Lone Dog’s
Winter Count
Winter Counts
Winter Counts are pictorial calendars. Most winter counts include a single pictograph, or an image that conveys a meaning through resemblance, for each year. Often, the most memorable event of that year is symbolized on the calendar. Winter counts can be used as a guide or reference to oral histories.
Traditionally, bands would choose a single keeper of the winter count. Keepers are charged with consulting with tribal elders to choose the pictograph for each year. The keeper also chooses their successor.
Winter counts were typically recorded on buffalo. Due to the scarcity of buffalo hides after the late 19th century, keepers would choose alternate mediums for the counts. Muslin, linen, and paper were popular choices for alternate materials.
Lone Dog’s Winter Count
The Lone Dog Winter Count … came from the Yanktonais Nakota community. A Yanktonais (YANK-tow-nigh) man known as Lone Dog was the last known keeper of this winter count, and that is why it bears his name. This Winter Count contains pictographs that document seventy years of Yanktonais history, beginning in the winter of 1800 and ending in 1871. The Lone Dog Winter Count contains the records of many important events: of encounters with other Native peoples and with non-Natives, of years when there were disease epidemics, and of times of war. The pictographic symbols begin in the center of the hide and spiral outward in a counter clockwise direction.
The Yanktonais are part of a much larger tribe of Native Americans known as the Sioux. There are three dialects of the Sioux language —Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota. The Yanktonais are Nakota speakers. Traditionally, the Yanktonais were further divided into tiyospaye (tee-YO-spa-yay), or smaller communities of one or more extended families with grandparents, parents, children, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, and allies. The tiyospaye was an essential part of Nakota social, political, and cultural life. The members of a tiyospaye traveled and often lived together in a small village, crossing the Plains in search of buffalo and places to camp. The Nakota territory encompassed much of what is now the eastern portions of North and South Dakota (see map activity). Their Lakota cousins, who lived to the west and the Dakota, who lived to the east, were also divided into smaller groups of tiyospaye. Winter counts have been found and identi fied from Lakota and other Nakota tiyospaye.
Educational Winter Count Activity
Grade Level: 4–8
Time Required: Approximately 4 one-hour class periods and 2-3 homework sessions
National Museum of the American Indian. “Lone Dog’s Winter Count: Keeping History Alive.” Accessed November 12, 2020, https://americanindian.si.edu/sites/1/files/pdf/education/poster_lone_dog_final.pdf