’s hand grip. The right arm is drawn in nearly the same position as the left but the lower arm, with no hand, reaches across the body to the other elbow as if prepared to draw back the bowstring. The result is a reasonably accurate representation of a bowman in shooting position. Bowstrings are not drawn back and only warrior 3 has an arrow nocked in the “ready to draw and fire” position, but both he and warrior 1 carry a quiver. In typical Plains style, these quivers are an elongate, narrow U-shape closed at the squared-off end and filled with longitudinal lines. They are oriented obliquely across each warrior’s torso with the top at the left shoulder. As previously described in the section on how to use the lexicon (see Chapter 2, “Correct Identification” and following), the first thing we have done is identify the key actors (in this case as enemies acted upon) and then identified the various items used by them. With this identification, the several other weapons shown floating near or touching these men now serve to identify this

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Figure 5.5. Tally of coups at Lucerne, Wyoming. Grey shows eroded area, but imagery has been reconstructed using historical drawings. Drawing by the authors.

composition as a coup-count tally. We then must identify the other items in the scene to understand the coups recorded. Warrior 1 was struck, and probably killed, with the elaborately decorated, horizontally oriented, floating tomahawk whose relatively small, quadrangular killing blade is just above his head. The handle of this weapon is adorned

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with an outsized, fan-shaped tab probably formed of feathers or beadwork attached to a triangular piece of leather or fabric. Projecting just ahead of the weapon’s blade off the distal end of the handle are two short decorative streamers. Both the tab and front streamers are typical Plains tomahawk decorations. Dashes start at the weapon and lead down to the warrior. These are the tracks of the artist who struck the blow running up to the bowman to take his quiver. Although no capture hand is illustrated, the longer dash touching the quiver implies its capture as a war trophy. A short, curved line in front of his left leg may be a second weapon also striking this man. Warrior 2 was struck by three weapons. The primary one is a banner-lance decorated with feathers (which are shown as long narrow triangles) that would have been fastened onto a long narrow strip of cloth attached to the spear shaft. This weapon touches his head, indicating the striking of a coup rather than a lethal blow. This is commensurate with the absence of a killing point on the lance. Such banner-lances functioned as officers’ emblems in various military societies of most Plains tribes, suggesting the artist served in such a capacity during this action against his enemy. Just below the banner-lance is a spear elaborately decorated with a tab of streamers at its rear end and a chevron of lines and a small triangular “flag” attached at mid-shaft. Such decorations could represent feathers or streamers or animal pelt wrapping of the spear shaft, all of which were common decorative elements on Plains Indian lances. This spear strikes either a killing blow or touches the man to count a second coup. A diagonal slash across the man’s right arm is another weapon—likely a coupstick—striking a third coup on him. Warrior 3 was lashed with a quirt positioned just above his bow’s upper curve. This relatively long-handled whip has its single lash curled back over the handle and an oval loop wrist strap at the handle’s butt end. The fact this enemy is shown with an arrow nocked and ready to fire indicates he was alive when struck. Positioned just below the quirt (and the archer’s arrowpoint) is a single hoofprint pointed up toward the quirt. This hoofprint indicates a horseman riding up to the warrior and either lashing him as he passed by or dismounting to run up and strike him. Striking a live enemy with a quirt in this way was a very brave deed because a horsewhip is not a lethal weapon and requires the rider to closely approach his foe. A vertical line just to the right of this man’s leg represents another weapon apparently counting a second coup on him. Finally, far to the left of these three vanquished enemies is a long, vertically oriented, rectilinear figure showing three compartments, each inscribed with an X. The central compartment is approximately square, while those above and below it are much longer than they are wide. This represents either a decorated rawhide parfleche or a blanket captured as a war trophy. Taking such trophies was a common practice and documented a man’s presence in close contact with the enemy.

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These six explicitly depicted coup strikes are typical Biographic art war honors. Despite the fact that each bowman is struck by a different primary weapon (tomahawk, banner-lance, quirt), and at least two were hit with multiple weapons, the primary coups are all those of a single warrior who drew this tally composition. Striking coup with different weapons on different enemies is typical of such tallies. What is less typical is including other warriors’ weapons also striking these men, but including such coups implies the artist was the leader of one or more war parties during which these were counted. A leader had the right to claim—as secondary honors—all those accrued by the men he commanded on such raids. The Lucerne tally documents the war record of a prominent man. He directly struck three enemies, all apparently as the first (and most honored) coup. For one of these he was acting as an officer of his military society. For at least two of the engagements he was apparently the leader of the war party, for he illustrated others’ coups in addition to his own in order to claim them as secondary honors. In addition to striking three first coups, he captured a quiver from one defeated enemy and also took a parfleche or blanket as a war trophy during another fight. Although not as numerous as the war honors of other better-known Plains warriors, who often claimed a dozen or more coups, these war honors show the Lucerne artist-hero to be a well-respected man who would have been accorded high status in his own group.

Narrative Four 5GF1339: Breaking through the Defenses Drawn in the Salt Creek drainage in the Book Cliffs region of far west-central Colorado is a Plains Biographic style battle scene illustrated with a red ochre crayon (Figure 5.6). The scene is one of several drawn at the site, which is unique among the known pictographs in this area (Mahaney 1986:85), because it shows many conventionalized Plains-style images including stacked arrays of weapons, a large circular entrenchment, track sequences, tipi villages, and flying bullets. In combination with the horses and humans (both dead and alive) scattered across the site, these attributes led Mahaney to recommend a detailed study of the pictographs, but unfortunately that never happened and much of the site collapsed sometime before 2010. Fortunately, a few site photographs of one particular scene are in possession of the Grand River Institute, who provided them to us. From these we can see that part of the site tells a detailed story of fortified defenders being overrun by a group of determined attackers. The large circle dominating the left half of the scene represents a fortification large enough to hold several people as well as horses (Figure 5.6a). It probably indicates some form of constructed breastwork or palisade, but it might instead be a natural hollow or other defensible location. Defending this

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Figure 5.6. Enemy attack on entrenched warriors at 5GF1339, Colorado. Defending force shown in (a), while attackers shown in (b). Pictograph drawn with red ochre crayon. Drawing by the authors.

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position from an attack coming from the right is a stacked array of weapons, including nine long guns (indicated by a long barrel extending from a triangular buttstock) and four simpler lines representing spears. Based on other guns shooting in the scene, the unnaturally elongated barrels on these weapons indicate they are firing. This array of weapons is a synecdochical representation of a rank of armed warriors defending the fort. Within the fort are a small bent-backward stick-figure human, a shield-bearing warrior apparently armed with a spear, and a horseman. All appear to be engaged in fighting, as described below. At the lower right quadrant of the fortification is a group of oblique lines that may represent a fallen defender. Although quite sketchy, this figure is located directly below the largest horse and may represent one of defending gunmen overrun by this mounted man. From the right, the attacking force (Figure 5.6b) charges toward and overruns the fortification. Two humans, and possibly a third, lie dead where the attack originates. One of these is killed by an arrow in his head or neck. Based on their placement we interpret these as attackers killed at the start of the fight. Despite putting up a strong defense by killing some attackers, however, the defenders’ ranks are breached by both horsemen and pedestrians. Four lines of hoofprints show charging horsemen, two lead directly to horses breaching the fortification while two others are synecdoches for unseen animals who may not have penetrated the fortified position. A third, crudely drawn, riderless horse (shown in grey in inset) stands among the group of fighting warriors just below the stickman shooting a gun. Because it faces left, we suspect it represents a third mount used by the attackers to enter the fortification. Bracketing the uppermost charging horse are seven lines of dashes extending from outside the fortification into it. These footprints show a charge of several pedestrian warriors who split the line of defenders outside of the breastworks, then breached the breastworks and came through them in concert with the upper horse. One track sequence starts at this riderless horse to indicate its rider dismounted and continued on foot inside the fort. A lone line of footprints enters the fortification at its top and ends directly at an attacking warrior carrying a small shield and armed with a spear. Two horizontal footprint sequences terminate at a warrior indicated only by his shield and gun. Seven attackers are shown inside the fortification, most focusing their weaponry on a large shield bearer and smaller stick figure in the left center of the fortification. These include both complete human figures and those represented only by their weapons. From top down, the attackers include a stickfigure human shooting a long gun, a floating gun (possibly a pistol) pointing downward just in front of the crude horse. This gun shows a muzzle blast and its bullet flies by the front of the shield bearer at whom it is aimed. Proceeding downward, a small shield bearer is attacking a larger one with a spear, two crudely drawn floating guns fire bullets toward the same larger shield figure, a shield with a gun pointed toward this same larger shield figure also represents

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an attacker, and finally a horseman storming through the breastworks faces off against the lone horseman inside the fortification. The eight lines of tracks and four lines of hoofprints indicate that this attacking force was larger than the seven attackers shown by other means, but this discrepancy could simply be an attempt to show the frenzy of the rush against the defenders. Much of the action takes place within the fortification. Of the seven attackers, six are shown battling two defenders. The uppermost stick-figure human, likely dismounted from his horse, uses an obvious flintlock gun to shoot another stick figure shown falling backward just behind a large shield-bearing warrior. A long line from the gun barrel traces the bullet’s path. In the center of the fortification, three shield-bearing warriors and three floating weapons do battle. Again, the defender, represented by the larger shield figure, loses the combat. Although one bullet flies past him, the large point of the upper shield figure’s spear touches him, and streams of bullets fly in from guns at the lower right. One of these guns may be that of the lowest mounted attacker. The other attacker, represented as a shield with a flintlock gun pointed at this enemy, apparently does not shoot. Floating between the two upper shield bearers is a spear. Its position between the combatants suggests it was captured by one of the attackers. Finally, the lower horseman faces off against the larger, attacking horseman in a typical image showing opposing combatants. Although there is no direct indicator of action between these men, the placement of this smaller horse and rider in a subordinate position is a typical combat scene likely representing the defender’s defeat. In summary, this panel at 5GF1339 shows a well-armed and entrenched group being overcome by an attacking force, who broke through the defensive line on horseback and on foot and then entered a breastwork fortification to kill those still within. The artist of this scene was almost certainly a member of this attacking force, and he illustrated the action from his own group’s loss at the start of the fight through their attack and eventual victory. The use of so many Plains Biographic style conventions to compose this narrative suggests it was a raid by groups from the east on local Ute people. Such raids were commonly carried out by Arapaho, Comanche, Cheyenne, and Shoshoni warriors who came into eastern Colorado to take horses and count coups.

Notes 1. This probable leg, though visible in the photograph, is not shown here because it is far outside the dance scene. 2. For this Joliet discussion we thank Stu Conner and Larry Loendorf for introducing us to the site and taking us there multiple times. Tim McCleary shared his notes and knowledge of the site in several intensive discussions both in person and via email, and Stu Conner and Bonnie Smith provided early photographs. Finally, we thank the late David Gebhard for publishing his early photographs of the site, one of which shows a level of detail for the dance scene that is not available elsewhere.

APPENDIX I

SITE NAMES AND NUMBERS FOR FIGURE 1.1, NORTH AND SOUTH HALVES

⤞⤝ 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

South Half

San Antonio de los Alamos Acebuches El Caido Castle Canyon (41VV7), Hussie Miers (41VV327), Vaquero Shelter (41VV77), Caballero Shelter (41VV343), Missionary Shelter (41VV205), Ringbit Shelter (41VV339) Meyers Spring (41TE9) Indian Map (41TE330) Goodbar Cave (LA190489) Dorward Ranch (41GR51) Verbena (41GR52) Cowhead Mesa (41GR414) Huddleston Shelter (41GR344) Mujares Creek Rocky Dell (41OL4) Conant Springs La Vista Verde (LA75747) Picture Canyon (5BA12) Black Hole North (5BA506) 5LA5569 5LA5563 Box Canyon (5LA8464) Red Rock Ledge (5LA8463) Highland Headgate (5BN124) 14SA304 14EW1, 14EW401, 14RU3, 14RU5, 14RU10, 14RU304, 14RU317 5GF2 5GF1339 Canyon Pintado McKee Spring

426 ♦ APPENDIX I

29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

Castle Park Craig Sandrocks (5MF4306) White Rocks Wildcat Mound Fort Saint Vrain 5LR293

North Half 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

Chimney Rock Ranch Powder Wash (48SW9532, 48SW16695, 48SW9438) Lucerne (48SW82) 48SW83 Tolar (48SW13775) Cedar Canyon (48SW943) White Mountain (48SW302) Pine Canyon (48SW309) 48LN18 Gateway (48LN348) Names Hill (48LN39) La Barge Bluffs (48LN1640) South Piney (48SU5331) Little Boxelder Cave (48CO287) Register Cliff (48PL132) Castle Gardens (48FR108) Red Canyon (48FR2506, 48FR2508, 48FR2509) Doak Arminto (48NA991) Wold (48JO6) Pinnacle Rocks (48NO231) Big Dry Creek Legend Rock (48HO4) No Water (48WA2066) Mahogany Butte (48WA1218), Trapper Creek (48BH303), 48BH4275, 48BH492, 48WA2289, Ten Sleep Pictographs 48HO9 48PA3478 Gyp Spring (48BH3987) Daly (48CA58) 39FA58 39FA79 North Cave Hills: 39HN17, 39HN49, 39HN162, 39HN165, 39HN177, 39HN199, 39HN207, 39HN209, 39HN210, 39HN217, 39HN486, 39HN745, 39HN826, 39HN842, 39HN893 Radonski Rock (24CT1360) Alcatraz Rock (24FA294)

APPENDIX I ♦ 427

69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102.

103. 104.

