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ANIMALS, ELK: Bull; COURTING: Man (in Exaggerated Gray Breechclout) and 2 Women Face Woman in Blue Blanket

Ethnographic Notes

42 ANIMAL, ELK. A bull elk runs from right to left across the page (extended legs show motion). He has dark shoulders and yellow body. He has a small rack of antlers (three by three points), and his round eye is created by an outlined circle of unpigmented paper, contrasting with the dark hide around it. Penciled details include antlers, ears, beard, split hooves, dewclaws, genitalia, midsection (ribs ?), and tail. Twelve nearly identical images of this male elk appear in this ledger (plates 19-23; 30, 32, 37-41). See further discussion for plate 19. 43 Two women and a man face a woman at the far left edge of the page, in a composition almost identical to PILA plate 41. Details of dress vary. The man and two women facing right wear blankets with Lakota medicine wheel strips (see plate 1 discussion). The first woman, to the far right, wears a red blanket with beaded strip. Her face in unpainted. She wears white leggings with small German silver or brass buttons (Lanford, 2003: 164). Her dress is covered by the blanket, but the dress panel ends, black Stroud trade cloth with white selvages, show. Two bands are drawn around each ankle�perhaps where her leggings attach to moccasins, edging of her leggings, or paint. The next woman, second from the right, is dressed identically except her blanket is blue trade cloth, and her leggings have no row of ornaments. She wears red facepaint along the visible hairline edge. She has three bands around her ankles. The man, third from the right, has the longest black braid of the group. He wears a Garman silver hairplate trailing from his scalp lock down his back and a single feather with black tip attached to the hairplate. His red courtship blanket, with a strip in the middle containing the four-quartered medicine wheel design, is like the first woman�s. His trade cloth leggings have one vertical white stripe, created from sewing together undyed selvedges of trade cloth. His dark (pencil) breech clout matches the leggings, with white selvage edging. His clout reaches unusual lengths: one flap touches the second woman and another touches the third woman. A similar Cheyenne drawing with similarly extended breech clout flaps is Red Lanced or White Horse�s page from the Summit Springs ledger (Afton et al., 1997: 215, plate 105); this is also a courtship occasion. The woman to the far left wears a plain blue trade cloth blanket. Her face is painted red along the vertical hairline. Her leggings are white or uncolored, with a band of black at the cuff, perhaps indicating a dyed edging from a Hudson�s Bay blanket (Lanford, 2003: 164). Her feet are barely represented, as are the feet of the second and third figures�they crowd into the page. The number of women would provide chaperone presence for the others with. This one of a sequence of drawings with similar composition (plates 19, 21-25). See plate 1 for further discussion of courtship conventions. Media: Lead pencil outlines, details, fill; blue crayon, red watercolor


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Drawn in 1879 by one or more Northern Cheyenne prisoners in the Dodge City jail held for trial after breaking ...

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Document Info
Plate No: 23
Page No: Pages 42-43
Media: Lead pencil outline, detail, and fill, yellow crayon; Lead pencil outlines, details, fill, blue crayon, red watercolor
Dimensions: 3.25 x 5 in (8.5 x 12.75 cm)
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