OBJECT history On the Trail of Eugène de Girardin: A Hitherto Unknown Sioux Painted Robe Acquired by the Musée du Quai Branly War seems to be the Piegans’ sole delight; their discourse 140 always turns upon that subject; one war-party no sooner arrives than another sets off. Horses are the principal plunder to be obtained from their enemies … They take great delight in relating their adventures in war, and are so vivid in rehearsing every detail of the fray that they seem to be fighting the battle over again. Written in 1800 by Alexander Henry of the North West Company, a fur trading enterprise, these words about the Piegan Indians could easily apply to any of the other Native American cultures of the Great Plains of the United States and Canada. These peoples were bellicose, not by nature as racist propaganda of the nineteenth century held, but because their cultural, social, and economic systems born of their contact with Anglo-Americans necessitated them to be. The introduction of the horse followed by the dissemination of firearms and trade goods associated with the fur trade contributed to a culture that has often been described as “improbable” and that emphasized prestige based on the exploits of warriors. Such prestige was indispensable for a young man’s social ascension within his clan and his tribe. For his acts to be deemed worthy, the nature of a warrior’s exploits had to be known to all and were disseminated within the group by various means, including oral narration in the presence of witnesses and narrative illustration of a kind that everyone could comprehend. Often this took the form of painting on bison hide, which could be worn as a robe and/or displayed in its owner’s lodge. These painted robes depicting scenes of hunting, combat, and the taking of horses from enemies quickly aroused the interest of European and Anglo-American travelers, and several found their way into the curiosity cabinets of the European nobility by the end of the eighteenth century. By André Delpuech and Michel Petit A Sioux Robe from the 1840s The painted robe of this type in question here was hitherto unknown and was acquired by the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris in 2012 (fig. 1).1 Made from the hide of an American buffalo (Bison bison) with its fur removed, measuring 210 centimeters in length and 168 centimeters in width (6’ 10.5” x 5’ 6”), it is decorated at the center with an applied longitudinal band of hide worked with porcupine quills dyed brown, orange, and red arrayed in geometric patterns on a white background. The areas above and below this central band contain painted mounted and armed figures and their horses moving from left to right, indicating the orientation in which the robe is to be read. A “stick-figure” technique is used to render the human figures. The silhouette is delineated in black and filled in with blocks of color. The bust is rendered frontally and the slightly bent arms extend outward from the body in a position reminiscent of the “orans” posture. The head is round and the facial features are either lacking or cursorily outlined. The legs descending from the horse’s visible flanks are rendered in profile. Colors are restricted to black, brown, yellow, and several reds of varying intensity. A much more vivid red is sparingly applied in touches. Analysis by Raman spectroscopy of the pigments demonstrates that they are natural and mineral-based, belonging to the family of ochers (iron oxides), with the exception of the brighter red, which is a synthetic vermilion pigment of Chinese or European origin. Sixteen of the warriors shown have their hair tied in a sort of chignon above their foreheads, a type of hairdo that generally designates the Sioux in pictographic representations. Four other figures wear their hair hanging freely or braided at the back of the head. Some are clothed in European-style military coats, while others
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