Carbone (24BH404) Kobold (24BH406) Spring Creek Petroglyphs (24BH1046) Elk Dreamer (24RB275), Brand Rock (24RB2455), 24RB1010, 24RB2210, 24PR2121, 24PR2317, 24PR2382 Deer Medicine Rock (242RB401), Ellison’s Rock (24RB1019), 24RB2809, Benjamin Hill Porcupine Lookout (24RB563) Manuel Lisa (24YL82) Custer (24YL600) Crazy Horse (24BH658) 24BH653 Bierce Arborglyph Pictograph Cave (24YL1) Four Dance Cliff (24YL559) Canyon Creek (24YL1203) Joliet (24CB402) 24CB406 24CB413 24CB1163 Weppler (24ST560) Steamboat Butte (24YL576), Castle Butte (24YL418), Nordstrom-Bowen (24YL419), Razor Creek (24YL578), Explorers Petroglyph (24ML402), 24YL1358, Turner Rockshelter, Turner-Cantrell Goffena (24ML408), Musselshell (24ML1049), Horned Headgear (24ML508), Kyte 24GV191, 24GV139, Ryegate South Atherton Canyon (24FR3) Bear Gulch (24FR2) 24JT87 24JT86 Eagle Creek (24CH757) 24FH1006 Cheval Bonnet (24GL1663), No Bear (24GL1717), Two Medicine River (24GL1718), 24GL67, 24GL1661, 24GL1662 Kevin Rim Samsal Boulder (24TL959) Coffin Bridge (DgOx-15) Verdigris Coulee: DgOw-28, DgOw-29, DgOw-31, DgOw-32, DgOw-41 Writing-on-Stone (Provincial Park area): DgOv-2, DgOv-3, DgOv-9, DgOv42, DgOv-43, DgOv-45, DgOv-46, DgOv-49, DgOv-57, DgOv-60, DgOv-63, DgOv-66, DgOv-69, DgOv-74, DgOv-75, DgOv-78, DgOv-79, DgOv-80, DgOv81, DgOv-83, DgOv-84, DgOv-85, DgOv-88, DgOv-130, DgOv-133, DgOw-9, DgOw-19, DgOw-20, DgOw-21, DgOw-22, DgOw-27, DgOw-38, DgOw-51 Williams Coulee (EcPl-25) Crossfield Coulee (EiPl-19)

APPENDIX II

SOURCE MATERIALS AND SITE INDEX FOR ILLUSTRATIONS

⤞⤝ Source Materials American Horse winter count, NAA MS, 2372, Box 12:F7, NAA INV 0874692308746933, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution Arikara/Hidatsa ledger drawings: Drawing 1, NAA MS 154064b, 085106.03; Drawing 2, NAA MS 154064b, 085106.05; Drawing 3, NAA MS 154064b, 085106.15; Drawing 4, NAA MS 154064b, 085106.18; National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. Assiniboine ledger drawing, NAA MS 12600-B-1, 08690300; National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. Barstow ledger drawings, H. Barstow Collection, Montana State University Billings Library Special Collections Battiste Good winter count, NAA MS, 2372:Box 12:F6, NAA INV 08746800, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution Bear Chief’s war tipi, American Museum of Natural History, New York (cat. no. 50/4485). Big Nose elk skin robe, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul (cat. no. 8151) Charges Strong bison robe, American Museum of Natural History, New York (cat. no. 50/6826) Cloud Shield winter count, NAA MS, 2372, Box 12:F7, NAA INV 0874690108746922, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution Crazy Mule map, Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska Crow war shirt, National Museum of the American Indian (cat. no. NMAI 17/6345) Deadmond bison robe, Broadwater County Museum, Townsend, Montana Deming ledger, Splendid Heritage Collection (Cowdrey 2010) Deutches Ledermuseum bison robe, Deutches Ledermuseum Offenbach am Main, Germany (cat. no. E459MVF) Dog Soldier ledger, Colorado Historical Society, Denver (cat. no. 0.751.25) Five Crows Ledger, De Smetiana Collection, Missouri Province Archive, Jesuit Archives & Research Center, St. Louis, MO. Foureau Robe: Musée du quai Branly, Paris (cat. no. MH 96.73.1) Gilbert Minthorn coup marks illustrated in Cayuse Interlinear Texts. Collected by Morris Swadesh, Notebooks in the American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia Hidatsa ledger drawing, published in Mallery 1893:439

APPENDIX II ♦ 429

His Fight ledger drawing, published in Smith 1943, between pages 114-115 His Horse Looking (Lakota), bison robe, National Museum of the American Indian (cat. no. 00.1029) Howling Wolf sketch book, published in Petersen 1968:56-57 Lakota Bison Robe, American Museum of Natural History, New York (cat. no. 50/6793) Lakota War Book (Half Moon) ledger, Harvard Houghton Library, Cambridge Massachusetts (cat. no. MS AM 2337) Lean Wolf ledger drawing, published in Mallery 1893:581 Malcolm Robe (Blackfoot), Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada (cat. no. 2006.79.1) Mandan war shirt, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (cat. no. 90-17-10/49309) Mato-tope bison robe, Bernisches Historisches Museum (cat. no. 113) Maximillian bison robe, Ethnological Museum of Berlin, Berlin, Germany (cat. no. IV B 199) Merriam bison robe, Canadian Museum of History, Hull, Quebec (cat. no. V-B5360) National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, Blackfoot bison robe (cat. no. Hc478) National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, Crow bison robe, (cat. no. Hd60) Oberlin ledger, Howling Wolf drawing, Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio (cat. no. 04.1180) Ojibwa breechclout design published in Skinner 1914:484 Opočno Castle Museum shirt (Crow), Opočno, Czech Republic (cat. no. 6915) Opočno Castle Museum leggings (Crow), Opočno, Czech Republic (cat. no. 6916) Pamplin ledger, privately held, available at plainsledgerart.org Peabody Essex Museum robe, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts (cat. no. E24.991) Péhriska-Rúhpa (Hidatsa) bison robe, Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin, Germany (cat. no. IV B 203) Pope (Crazy Dog) ledger, United States Military Academy Library, West Point, New York (cat. no. 169568) Red Cloud census, Pictorial census prepared under the direction of Red Cloud, reproduced in Mallery 1886:176-181, Plates LIX-LXXIX Red Crane bison robe, National Museum of the American Indian (cat. no. 11-3195) Red Dog ledger, Indianer Museum der Stadt Zürich, Switzerland Red-plume (Blackfoot) ledger drawing (published in Wissler 1913:457) Samuel Strong/Roman Nose ledger NAA MS 1303 (11008300), National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution Schoch war shirt, Bernisches Historisches Museum, Bern, Switzerland (cat. no.1890.410.15) Schoolcraft (Lakota) bison robe, published in Schoolcraft 1854:Plate 31 Segesser I Robe, New Mexico History Museum, Santa Fe Sharp robe (Blackfoot), National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. (cat. no. E165449-0) The Flame winter count, NAA MS, 2372, NAA INV 08633800, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution

430 ♦ APPENDIX II

Tie Creek ledger, privately held, available at plainsledgerart.org Upper Missouri bison robe, published in Maurer 1992:194-195 Wolf Carrier’s robe, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada (cat. no. HK457) Yellow Wolf ledger drawing, Rochester Museum & Science Center, Rochester, New York (cat. no. 2890B)

Index for Site Numbers/Names (referred to in volume) Coahuila, Mexico San Antonio de los Alamos Acebuches (La Tinaja de Acebuches)

El Caido

Texas Caballero Shelter (41VV343) Castle Canyon (41VV7) Cowhead Mesa (41GR414) Dorward Ranch (41GR51) Huddleston Shelter (41GR344) Hussie Miers (41VV327) Indian Map (41TE330)

Meyers Spring (41TE9) Missionary Shelter (41VV205) Mujares Creek Ringbit Shelter (41VV339) Rocky Dell (41OL4) Vaquero Shelter (41VV77) Verbena (41GR52)

New Mexico Conant Springs Goodbar Cave (LA190489)

La Vista Verde (LA75747)

Kansas Circle Rock (14RU10) Indian Hill (14EW1) Katzenmeier (14EW401) 14RU3

14RU5 14RU304 14RU317 14SA304

Colorado Black Hole North (5BA506) Box Canyon (5LA8464) Canyon Pintado Craig Sandrocks (5MF4306) Fort Saint Vrain Highland Headgate (5BN124) Picture Canyon (5BA12) Red Rock Ledge (5LA8463)

White Rocks Wildcat Mound 5GF2 5GF1339 5LA5563 5LA5569 5LR293

Utah Castle Park

McKee Spring

APPENDIX II ♦ 431

Wyoming Arminto (48NA991) Big Dry Creek Castle Gardens (48FR108) Cedar Canyon (48SW943) Chimney Rock Ranch Daly (48CA58) Doak Gateway (48LN348) Gyp Spring (48BH3987) La Barge Bluffs (48LN1640) Legend Rock (48HO4) Little Boxelder Cave (48CO287) Lucerne (48SW82) Mahogany Butte (48WA1218) Names Hill (48LN39) No Water (48WA2066) Pine Canyon (48SW309) Pinnacle Rocks (48NO231)

Powder Wash (48SW9532, 48SW16695, 48SW9438) Red Canyon (48FR2506, 48FR2508, 48FR2509) Register Cliff (48PL132) South Piney (48SU5331) Ten Sleep Pictographs Tolar (48SW13775) Trapper Creek (48BH303) White Mountain (48SW302) Wold (48JO6) 48BH492 48BH4275 48HO9 48LN18 48PA3478 48SW83 48WA2289

South Dakota 39FA58 39FA79 39HN17 39HN49 39HN162 39HN177 39HN199 39HN207

39HN209 39HN210 39HN217 39HN486 39HN745 39HN826 39HN842 39HN893

Montana Atherton Canyon (24FR3) Bear Gulch (24FR2) Benjamin Hill Bierce Arborglyph Brand Rock (24RB2455) Canyon Creek (24YL1203) Castle Butte (24YL418) Cheval Bonnet (24GL1663) Crazy Horse (24BH658) Custer (24YL600) Deer Medicine Rock (24RB401) Eagle Creek (24CH757) Elk Dreamer (24RB275) Ellison’s Rock (24RB1019) Explorers Petroglyph (24ML402)

Four Dance Cliff (24YL559) Goffena (24ML408) Horned Headgear (24ML508) Joliet (24CB402) Kevin Rim Kyte Manuel Lisa (24YL82) Musselshell (24ML1049) No Bear (24GL1717) Nordstrom-Bowen (24YL419) Pictograph Cave (24YL1) Porcupine Lookout (24RB563) Radonski Rock (24CT1360) Razor Creek (24YL578) Ryegate South

432 ♦ APPENDIX II

Samsal Boulder (24TL959) Spring Creek Petroglyphs (24BH1046) Steamboat Butte (24YL576) Turner-Cantrell Site Turner Rockshelter Two Medicine River (24GL1718) Weppler (24ST560) 24CB406 24CB413 24CB1163 24BH404 24BH406 24BH653 24FA294 24FH1006

24GL67 24GL1661 24GL1662 24GV139 24GV191 24JT86 24JT87 24PR2121 24PR2317 24PR2382 24RB1010 24RB2210 24RB2809 24YL1358

Alberta Writing-on-Stone

DgOv-2 DgOv-3 DgOv-9 DgOv-42 DgOv-43 DgOv-45 DgOv-46 DgOv-49 DgOv-57 (Rocky Coulee Battle Scene) DgOv-60 DgOv-63 DgOv-66 DgOv-69 DgOv-74 DgOv-75 DgOv-78 DgOv-79

DgOv-80 DgOv-81 DgOv-83 DgOv-84 DgOv-85 DgOv-88 (Thunderbird Cave) DgOv-130 DgOv-133 DgOw-9 DgOw-19 DgOw-20 DgOw-21 DgOw-22 DgOw-27 DgOw-38 DgOw-51

Verdigris Coulee

Coffin Bridge DgOx-15

DgOw-28 DgOw-29 DgOw-31 DgOw-32 DgOw-41

Williams Coulee EcPl-25

Crossfield Coulee EiPl-19

APPENDIX III

IDENTIFICATION OF SOURCE MATERIALS FOR FIGURES

⤞⤝ Figure 0.1. Figure 0.2.

Figure 0.3. Figure 0.4. Figure 0.5. Figure 0.6. Figure 0.7. Figure 0.8. Figure 0.9. Figure 0.10. Figure 0.11. Figure 0.12. Figure 0.13. Figure 0.14. Figure 0.15. Figure 0.16. Figure 0.17. Figure 0.18. Figure 0.19. Figure 0.20. Figure 0.21. Figure 1.1. Figure 1.2. Figure 1.3. Figure 1.4. Figure 1.5. Figure 1.6.

NA a, 39HN162; b, 24GL67; c, DgOv-2; d, 24BH404; e, 24CB406; f, h, n–o, v, DgOw-29; g, 24JT87; i, DgOw-28; j, 48HO4; k, 39HN165; l, m, r, Southeastern Colorado (no site specified); p, 24YL419; q, 24RB275; s, Wildcat Mound, Colorado; t, y, 24FR2; u, 48SU5331; w, DgOv-2; x, DgOv-88 DgOw-29 a, 24PR2317; b, 14SA304 48WA2066 24FR2 (all) DgOv-83 a, DgOw-29; b, DgOv-2; c–d, 48FR2508 24FR2 a, 48FR2506; b, Big Dry Creek (Wyoming); c, 24FR2 24FR2 NA 24FR3 NA NA Foureau Robe Segesser I Robe Five Crows Ledger, drawing 12 by Red Feather Samuel Strong/Roman Nose ledger a, 48LN1640; b, Lakota Bison Robe; c, Tie Creek ledger a, b, g, Red Cloud census; c, American Horse winter count; d, e, Cloud Shield winter count; f, Battiste Good winter count; h, The Flame winter count NA a, DgOw-29; b, 39HN177 DgOw-29 48HO9 24CB402 24RB275

434 ♦ APPENDIX III

Figure 1.7. Figure 1.8. Figure 1.9. Figure 1.10. Figure 1.11. Figure 1.12. Figure 1.13. Figure 1.14. Figure 1.15. Figure 1.16. Figure 1.17. Figure 1.18. Figure 1.19. Figure 1.20. Figure 1.21. Figure 1.22. Figure 1.23. Figure 1.24. Figure 1.25. Figure 1.26. Figure 1.27. Figure 1.28. Figure 1.29. Figure 1.30. Figure 1.31. Figure 1.32. Figure 1.33. Figure 1.34. Figure 2.1. Figure 2.2.

a, DgOw-29; b, DgOv-66; c, 24FH1006; d, 24ML1049 Tie Creek ledger DgOv-43 DgOv-43 24CB402 a, 39HN217; b, DgOv-2 a, DgOw-32; b, Turner Rockshelter 24RB2210 DgOv-2 DgOv-2 a, 48FR108; b, DgOv-133, 24YL418 DgOv-57 a–b, 24FR2; c, 48FR2508; d, Malcolm Robe; e, DgOw-32 48FR2508 Ten Sleep Pictographs DgOv-60 a, Mandan war shirt; b, 24RB1019; c, Schoch war shirt a, DgOv-2; b, 24GL1718 DgOw-27 McKee Springs American Horse winter count 24YL82 24RB1019 Schoch war shirt 48LN1640 48LN1640 Big Nose elk skin robe a, DgOv-9; b, Deutches Ledermuseum bison robe a, 24CB402; b, Barstow ledger drawing collection (drawing 1930.29 by Above) Figure 2.3. NA Figure 2.4. DgOw-29 Figure 2.5. a, DgOv-9; b, Barstow ledger drawing collection (drawing 1930.31 by Above); c, Schoch war shirt; d, 24YL418; e, 24YL419; f, Upper Missouri robe Figure 2.6. a, 24FR3; b, 24GL1663; c, 24ML508; d, DgOw-27 Figure 2.7. Tie Creek ledger Figure 2.8. Lakota War Book ledger Figure 2.9. DgOw-38 Figure 2.10. Upper Row: a, b, c, Bear Chief’s war tipi. Middle Row: c, Bear Chief’s war tipi. Lower Row: a, Merriam Robe; b, Bear Chief’s war tipi; c, DgOw-27 Figure 2.11. 24CH757 Figure 3.1. DgOw-22 Figure 3.2. 24YL419

APPENDIX III ♦ 435

Figure 3.3. Figure 3.4. Figure 3.5. Figure 3.6. Figure 3.7. Figure 3.8. Figure 3.9. Figure 3.10. Figure 3.11. Figure 3.12. Figure 3.13. Figure 3.14. Figure 3.15. Figure 3.16. Figure 3.17. Figure 3.18. Figure 3.19. Figure 3.20. Figure 3.21. Figure 3.22. Figure 3.23. Figure 3.24. Figure 3.25. Figure 3.26. Figure 3.27. Figure 3.28. Figure 3.29. Figure 3.30. Figure 3.31. Figure 3.32. Figure 3.33. Figure 3.34. Figure 3.35. Figure 3.36. Figure 3.37. Figure 3.38. Figure 3.39. Figure 3.40. Figure 3.41. Figure 3.42. Figure 3.43. Figure 3.44.

