Teacher professional development and classroom resources across the curriculum
Teacher professional development and classroom resources across the curriculum
+ Display larger image Anonymous Sioux, PICTOGRAPHS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. A PRELIMINARY PAPER. Pp. 3-246 in Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution (1882-1883). Courtesy of Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
| Creator | Lakota Tiyospaye (Winter Count Keeper) |
| Context | The Lakota recorded key annual events by recording them on buffalo robes. Because the Lakota did not keep written histories, these robes are rare pieces of documentary evidence showing how they responded to contact early in the eighteenth century. |
| Audience | The Lakota of current and future generations |
| Purpose | To mark key historical events |
The Lakota of the Great Plains commonly
recorded their history through winter
counts. Ordinarily placed on buffalo robes,
in a spiraling succession, these pictures
identified the most important event of the
year for an individual or a village. Some
winter counts stretched over two or three
generations.
The Columbian Exchange transformed
relations between Native American groups
on the Great Plains. The intersection of
horses, buffalo, and firearms drew Lakota
groups (such as the Santee) westward in
the early 1700s, where they enjoyed great
success as hunters, raiding at the expense
of more sedentary and horticultural tribes
like the Pawnee.
But the European presence brought
devastating microbes as well as horses
and guns. The first smallpox epidemic
evidently arrived in the 1730s, killing great
numbers of Native Americans by the
1780s. The figures reproduced below—
which are drawn from several robes—
depict diseases and other hardships that
afflicted the Lakota after contact.
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