In Conversation: Lone Dog's Winter Count and George Catlin
Crystal Bridges and the Museum of Native American History are currently conversing between the two collections. In viewing Crystal Bridges works by George Catlin, Thomas Cole, James Henry Warre, and Cyrus Dallin alongside the objects they were depicting, we are reminded of the great importance these artifacts had in the lives of Indigenous peoples who used them.
George Catlin’s North American Indians prints from 1844 and 1865 are on view and in conversation with Lone Dog’s Winter Count in MONAH’s first Historic Room. In one of the prints, the “Osage Warrior” in one print wears a bison hide decorated with various pictographs of horses and riders on the Catlin print. This covering resembles the painted bison hide, Lone Dog’s Winter Count, which depicts a spiral of pictographs representing the years between 1800-1801 and 1870-1871, like a modern calendar.
The pictorial calendar begins in the center and spirals out counterclockwise, mimicking directions of growth found in nature. Each year starts from the first snow of winter, hence why it is called a “winter count.” Lone Dog is the name of its last- known keeper, the person who consulted with elders to depict the year’s most important event. Pictured below are two examples of events represented with small symbols or characters. For example, bison marked the year 1861-1862, and a celestial event was important in 1869-1870. Each symbol represents the collective community’s history and acts as a mnemonic device for their oral history and stories.
Lone Dog’s Winter Count came from the Yanktonais Nakota community, who call the Northern Great Plains region home. The importance of bison for the Nakota people cannot be underestimated. Bison-related events even marked seven different years on Lone Dog’s Winter Count. They provided food, shelter, clothing, and many more integrations into daily life and ceremonies, and the hide acts as the canvas for the Winter Count.
The vast scale of the hide vividly depicting the records of 1800-1801 to 1870-1871 places greater importance on bison in the Yanktonais Nakota community. Adding the depiction of a similarly painted bison hide in Catlin’s North American Indians prints reminds us of the bison’s more prominent and spiritual role across North America in the nineteenth century. Many Nations, just like Nakota and Osage, had and still have a similarly honored reciprocal relationship with bison.
See the more extensive conversation between MONAH and Crystal Bridges on view now through June 2022.
Want to learn more about this conversation? Head over to the Crystal Bridges blog to learn more about George Catlin!
Images:
Lone Dog’s Winter Count. 1801-1871. Bison Hide.
Pictograph on Lone Dog’s Winter Count depicting 1861-1862: Buffalo were so plentiful their tracks came close to the tipis.
Pictograph on Lone Dog’s Winter Count depicting 1869-1870: An eclipse of the sun
The regal and ornately decorated trade coat pictured here is attributed to a well-known figure in indigenous history: Chief Sitting Bull! This fantastic addition to our collection tells a fascinating narrative on the history of trade blankets and their continued importance to Native American cultures and traditions.