a, DgOv-57; b, 24FR2; c, DgOv-60; d, DgOv-2; e, DgOv-42; f, Kevin Rim; g, Turner Rockshelter; h, 24YL418; i, Benjamin Hill; j, 24YL559; k, 24CB402 a, DgOv-2; b, 24YL82; c, DgOw-29; d, 24YL418 a, b, 24ML1049; c, Kyte; d, 48WA2066 a, 48FR2509; b, 48LN1640 DgOv-81 Kevin Rim 39HN217 a, DgOv-46; b, DgOw-21; c, DgOv-9; d, Mujares Creek; e, Southeastern Colorado (no site specified) ; f, 24BH653; g, 41GR344 a, DgOv-2; b, DgOv-75; c, d, 48LN1640; e, DgOw-27; f, DgOw-21 DgOv-60 a, c, 24GL1662; b, d, e, 48LN1640 a, 48BH303; b, 49SW943; c, 48SW309 24CB402 NA Tie Creek ledger 48WA2066 Five Crows ledger, drawing 9 by Five Crows 24ML508 41GR51 Bierce Arborglyph Turner Rockshelter 24BH658 Red Dog ledger 24FR2 (all) 24PR2382 Crow war shirt a, 48LN1640; b, c, 48SW83 a, 48LN1640; b, 48PL132; c, j, 24RB275; d, 24CB402; e, 24RB2455; f, 24ML1049; g, h, i, 24PR2121 a, DgOw-28; b, 48SW302 a, 39HN893; b, 24BH653 48LN1640 a, 24YL559; b, 24CB402; c, DgOv-2; d, 48LN1640 a, 39HN49; b, 41TE9; c, Fort Saint Vrain; d, e, 24CB402 41VV77 24GL1663 a, 24YL1358; b, 48LN18 Schoch war shirt 41VV327 41VV343 Tie Creek ledger (all) 48SW83 a, 14RU317; b, 39HN207; c, 14EW401; d, 5MF4306

436 ♦ APPENDIX III

Figure 3.45. 24FR3 Figure 3.46. 39HN217 Figure 3.47. a, 48LN1640; b, e, 24CB402; c, McKee Springs; d, f–h, 24FR2; i, Ten Sleep Pictographs; j, 5LA8464; k, 5MF4306

Figure 3.48. 24YL1 Figure 3.49. 5LA8464 Figure 3.50. Figure 3.51. Figure 3.52. Figure 3.53. Figure 3.54. Figure 3.55. Figure 3.56. Figure 3.57. Figure 3.58. Figure 3.59. Figure 3.60. Figure 3.61. Figure 3.62. Figure 3.63. Figure 3.64. Figure 3.65. Figure 3.66. Figure 3.67. Figure 3.68. Figure 3.69. Figure 3.70. Figure 3.71. Figure 3.72. Figure 3.73. Figure 3.74. Figure 3.75. Figure 3.76. Figure 3.77. Figure 3.78. Figure 3.79. Figure 3.80. Figure 3.81. Figure 3.82.

48NO231 24YL82 24FR2 (all) Southeastern Colorado (no site specified) 48LN1640 Barstow ledger drawing collection (drawing 1930.68 by an anonymous Gros Ventres artist) a, 24FR3; b, 48FR108 a, 24FR3; b, Crow bison robe; c, His Horse Looking bison robe; d, e, f, 48LN1640; g, 14RU317 48LN39 a, Samuel Strong/Roman Nose ledger; b, Pamplin ledger; c, Dog Soldier ledger El Caido a, 39HN745; b, 48PL132 24FR2 24YL1358 a, 39HN217; b, 48SW13775; c, 24ML1049; d, DgOw-21 24YL419 24ML408 48LN1640 48FR2508 a, 24RB275; b, 39HN162; c, 24CB413; d, 48FR2508; e, 24RB1019 ; f, 24YL1 NA DgOv-2 NA a, Arikara/Hidatsa ledger drawing 1; b, Deming ledger; c, Arikara/ Hidatsa ledger drawing 2 24FR2 24CB402 a, Turner Rockshelter; b, 24ML1049; c, DgOv-79; d, g, p, q, 48LN1640; e, 24CB402; f, DgOv-2; h, m–o, r, t, 24FR2; i, DgOw21; j, s, 48WA2066; k, DgOw-29; l, 24ML508 41VV339 DgOv-2 24ML402 DgOw-20 DgOw-20 a, c–f, k–m, 24FR2; b, 24YL418; g, n, 24YL1; h, 24BH404; i, j, 48WA2066; o, DgOv-2

APPENDIX III ♦ 437

Figure 3.83. Barstow ledger drawing collection (drawing 1930.06 by Medicine Crow) Figure 3.84. a, 24FR3; b–e, g–i, 24FR2; f, 48CA58; j, Sharp robe, Smithsonian Institution (cat. no. 165,449); k, Copenhagen National Museum robe (cat. no. Hc478); l, Malcolm robe Royal Ontario Museum (cat. no. 2006.79.1); m, 48SW9438 Figure 3.85. 24GL1717 Figure 3.86. NA Figure 3.87. a, b, DgOw-32; c, 24ML408; d, e, 24GV191; f, 24YL419; g, 24YL1358; h, i, 39HN210; j, 48NO231; k, l, 48NA991; m, 48SW309; n, Chimney Rock Ranch, Wyoming; o, Wildcat Mound; p, q, 5BN124; r, 14RU5; s, 5BA506 Figure 3.88. a, 24YL418; b, 48HO9; c, d, Kyte; e, 48WA2066; f, 48WA1218; g, 48BH4275; h, 24ML1049; i, p, DgOw-32; j, DgOw-41; k, DgOx-15; l, DgOv-42; m, DgOv-69; n, DgOv-84; o, DgOw-20 Figure 3.89. a, 24CB402; b, 39HN49; c, 14RU5; d, 48NA991; e, DgOv-63; f, 48LN1640; g, 34ML508; h, 24GV139 Figure 3.90. NA Figure 3.91. a, f, 24CH757; b, 5LR293; c, Canyon Pintado; d, 14RU10; e, 24CB402 Figure 3.92. Mato-tope bison robe Figure 3.93. 5LA8464 Figure 3.94. Blue Bull Cave, Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Arizona Figure 3.95. 48SW302 Figure 3.96. Conant Springs Figure 3.97. NA Figure 3.98. NA Figure 3.99. a, b, DgOw-32; c, 24GL1718 Figure 3.100. DgOv-80 Figure 3.101. La Vista Verde LA75747 Figure 3.102. Image redrawn from Schoolcraft 1854:253 and Mallery 1893:206) Figure 3.103. a, c, 24CB402; b, Goodbar Cave LA190489; d, 48WA2066; e, 5MF4306; f, g, Pamplin ledger; h, Dog Soldier ledger Figure 3.104. Barstow ledger drawing collection (drawing 1930.31 by Above) Figure 3.105. a, 24ML408; b, DgOw-32; c, DgOv-84; d, h, 39HN210; e, DgOv-79; f, DgOw-27; g, 5GF2; i, 48NA991; j, m, n, Chaco Canyon (New Mexico); k, 48WA2066; l, 14RU304; o, 41VV339; p, 39HN49; q, 41VV327 Figure 3.106. a, 24CB402; b, 24YL418 Figure 3.107. NA Figure 3.108. Doak Figure 3.109. a, Deming ledger; b, Mato-tope bison robe; c, Red Dog ledger; d, Péhriska-Rúhpa bison robe Figure 3.110. NA Figure 3.111. Ryegate South Figure 3.112. a, 48FR2509; b, DgOw-9 Figure 3.113. NA Figure 3.114. La Vista Verde LA75747 Figure 3.115. DgOw-32

438 ♦ APPENDIX III

Figure 3.116. a, Mato-tope bison robe; b, Pamplin ledger; c, Pope ledger; d, Samuel Strong/Roman Nose ledger Figure 3.117. 5MF4306 Figure 3.118. Tie Creek ledger Figure 3.119. Ryegate South Figure 3.120. a, Wolf Carrier’s robe; b, Deadmond bison robe; c, Bear Chief’s war tipi; d, DgOv-80 Figure 3.121. a, b, d, e, k, 24CB402; c, 48HO9; f, DgOv-63; g, 24GV191; h, l, 24ML1049; i, DgOw-20; j, 39HN49; m, 48WA2066; n, 14RU304; o, 48PL132 Figure 3.122. 5LR293 Figure 3.123. a, b, 24ML1049; c, 24CB1163; 24GL1663 Figure 3.124. 24YL578 Figure 3.125. 5GF2 Figure 3.126. NA Figure 3.127. DgOv-63 Figure 3.128. a, b, Merriam bison robe; c, DgOv-2; d, 14RU324 Figure 3.129. 48PA3478 Figure 3.130. DgOw-32 (all) Figure 3.131. 41GR52 Figure 3.132. Mujares Creek Figure 3.133. a, i, 24FR2; b, f, h, k, p, q, 48FR2508; c, 48WA2066; d, 24GL1663; e, 24ML508; g, 24GV191; l, 24BH404; j, m, 48LN348; n, 48SW82; o, DgOw-32 Figure 3.134. a–h, 24FR2; i, j, DgOv-2; k, 14EW401 Figure 3.135. DgOv-2 Figure 3.136. 48FR2508 Figure 3.137. NA Figure 3.138. a, 48SW13775; b, Castle Park Figure 3.139. Yellow Wolf ledger drawing Figure 3.140. a–d, Watson Petroglyphs (Oregon); e, 24FR2 Figure 3.141. 24JT86 Figure 3.142. a, Canyon Pintado; b, El Caido Figure 3.143. Benjamin Hill Figure 3.144. 48WA2066 Figure 3.145. a–c, i, 48WA2066; d, 24YL418; e, La Vista Verde LA75747, f, DgOx-15; g, DgOw-9; h, DgOv-78; j, 5MF4306 Figure 3.146. DgOw-29 Figure 3.147. a, Five Crows ledger, drawing 4 by Five Crows; b, Arikara/Hidatsa ledger drawing 3; c, Schoolcraft bison robe Figure 3.148. a, DgOw-31; b, La Vista Verde LA75747 Figure 3.149. a, 48SW302; b, c, 48LN1640; d, 24FR2 Figure 3.150. 24FR2 (all) Figure 3.151. NA Figure 3.152. a–c, 24FR2; d, ethnographic specimen collected by Karl Bodmer Figure 3.153. a, DgOw-21; b, 24ML1049; c, 24YL419; d, Benjamin Hill; e, Ryegate

APPENDIX III ♦ 439

Figure 3.154. Figure 3.155. Figure 3.156. Figure 3.157.

Figure 3.158. Figure 3.159.

Figure 3.160. Figure 3.161. Figure 3.162. Figure 3.163. Figure 3.164. Figure 3.165. Figure 3.166. Figure 3.167. Figure 3.168. Figure 3.169. Figure 3.170. Figure 3.171. Figure 3.172. Figure 3.173. Figure 3.174. Figure 3.175. Figure 3.176. Figure 3.177. Figure 3.178. Figure 3.179. Figure 3.180. Figure 3.181. Figure 3.182. Figure 3.183.

South; f, j, El Caido; g, DgOv-57; h, 48SW302; i, 24YL1358; k, 41VV343; l, K. D. Petersen, Pictographic Dictionary, (Petersen 1971:308) a, Ten Sleep Pictographs; b, Conant Springs; c, DgOw-9; d, Fort Saint Vrain; e, f, 24YL419; g, j, 24RB1019; h, Chimney Rock Ranch, Wyoming; i, 24ML408; k, 24CB402; l, 24YL599 NA 5LA8463 a, b, 24ML508; c, 39HN217; d, 24RB1019; e, 48SW82; f, 24YL418; g, h, 24YL419; i, DgOv-2; j, DgOw-21; k, DgOw-20; l, DgOv-9; m, Schoch war shirt; n, Five Crows ledger, drawing 8 by Five Crows; o, p, 24CB402; q, r, 48LN1640; s, 39FA79 48BH3987 a, 39HN199; b, 39HN17; c, 24BH404; d, 48PA12; e, 39HN210; f, 48BH92; g, u, dd, DgOv-2; h, 24GL67; i, 24BH406; j, 24 CB1094; k, x, 24RB2809; l, 24YL576; m, DgOw-9; n, o, 48FR2508; p, 24CB406; q, 48BH499; r, cc, 48NO231; s, 39HN217; t, y, aa, bb, 48FR108; v, DgOw-29; w, 24FA294; z, 24YL1 NA 24FR3 48LN348 a, b, 24FR2; c, 48WA2066, d, 24GV191; e, 24ML408; f, 24YL1; g, 24ST560; h, 24YL419; i, Ten Sleep Pictographs; j, Assiniboine ledger drawing 24GV191 a, 24FR3; b, c, Arapaho bison robes a, Upper Missouri bison robe; b, National Museum of Denmark bison robe (cat. no. Hc478) a, 14RU304; b, Deadmond bison robe 24ML1049 39FA79 a, Malcolm bison robe; b, DgOw-20 a, Benjamin Hill; b, 24RB275; c, 48LN39; 24YL418; e, DgOv-2; f, DgOw-19; g, DgOv-57; h, 24ML1049 DgOw-32 (all) 24FR2 a, e–g, 24FR2; b, c, 24YL1203; d, 24FR3 a, b, 39HN486; c, 39HN209; d, 39HN842 48WA2066 La Vista Verde LA75747 (all) 24FR3 a, 41GR51; b, 41GR414 41OL4 Conant Springs 48SU5331 24FR2

440 ♦ APPENDIX III

Figure 3.184. DgOv-2 Figure 3.185. 48LN1640 Figure 3.186. a, Acebuches; b, 39FA58; c, Ambrose Bierce petroglyph, upper Powder River, Wyoming (location no longer known) Figure 3.187. a, 24BH1046; b, DgOv-74; c, 39HN826; d, DgOv-78 Figure 3.188. 14RU10 Figure 3.189. a, b, Dog Soldier ledger; c, d, 24RB1019; e, 24ML508; f, Howling Wolf sketch book, drawing no. 10; g, Ten Sleep Pictographs; h, 5LA8463; i, Oberlin Ledger, Howling Wolf drawing; j, m, DgOv-43; k, l, 41TE330 Figure 3.190. 24GV191 Figure 3.191. Conant Springs Figure 3.192. NA Figure 4.1. a, b, DgOw-20 Figure 4.2. Turner-Cantrell Figure 4.3. 48CO287 Figure 4.4. 48SW309 Figure 4.5. EiPl-19 Figure 4.6. 24GV191 Figure 4.7. a, Maximillian bison robe; b, DgOv-81; c, e, Five Crows ledger, drawings 10 and 9 by Five Crows; d, Malcolm bison robe; f, 24ML508 Figure 4.8. 24YL1 Figure 4.9. a, 24GV191; b, 48SW9532; c, 48HO9 Figure 4.10. Tie Creek ledger Figure 4.11. 48LN39 (all) Figure 4.12. a, facsimile drawing from ethnographic report; b, Red Plume (Blackfoot) ledger drawing; c, Peabody Essex Museum robe; d, Five Crows ledger, drawing 12 by Red Feather; e, DgOw-41; f, DgOv-81; g, DgOw-32; h, 24GL1718 Figure 4.13. a, DgOv-60; b, 39HN210; c, 39HN17; d, DgOv-57 Figure 4.14. NA Figure 4.15. a, DgOw-31; b, DgOv-2; c, DgOv-130; d, DgOw-27; e, 24RB563; f, DgOv-2 Figure 4.16. a, c, DgOv-2; b, DgOv-45; d, DgOw-20; e, 39HN17 Figure 4.17. Sharp robe Figure 4.18. 48SW16695 Figure 4.19. a, Upper Missouri robe; b, Malcolm robe Figure 4.20. a, 48LN1640; b, DgOv-2; c, 48WA2289 Figure 4.21. La Vista Verde LA75747 Figure 4.22. White Rocks Figure 4.23. Schoch war shirt Figure 4.24. 24CB402 Figure 4.25. DgOw-32 Figure 4.26. Ojibwa breechclout design Figure 4.27. 48SW82 Figure 4.28. 24FR2 (all)

APPENDIX III ♦ 441

Figure 4.29. Figure 4.30. Figure 4.31. Figure 4.32. Figure 4.33. Figure 4.34. Figure 4.35. Figure 4.36. Figure 4.37. Figure 4.38. Figure 4.39. Figure 4.40. Figure 4.41. Figure 4.42. Figure 4.43. Figure 4.44. Figure 4.45.

