Plains hide painting

tradition pre-contact - 19th century Great Plains North America

Plains hide painting is the traditional practice of painting tanned or raw animal hides among the Indigenous peoples of the North American Great Plains. Nearly any hide surface could carry paint: tipis and tipi liners, shields, parfleche envelopes, robes, clothing, drums, and the pictorial calendars known as winter counts. The work divides along gendered lines: women painted abstract geometric designs - bright solid fields of color, with negative shapes discussed and balanced by eye - while men painted flat, two-dimensional pictographs recording battle and hunting exploits, treaty signings, and the passing years. Visionary designs drawn from dreams gave shields and tipis their protective power. Painted with mineral and vegetable pigments applied with bone styluses and buffalo-rib brushes, the art grew more detailed after 1850; when the buffalo herds were destroyed, the same picture-writing moved onto ledger paper and gave rise to ledger art.

Tulsa, Oklahoma. Gilcrease Museum: Sioux parfleche ( 1900 )
Tulsa, Oklahoma. Gilcrease Museum: Sioux parfleche ( 1900 )CC BY-SA 3.0 (credit: Wolfgang Sauber) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Flat, two-dimensional pictographic figures, instantly legible within the community
  • Bright, solid fields of color with negative space treated as a design element
  • Narrative hides read right to left, with the protagonist repeated across the hide
  • Semi-transparent figures scattered freely across the hide and allowed to overlap
  • Minimal backgrounds; dots and cross-hatching used sparingly to fill or break up fields
  • Geometric motifs such as the 'Feathered Sun' of concentric feathered circles

Key figures

  • Kicking Bear (1845-1904) — Oglala Lakota warrior and painter who recorded the Battle of the Greasy Grass on hide at Frederic Remington's request
  • Cotsiogo (Cadzi Cody) (c. 1866-1912) — Eastern Shoshone hide painter of Sun Dance and buffalo hunt scenes made for sale from the Wind River Reservation
  • Naiche (c. 1857-1919) — Last hereditary chief of the Chiricahua Apache and a painter of narrative hide and canvas subjects
  • Silver Horn (c. 1861-?) — Kiowa painter whose hide and ledger work carried the tradition into the reservation era

Example works

  • Painted Elk Hide — Cotsiogo (Cadzi Cody) (c. 1900)
  • Account of the Battle of the Greasy Grass — Kicking Bear (1898)

Sources

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