Four Views of the Story Robe: https://fourviewshist181.jenniferandrella.com/exhibits/show/four-views
Oral history and paintings are valuable sources of information for historians and anthropologists to get access to events that happened in the past. This is especially true when we want to learn more about the lives and cultures of Native Americans. In this blog, I focused on analyzing the meaning of a Story Robe (Iitsiiniiksi’naatsin) from the Blackfoot nation and how Native Americans used this type of history art to preserve their nations’ histories.
Blackfoot people lived in North America (Great Plains) and were well-known warriors. Warfare was important in the nation’s culture due to many reasons. These included territory expansion, defense, or revenge (Harrod, 1999). The victory in a war not only brought multiple benefits to the nation in terms of food and lands but also brought pride and honor to the men participating in the war party (Harrod, 1999). Many victorious warfare were painted on the story robes to record the important achievements of individuals or the nation. The role of these paintings is to show exactly what had happened, and thus, any exaggeration or addition is not allowed (Dempsey, 2016).
Looking at the painted robe in the Four Views project, I noticed that the painting only shows a piece of information about the historical event. Although the general interpretation of the painting could be straightforward, the background story or the reasons behind the event were not mentioned. In particular, although I know that the robe in the Four Views project showed a victorious battle of the Blackfeet against their enemies, the battle’s motive and the identity of the enemies are still a mystery to me. Based on a drawing of a woman at the lower left of the hide, I speculate that the painting showed a successful captive of a woman from another nation (?).
It is a challenge to fully understand the painting without the information from the native carers. However, given that Native American paintings in the nineteenth century were mostly acquired from unknown sources (based on my experience when visiting the digital collections), it is even harder to recover the background story of these paintings. To gain insight into the paintings, I had to read about the lives of the Blackfoot people, the symbolic meanings of the images, colors, as well as the role of the painting on hide in their cultures. However, since I am not a Native American, my interpretation may contain wrong assumptions. Despite the difficulties in understanding the context of the hide painting, I appreciated the beauty of the painting and how it told me interesting information about the life of Native Americans, in this case, the life of the Blackfoot people.
The painting depicted a small-medium raid in which the Blackfeet and the opposing sides were represented by yellow and red rectangles respectively. Through the way that the humans were drawn, I learned that the painting was painted somewhere in the 1840s because it was the common way to portray humans in this period (Dempsey, 2016). In addition, I could speculate that the members of this raid may not be closely related to each other. Rather, this could be a group formed temporarily for this specific battle. This interpretation stemmed from a note that in the 19th century, smaller raids became popular among the Blackfeet, and small temporary groups were formed to achieve a specific goal (Harrod, 1999). In this Blackfoot robe, I think it is possible that the horses with different colors could represent the idea of individualism. On the other hand, the colors could have symbolic meanings as well. The horses were painted in five colors: blue, yellow, orange, brown, and green, which were both masculine and feminine colors, implying the importance and significance of the event to its owner (Wardle, 1990). Using the common symbolic meaning of these five colors in Native American tribes (Wardle, 1990) and assuming the painting recorded a fight to captivate the woman, I think that the horse colors show not only the pride and bravery of the owner but also the new beginning for the woman.
These types of paintings on hide were desired by the Hudson Bay Company and thus, had a higher value than unpainted ones (Dempsey, 2016). The Blackfoot’s robe is made of a relatively large piece of tanned buffalo skin. With a closer look, I could see that the material is soft and thick. The painting was likely to be decorated by men since women only painted general decorative patterns (Dempsey, 2016). The purposes of these hide paintings were to not only record important events but also showcase the honor and pride of their wearers. Besides depicting warfare, Native Americans also drew ritual ceremonies on the hides (Dempsey, 2016). In general, Native Americans used art as a means to record historical events. Most of the paintings, for example the Blackfoot’s story robe, are very informative with a focus on the story rather than the art itself (Dempsey, 2016).
Since the meaning of these paintings can only be best interpreted by the native communities, the repatriation of these objects to the communities is important. When viewing the Native American objects on the museum websites, it was notable that most of the objects were collected from an unknown source, and previous owners were often non-native people. Where these native artifacts were obtained was important to understanding the meaning of the illustrated story. Even the Story Robe of the Blackfeet in the Four Views project, besides the general information about the robe and its usage, the website, which is supported by the Blackfeet community (Blackfoot Digital Library) does not include any further interpretation of the object. Moreover, this object is still held by the British Museum in London. Given a long time of misplacement and the lack of the right carers for the objects, many stories have been lost. This resulted in a great damage to native cultures. I hope that in the near future, these artifacts will be repatriated to the right native communities.
Work cited
Blackfoot Digital Library. (n.d.). Iitsiiniiksi’naatsin. Mootookakio’ssin.
Retrieved June 2, 2024, from
https://mootookakiossin.ca/explore/objects/storyrobe_BM_1869/main
Dempsey, L. J. (2016). Blackfoot War Art: Pictographs of the Reservation Period,
1880–2000. University of Oklahoma Press.
Harrod, H. L. (1999). Mission among the Blackfeet (Reprint).
Univ. of Oklahoma Press.
Wardle, B. L. (1990). Native American Symbolism in the Classroom.
Art Education, 43(5), 12–24.