of receiving, using, and displaying swords.
Clearly, Red Cloud held the blade in great esteem,
as he hung it up on the wall together
with the American flag and the iconography
of his own Roman Catholic faith, into which
he had been baptized in 1884 along with his
family and other headmen.5
On the other side of the world, however,
the katana had a somewhat parallel place
in Japan’s own cultural life, as Japan itself
was during this period slowly opening to the
West and to America. So it is to that story
we turn our attention now, to explore some
ways in which the long sword of the samurai
may have reached these remote parts of Indian
111
country.
FIG. 12 (above): Two
mounted Cheyenne
warriors with feathered
shields, lance, and sword
pursuing a mounted Ute
warrior aiming bow and
arrow, by Tichkematse
(Squint Eyes, Cheyenne).
Fort Marion, St. Augustine,
Florida, November 8, 1879.
Ink and watercolor on paper.
21 x 29 cm.
National Anthropological Archives,
Smithsonian Institution, manuscript
290844.
FIG. 10 (left): Pictured
buffalo robe. Hidatsa,
Arikara, or Mandan, Prairie
Plains/Upper Missouri.
Before 1872.
Buffalo hide, pigment. 310 x 299 cm.
Collected by Brigadier General
William B. Hazen at Fort Buford,
Dakota Territory, 1872. Donated to
the Smithsonian by Mrs. Mildred M.
Hazen, May 25, 1892.
National Museum of Natural
History, Smithsonian Institution, inv.
E154068-0.
This colorful hide painting depicts
battle scenes between enemy
warriors. The intertribal warfare
theme is typical of what George
Horse Capture (1993:83, 86) referred
to as “exploit robes,” which he
considered “the most important
type of painted hide because it is
visual history.” It shows warriors in a
variety of attires, hairstyles, and body
decorations employing a variety of
weapons, including guns and swords.
Horse tracks and flying bullets are
visible, along with small pictographs
of animals (bears/wolves), possibly
indicating personal names. The robe
falls within the broad category of
“Plains biographic art,” typically
showing the main action moving
from right to left and is also seen on
war/scalp shirts and later adopted in
ledger art drawings.
Originally identified as Sioux,
the tribal affiliation of this robe
was changed by Candace Greene
(unpublished Smithsonian collection
record annotation) in 2017 to
Hidatsa, Arikara, or Mandan, Prairie
Plains/Upper Missouri, based on a
full review of the collecting history
and consideration of general stylistic
traits.
FIG. 11 (below): Detail of
buffalo robe in fig. 10.
Within the dynamic painted battle
scene are two warriors with swords,
one mounted and one on foot.
INDIAN SWORDS
in the field or visiting a photographer’s studio
in town would be rewarded with a gift or
with monetary compensation as payment for
allowing the picture to be taken. In individual
and group photographic portraits of Indians,
the sword often appears.
Portrait photographs of Indians with swords
and sabers were taken in Washington as part
of the delegation images that photographers
impressed on their “wet plates.” Some images
reviewed by Paula Fleming in her Shindler
Catalogue (Fleming 2003) show tribal headmen
holding heavy cavalry sabers. Alexander
Gardner (1821–1882), the noted Civil
War photographer, also took photographs of
American Indians with swords or sabers in his
popular studio on Pennsylvania Avenue. Like
the Shindler portraits, Gardner’s portraits are
in the extensive Smithsonian collection at the
National Anthropological Archives (NAA).
Also at the NAA are stereoviews produced
in the years 1869 to 1871 by another wellknown
photographer of the Old West, William
H. Jackson (1843–1942). Jackson’s own
photographs are among many he cataloged
(Jackson 1877), without attribution, and the
portraits of Indians often include swords and
sabers (figs. 18–20).
The NAA also holds a stereoview photograph
by Stanley J. Morrow (1843–1921),
taken at Fort Berthold, Dakota Territory,
before May 1876 (fig. 22). The photograph
shows four Arikara Indians, including Bobtail
Bull (sometimes recorded as Bobtailed Bull),
second from left, wearing an otter-skin fur
cap and military-style coat with epaulettes
and holding a cavalry saber with two eagle
feathers hanging from the handguard.
The brief survey and illustrative examples
provided here are intended to show that,
whenever and however the katanas shown in
the two 1890s photographs above reached the
Great Plains, they did not arrive in an indigenous
interpretive vacuum. Rather, from the
Indians’ perspective, even though the blades
themselves may have been somewhat different
from many others in Indian possession,
they surely fit within and became incorporated
into a longstanding indigenous tradition