Figure 4.46. Figure 4.47. Figure 4.48. Figure 4.49. Figure 4.50. Figure 4.51. Figure 4.52. Figure 4.53. Figure 4.54. Figure 4.55. Figure 4.56. Figure 4.57. Figure 5.1. Figure 5.2. Figure 5.3. Figure 5.4. Figure 5.5. Figure 5.6.

48LN1640 24FR3 Red Dog ledger a, His Fight ledger drawing; b, Upper Missouri robe; c, 24FR2 24CB402 24CT1360 DgOw-32 DgOv-88 a, b, Barstow ledger drawing collection: a, drawing 1930.40 by Takes Away the Enemy; b, drawing 1930.56 by New Bear NA 14RU304 American Horse winter count Crazy Mule map (all) 41TE330 24GL1661 48LN1640 a–e, Malcolm bison robe; f, Opočno Castle Museum shirt; g, h, National Museum of Denmark bison robe (cat. no. Hd60); i, Lean Wolf ledger drawing; j–k, Schoch war shirt; l–m, 48FR2508; n, 24BH653; o, 24FR2; p, 39HN893; q, DgOw-32; r, Ten Sleep Pictographs 24FR2 a, DgOw-32; b, 24FR2; c, Deadmond bison robe; d, Ten Sleep Pictographs a, 24CB402; b, 39HN217; c, 48WA2066; d, 48BH4275; e, 24FR2; f, 48FR2508; g, 24BH653; h, 39HN893 a, Malcolm bison robe; b, Schoch war shirt; c, The Flame winter count a, Bear Chief’s war tipi; b, c, Red Crane bison robe a–c, Mandan and Hidatsa boat paddles; c, Hidatsa dance society wand 24TL959 Hidatsa ledger drawings a, Hidatsa ledger drawing; b, drawn from a photograph of Crow warrior, Bull Snake a, Charges Strong bison robe; b–f, various tribes Opočno Castle Museum leggings a, Gilbert Minthorn illustrated coup marks; b, Steiwer Ranch, Oregon 35WH38 DgOv-57 DgOv-57 24CB402 a, c, 24GV191; b, e, 24ML1049; d, Kyte 48SW82 5GF1339

GLOSSARY

⤞⤝ Calling Card: A rock art drawing left in enemy territory to taunt locals with your prowess as a raider. Ceremonial Tradition: A widespread rock art tradition showing primarily shield-bearing warriors, V-neck and rectangular-body humans, and boat-form or rectangular-body animals. These images are typically composed in static compositions for iconic, rather than narrative, purposes. Claiming a Horse: Touching a horse with a weapon or your hand in a fight where the horse’s rider had been unseated. The first person to touch such an animal claimed it as his own. See also Creasing a Horse; Cutting a Horse Cock Screw: The screw that tightens the jaws of a flintlock firing mechanism to firmly hold the flint. Also called a jaw screw. Cordelling: Towing a vessel (usually a keelboat) upstream by men or draft animals on shore who pulled on long towlines (cordelles) attached to the boat. Coscojos: Small metal links composing the chains fastened to the mouthpiece of a horse’s bridle. Count Coup: The act of performing a war honor. Creasing a Horse: Shooting a horse with an arrow in a non-lethal fashion to disable it so it could be captured. See also Claiming a Horse; Cutting a Horse Curb Bit: A type of bit used for riding horses that uses a long shank with a ring at each end as a lever to apply pressure to the horse’s mouth. Cutting a Horse: Sneaking into an enemy camp and stealing a horse picketed in front of its owner’s tipi. See also Claiming a Horse; Creasing a Horse Factor. See Fur Trade Factor Ferrule: The brass rings on a flintlock gun underneath the gun barrel aligned to hold the ramrod. Finial: An ornamental knob at the end of the quillon on a sword or an ornamental sculpture at the upper end of a flagpole. Frizzen: The erect striking surface contacted by the flint to produce sparks to ignite the powder in a flintlock gun.

GLOSSARY ♦ 443

Fur Trade Factor: Agent in charge of commercial activities for a fur trading company. The Chief Factor was the man in charge of an entire fur trade district. German Silver: Also called “nickel silver,” this metal is a silver-colored alloy containing copper, zinc, and nickel. It was commonly used for pectorals, armbands, and concho hair plates. Grandee: A Spanish person of high rank. Gun Worm: A corkscrew-like device used to remove unspent charges and burned powder debris from the barrel of a musket. Historic Period: The period in American Indian history after they had first been contacted by Euro-Americans. Honda: a small loop at the end of a lariat rope or Plains Indian war bridle. Sometimes these were just a rope loop, but others used a small ring of metal or one cut as a cross-section of a buffalo horn. Hot Dance: The Crow tribe’s version of the Grass Dance, purchased from the Hidatsa in 1882. It is characterized by fancy regalia and Historic period dancers brandishing weapons. Hudson’s Bay blanket. See Point Blanket Ideogram: A written character symbolizing an object, action, or idea without indicating the spoken sounds for the word(s). Jingle Bit: Any of several varieties of bits used for riding horses that incorporate chains or linked coscojos (jingles) to create a jingling sound when the animal moves. Jaw Screw. See Cock Screw Late Prehistoric period: The period in American Indian history that predates the arrival of Euro-Americans and their trade items. Lingua Franca: A common language adopted among speakers of different native languages. Logogram: A symbol or character representing a spoken word or phrase. Similar to ideograms, which can also represent objects or ideas, but ideograms do so without being tied to specific spoken utterances. Lunule: Antiquated term for a crescent shape. Used to describe horse hoofprints. Medicine: Supernatural power expressed in many ways. See also Vision Quest Métis: A person with mixed American Indian and European (usually French) ancestry. Miquelet Lock: A type of flintlock firing mechanism with a distinctive ringtopped cock screw.

444 ♦ GLOSSARY

Name Glyph: A pictograph expressing the name of a person or (less commonly) an object or geographic feature. The name glyph is typically connected by a line to the person or thing it names. Narratology: The study of narrative structure and function, as well as its conventions and symbols. Nonphonological Writing: A writing system not based on the sounds of a spoken language. Partisan: The leader of a war party. Partizan (also Partizan blade): A type of polearm tipped with a large metal point with protrusions on the sides at its base. Used in European pre-gun warfare, these protrusions on a partisan blade were intended to help parry sword thrusts. Plains Indians obtained a few of these partizan blades in trade and used them as fancy spearpoints. Peace Medal: Oval or circular medallions awarded to tribal leaders and other important men as a demonstration of goodwill from government representatives. Made of brass or silver, such medals are frequently worn by Indian men in early photographs. Petroglyph: A rock art image carved into stone. Petroglyphs can be made by incising, scratching, pecking, abrading, or drilling. Pictogram: A graphic symbol that conveys its meaning by its resemblance to a physical object. Pictograph: An image drawn or painted using pigment. They can be painted, stenciled, spattered, or drawn with a pigment “crayon” or a raw lump of color or any combination of these. In rock art, pictographs are contrasted to petroglyphs, which are carved, but both techniques can occur together. Pidgin Language: A communication system developed between two or more groups who do not have a language in common. Often parts of a pidgin language are taken from several languages, though it is not spoken as any group’s primary, first language. Point Blanket: A type of colorful wool blanket with colored stripes traded by the Hudson’s Bay Company in British North America (Canada) and the United States and its territories during the fur trade period. The “points” are short black lines woven into the blanket’s selvedge edge to indicate the size of the blanket. Protohistoric Period: A short, transitionary period in American Indian history that occurred between the time they first obtained trade items of European manufacture and the initial contact with Euro-Americans.

GLOSSARY ♦ 445

Quillon: A short metal projection extending perpendicular to the blade of a sword or knife just above the handgrip, typically functioning to protect the user’s hand. Red River Cart: A large, two-wheeled wooden cart typically used by Métis people engaged in the fur trade or bison hunting. Such carts could be pulled by oxen or horses. Reservation Period (reservation years): The period in American Indian history when nomadic tribes were restricted to living on reservations, many of which are those they occupy today. Ride-by: A type of attack where the aggressor rides past an enemy in order to strike him with a weapon or something else (quirt, bare hand) in order to count coup. Scotch Cap: A special cap with a short bill and often a round “toorie” tassel on top. Usually obtained in trade with the Hudson’s Bay Company. Selvedge Cloth (Selvedge Edge): Cloth with a “self-finished” edge to keep it from unraveling or fraying. A piece of selvedge material does not require a hem. Semiotics: The study of the use or interpretation of signs and symbols, particularly nonexplicit meanings such as connotation, analogy, metaphor, and symbolism. Snaffle Bit: A bit used for horses that has a mouthpiece with a ring on either end. Spanish Chain Bit: A type of jingle bit. Synecdoche: An element of speech, or visual symbol, in which a part of something represents the whole object, or conversely the whole object stands in for one of its parts. Taxonomy: The practice of scientific classification. Therianthrope (Therianthropic): An image combining human and animal features. Thunderstick: Plains Indian term used to describe early firearms. Vision Quest (vision supplicant, medicine vision): A culturally structured vigil undertaken to acquire a guardian spirit. Plains vision quests usually involved fasting and sometimes self-torture for the supplicant. Sometimes referred to as “medicine visions.” Voyageur: French Canadian boatman employed by a fur trading company to transport goods between trading posts.

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INDEX

⤞⤝ 14RU3, 344 14RU304, 231, 289, 344, 403 14RU317, 143, 149 14RU5, 198 14SA304, 231, 289, 344, 403 24GL1661, 383 24GL67, 275 24GV191, 99, 225–26, 244, 248, 273, 281–82, 285, 352, 402, 414 24JT86, 253, 282, 363 24PR2317, 189 24PR2382, 227–28, 322 24RB1010, 281 24YL1358, 99, 310, 363 39FA58, 242 39FA79, 271, 290 39HN17, 344, 348 39HN209, 298 39HN210, 215, 344 39HN217, 109, 131, 151, 156, 180, 240, 358, 360, 402 39HN486, 208, 299–300, 350 39HN49, 140, 145, 148, 151, 218, 239, 254, 405 39HN745, 166, 184 39HN826, 316 39HN842, 298 48BH4275, 218 48HO9, 231 48LN18, 340 48PA3478, 242–43, 318 48SW83, 148 48WA2289, 352 5GF1339, 307, 421–24 5LA5563, 273 5LA5569, 273, 339 5LR293, 233–35 Acebuches (La Tinaja de Acebuches), 242–43, 314 action hand. See under capture hand

Addih-Hiddish, 268, 285 Afton, Jean, 44, 85n4 alphabetic. See under writing systems American Horse winter count, 73, 381 amulet, 20–22, 110, 118, 122, 130, 174, 190– 91, 207, 213–14, 226–29, 234. See also medicine animal, supernatural, 53–54, 110, 114, 125– 26, 166, 191–92, 318. See also thunder horse power shown by internal organs, 50, 128, 174 Arapaho, 30, 117, 197, 241, 424 Arikara, 25, 30, 118, 189, 317, 367, 395 honor marks, 178, 329, 388, 397–400 Arminto (48NA991), 198 armor. See also under horse effectiveness against weapons, 20, 117, 169, 266 human body armor, 20, 29–30, 88, 117, 136, 141–42, 168–72, 219, 224, 266, 363 poncho style, 169–71, 219 precludes use of quirt, 270 Spanish (metal), 252 arrow, 16, 40, 62–63, 75, 77, 83, 153, 244–46, 253, 258, 279, 282, 292, 306–7, 326, 333, 335, 338, 351, 363–64, 383, 393–94, 410, 418–20, 423 bundle atop lodge, 299 in creasing a horse, 208–09, 350–51 fletching, 282 held at the ready, 363–64 in hunting, 124 Atherton Canyon (24FR3), 22, 99, 132, 150, 153, 155, 156–58, 161–62, 189, 192, 246, 250, 261, 274–77, 279, 281–83, 285–86, 297, 302–4, 307–9, 345, 349, 352, 366, 368, 402 atlatl/dart, 9, 194, 252–53, 273, 282, 363 automobile, 293, 311–12 awl/awl case, 174, 190, 261

INDEX ♦ 465

Bad Heart Bull, Amos, 31, 378 Barstow Collection ledger drawings, 40, 87, 160, 191, 211, 376 bear, 9, 12, 110–11, 124–25, 154, 202, 247, 325, 382, 414 claw (amulet), 118, 227–28 cult, 8, 153, 173 dancer, 188 ears (headdress), 153, 174–75, 182, 187–88 eyes, 106, 118, 241 power, 118, 122, 125, 153, 173–75, 188, 191, 261 tracks/paws, 107, 153, 158, 236, 269, 281, 320, 324–25, 358–59 warrior, 153, 174–75 Bear-Coming-Out shield heraldry, 9, 324–25 Bear Gulch (24FR2), 15–16, 33, 73, 99, 131, 148, 155–58, 166, 173, 178, 189, 192, 194, 246, 251–52, 262, 264, 274, 276–78, 280–81, 284–85, 296–97, 300, 302, 310, 335–36, 340, 342, 345, 357, 363, 366, 368, 384, 390–92, 397 Bear Gulch style, 157, 368 beard, as ethnic indicator, 116, 129, 134–35, 143, 329 Benjamin Hill, 255, 282, 327n12 berdache (transgendered person), 131 Berlo, Janet, 35 Bierce, Ambrose, 123, 315 Bierce Arborglyph, 123, 273, 310, 314, 316, 318–19, 326, 359, 383 Big Nose robe, 81 Biographic Tradition, 2–3, 4, 9–26, 37n5, 44, 46, 50, 54, 92, 103, 111, 128–29, 174–75 in other media, 26–36 Bird Rattle, 311, 320, 326, 366, 415 bison, 1, 22, 37n1, 56, 110, 125, 168, 320 aggressive posture, 128, 131–32, 158, 276–77 horse mask, 233–35 hunting, 111, 124, 260 robe, 4, 26, 28–30, 33–36, 42, 91, 137, 159, 162–63, 192, 214, 216, 239, 242, 259, 286–89, 292, 325 scapula painted, 209–10 shaman, 9 Blackfeet, 39, 41–42, 81, 86, 192, 312 Blackfoot, 183, 215, 218, 222, 234, 406n16 Biographic art, 23–27, 29–32, 81, 99–100, 116–17, 124, 184–85, 192–93, 211–14, 230, 233, 239, 241, 242, 278, 280,

