Magazines - Tribal Art Autumn 2007

By Duane Anderson, former vice president of the School of American Research and retired director of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, both in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Casey Reed, a research associate at the Laboratory of Anthropology at the Museum of New Mexico and the American Indian Research Center in Santa Fe.

Introduction:
The Chief White Antelope Blanket (hereafter CWAB) was illustrated in this magazine in 2002, where it was described as an important cultural icon of the Southern Cheyenne because of its attribution to a central figure of this culture, Chief White Antelope (Anderson, 2002: Anderson, Ed. 1999). Its significance to the Southern Cheyenne people is paralleled by its artistic and historical significance to anthropologists and art historians, who regard the blanket as the finest example of Navajo weaving created during the Classic Period. Over the years the blanket has been described in several publications and there have been a number of statements made about technical aspects and manufacturing details. Some observations have been accurate and are supported by recent work, while others have been proven otherwise. Original research on its yarns, fibers, and dyes was reported and later summarized by Joe Ben Wheat (1981, 2003), a pioneering scholar of Native American art. The co-author of this article, Casey Reed, conducted the scientific research detailed herein in 1995 (Reed, 1996). The purpose of this article is to bring together extant information, partly for the record and partly to support the attribution of the blanket to Chief White Antelope. The history of the CWAB was first deposed in 1917 and was published for public review in the Denver Post in February 1920: John A. Tritts, 111 East Second Street, Ivywild, Colorado Springs, under date of April 9, 1917, under oath deposed: The blanket was taken off the body of Chief White Antelope at the battle [o]f Sand Creek, Nov., 29, 1864, by Henry Mull, who belonged to my company, Company F of the First Colorado cavalry. I tried to buy the blanket and offered him $50 for it. He said he was going to Denver and he told me afterwards that he got $150 for it. This was March, 1865. The article goes on to note that Mr. Clark, agent for Overland Stagecoach and one of Denver’s first mayors, later bought the blanket for $375. His daughter, Mrs. Fannie Clark Wiggington, inherited it and eventually sold it for $2,500 to the Indian Arts Fund, Inc. in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on July 13, 1929. Such a high price so long ago reflects the aesthetic beauty and historical significance that this remarkable textile was afforded even then.