Magazines - Tribal Art Autumn 2010

By Mike Cowdrey author, with Ned & Jody Martin, of American Indian Horse Masks (2006: Hawk Hill Press) and the forthcoming Beaded and Quilled Bridles of the American Indians.

Introduction
Ancestors of the Apsáalooke, or Crow Indian people, may be traced in the archaeological record to the Coteau des Prairies of eastern North Dakota, more than 1,500 years ago (Bowers, 1963: 10–15 & 476–80). After many years of wandering, recounted in the tribe’s oral history, they found a prophesied homeland in the valley of the Yellowstone River and adjacent Bighorn Mountains of southeastern Montana and northeastern Wyoming (Medicine Crow, 1992: 1–25).
Four-hundred-year-old pictographs and petroglyphs at numerous cave and cliff sites in that region testify to a rich and already ancient artistic tradition. These compositions on stone reflect a simultaneous tradition of artwork painted on leather clothing and tanned buffalo or elk robes. The latter were the ubiquitous “overcoats” necessary for an environment in which temperatures during nine months of each year might veer in a few hours from temperate to below zero. The robes of prominent warriors often were painted with self-portraits depicting the artists’ martial or hunting prowess (fig. 2). Prehistorically, these were further decorated with colorful bands of dyed porcupine-quillwork embroidery created by each man’s wife, sisters, or mother. When Italian glass beads were introduced to the Crow by Canadian traders during the eighteenth century (Wood & Thiessen, 1985), Crow women quickly added this new medium to their artistic repertoire. By the mid-nineteenth century, distinctive beadwork in a rainbow palette characterized the Crow personal appearance and was reported by nearly every awed visitor (Catlin, 1857: Vol. I: 45–46).