283–84, 288–89, 307, 311, 318, 325, 336–37, 344, 347, 349, 355, 367, 372, 382, 392–94, 396, 411 compared with other tribal art styles, 25, 99, 104–5, 197, 329, 351, 368, 377, 389– 91, 397, 399–400, 403, 405n9, 406n13, 406n14, 406n18 ethnographic work among, 41, 116, 327n10 honor mark vocabulary, 25, 65, 70–71, 89, 92, 95–97, 109, 121, 178–79, 189, 283–84, 329, 351–52, 365, 387, 399– 400, 402–3 portrayed as enemies, 120, 142, 237, 385 rock art at Writing-on-Stone, 98–99, 273, 283, 331, 344 blanket, 22, 136–37, 159–62 given away, 401 Hudson Bay, 361 point, 361 saddle blanket (see under horse tack) boat, 294, 311, 317–18, 320 boat paddle, 394–96 boat-form animal, 4, 6, 12, 112 horse, 112–14 Bodmer, Karl, 116, 155, 157, 174, 259, 264, 286, 300, 406n12 portrait of Addih-Hiddish, 267–68, 285 bow, 18, 23, 73, 94–95, 168, 170, 172, 222, 224, 244–46, 253, 258, 329, 354 as floating weapon, 11, 15, 32, 75, 82–84, 125, 127, 245, 323, 333–34 in tally, 11, 15, 68–69, 75, 77, 82–84, 103, 125, 245, 323, 336–37, 357, 418–21 in use, 63, 75, 269, 283, 326, 340, 351, 363–64, 371–72, 390, 410 bow-spear/bow-lance, 9, 16, 92–93, 153, 155, 157, 245, 256, 277–78, 280–81, 335–37, 357, 360, 363, 370 thunder-bow, 93, 277–78, 370, 374 Box Canyon (5LA8464), 154, 202, 221–22 bracelet/arm band, 10, 156–57 Brand Rock (24RB2455), 350 breastplate, hairpipe, 163–65 breasts (gender identifier), 16, 40, 50, 65, 129–31, 134–35, 310, 416 touching, 15, 59, 65, 392 (see also sexual capture) breastworks, 25, 97, 178, 306–7, 329, 387– 88, 395, 398–99, 421, 423–24. See also fortification breechclout, 138, 163, 164, 354, 363

466 ♦ INDEX

bridle bit decoration, 88, 122, 210–18, 217, 220–21, 224, 242–43, 366–67 cloth flag, 137, 211, 218, 309 double line, 213, 218 feathers, 213, 215, 237–38 Navajo tinkler, 184, 213, 216–18, 226 scalp, 171, 211–13, 283, 343, 367 Spanish chain bit, 106, 119, 121, 138, 154, 198, 202–3, 210–11, 213, 215–17, 221, 227, 234–35, 256 (see also lightning symbolism) a thing-to-tie-on-the-halter, 197, 213–14, 367, 372 bridle bit hardware, 22, 194, 206, 210–11, 218–20, 311, 354 Brownstone, Arni, 35, 38n12, 81, 356, 396 buffalo. See bison bugle/bugler, 139, 143, 291–92 building, 80, 290, 303–4, 319, 322, 327n15, 340, 380 mission church, 145, 293–94, 304–7 wooden, 184, 243, 293–94, 303–4, 309, 314, 326, 354 bullet, 191, 226. See also splat flying, 24, 34–35, 47, 56, 62, 64, 73, 75, 88–89, 92, 98, 107, 116, 119–20, 226, 255–56, 271–73, 320, 324–26, 331–33, 339, 354, 381, 385, 387, 407–10, 421–24 modern damage to rock art, 149 wound, 24, 73, 139, 292–93, 394 bundle, medicine, 10, 21–22, 162, 174, 190– 95, 244, 275, 281, 344, 357 animal, 125, 162–63, 167, 191–93 bird, 167, 184, 194, 369 displayed atop lodge, 299–300, 311 freestanding, 192–93 on shield tripod, 302 war bridle/horse medicine, 118, 122, 214 (see also bridle bit decoration: a thing-to-tie-on-the-halter) worn or carried, 162–63, 167, 184, 192–94, 369 bustle, feather, 8, 10, 287–88 dance bustle (regalia), 23, 87, 136, 158, 194, 342, 413, 415 on shield, 263, 275 Caballero Shelter (41VV343), 145–46, 186, 266, 290, 306 calling card (rock art as), 214, 237, 318, 355, 384–85 camp circle. See under tipi cannon, 258

Canyon Creek (24YL1203), 297, 340–41 Canyon Pintado, 199, 202, 204, 238, 254– 55, 350 cape, 137–38, 159, 162–63, 254 capture hand, 15–16, 24, 35, 42, 62, 65–66, 76, 93, 109, 125, 129–30, 134, 142, 178, 207, 244–45, 255, 329, 344–46, 349, 371, 387–94 action hand, 33, 230, 292–93, 336, 389, 392–94 capote, 137, 361 Castle Butte (24YL418), 63, 75, 120, 164, 244, 255, 282, 294, 302, 344, 414 Castle Canyon (41VV7), 186 Castle Gardens (48FR108), 162, 273, 277, 281–82, 373 Castle Park, 250 Catlin, George, 38n7, 42, 116, 155, 174, 235– 37, 286, 350, 383 cattle (oxen), in rock art, 110, 123, 209, 241–42, 314 Cayuse, 117, 403–4 ledger art, 117, 405n9 ceremonial lodge (in rock art), 160, 294, 300 Ceremonial Tradition, 4–10, 26, 36, 50, 53–55, 73, 102, 128–29, 131, 165, 173–74, 246, 373–74 contrast with Biographic Tradition, 11–12, 54–55, 384 Chaco Canyon, 112, 217, 313, 377 Cheval Bonnet (24GL1663), 142, 237, 322 Cheyenne, 21, 104, 159, 165, 194–95, 211, 218, 239, 277–78, 354, 358, 367, 377–78, 391, 424 Dog Soldiers, 44, 150, 292 ledger art, 30, 39, 41, 43–44, 53, 98–99, 140, 145, 146, 157, 164, 197, 210, 215–16, 218, 228, 231, 241–42, 259, 277, 283, 322, 327n5, 372, 380, 382, 405n9 robe art, 28, 214, 239 rock art, 54, 117, 125–26, 132, 150, 177–78, 239–40, 358, 360, 376, 378 church, Spanish mission, 145, 293–94, 304–07 Circle Rock (14RU10), 318, 238 claiming a horse. See horse capture clothing, 8, 10, 12, 14, 23, 26, 35, 48, 69, 71, 135, 136–38, 143–44, 148, 163, 178, 243, 281, 330, 348, 360, 370, 388, 394, 396–402, 416 belt, 10, 139–40, 143, 148–51, 190, 194, 261–62, 288, 416 capote, 361

INDEX ♦ 467

chief’s coat, 23, 136–38, 140–42, 162 coat, 138–40, 143, 147 gloves, 140, 142, 143, 147 jacket, 137–40, 146 leggings, 6, 8, 10, 23, 35, 51, 65, 136–39, 146–48, 286, 348, 395–96, 400–1 priest’s vestments, 139, 147, 186 shirt, 5, 10, 136, 143, 190 (see also war shirt) club, 9, 12, 15, 18, 20, 167, 169, 222, 244, 262–64, 280, 334 gunstock war club, 263–64, 268 pogamoggan, 89, 263–64 Coahuila (Mexico), 1, 112, 115, 138, 147, 149, 159, 186, 242, 253, 265, 314, 360 cock screw, 255, 442 coffin, 184, 304, 309 Coffin Bridge (DgOx-15), 37n3 Columbia Plateau rock art tradition, 3 tribes, 234, 273, 403–4 Comanche, 30, 117, 145, 159, 165, 218, 234, 250–51, 260, 278, 338–39, 350, 352–53, 377, 383, 405n1, 405n9 Yellow Wolf, 251 communal event, 33, 82, 385–86 Conant Springs, 204–5, 221–22, 305–6, 327n15 concho/hairplate, 83, 150, 158–60, 164, 199, 210–11, 220, 227, 230–32 Conner, Stuart, 43, 45, 63, 413 connotation, 2, 37n2, 43, 47–48, 87, 272, 328, 356, 367 context of images, 47–49, 80, 83, 86–87, 90–93, 97–98, 124, 178, 320–21, 326, 328, 331, 355–56, 359, 369 convention, 11, 15, 20–21, 24, 33, 35–36, 37n2, 38n11, 43–50, 53, 56, 63–65, 67–69, 75–76, 78, 82–84, 87, 89, 94–96, 98, 101, 106–7, 117–21, 131, 165, 172, 181, 207–8, 221, 223, 226, 231, 233–37, 241, 247, 255, 289, 283, 290, 293, 309, 313, 316, 319, 322, 326, 327n13, 328, 330–34, 336, 341, 343–345, 350, 363, 373, 377, 379–80, 392, 408, 410, 424. See also synecdoche coscojos, 215–17, 235, 378 coup count, 11–16, 14, 37n5, 18, 24, 32–33, 48, 61, 63–64, 66–68, 74–78, 88–95, 104, 108–9, 119, 127, 134, 151, 245–46, 248–49, 258–59, 269–71, 277, 283, 289, 292, 297–98, 309, 319, 322–23, 325, 331, 333–35, 356, 358, 364, 367, 369,

371, 401–4, 410. See also capture hand; tally on animal, 12, 111, 124–25 early recognition of, 43 horse capture, 336, 345–54 rescuing a comrade in battle, 124, 370–72 ride-by, 21, 35, 322–23 striking enemy structure, 142, 170, 340–41 trampling (riding down) an enemy, 14, 18, 21, 92, 109, 212, 240, 241, 342–44, 367, 402 weapon capture, 63, 335–36, 344–45 in winter counts, 34–35 on women, 14–16, 65, 106, 130–31, 186, 336, 357, 392, 411 coup mark/honor mark, 24–25, 49, 96–97, 178–81, 351–52, 387–88, 395–99 blanket given away, 401 coup-strike indicated by X, 181, 396–97 coup stripes, 395–96, 413, 417 fought behind breastwork, 25, 178, 329, 387–88, 395, 398–99 horse given away, 90–91, 93, 103, 120, 128, 179, 271–72, 351–52, 388, 400–401 lines over head, 398 painted on horse, 240–41 picket pin, 70–71, 96–97, 229–30, 351, 393–94, 402–3 picket rope, 93, 97, 180, 230, 296, 336, 346–47, 351, 389, 392–94, 403 picketed horse, 347 scalps taken, 103, 178–81, 282–86, 356– 57, 396, 401 scout service, 178–79, 387–88, 399–400 stolen horse, 24–25, 97, 229, 346, 351– 52, 402 war party leader, 288, 400, 403 war party stripes, 103, 178 wound mark, 25, 179, 330–31, 394–95 (see also wound) wounded horse, 179, 191, 394–95 coupstick, 23, 56, 69, 75, 78, 83, 107, 204, 244, 246, 269–70, 281–83, 334, 337, 354, 357, 420 coup-strike weapon, 11, 15, 24, 32–33, 35, 43, 83, 90, 95, 127, 245, 323, 333–35, 356, 369 cowboy, in Biographic art, 140, 186–87, 209–10 Cowhead Mesa (41GR414), 303 Craig Sandrocks (5MF4306), 151, 154, 226– 27, 257

468 ♦ INDEX

Crazy Dogs (Crow military society), 417 Crazy Horse, 125–26, 241, 375–76 Crazy Horse site (24BH658), 125–26, 241, 355, 375–76, 415 creasing a horse, 346, 350–51. See also horse capture cross sticks, 259–60 Crossfield Coulee (EiPl-19), 337, 344, 357 Crow, 18, 21, 118, 131, 153, 172–73, 325, 369–70 art style, 104–5, 117–18, 189, 195–97, 229–30, 231, 241, 284, 320, 329, 342, 377–79, 387–90, 397–98 enemies of other tribes, 163, 228, 237, 241, 382 honor mark vocabulary, 25, 49, 97, 178, 180–81, 340, 351, 389–403 horse bonnet, 224, 235–38 horse tack, 202, 205, 215–16, 222, 229–31, 241 interpretation of rock art, 53, 58, 286–87, 360, 367, 373, 411–18 ledger drawings, 30, 40, 43, 110, 154, 156, 191, 201, 210–11, 231, 241, 309, 376 “love medicine,” 125 masculinity reflected in horses, 21–22, 132 masculinity reflected in long hair, 21–22, 38n9, 118, 189 robe art, 29, 130, 162, 266, 280, 344, 395 rock art, 59, 74, 99–100, 103, 109, 119, 125, 134, 139–40, 142, 150, 158–59, 162, 164, 174, 178, 180–81, 189, 202, 205, 224, 227, 233, 237, 248, 255, 266–71, 281–82, 284, 287, 301, 324, 338, 352, 355, 377–78, 385, 394, 396, 411–18 Crow belt (dance bustle), 158 Crow feathers, 170, 172, 223, 232, 236–37, 247, 329 curb bit, 210–11, 218–20 Custer battle, 125–26, 241, 291 Custer site (24YL600), 364 cutting a horse. See horse capture Daly (48CA58), 192 Deadmond robe, 289, 391 Deer Medicine Rock (24RB401), 6, 302 Dempsy, James, 35 Denig, Edwin, 22, 38n9, 40–41, 84n1, 87 DeSmet, Fr. Pierre-Jean, 36, 136, 259 Dewdney, Selwin, 43, 112, 114 DgOv-2, 155, 184, 229, 242–43, 264, 278, 280, 303–4, 309, 311, 344, 347–49, 362–63, 366, 415

DgOv-3, 273 DgOv-9, 192, 366 DgOv-42, 355 DgOv-43, 57, 322 DgOv-45, 348 DgOv-60, 344, 352 DgOv-63, 199, 240 DgOv-74, 316 DgOv-78, 316 DgOv-80, 347 DgOv-81, 297, 307, 316, 344, 359, 385 DgOv-83, 14–15, 208 DgOv-85, 275 DgOv-130, 229, 347, 350 DgOw-9, 257, 280, 355 DgOw-19, 349, 383–85 DgOw-20, 185, 292, 307, 322 DgOw-21, 350 DgOw-27, 121, 178, 229, 350–51, 367, 402–3 DgOw-29, 51, 89, 264, 289, 344, 403 DgOw-31, 261, 282 DgOw-32, 207, 212, 218, 229, 245, 264, 283, 298, 307, 326, 344–45, 347, 349–50, 371–72, 391 DgOw-38, 95, 331, 334 DgOw-41, 344 DgOw-51, 355 Dinwoody tradition, 3, 36 disease in art, 33, 53–54, 373, 386 as cultural change agent, 17, 391 disheveled hair, 129–30, 134–35, 187–88, 229 dog, 18, 110–11, 125, 316, 320, 373 Dog Soldier, 150, 292 ledger book, 44, 143 Dorward Ranch (41GR51), 242–43, 273, 303, 314, 326, 383 dress, woman’s, 23, 58, 78–79, 130, 136–37, 148–52, 162, 229, 411–17 Eagle Creek (24CH757), 99–100, 201, 205, 231, 355 earrings, 173 El Caido (Coahuila, Mexico), 138, 149, 159, 163, 165, 207, 212, 220, 254–56, 266, 275–76, 281–82, 371 elk, 6, 8, 54, 59, 81, 110, 125, 154, 177, 188, 378, 412–16 antlers used as tools, 18, 271–72 bugling, 7, 52, 132, 373–74 love medicine, 7, 125, 132 name glyph, Elk (Yellowstone) River, 123, 127, 326, 359–60

