“This is my home in Dakota/ it is made of logs I like my/ home very much./ Geo. Bush Otter” (Artist’s inscription, verso)

“Here Bushotter has depicted his house on Lower Brulé Agency. His manner of handling the architectural forms is very similar to that used by Bear's Heart in his drawing of Shellbanks (Nº6): the log cabin is flattened out so that both front and side views are seen simultaneously.

During the period when the reservation system was fairly new, it was not unusual to find sights such as this -or the one in drawing Nº12- in which log cabins have tipis to the side or behind. For a people such as the Sioux who had lived a nomadic existence in conical shaped tipis, the switch to a permanent box-shaped lodging must have indeed been traumatic. The change was mandatory, for the house was deemed civilized and the tipi not. Many people, however, set up their traditional home and lived in it during the summer.” (p.27)

William S. Wierzbowski and Helen M. Mangelsdorf in Images of a Vanished Life: Plains Indian Drawing from the Collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1985.