Details

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Collection Summary
Collection: 00086 - Paul Ewald Photograph Collection
Folder: 0035
Item: 01441
Title: Spotted Horse, Harry Gillette and two men of the Duck medicine fraternity dance around the Sacred Cedar of the Arikara
Date: 1908
Creator: Curtis, Edward S.,--1868-1952
Inscription/Marks: On the back: col. 86-1441, "The Ducks" twice, "13", and speculative idenifications: Spotted Horse, Harry Gillette, Plenty Fox, and ?.
Summary: Four men belonging to the Arikara medicine fraternity known as the "Duck", "Big Foot", or "Hwat kusu", dance around the Sacred Cedar and the Sacred Stone during a ceremony outside the medicine lodge on Beaver Creek. They are in regalia specific to the medicine which is in the medicine bundle of their fraternity. Each holds a handful of grasses or reeds, and one holds a rattle as well. Their bodies have been painted with symbolic markings exclusive to the Ducks' medicine, they are bare-chested and wearing breechclouts. Notes on the back suggest the outer two men are Harry Gillette (White Shield), and Spotted Horse. The other two are not identified. Known to be Duck medicine men are Little Sioux, Harry Gillette, and Spotted Horse. 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".
Red ID: PH_I_21890 Image ID: 116709 Image Notes: 00086-01441

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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