INDEX ♦ 469

spirit helper, 125, 166, 177–78, 184 (see also elk dancer; elk dreamer) teeth as decoration, 78–79, 137, 148–51, 158, 173, 190, 417 elk dancer, 53 elk dreamer, 53–54, 125, 166–67, 177–78, 184, 194, 374 Elk Dreamer site (24RB275), 53, 166, 177– 78, 184, 294, 373, 376 Ellison’s Rock (24RB1019), 82–84, 159, 246, 357 escopeta, 256–57 Estradiota (Spanish)-style saddle, 198–201, 224, 235 estribos de cruz/cruciform stirrup, 22, 200, 205–6 ethnic marker, 69, 134, 143, 152, 154, 184– 86, 189–90, 204, 237, 241, 290, 329, 389, 398 Ewers, John, 35, 39, 42, 84n1, 84n3, 116, 206, 209, 238, 327n10, 380 Explorers Petroglyph (24ML402), 184–85, 318, 352 factor. See under fur trade feathers in hair, 183 female. See woman ferrules, 23, 130, 226, 245, 255, 257, 258, 282 cloth decorated, 23, 166, 254–55, 280, 282 fertility, indicators of, 21, 132, 301 firearms, 9, 20, 23–24, 28, 88, 101, 168–69, 222, 225, 253–61, 282, 292, 350 caplock, 253, 256–57 double barreled gun, 253, 257 flintlock, 63, 75, 77–78, 88, 102, 130, 166, 226, 253–58, 260, 272, 280, 282, 387, 424 (see also flintlock details) pistol, 138–39, 253–55, 282, 293, 330, 405 repeating rifle, 102, 253, 256–57 Five Crows, 120, 136, 214 ledger, 31, 120, 284–85 flag, 123, 184, 309–10 bridle decoration, 211, 218, 226 on tipi, 294, 310 on weapon, 10, 23, 246–48, 278, 281–82 flagstaff/flagpole, 123, 184, 291, 337 Flathead, 29–31, 120, 344, 405n9 flintlock details, 40, 254–55, 257 cock, 255, 257 cock screw, 255 escopeta, 256–57

frizzen, 256–57 jaw screw, 256–57 miquelet lock, 256–57 floating weapon, 13–15, 24, 32, 35, 43, 62, 64–65, 67, 76, 83–84, 88–89, 94–95, 98, 101, 108, 119–20, 142, 245, 248–49, 264, 266, 269, 271, 323, 328, 333–37, 342, 344–45, 392, 408–10, 418–20, 424 fly whisk, 287 footprints, 58, 62–69, 74–77, 82–84, 91–92, 98–99, 119–21, 123, 141, 245, 269, 293, 308–9, 319–22, 337–38, 371, 384–85, 395, 399–400, 405n4, 407–11, 421–23. See also tracks Fort Marion warrior artists, 1, 30, 36, 39, 43, 86, 317, 380 Fort Saint Vrain, 143, 292 fortification, 14, 60, 88, 95, 99, 107, 185, 294, 297, 306–9, 329, 362, 421–24. See also breastworks Four Dance Cliff (24YL559), 162, 280 Fowles, Severin, 37n5, 209, 383, 405n1 frizzen. See under flintlock details fur trade, 17, 140, 195, 304, 361 factor, 30, 40 fusillade of fire, 16, 24, 56, 101, 226, 245, 256, 273, 324–25, 330, 332–33, 370 gallows, 243, 309, 310 garters, 10, 157–58 anklets, 157 knee pendants, 136, 148, 157–58 Gateway (48LN348), 13, 282 genitalia, 4, 15, 58–59, 65, 129, 131, 391–92, 416 geometric designs, 4–5, 71, 96–97, 192, 283, 398, 418 as robe art design, 286–87 as shield heraldry, 9, 274 geometric perspective in Western art, 49, 55 German silver, 22, 156, 158, 165, 210, 227 Goffena (24ML408), 212, 285 Goodbar Cave (LA190489), 210, 230, 359 grammar, 46, 67, 101 Green River, 112, 418 Greene, Candace, 35, 98–99 Grinnell, George Bird, 1, 18, 354 Grinnvoll (24JT401), 38n8, 132 Gros Ventres (A’ani’nin), 29–30, 78, 117, 222, 368, 396, 399–400, 405n9 gun worm, 88, 258–59 Gyp Spring (48BH3987), 273, 371

470 ♦ INDEX

hairstyle bear’s ears, 153, 174–75, 182, 187–88 as ethnic marker, 189–90, 329 extensions, 38n9, 119, 187–89 indicating gender (disheveled), 129–30, 134–36, 187–88, 229 long hair, 38n9, 53, 118–19, 139, 146, 154, 187–90 mullet, 187, 189 roach, 187–88, 190, 194 scalp lock, 83, 135–36, 158–59, 187–88, 190, 284–85 handprint, 27, 109, 180, 238, 240, 343, 401–2 battle hand, 401–402 on horse marking trampling coup, 109, 240 hand-to-hand combat, 13–14, 61, 63, 75, 77–78, 248–49, 255, 264, 335, 344–45, 410 hat, 73, 123, 135–37, 139–40, 184–87, 204, 209, 290, 306, 318 military campaign hat/helmet, 73, 139– 40, 142–47, 292 scotch cap, 185–86 top hat, 135, 182, 185–86 head/bust, indicating defeated enemy, 64, 74, 88, 135, 369 headdress, 5–6, 8, 10, 23, 78, 105–6, 121, 135, 153, 166, 174, 181–88, 194, 204, 254, 256, 287, 327n7, 344, 363, 413 antelope horn, 121, 182–83 bear’s ears (headdress), 153, 174–75 bison horn, 78, 105, 182–83, 234 as ethnic marker, 189–90, 243, 360 feather trailer, 182–83, 372 horse bonnet (see horse tack: bonnet) war bonnet, 23, 74, 137, 182–83 wolf hat, 49, 182–83, 263, 367–68, 400 headless human, 283, 331, 410 heartline, 128, 174 animal, 4, 50 human, 4, 50–51, 165 hero. See protagonist hetanehao (Cheyenne man power symbol), 54, 177, 194–95 Hidatsa, 25, 29–30, 118, 178, 180, 189, 215, 235, 241, 268, 285, 298–300, 329, 351, 367, 377, 388–90, 395–99, 403, 405n9– 11, 406n13 ledger drawing, 41, 234 transfer Grass Dance to Crows, 59, 164, 189, 360, 367, 411–16

hips, 16, 65, 129, 134, 310 Historic period, 4, 7, 9–10, 15, 18, 22, 24, 26, 64, 88–89, 94, 97, 145, 150, 153, 156, 159, 165, 169, 188–89, 219, 225, 229, 237–39, 244, 246, 255, 262–64, 274–75, 278–79, 282, 286, 309, 326, 343, 413–14 hoofprint (horse), 24, 47, 55, 58, 64, 66–68, 77, 80, 83–84, 91–92, 98, 112, 119–21, 130, 141, 180–81, 205, 209, 230, 245, 269, 298, 316–17, 319–22, 324, 337–38, 344, 348, 351–352, 363, 383, 394–95, 399–400, 402–4, 408, 411, 420, 423–24 squared, 24, 27, 91–92, 121, 323, 351, 394, 402–4, 406n17 tradition, 3, 397–98 ungulate, 132 Hope-style saddle, 198–99 Horned Headgear (24ML508), 202, 294, 338 horse, 29, 40–41, 44, 52, 69, 80, 87, 93, 96, 100, 102–3, 109, 111–22, 137–39, 143, 154, 156, 159, 169, 184, 298–99, 305, 328, 340, 370–72, 375–80, 397, 400–401 armor, 20, 22, 29–30, 99, 115, 117, 121, 168–72, 196, 198–99, 201–3, 214, 222– 26, 248, 266, 285, 310, 371 Biographic art painted on, 26–27 Blackfoot style, 197, 318, 329 boat-form, 113 Crow style, 197, 329, 342 as draft animal, 184, 242–43, 303–4, 309, 313–16, 318 influence on Plains Indian art, 18–24, 54–56, 67 introduction onto Plains, 11, 14, 17–19 Ledger style, 114, 117–18, 133 Mature style, 112–14, 116, 156 medicine, 122, 126, 212, 214, 327n3, 355, 375 name glyph, 359 non-Indian horse, 210, 306, 354 penis, 21–22, 21, 38n8, 118, 129, 131–32 racing, 228, 380, 385–86 shorthand, 112–13, 141 symbols for, 25, 396, 402 in warfare, 57–58, 60, 74–77, 83–84, 90, 92, 98–99, 106, 108, 117–21, 124–25, 170, 177, 180–81, 185–86, 199, 212, 225–26, 244, 262–64, 272, 295–96, 307–9, 342– 44, 362, 407–10, 420–24 in winter counts, 33, 340, 381 wound, 179, 191, 292, 322–24, 326, 330– 31, 356, 394–95

INDEX ♦ 471

horse capture (stealing, claiming, creasing, cutting), 34, 48, 70–71, 80, 96–97, 103, 177–79, 208–9, 230, 261, 333, 336, 345– 57, 363, 383–85, 389–92, 394, 402–3 wild horses, 208–9, 327n8, 350–51, 383, 402 Horse Capture, George, 18, 35 horse tack, 48, 62, 88, 98, 106, 108, 114, 118, 137, 160, 180, 195–243 amulet, 20–22, 118, 122, 130, 191, 207, 213–14, 226–29, 234 armor (see armor; horse: armor) bonnet, 217, 234–38 brand, 23, 80, 195, 198–200, 204, 210, 213, 236, 238–41, 310, 356 bridle (see bridle bit decoration) collar and harness, 118, 242–43, 318, 354 decorated bit, 23, 88, 171, 202, 211–21, 224, 226–27, 231, 237, 242–43, 283, 343, 366–67 feathers tied in tail, 88, 122, 213, 228, 232 forelock decoration, 23, 122, 138, 171, 211, 213, 217, 220, 224, 228, 234 headstall, 22, 118, 200, 206, 210–11, 218– 21, 227, 231, 256 keyhole face ornament, 106, 119, 122, 154, 202–3, 205, 211, 213, 217, 220–22, 228, 230, 256 mask, 118, 122, 200, 202, 217, 220, 227, 233–36 mochila, 201–3, 205 necktie, 122, 137, 180, 220, 228–30 pack/saddlebag, 203–4 paint (see paint: horse) rein, 21–23, 106, 118–19, 154, 169, 197–98, 202–7, 210, 213, 215, 216, 218–21, 224, 226–27, 235, 243, 256, 270, 276, 346, 349–50, 354, 371, 377, 379–80, 390 saddle, 22–23, 56, 118, 195, 198–205, 224, 235, 243, 316–17, 354 (see also Estradiota-style saddle; Hope-style saddle; McClellan saddle; Mexican saddle; pad saddle) saddle blanket, 22, 118, 137, 159, 195, 199–203, 241, 354 saddle blanket, bilobed style, 200–2 split/notched ears, 21, 23, 117–18, 122, 156, 197–98, 202, 213, 227–28, 233–34, 327n10, 366 stirrup, 22, 184, 195, 198–200, 202, 204–6, 354 stirrup hood (tapadero), 198–200, 204, 354

tacked up, 195–96, 256, 290, 354–55, 385, 403 tail tied up/bobbed, 22, 118, 122, 198, 231–32, 366 Hot Dance, 58–59, 99, 148, 156, 158, 172–74, 189, 360, 370, 385, 395, 411–18 Hot Dancer, 148, 151, 154, 156–58, 164, 172, 257, 270, 367, 411–17 Howard, James H., 35 Howling Wolf, 30, 80, 373, 380 ledger drawings, 240, 380 Huddleston Shelter (41GR344), 186 Hudson’s Bay Company, 162, 202, 291, 361 human figure, in early Biographic style compositions, 11–16, 23, 50–52, 104, 245, 281 hourglass/wineglass, 23, 51, 103–4, 108, 161, 318, 329, 337 invisible (see implied actor) rectangular body, 4, 9, 12, 23, 28, 50–51, 103–5, 153, 418, 442 shield-bearing warrior, 4, 9, 12–16, 36, 50–51, 55, 66, 99, 148, 150, 152–53, 155–57, 166–68, 171, 173, 180, 183, 188, 192–94, 225–26, 245, 248- 49, 251–54, 258, 263–64, 273–79, 281–82, 285, 287, 296, 323, 334, 336, 338, 360, 364, 366, 368, 374, 384, 397, 400, 423–24 stick figure, 4, 9, 12, 103, 112, 113, 226–27, 342, 371, 390, 423 V-neck, 4, 6, 9, 12–16, 23, 28, 36, 50–51, 103–4, 157, 161, 165, 173 hunting/ hunting scene, 48, 98, 109–11, 124, 212, 214, 233, 246, 259–60, 298, 367, 377, 385 in winter counts, 33 hunting camp raided by war party, 407–11 Hussie Miers (41VV327), 143, 145, 159, 233, 235, 248, 279, 282, 377 iconic composition, 4–5, 11, 70, 73, 355, 358, 442 ideogram, 24–25, 41–42, 49, 96–97, 109, 178, 329, 352, 368, 386–87, 392, 394, 443 horse raid, 70–71, 97, 112, 121, 229, 346, 351, 403 idiographic. See under writing system implied action, 90, 92, 105, 120, 349, 356 implied actor (unseen), 67–68, 90, 94–95, 103–6, 108, 109, 319, 321, 337, 349, 354, 385, 393 Indian Hill (14EW1), 318 Indian Map (41TE330), 381–82, 384

