Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T L Y M O N T A N A M A G A Z I N E • S U M M E R 2 0 2 2 98 The most intriguing composition, which appears on the robe's upper left corner, depicts the successful capture of an enemy's horse. Interestingly, theft of only those mounts picketed outside their owners' lodges qualified as one of the four prerequisites to chieftainship. Horses tethered in this manner were, invariably, the most highly prized ponies in any encampment. A discrepancy in the protagonist's regalia raises the pos- sibility that this horse was, indeed, a "buffa- lo runner," one reserved for the chase or the battlefield. The artist's pompadour, panel leggings, and pitched hair extension clearly convey his Crow ethnicity. The horse's reins, however, are tucked inconspicuously into the folds of a buffalo robe, one painted in a style that is reminiscent of Black- feet biographical art. This anomaly suggests that the protagonist used a Blackfeet pictorial robe to disguise his tribal affiliation while enter- ing an enemy village. Statements by Ghost Head, a Lakota warrior, support this interpretation. Emphasiz- ing that he always took enemy clothing on horse raids, Ghost Head expounded upon this point with the following observation: "Had it been a Shosho- ni camp, I would have worn Sho- shoni cloth- ing, so that I would have smelled like a Shoshoni and painted my face and fixed my hair so that I would not be noticed." The White Swan robe's blanket strip is a veritable textbook on classic Crow beadwork, but Apsáalooke ownership of these decorative strips significantly predated the emergence of their distinctive style of beaded art. In 1805, Francois-An- toine Larocque observed that Crow men wore "a Buffaloe Robe on which is painted their war exploits or garnished with beads and porcupine quills ove[r] the seam." Prince Maxi- milian of Wied-Neuwied reported similarly, in 1833, that Crow buffalo robes were "painted and embroidered [with dyed porcupine quills]." In Karl Bodmer's portrait of Crow men, rendered in 1833, one figure is cloaked in a buffalo robe; wavy, transverse lines on the background of its beaded strip illustrate the texture of Crow-stitch embroidery. While stationed at Fort Union, Rudolph Friederich Kurz received, as a gift, a buffalo cow's hide, obtained originally from the Crows, on September 15, 1851. Kurz described its ornamen- tation as "a broad band, decorated with beads, porcupine quills, and tiny bells that hang from rosettes." Edwin Denig, the most knowledgeable Euroamerican source on the Upper Missouri tribes at that time, wrote, most probably in 1856, that "bright-colored blankets, loaded with beads worked cu- riously and elegantly across them, [were an important part of regalia worn by young Crow] men." Despite historical and pictorial evidence that Crow usage of this object type persisted throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, well-documented examples and archival photographs indicate that the vast majority of Transmon- tane-style blanket strips should be attributed to Plateau peo- ples, most commonly the Nez Perce, with whom the Crows traded extensively. So, what features enable us to conclude definitively that this particular blanket strip was crafted by Crow beadworkers? In an article published in Montana The Magazine of West- ern History (2001), Bill Holm makes a profoundly compelling argument that a photograph, taken by F. Jay Haynes in 1883, depicts the Crow scout, Curley, wearing the White Swan robe. Kirby Lambert, then Curator of Collections at the Mon- tana Historical Society, stated in a 1995 communique that it was unclear "whether the robe in the photograph belonged to Curley or if it was one that Haynes used as a prop for stu- dio portraits." When compared, however, to the color pho- tographs published in this article, the distortion of color val- Ermine-fringed, split-horn bonnets, such as the one depicted in this vignette, were a mark of distinction, particularly in the early nineteenth century, among the Upper Missouri tribes. Medicine Crow, Crow, 1880. Photograph by Charles M. Bell. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution Detail of rosette and rectangular panel on the White Swan robe's beaded blanket strip.

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