FEATURE
Red Cloud, Dog Child,
and the “Long Knife”
of the Samurai in
Indian Country
FIG. 1 (above): Home of Chief Red Cloud, by
Clarence Grant Morledge.
Pine Ridge Agency, South Dakota, 1890.
From a glass plate negative. 13 x 21 cm.
Morledge negative number 1036.
Ex Louise Stegner, Omaha, Nebraska, 1951.
Collection of the Denver Public Library, call number X-31434.
Bedroom in the frame cabin of the Oglala Lakota leader Red
Cloud at the Pine Ridge Agency probably taken shortly before
the massacre at Wounded Knee. His wife, Pretty Owl (Mary
Good Road), sits on the bed and a large American fl ag, a Navajo
fi rst phase wearing blanket, a concha belt, various other clothing
items, and religious and secular decorations hang on the wall.
Interestingly, a Japanese katana with handachi fi ttings hangs on
the wall to the right of the wood stove.
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FIG. 2 (below): Dog Child, a North-West
Mounted Police scout, and his wife, The Only
Handsome Woman, members of the Blackfoot
Nation, by Norman Caple and/or Richard Henry
Trueman. Gleichen, Alberta, c. 1890–1894.
Ex Edward McCann Collection.
Gelatin silver print on cardboard mount.
Inscribed on mount: 1115 N.W.M. Police, Indian Scout: dog, child
and squaw sic, (Blackfeet Indians) Gleichen, Alb./Trueman &
Caple, Photo, Vancouver, B.C.
Trueman and Caple/Library and Archives Canada, call number
PA-195224.
Blackfoot scout Dog Child wears a military-style tunic under a
bearskin coat. He holds a katana, the handachi-fi tted scabbard for
which hangs from his Sam Browne belt, characteristically worn
by the Mounted Police. Dog Child’s wife’s English name has also
been recorded as “Handsome Gun Woman” or “Pretty Gun”
By Cesare Marino, Robert Pontsioen, and Paul Michael Taylor (Dempsey 1996:204; Dempsey 2003:193).