472 ♦ INDEX

James, Edwin, 40 jaw screw. See cock screw jingle bit, 22, 215–18, 378, 380, 443, 445 Joliet (24CB402), 58, 99, 125, 131, 139–40, 146–48, 150, 151, 154, 156, 158, 162–64, 172–74, 180, 189, 196, 199, 204, 210, 218, 219, 227–31, 233, 238, 240–41, 244, 254, 256, 270, 286, 287, 342, 347, 361, 363, 364, 367, 370–71, 373, 376–77, 385, 395, 397, 403, 411–15, 418 Jordan, Michael, 36, 143, 145, 360 Katzenmeier (14EW401), 281, 342 kidneys, 4, 50, 128 animal, 50, 129, 165 human, 50–51, 129, 165, 174 Kiowa, 30, 32, 86, 145, 159, 165, 197, 259, 278, 380–81, 405n9 Klassen, Michael, 5, 6, 11, 12, 355 knife, 150, 153, 168, 173, 180, 190, 224–25, 238, 240, 261–62, 264, 277, 279–80, 286, 292, 334, 393–94, 445 cutting horse, 93, 230, 333, 336, 389, 392, 393–394 DAG/stabber, 180, 230, 240, 264 sheath, 173, 190, 261–62 wound, 292, 394 Kurz, Rudolph Friederich, 52, 116, 174, 286 Kutenai, 214, 384–85 La Barge Bluffs (48LN1640), 78, 131, 138, 142, 148, 151, 154, 159, 163–64, 172, 186, 190, 199, 202, 204, 218, 233, 254, 257, 261–62, 264, 270, 273, 282, 300–1, 312, 326, 347, 352, 354, 355, 359, 364, 370, 371, 383, 385 La Vista Verde (LA75747), 208, 218, 259, 302, 350–52, 383, 402 Lakota. See Sioux landscape features, 43, 80–81, 296, 303, 380–84, 402 ground line, 61, 80, 123, 296, 300, 303–4, 316, 362, 381, 384–85 mountains, 349, 381–82, 384–85 rivers, 123, 127, 326, 357–60, 380–83 trees, 80, 303, 324, 381–85 lariat/lasso, 208–9, 349–51, 383, 443 Late Prehistoric period, 4, 10–11, 13, 15, 17, 28, 153, 155–56, 165, 244, 253, 273–74, 279, 373, 388, 414, 443 ledger art, 4, 10, 26, 30–36, 39–41, 43–45, 52, 56, 60, 64, 78, 80, 82, 86, 87, 92–93, 95, 98–99, 101n1, 105, 109, 111, 112,

115–16, 120, 126–27, 131, 134, 137, 140, 142–43, 145–46, 149, 152, 154–58, 160, 163–66, 172–76, 178–79, 186, 188, 189– 91, 194, 197, 201, 203–4, 208–12, 215–19, 221, 226–28, 231, 233–34, 238–42, 244, 250–51, 258–60, 263, 265–66, 268, 270–72, 275–77, 281, 283–86, 290–93, 300–3, 307, 309, 312–13, 319–20, 322, 324, 330–31, 333–34, 340, 342–44, 346, 355, 358–59, 361, 363, 366–68, 370, 372–76, 378–80, 386, 389–90, 394–95, 397–402, 411, 413. See also under style War Books, 1, 26, 30, 33, 44, 45, 82, 143, 146 leggings, 5, 8, 10, 23, 35, 51, 65, 136–39, 146–48, 286, 348, 395–96, 400–1 Lewis and Clark Expedition, 185, 201, 222, 225, 317–18 lexicon, Biographic art/warrior art, 24, 26, 32, 33, 38n11, 41–44, 47, 86–88, 94, 97, 329, 333, 381, 388, 389, 411, 418 lightning symbolism, 7, 118, 125–26, 234, 282, 374–75, 380 body paint, 54, 177, 376 chain bit, 221, 377–79 horse paint, 21, 122, 126, 213, 241, 327n3, 355, 375–76, 377, 379 quirt, 118, 270–71, 377–78, 379 rein, 106, 118, 119, 169, 202, 203, 207, 213, 216, 221, 227, 235, 256, 377 Little Boxelder Cave (48CO287), 125, 334, 390 Lodge, 294, 296–97, 300, 302, 310, 317, 340, 362. See also tipi ceremonial, 160, 294, 300 eagle trapping, 294, 298–300 menstrual, 294, 301 sun dance, 301 sweat, 195, 294, 301 war, 293–94, 296, 297–98, 306, 310, 340– 41, 349–50 Loendorf, Lawrence, 183, 290, 301, 413 logogram, 49, 443 logographic. See under writing system long hair, 22, 38n9, 53, 118–19, 139, 144, 146, 154, 159, 187, 188–90, 340 Lucerne (48SW82), 246, 249, 334, 363, 401, 418–21 mace, 18, 20, 73, 95, 263, 264, 280, 334, 355 Mallery, Garrick, 40, 41–42, 189, 209, 361, 405n4, 405n10

INDEX ♦ 473

Mandan, 1, 25, 29, 30, 32, 76–77, 116, 118, 180, 216, 234, 268, 298–300, 329, 351, 367, 388, 389, 395–99, 406n13 Manuel Lisa (24YL82), 156, 233, 318, 324, 369 masculinity, indicators of, 18, 21–22, 77, 96, 118, 131–32, 177, 194, 365 mask, 166–67, 184, 194 Mato-tope, 29, 118, 202, 234, 235–37, 241, 406n12 Mature-style animal, 103, 114–18, 124, 156, 233, 270 Maurer, Evan, 35, 38n12 Maximilian, Alexander Phillip, Prince, 400 McCleary, Timothy, 125, 147, 164, 238, 239, 286, 359, 360, 406n15, 413–15, 417 McClellan saddle, 102, 198–200, 204 McKee Spring, 164–65, 172 McLaughlin, Castle, 35, 47, 376 medicine. See spirit power Medicine Crow, 110, 122, 191, 194, 313, 317, 394 metal weapons, 11, 13, 15–18, 23, 26, 61, 76, 83, 141, 150, 153, 169, 199, 224–25, 244–46, 248, 252, 255, 261, 263, 266–67, 277–80, 286, 393, 444, 445. See also knife; projectile point; sword; tomahawk Métis, 123, 311, 316, 443, 445 Mexican saddle, 198, 200–1 Meyers Spring (41TE9), 147, 186, 306 military, 2, 7, 92, 98, 129, 134, 166, 185, 186, 201, 204, 250, 303–4, 314, 315, 317 insignia, 290–91, 309 Mexican, 143–45, 198, 200–201, 265–66 Spanish, 22, 140, 147, 187, 198, 200–1, 203, 205, 215, 224, 252, 256, 290 US, 22, 30, 32, 73, 92, 116, 139–40, 143, 146, 199–201, 229, 238, 258, 265, 291– 92, 309, 322, 333, 354 military society (tribal), 53, 78, 93, 155, 162, 240, 247, 277, 287, 360, 369–70, 373–74, 377–78, 421 military uniform, 116, 136–38, 139–40, 142– 48, 186, 290 striped pants cut down for leggings, 139, 145–46, 148 Miller, Alfred Jacob, 116 miquelet lock, 256–57, 443 misidentification of image, 31, 32, 38n7, 88–89, 95, 101n2, 241, 275, 277, 333, 405n4 Missionary Shelter (41VV205), 246, 306

Missouri River, 29, 99, 268, 304, 382 Missouri war axe, 66, 76, 88, 149, 170, 171, 212, 266–68, 285 moccasin, 13, 23, 136, 152–54 Bear Paw, 150, 152–53, 173–75, 188 Pawnee, 152–54, 190, 202, 227, 329 moccasin tail, 13, 152, 154–56, 348, 367 Mujares Creek site, 245, 278, 280, 282, 337, 344 mule, 111, 117, 199, 204, 210, 354 muslin, painted, 26, 29, 35, 121, 402 Musselshell River, 118, 178, 180, 210, 219, 226, 229, 268, 338, 359, 397 Musselshell site (24ML1049), 118, 149, 241, 342, 414 muzzle blast, 24, 35, 73, 75, 101, 120, 127, 258, 272, 329, 339, 364, 387, 423 name glyph, 38n11, 39, 41, 43, 44, 52, 56, 73, 106, 123, 125–27, 144, 151, 248, 293, 299, 312, 331, 334, 340, 357–60, 373– 74, 376, 381–82, 389, 405n4, 444 Names Hill (48LN39), 163, 257, 294, 340 narrative content, 68–69, 71, 88–89, 96, 127, 416 explicit, 11, 33, 64, 67–69, 71–72, 75, 82–84, 285, 340, 344–45, 392, 407–11, 418–21 implied, 33, 64–67, 68, 69–70, 71–73, 75, 84, 93, 103, 207 inferred, 33, 67, 68, 70–71, 72, 355, 386 tally as, 11, 14–16, 24, 64, 74, 75, 77–78, 82–84, 144, 180–81, 289, 322–23, 358, 418–421 narrative structure, 33, 49, 71–72, 78, 82, 444 continuous, 62–64, 72, 80–81 cyclical, 72, 78–80, 135, 327n4 monoscenic, 67, 72–74 progressive, 66, 72, 76–78, 84 serial, 72, 81–82 simultaneous, 63, 72, 74–75, 83–84, 94, 362 natural features, incorporated into rock art, 327n8, 373, 384 Navajo, 177, 184, 190, 196, 201–3, 212–13, 215–18, 226, 329, 359, 377 necklace, 136, 165–66, 172–73, 262 Nez Perce, 30, 117, 234, 324, 404 No Bear (24GL1717), 192, 194, 253, 282, 288, 342, 366 No Water (48WA2066), 189, 221, 248, 256, 273, 284, 287–88, 301, 312, 326, 363

474 ♦ INDEX

Nordstrom-Bowen (24YL419), 171–72, 245, 266–67, 271, 280, 284–86, 337, 344, 396, 401, 414 off-stage action. See implied action actor (see implied actor) Omaha, 40, 188 organs, internal, 4, 7, 50, 52, 127–29, 165, 174, 373 Osage, 188, 327n5 otter skin wrap, 23, 138, 231, 246–47, 267– 68, 278, 280, 420 overkill, 332–34 pad saddle (apishamore), 198, 202 paint body, 5, 20, 21, 22, 54, 128, 174–76, 177, 178, 188–89, 191, 194, 330, 375–76, 388, 395, 398–99, 401–2, 415 face, 5, 148, 153, 174–76, 177, 189, 413, 416–17 horse, 18, 23, 26–27, 55, 59, 106, 109, 118, 122, 170–72, 178, 180, 191, 202, 213, 223–24, 228, 230, 238–41, 327n3, 330, 342–43, 355, 356, 366, 375–77, 379, 396–97, 401–2, 403 Parsons, Mark, 36, 44, 45 partisan, 89, 288–89, 344, 357, 403, 444 partizan (partizan blade), 250–51, 444 path, of projectile, 24, 256, 320, 326, 331– 33, 424 Pawnee, 29, 117, 127, 152–54, 188, 190, 202, 227, 329, 367, 381, 403, 405n9 peace medal, 164–65, 444 pectoral, 164–66, 443 penis, 131–32 animal, 21, 38n8, 131–32 human, 50, 51, 58, 61–62, 77, 129, 131, 134, 135, 173, 405, 416–17 penis sheath (prepuce), 22, 77, 118, 129, 131–32 pipe, 96, 138, 140, 145, 186, 205, 244, 266– 68, 288–90, 306, 336, 342 pipe carrier, 89, 94, 96, 288–89, 344, 357, 400, 403. See also partisan Peopeo T’olikt, 324–25 perspective, 42–3, 49, 85n5, 221, 292, 296, 362, 417 bird’s eye/aerial view, 50, 57–58, 60, 83, 177, 296–97, 309, 363, 381 expanded space/empty center, 50, 62–64, 332, 410 flattened, 60

hierarchical, 50, 61, 85n5 stacked, 50, 56–57, 61, 94, 139, 362, 384 twisted, 43, 50, 54–55, 60, 82, 85n5 X-ray, 8, 42, 50–52, 107, 128–29, 131, 165, 173, 174, 222, 246, 292, 312, 373 Petersen, Karen D., 36, 39, 43–44, 85n4, 86, 143, 244, 327n5 phonetic. See under writing system pictogram, 42, 96, 178, 357, 387–88, 392, 444 Pictograph Cave (24YL1), 283–84, 307, 359–60, 364 Picture Canyon (5BA12), 54 picture writing, 2, 17, 26, 39, 41, 43, 45–48, 87, 96, 386–87 pidgin language, 46, 444 Pine Canyon (48SW309), 344 Pinnacle Rocks (48NO231), 155, 278, 360, 374 Plains warfare, 18, 22, 75, 222, 244, 322, 336, 410 early period, 37n6, 117, 168, 171, 199, 262 Indian Wars, 1, 30, 135, 143, 146–47, 165, 199, 265, 271, 292, 316, 354 Plenty Coups (Crow warrior), 40, 417 pogamoggan, 89, 263–64 Point, Fr. Nicholas, 317 polearm, 198, 244, 250, 267, 444 Porcupine Lookout (24RB563), 347 posture of combatant, 13, 67, 73, 75, 84, 87, 89, 94–95, 106, 164, 224, 328, 341–42, 344, 408, 410 powder horn, 142, 260–61, 336, 357 Powder Wash (48SW9532, 48SW16695, 48SW9438), 351 projectile point, metal, 13, 15–17, 23, 61, 83, 141, 169, 199, 224, 225, 245, 246, 248, 252, 277–80, 286, 444 protagonist, 15, 23, 24, 34, 61, 63, 65–67, 68, 69–70, 75, 76, 77–78, 83–84, 90, 92, 94, 95, 98, 106, 108–9, 119–20, 124, 185, 204, 207, 248, 289, 319, 322, 324, 330, 332–33, 334, 335, 372, 378, 421 Protohistoric period, 9, 10, 13, 15, 16, 28, 169, 199, 224, 226, 266, 278, 287, 444 Purgatoire River (Picketwire Canyonlands), 112, 154, 184, 238, 240, 339 quillon, 246, 248, 252, 265–66, 279, 442, 445 quirt, 14, 21–24, 26, 35, 65, 75, 83–84, 88, 90–91, 93, 103, 118, 120–21, 138, 179, 211, 244, 270–72, 296, 316, 328, 334, 337, 344, 350, 351–52, 356, 357, 367,

