112
FIG. 15 (below middle):
Engraved French sword
blade with buckskincovered
scabbard and
pommel.
Woodlands. C. 1770.
Steel, gold, buckskin, wood, brass
tacks. L: 85.1 cm.
Ex Wild West Museum, Harrisburg.
Photo courtesy of Sara Pipino.
FIG. 16 (below):
Saber with native
adornment.
Great Plains. Second
half of the 19th century.
Steel, leather, wood, brass, glass
beads, sinew, horsehair. L: 85.1 cm.
Ex Wild West Museum, Harrisburg.
Photo courtesy of Guernsey’s
Auctions.
FIG. 17 (bottom): Beaded
hide sword case.
Southern Cheyenne, Great
Plains. C. 1870.
Hide, glass beads, sinew, red ochre.
L: 85.1 cm.
Ex Valentine Pasvolsky Collection.
Photo courtesy of Heritage Auctions,
Dallas.
FIG. 13 (above):
Cavalry saber and scabbard
with Arapaho beadwork
and fi ttings.
Great Plains. C. 1875.
Steel, brass, wood, hide, glass seed
beads, sinew, commercial leather,
brass and iron fi ttings. L: 111.1 cm.
Ex KSA Industries (Kenneth S. “Bud”
Adams Jr. Collection); Cliff Logan,
Austin, TX; Bill Healey.
Image courtesy of Heritage Auctions,
Dallas.
FIG. 14 (below):
U.S. Model 1860 saber
with added raccoontail
pendant, U.S. fl ag
beadwork, and brass tacks.
Great Plains. Second half of
the 19th century.
Steel, brass, wood, leather, animal
tail, cotton cord. L: 101.6 cm.
Ex Brent Burg, Houston.
Photo courtesy of Heritage Auctions,
Dallas.
THE JAPANESE KATANA IN
INDIAN COUNTRY
In his article “The Sword of Japan” published in
the early 1870s in Yokahama, the British scholar
Thomas R. H. McClatchie affi rmed that “there
is, perhaps, no country in the world where the
sword, that ‘knightly weapon of all ages,’ has in
its time, received so much honour and renown
as it has in Japan” (McClatchie 1873:55). Great
mystique had always surrounded the making of
the classic Japanese sword, particularly the tachi
and katana (see e.g., Hughes 1977:53–54).6
In the second half of the nineteenth century,
following pressure exerted by Commodore Matthew
Perry and his fl eet of “black ships” (Taylor
1995), Japan was emerging from a period of isolation
and opening up to foreign trade and diplomatic
missions. Prized Japanese swords increasingly
played an important role in gift-giving and
diplomacy.7 In 1860, the Tokugawa Shogunate
sent the so-called Man’en Gannen Mission to
the United States to ratify the Japan-U.S. Treaty
of Amity and Commerce.8 Mathew Brady photographed
leading members of the delegation at
the Washington Navy Yard (fi g. 23).9
In January 1872, scarcely three years after the
Meiji Restoration of 1868, another Japanese
Mission, led by Iwakura Tomomi, arrived in San
Francisco, en route to Washington, D.C., and
points in Europe, having sailed from Yokohama
aboard the USS America the previous month.
The delegation’s arrival in Washington caused a
sensation (fi g. 24).
An intriguing connection between the Smithsonian
and the Iwakura Mission lies in the
close relationship apparently forged between
Smithsonian Secretary Joseph Henry and the
fi rst Japanese Chargé d’Affaires to the United
States, Mori Arinori (1847–1889). Mori’s interest
in developing the Japanese education system
led him to seek Henry’s guidance in that
effort. Signifi cantly, Mori gifted a Japanese
sword to Henry, the whereabouts of which
are now not known. He also gifted a sword to
the U.S. Secretary of War, William Belknap.10
Although these swords cannot be defi nitively
linked with the swords under consideration in
this paper, it does establish the practice of giving
swords as gifts by members of the Iwakura
Mission during their stay in Washington,