In 1889, the same year that Vincent van Gogh painted The Starry Night, the Húnkpapa warrior Lakoda Rain-in-the_Face illustrated a chronicle of his exploits: stealing horses, waging war, and even the heroic rescue of a chieftain’s daughter during a battle with US soldiers – in the lining of his teepee.
As the teepee shows, Native Americans had architecture as well as art. More than 30 different Plains Indian tribes, scattered from Texas to Canada, used teepees as refuges for much of the 19th century.
This portable dwelling is the central theme of “Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains” at the Brooklyn Museum, which has seized the supposedly crowd-pleasing opportunity to erect several royal teepees as part of the show (Brooklyn Indians and the rest from the northeast, did not use teepees). Visitors can enter one example, which rises 28 feet toward the museum’s fifth-floor rotunda. It was built around three slender wooden posts, to which others were added, and then a painted canvas (formerly a buffalo hide covering) was unfolded on top and secured.
The museum commissioned this splendid teepee from artist Blackfeet Lyle J. Heavy Runner, owner of the design. Traditionally, the designs have been passed down from generation to generation, and the pictorial images are based on visions that men experienced during religious ceremonies.
This example is called a Bleeding Buffalo Skull. The main red motif can be interpreted as a bleeding buffalo skull or as two men holding pipes or axes. The layout, which is read from scratch, has many other elements.
The show contains two more full-size teepees, which gives insight into the evolution of the form. One is a replica of a Lakota buffalo hide teepee dating from the days before the reservation, or before 1860. Another is from southern Cheyenne, dating from 1904, and is filled with beautifully crafted backs and painted patches ( rectangular folded rawhide containers).
Women were typically responsible for making the teepee, and in many tribes they contributed abstract beaded medallions to the teepee covers, as can be seen in the 1904 teepee on display. Women also made most of the family’s possessions and designed geometric patterns for clothing and small portable objects.
Native American men owned and displayed their medicine packages and warrior garb in the teepee, earning the rights to wear certain items of prestige, such as feathers in war hats, based on their fighting prowess. Men also created naturalistic designs on tepee covers and linings, which in the reservation era were also drawn on ledgers.
The decoration of objects of Native American women artists always dazzles me. They were and are formidable mixed media artists. Even a small Arapahoe bag from the early 20th century deserves an abstract design worked with porcupine quills and beads, while a 19th century Ogala Sioux spear box mixes leather, red trading cloth and beads in a highly patterned three-dimensional scheme. vigor and complexity.
Another extravaganza by an unknown Sioux artist is a 19th century buckskin shirt, which is partially pigmented with red hand bead bands on a white background, hair and feathers.
“Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains” includes several examples of an object type, such as moccasins, to underline the aesthetic diversity of the Plains Indians. The tribes of the Great Plains embrace a wide variety of visual ideas, all in constant flux.
A look at artist Kiowa Terri Greeves’ beaded high-heeled slippers, Great Lakes Girls (2008), which are decorated with prickly oyster shell cabochons, Swarovski crystals, and various types of beads, shows just how far they are standing. carrying the traditions today.
A team led by Brooklyn Museum curators Nancy B. Rosoff and Susan Kennedy Zeller organized this excursion into the life of the Plains Indians.
“Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains”, Feb. May 18-15, 2011, Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York, NY 11238
