108
FIG. 4 (above): The Pipe
Dance and the Tomahawk
Dance of the Chippeway
Tribe, by James Otto Lewis,
1835.
Hand-colored lithograph on paper.
45.7 x 29.2 cm.
Smithsonian American Art Museum,
gift of H. Lyman Sayen to his nation,
inv. 1973.167.40.
One of the dancers holds in his
right hand a fl intlock trade gun,
the barrel decorated with feathers
and a leather or cloth bag (most
likely containing shot and powder)
tied and hanging from the breach.
In the other hand he holds a pipe
tomahawk, also a by-product of
early Euro-American trade. Another
dancer holds a war club with a
triangular blade in one hand and in
the other a saber in its scabbard with
a decorated cloth or leather strip
wrapped around it.
viewed the “long knife” as a sign of authority,
status, and friendship, with binding diplomatic
value and symbolic importance.2
Swords appear often in representations of
American Indians, both in group scenes and individual
portraits. One of the earliest is a portrait
painted in London in 1710 of the Mahican
leader Etowaucum, who was part of a delegation
then visiting for political reasons (fi g. 3).
Hanging from his belt is a curved sword, though
whether this belonged to him or was a studio
prop or confection of the artist is not clear. More
than a century later, in the 1820s, artist James
Otto Lewis was commissioned by the U.S. War
Department’s newly created Indian Offi ce to
document treaty negotiations with tribes of the
Upper Midwest and Great Lakes. Accompanying
Lewis Cass, Governor of Michigan Territory,
and Indian Affairs Superintendent
Thomas L. McKenney, Lewis
made several Indian portraits and
sketches directly in the fi eld, later
publishing them in The Aboriginal
Port Folio, printed in Philadelphia
(Lewis 1835, Fogel 2018). Among
his hand-colored small folio prints
is a drawing of “The Pipe Dance
and the Tomahawk Dance of the
Chippeway Tribe” (fi g. 4). The
sketch is interesting, as it incorporates
two key elements of Euro
American weaponry much desired
by many American Indians,
the gun and the sword.
A number of Lewis’ portraits were
incorporated by the same Thomas L.
McKenney and James Hall in their
three-volume set History of the Indian
Tribes of North America (McKenney
and Hall 1836–44). The frontispiece
in volume 2 is a painting by
young Swiss artist Peter Rindisbacher
(1806–1834), a member of the ill-fated
Lord Selkirk’s Red River Colony,
Manitoba. Titled War Dance of the
Sauks and Foxes (fi g. 5), the painting
is conceptually similar to that of Otto
Lewis, and, like Lewis, Rindisbacher
had also been an eyewitness who drew
his scene on the spot as the dance was
actually performed. One of the Sauk and Fox dancers,
his face painted black as a sign of victory, holds
a long, fl at-backed, heavy Dragoon-style saber.
As the subtitle of McKenney and Hall’s History
reads, the volumes were “Embellished with One
Hundred and Twenty Portraits, from the Indian
Gallery in the War Department.” Among the many
portraits, some feature prominent Indian chiefs
holding military swords or sabers. The fi rst of these
is a portrait by Charles Bird King of the Creek chief
William McIntosh (1775–1825), who is depicted
wearing Scottish garb with a bandolier bag over his
shoulder and holding a sheathed saber with a feline
pommel (a variant of the French model AN IX) in
his left hand (fi g. 6).
A fl at-backed broad saber with stirrup-style
hilt similar to that featured in Rindisbacher’s