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Performing Archive

List of Large Plates Supplementing Volume Nineteen

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In early days, before white men invaded the Great Plains and ruthlessly slaughtered them by the hundreds of thousands, bison were of prime importance to the hunting tribes of the vast region in which those animals had their range. The bison was not only the chief source of food of the Plains Indians, but its skin was made into clothing, shields, packs, bags, snowshoes, and tent and boat covers; the horns were fashioned into spoons and drinking vessels; the sinew was woven into reatas, belts, personal ornaments, and the covers of sacred bundles; and the dried droppings, "buffalo-chips," were used as fuel. So dependent on the buffalo were these Indians that it became sacred to them, and many were the ceremonies performed for the purpose of promoting the increase of the herds.
The Cheyenne belong to the Algonquian linguistic family and therefore are related to the tribes of the Blackfoot Confederacy and to the Arapaho of the north, and, much more remotely, to many of the tribes that once lives along the Atlantic seaboard and in the Midwest. They are now divided into the Northern Cheyenne, living in Montana, and the Southern Cheyenne who were assigned a reservation in the present Oklahoma in 1867.
There were no more vigorous people among the Indians of the Plains than the Comanche, a Shoshonean tribe, related to the Shoshone and Bannock of Idaho, from which region they entered the northern plains and drifted ever southward, following the bison in their wanderings. They were noted warriors and raiders, being the enemies of many tribes and extending their depredations far into Mexico. One need look no farther than the accompanying portraits to discern the warrior character of those old braves.