Details

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Collection Summary
Collection: 00086 - Paul Ewald Photograph Collection
Folder: 0035
Item: 01428
Title: The Buffalo (Chiwiku/Shedding Buffalo) medicine men dancing in an Arikara ceremony
Date: 1908
Creator: Curtis, Edward S.,--1868-1952
Inscription/Marks: On the back: col. 86-1428, "106", "9", "x2879", and the speculative identifications noted in the summary. Note that Yellow Bird is actually a member of the Ghost medicine fraternity.
Summary: This Curtis image is one of a sequence of photographs of Arikara medicine men engaged in dance rituals outside a medicine lodge near Beaver Creek on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. Three men of the Buffalo medicine fraternity (also known as the Shedding Buffalo or Chiwiku), tentatively identified left to right as Snow Bird, Yellow Bird (wrong), and Stephen Wash, are attired in regalia specific to their medicine fraternity, as are the items they carry. They dance and sing as they pass the Sacred Cedar. Tipis and tents of the encampment are in the background. Photographed by Edward S. Curtis in 1908 on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. Many of these images were published with accompanying descriptive text in Volume 5 of his famous 20 volume series of "The North American Indian". __The North American Indian (1907-1930) v.05, The Mandan. The Arikara. The Atsina ([Seattle] : E.S. Curtis ; [Cambridge, Mass. : The University Press], 1909), Facing page 92.
Red ID: PH_I_146223 Image ID: 107383 Image Notes: 00086-01428

Collection: 00086 Digitized Images from Collection
Title: Paul Ewald Photograph Collection
Date: 1875-Circa 1960

Summary: Consists of prints and some copy negatives of several photographers on the Fort Berthold Reservation, primarily Gilbert L. Wilson, and also including Frances Densmore, Frank Fiske, Fred Olson, Sumner Matteson, and several unidentified photographers. Ewald wrote identification of many photographs in his collection based upon suggestions from the people of Fort Berthold. Images include celebrations and gatherings, dances, sweat lodges, Little Missouri camps, cradles, portraits, Buffalo Bird Woman, Wolf Chief, Goodbird, Indian crafts and skills, artifacts, wood gathering, gardening, food processing and cooking, earth lodges, bullboats, travois, and Indian cowboys.

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