INDEX ♦ 475

377–80, 396, 400–1, 420–21, 445. See also coup mark: horse given away; lightning symbolism: quirt in tally, 103, 179, 337, 357, 420–21 quiver, 73, 84, 95, 127, 246, 334, 336, 363, 366, 418, 420–21 Radonski Rock (24CT1360), 371 railroad/train, 78–79, 293, 311, 312–13, 326, 359, 380, 385 ramrod, 23, 88, 130, 226, 254–55, 258–59, 282, 442 Razor Creek (24YL578), 236 Red Canyon (48FR2506, 48FR2508, 48FR2509), 12, 125, 158, 273, 278, 281, 344, 391 Red Cloud, 357, 38n11 Red Cloud census, 38n11 Red Dog ledger, 127, 367 Red Feather, 31, 285 Red River cart, 123–24, 311, 316, 326, 445 Register Cliff (48PL132), 231 rescue of comrade, 21, 111, 124, 125, 150, 207, 254, 272, 282, 370–72 reservation period (years), 4, 21, 26, 31, 138, 312, 417, 445 reuse of images, 51, 99–100, 226 ribs, 4, 50, 128, 129, 173, 174 ride-by attack, 21, 35, 84, 298, 322–23, 341, 445 Ringbit Shelter (41VV339), 186, 204, 217 Rio Grande River, 305, 377 Gorge, 112, 163, 256, 339, 377, 405n1 robe, decorated, 1, 10, 12, 26, 28–30, 33, 35–36, 42, 44–45, 77–78, 81, 86, 88, 91, 96, 109, 110, 121, 124, 137, 162–63, 168, 178–79, 193, 205, 214, 216, 222, 225, 233, 235, 241, 258, 266, 275, 280, 286, 294, 325, 336, 337, 344, 349, 352, 357, 365, 379, 388, 392, 394, 396, 398, 400–1, 402, 403 Rocky Coulee battle scene (DgOv-57), 63–64, 407–11 Rocky Mountains, 1, 268, 382, 384–85 Rodee, Howard, 43 rubout, 365–66 Ryegate South, 229 Saline Valley, 112, 289, 318 Samsal boulder (24TL959), 180, 397 Samuel Strong/Roman Nose ledger, 32, 95, 333 San Antonio de los Alamos, 186, 187

sash, 78–79, 105–6, 149–51, 244, 360, 370, 416 Saskatchewan River, 17 Saukamappee, 20, 37n6 scalp, 97, 244, 282–83, 387 attached to weapon, 119, 171, 246–48, 267–68, 284–85 bridle decoration, 18, 211, 212–13, 215, 221, 343, 367, 369 pole, 66, 76, 103, 282–86, 294, 310, 357, 396, 401 scalped human, 64, 95, 283, 331, 400, 410 war trophy, 14, 137, 147, 151, 178–81, 244, 283–84, 356–57, 371, 390, 393–94, 396–97, 401 scout service symbol, 29, 49, 178–79, 183, 357, 367–68, 387–88, 399–400, 406n16 US military, 7, 30, 139, 146–47, 200, 309, 382 war party, 14, 25, 178, 183, 356, 399–400 Segesser hide paintings, 168, 172, 205, 222–25 selvedge cloth/stroud cloth, 136, 146, 150, 151–52, 163, 218, 228–29, 231, 444, 445 sexual capture, 5, 16, 24, 48, 57–59, 62, 65, 78–79, 93, 99, 106, 129, 131, 134–35, 151, 180, 186, 270, 357, 389–92, 394, 410–11, 416–17 shaman, 8, 10, 53, 148, 153, 158, 173, 174, 184, 300, 405n2 Sharp robe, 86, 349 shorthand image, 13, 24, 64, 82–84, 96, 120, 130, 133–34, 181, 229, 255, 292, 330, 337–38, 344, 349, 351, 369, 387–88, 391–92, 396, 403–4. See also synecdoche horses, 112–13, 141, 191, 322, 352–53 Shoshone, 29, 104, 117, 132, 189, 201, 215, 222, 233, 301, 318 showing-off portrait, 111, 142, 159, 166, 277, 355, 366–67, 369–70, 385 shield, 4, 8–13, 15–17, 23–24, 29, 50–52, 61, 66, 74, 76, 77–78, 88, 95, 96, 98, 105–6, 110, 120, 124, 125, 138, 141, 144, 149, 150, 151, 164, 166, 167, 168, 170–72, 175, 190– 93, 222, 224–25, 226, 236, 237, 249, 254, 266, 273–77, 278, 287, 297, 302, 322, 324–25, 335–36, 342, 344, 354, 357, 358, 360, 369, 371, 372, 390–91, 408, 423–24 change in size, 16, 20, 23, 273–75 wooden slat, 175, 249, 273

476 ♦ INDEX

shield-bearing warrior, 4, 8–9, 12–13, 15, 16, 23, 36, 55, 99, 104, 148, 150, 153, 155, 156, 157, 166–67, 170, 173, 180, 183, 188, 192, 194, 224, 226, 248–49, 251, 253, 254, 258, 263, 264, 273–75, 277, 278, 279, 281, 282, 285, 287, 296, 334, 336, 360, 364, 366, 368, 374, 384, 397, 400, 423–24, 442 shield heraldry, 9, 98, 125, 195, 274–75, 325, 358, 360 shield trailer, 275–77. See also bustle shield tripod, 190, 294, 302 shock troops, 18, 21, 22, 199 shot pouch, 142, 260–61, 336, 357 Silver Horn robe, 86 Sioux, 1, 7, 21, 29, 30–32, 34, 38n11, 41, 43, 52, 73, 104, 117, 125–26, 145, 159, 163, 165, 167, 188, 190, 195, 197, 208, 210–11, 215–16, 218, 234, 240–42, 259, 277, 292, 314, 316, 322, 324, 340, 343, 355, 358, 361, 367, 368, 374, 375, 378, 381, 388–90, 392, 400, 403–4, 424, 428 Smith, Decost, 43, 98 Smokey Hills, 143 snaffle bit, 22, 206, 210–11, 218–20, 445 Snake River, 51, 252, 273 sound, as depicted, 7, 52–53, 59, 357, 372–74, 375, 415 South Piney (48SU5331), 307 Spanish chain bit. See under bridle bit decoration spear/lance, 9, 18, 20, 21, 23, 61, 66–68, 73, 74–75, 76, 77–78, 83, 89, 95, 103, 107, 119, 124, 141, 144, 149–50, 155, 166, 168–70, 172, 180, 198–99, 222, 224–26, 244–52, 259, 270, 272, 279, 280–82, 284, 285, 287, 289, 293, 302, 319, 323, 330–31, 333, 334, 336–37, 339, 340, 357, 358, 360, 364, 369, 370, 371, 378, 397, 408, 411, 420–21, 423–24. See also bow-spear banner lance, 247, 249, 334, 420–21 Spanish socketed, 150, 170, 198, 250–51, 280 spirit, power/beings, 3–10, 20, 22, 36, 50, 53–54, 61, 89, 114, 122–23, 125–26, 128, 131–32, 166, 177, 184, 190–92, 194, 212, 214, 226, 228, 247, 322, 331, 355, 369, 374–75, 443, 445 animal, 8, 125, 374 splat, 139, 381, 404–5 Spring Creek Petroglyphs (24BH1046), 316

stacked array, 23, 35, 60, 92, 107, 121, 123, 130, 255, 319, 332, 337–40, 396, 405n3, 421, 423 Steamboat Butte (24YL576), 281, 368 strike-a-light pouch, 174, 190, 261 style Bear Gulch, 157, 368 Blackfoot, 99–100, 104, 197, 278, 318, 329, 337, 389 (see also human figure: hourglass) Crow, 99–100, 104, 156, 162, 178, 233, 237, 239, 320, 329, 352, 389, 414 Ledger Art, 103–4, 112, 114, 116–18, 133, 137, 145, 148, 150, 210, 213, 220, 227, 229, 233, 239, 270, 373, 375, 389 Mature, 103, 114–18, 124, 156, 233, 270 Navajo, 196, 212, 217, 329 Realistic, 116 Seedskadee, 261, 273 Timber Creek, 414–15 Sundstrom, Linea, 36, 135, 290, 299–300, 316, 378 sword/saber, 23, 64, 92, 102, 103, 120, 144– 45, 166, 168–70, 172, 219, 222, 224, 248, 255, 265–66, 276, 277, 279–81, 290, 306, 336–37, 410, 442, 444, 445 syllabic. See under writing system synecdoche, 23, 35, 43, 50, 62, 64–65, 67–69, 72, 75–76, 82–84, 112, 120, 134, 289, 309, 319, 321, 322, 336, 356, 411, 423, 445 Szabo, Joyce, 35 tab, on weapon, 83, 88, 89, 168, 226, 245, 246, 247, 251, 252, 262, 265, 267, 277, 280–281, 420 tally, 11, 13–16, 24, 29, 32–33, 42, 64, 74–77, 82–84, 88, 90, 93, 99, 103, 108–9, 120, 125, 135, 143–44, 162, 229–30, 235, 240, 243, 245–46, 248–49, 257, 261, 266–67, 269, 271, 278–80, 283–86, 289, 291, 322, 323, 324, 333–37, 344, 352–53, 356–58, 378, 383, 396, 401, 403, 405n3, 418–21. See also coup count bar tally (war party stripes), 103, 178, 180–81, 284, 286, 329, 351–52, 356–57, 396, 397, 401, 402 Ten Sleep pictographs, 76, 85n6, 154, 286, 345, 393 testes, 50–51, 129, 131–32 therianthrope, 8, 53, 153, 445 Thompson, David, 20, 37n6, 308 thunder bow, 93, 277–78, 370

INDEX ♦ 477

thunder horse, 114, 241, 327n3 thunderbird, 7, 8, 101n2, 374–75 Tie Creek Ledger, 44, 56, 116, 146, 228, 340, 355 Timber Creek style, 414–15 tipi, 14, 24, 35, 57–58, 60, 69–70, 71, 97, 141, 168, 170, 186, 190, 207–8, 229–30, 233, 269, 283–84, 293, 294–98, 300, 301, 302, 303–4, 310, 314, 316, 322, 336, 340–41, 345–50, 351, 357–58, 359, 361– 62, 366, 380, 383, 384–85, 400, 402–3, 405n7, 407–8, 410–11, 442 camp circle, 57–58, 60, 80, 96, 107, 177, 184, 295–97, 304, 307, 309, 362–63, 383, 405n7 cover, 10, 12, 28–29, 38n10, 41, 84, 372 villagescape, 177, 284, 295–97, 300, 302, 362–63, 383 Tolar (48SW13775), 250, 280 tomahawk, 9, 23, 74, 75, 76, 84, 88, 95, 103, 138, 170, 240, 245, 252, 261, 266–68, 280, 323, 334, 336, 337, 338, 357, 358, 369, 393, 419–21 tracks, 125, 324–25. See also bear tracks; footprints; hoofprint bloody, 185, 292, 307, 322–24, 395 horse, 42, 47, 57–58, 62, 64–69, 76–77, 80, 83–84, 91–92, 98, 104–5, 107, 119– 20, 297, 319–24, 337–38, 359, 381–82, 399–400, 404, 407 sequences and groups, 91, 319–322, 352, 384–85, 402 vehicle, 311–12, 325–26 trade goods (Euro-American), 17, 142, 195, 314–15, 445 trampling (riding down) an enemy. See under coup count travois, 106–7, 293, 311, 316–17 trees. See under landscape features Turner Rockshelter, 37n4, 207, 307, 350, 372 Turpin, Solveig, 35, 143, 256 Two Medicine River site (24GL1718), 208 Ute, 30, 71, 153, 164, 165, 172, 200–1, 215, 237–38, 329, 391, 424 Vaquero Shelter (41VV77), 37n4, 139, 147, 186, 209, 290 Vatter, Ernst, 41–42, 389 Verbena (41GR52), 245, 340 Verdigris Coulee, 51, 89, 208, 212, 223, 244, 257, 282, 432

vision/vision quest, 6–9, 126, 174, 177, 181, 183, 184, 192, 241, 273, 301, 324, 327n3, 355, 375–76, 445 V-neck human, 4, 6, 9, 12, 13, 15–16, 23, 28, 36, 51, 103–4, 157, 161, 165, 173, 442 vocalization (voice). See sound voyageur, 361, 403, 445 vulva, 7, 21, 50, 57–8, 61, 65, 129, 131–35, 151, 180, 301, 366, 391–92, 394, 414, 416–17 capture (see sexual capture) wagon, 184, 242–43, 303–304, 309, 312–16, 322, 326, 327n16, 354, 382 Red River cart, 123–24, 311, 316, 326 wagon train, 123, 314, 326 war honor, acquisition of, 12, 14, 18, 22, 24, 26–27, 29, 48, 70, 76, 77, 97, 109, 125, 136, 140, 148, 152, 154, 156, 162, 178, 180–83, 185, 229, 240, 249, 269, 271, 282–83, 286, 289, 292, 297, 325, 330, 334, 343–45, 350, 367, 370–72, 385, 387, 389, 401, 411, 413, 417, 421, 442 war party, 14, 24, 29, 49, 94, 119, 121, 123, 178–79, 183, 283, 285, 288, 294, 306–7, 316, 326, 354, 356, 360, 367–68, 396, 399–400, 402–3, 407–8, 411, 421, 444 stripes (see tally: bar tally) war shirt, 23, 28, 33, 35, 38n12, 76–77, 96, 130, 137–38, 142, 266, 286, 292, 317, 348, 352, 357, 361, 392–93, 399, 403, 420 weapon brandishing, 5, 92, 145, 226, 257, 290, 342, 369–70 controlling enemy, 16, 333, 336 floating, 15, 32, 43, 83, 95, 245, 333–34, 424 tab, 23, 83, 88, 89, 168, 226, 245, 246–47, 251, 252, 262, 265, 267, 277, 280–81, 329, 420 weapon capture, 11, 14–15, 18, 24, 29, 42, 63, 65–66, 74–76, 78, 83–84, 89, 90, 92–93, 99, 101, 103, 120, 130, 166, 179–80, 192, 240, 244–46, 248–50, 255, 257, 261, 265–67, 269, 272, 275, 277, 278, 279, 280, 290–91, 328, 333, 335–37, 344–45, 356–57, 389–93, 396, 401, 411, 420–21, 424 Weppler (24ST560), 178, 180–81, 284–85, 351–52, 396, 402 wife, thrown away, 99, 417 White Mountain site (48SW302), 203, 261 White Rocks site, 358

478 ♦ INDEX

White Swan, 29, 146, 201, 309 Williams Coulee (EcPl-25), 13 winter count, 1, 26, 28, 32–33, 35–36, 41, 45, 52, 53, 70, 73–74, 82, 92, 126, 154, 188–90, 208, 301, 314, 316, 331, 372–74, 376, 380–81, 386, 390, 392–93, 404 Wissler, Clark, 1, 18, 41–42, 84n2, 331, 374, 389 Wold (48JO6), 301 woman, in rock art, 3, 8, 14, 15–16, 24, 50, 54, 57–59, 61–62, 65, 78–79, 88, 93, 99, 106–7, 129–35, 147–51, 156, 158, 159–60, 173–74, 180, 186–88, 190, 204, 229, 261–62, 269–70, 282, 285–86, 287, 301, 310, 314, 316, 336, 357, 365, 367, 369, 373, 389, 391–92, 410–17 World War I soldier, 4, 139–40, 146–47, 258 wound, 14, 24, 40, 94, 169, 178, 270, 292–93, 319, 330–31, 335, 356, 406n12. See also tracks: bloody Blackfoot mortal wound, 95, 331 horse, 77, 191, 225, 316–17, 322–24, 330, 342, 350, 394 human, 11, 16, 21, 40, 68, 73, 77–8, 95, 127, 185, 191, 273, 292–93, 307, 322–23, 330, 333, 338, 372, 381, 408, 410

wrist strap, on weapon, 84, 266–68, 270– 72, 420 Writing-on-Stone, 6, 7, 11, 37n3, 42, 44, 51, 63–64, 70, 89, 95, 98, 109, 112, 114, 121, 124, 125, 138, 147, 171, 178, 192, 198, 199, 212, 214, 215, 220, 221, 229–31, 233, 238, 242, 246, 266, 272, 273, 278, 280, 281, 283, 292, 294, 310, 311, 314–16, 320, 326, 331, 340, 344, 349, 352, 384, 385, 403, 405n5, 432 Provincial Park, 14, 37n3, 57, 155, 208, 273, 278, 303, 309, 311, 359, 383, 385, 407 writing system, 45–49, 82, 96, 98 alphabetic, 45 idiographic, 97, 284, 334, 346, 386–88, 392–97, 402 logographic, 46, 49 phonetic, 45 syllabic, 46 Yellowstone River, 40, 112, 123, 127, 162, 237, 268, 312, 318, 324, 326, 359 Zo-Tom, 30, 380