War Record
Northern Plains
ca. 1920-1927
canvas, paint
height: 46"
width: 78"
Inventory # CP4556
Please contact the gallery for more information.
RELATED EXAMPLES
For a 50' canvas panel commissioned by the Great Northern Railway for Glacier Hotels in the 1920's showing in part the exploits of Arrow Top Knot see:
Science Museum of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN – See: James, L. Dempsey, Blackfoot War Art: Pictographs of the Reservation Period, 1880-2000, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007, pl. 19
For a canvas panel commissioned by the Great Northern Railway for Glacier Hotels in the 1920's showing in part the exploits of Three Calf see:
Science Museum of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN – See: Ibid., fig. 100
For two other panels commissioned by the Great Northern Railway showing in part the exploits of White Quiver and Green Grass Bull see:
Science Museum of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN – See: Ibid., 22 and 23
For hand coloured photographs of panels commissioned by the Great Northern Railway reproduced from the booklet "Picture Writing by the Blackfeet Indians of Glacier National Park" (Eagle Calf and Heavy Breast) see:
Science Museum of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN – See: pls. 20 and 21
This pictographic war record is one of handful of surviving panels commissioned from elderly Blackfoot warriors by the Great Northern Railway between ca. 1914-1927. Following the successful expansion of the railway network, the company opened a number of hotels in Glacier National Park, Montana, themed entirely around Blackfoot war art to promote tourist travel to the West.
These panels are described in James L. Dempsey’s book Blackfoot War Art: Pictographs of the Reservation Period, 1880-2000: "A number of war record panels were displayed in the three Glacier Park hotels for which [very few] images are known to have survived. However, two typed records of the war experiences are in the archives of the U.S. National Parks Service office in West Glacier. One is an undated fourteen-page draft of an illustrated booklet that apparently was never published. Another is a sixteen-page document containing war records of a dozen elderly South Piegans. Both documents describe details of personal war exploits in such a way as to accompany illustrations. According to one document, “The Indians whose lives are pictured on the canvas are the oldest living chiefs of the Peigans. They painted their own histories and interpreted them thru one of their number who spoke Piegan and English tongues.”
Stylistically, the present panel is likely part of the second wave of commissions dating from the early to mid 1920s. These canvases were painted by a slightly younger group of warrior artists describing their exploits during the final years of the intertribal war period, prior to settling on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana. Known artists include Arrow Top Knot, Three Calf, and White Quiver. In particular, the work offered here shares many stylistic affinities with a canvas attributed to Arrow Top Knot now in the collection of the Science Museum of Minnesota, St. Paul. The horses are rendered with great anatomical accuracy, deviating from the more stylised silhouettes of earlier Blackfoot war art. By contrast, human figures are given only schematic form, lending an almost contemporary sensibility to the composition. The handwritten inscriptions at the bottom left corner of both works warrant further comparison.
Unfortunately, there is no clear record of how many of the canvases commissioned from Blackfoot warrior artists have survived to the present day. In the 1940s the Glacier Park hotels dismantled many of these panels. A handful of full sized works are in the collection of the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul. Other canvases were clearly cut into smaller strips and passed from the collection of former park employees into private hands. Likely a section of a larger panel, it is possible that the present work has survived in this manner.