Artistic and Historical Significance
An exceptional historic flag-beaded Lakota horse mask is available for collectors to view and learn about.
July 4th Lakota horse masks speak to a unique period in Lakota beadwork. These masks are standout items: fully beaded horse head coverings, typically ornamented profusely with American flags. While the design was inspired, the masks themselves were in fact continuations of several age-old Sioux societal practices, modified to suit Reservation life. The mask’s production albeit was brief, coinciding roughly with the popularity of Independence Day celebrations hosted on Reservations in South Dakota. Yet, the masks became iconic emblems of status, wealth and artistic prowess. While the subject mask has been prominently featured in early 20th century photographs, its whereabouts were largely unknown, until now.
On the Great Plains, horses were an integral part of the Lakota culture in the mid-18th century. Prominent in everyday life, the horse became a quintessential feature of Lakota social and ceremonial practice, ultimately inspiring the crafting of decorative items in their likeness.
Horse masks have a long and diverse genealogy. Some observers speculate that they were initially inspired by armor worn by mounts belonging to the Conquistadors. Sources indicate that masks appeared among the Sioux and their neighbors as early as the turn of the 19th century. In July 1806, Alexander Henry “The Younger” (1765-1814), a Canadian fur trader and explorer active with the North West Company in southern Canada, the western Great Lakes, and the Columbia River drainage, was part of a Hidatsa trading party that traveled to a Cheyenne and Sioux village, located along the Missouri River in present-day North Dakota. As the group neared the encampment, they were met by a small company of mounted warriors with horses that were, as Henry recalled, masked “in a very singular manner” to resemble buffalo, elk, or antelope. Henry further noted that the horses’ mouths, nostrils, and eyes were trimmed with imported red cloth and that “[this] ornamentation gave them a very fierce appearance.” Early masks were integral accoutrements in the Great Plains warrior complex.
Horse masks continued to evolve throughout the 19th century, the consequence of an everchanging sociopolitical climate. Only a few historic Lakota horse masks have survived into the 21st century and a half dozen of these, including the one pictured here, are beaded and tailored to cover the entire head and neck. This example bears American flag imagery and has been associated with Lakota July 4th celebrations. Many of these masks were predominantly crafted between 1898 to 1920 at “give aways” on the Pine Ridge Agency. Their intended use was to ornament a prized horse that was to be gifted during the annual event. As explained by Joyce Herold, Curator of Anthropology at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, in “Lakota Fourth of July Horse Masks,” The People of the Buffalo: The Plains Indians of North America; Essays in Honor of John C. Ewers: “there were many such flag-embellished tour de forces of beadwork during this high period of Lakota women’s art, but the mask was designed particularly well to take the eye and imagination and to transform the horse into a commanding marker of high status, beadwork art, and the traditional imperative of sharing.”
The nomadic Plains Indian way of life reached its zenith and ended abruptly in about 1880. At that time, most Great Plains peoples, including the Lakota, were living on reservations primarily in North and South Dakota, where bison herds had vanished, regional Indian wars had ceased, traditional religious practices were banned, and where rationed food and annuities had become necessary for survival. Within this new society, Lakota women created significant amounts of beadwork, but not as a byproduct of them having more leisure time. Rather, it occurred in response to a need to preserve Lakota identity and a family’s social standing.
During the same period, American flags became a popular motif in Lakota pictorial beadwork, especially during July 4th celebrations. The proliferation of American flag imagery during the late 19th century was fueled by the long-established “gift giving” culture of the Lakota, combined with their nostalgia for ceremony. In fact, Independence Day was one of just a few government sanctioned ceremonies in which the interned Lakota could partake. Adriana Greci Green, Curator of Indigenous Arts of the Americans at the University of Virginia’s Franlin Museum of Art, discusses this unique phenomenon in Performances and Celebrations: Displaying Lakota Identity, 1880-1915:
“…that it is to the giveaway that we must look for the most plausible explanation of the proliferation of the flag motif, as well as for the overall efflorescence in beadwork during this time. The huge amounts of clothing, horse trappings, and other objects given away …were made expressly for that purpose, so that it makes perfect sense that these items be decorated with Fourth of July flags…[the] flag motif marks objects for the giveaway and encodes the reason for their production. Further, an item so decorated would signify that the wearer/recipient was publicly honored at the Fourth and held in high esteem by his or her family.”
Stars and stripes were traditional motifs, used by generations of Lakota artists. Their inclusion to achieve flag motifs was seemingly inevitable and quickly embraced on the Reservation. The Lakota saw the flag as an important symbol of American patriotism, a protective device imbued with unique powers, and an appealing symbol during a time of heightened artistic activity. (Red, white, and blue were colors with which Lakota people already had affinities.) Finally, flag imagery was a part of the official symbolism of July 4th celebrations—a day during which select rituals could be performed.
The first July 4th celebrations were held on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in 1897 and on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1898. Warrior-artist Amos Bad Heart Bull’s visual record of the 1898 event includes images of the initial part of the July 4th parade in which the “give-away people” are being led by the “chiefs” of the occasion (one of whom was the artist’s father). Two of Amos’ drawings show participants riding horses adorned with beaded, long-case horse masks displaying the American flag.
This flag-beaded horse mask appears in a photograph dated about 1905, likely during a July 4th “give away.” Although this photo has been published numerous times in research pertaining to Lakota horse masks, the actual mask has never been published; moreover, the whereabouts of the subject mask were until recently unknown. The photograph belonged to John R. Brennan and is now in the collection of the South Dakota State Historical Society. Brennan (1848-1919), an Irish immigrant, rose through the social hierarchy and was subsequently appointed superintendent of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation between 1900 and 1917. It was during his time there that he supervised and coordinated July 4th celebrations for the agency’s residents.
Brennan’s photograph shows a well-dressed boy astride a richly adorned horse which wears the subject mask. One interpretation suggests that the pictured child has just received the horse during a giveaway. Another reading posits that this affluent boy was preparing to ride the horse in a July 4th parade, after which the horse, its trappings, and the child’s attire were all to be given away. Either way, that the subject horse mask is constructed entirely of buffalo hide, a scarce but sought-after material in the 1880s, and purposefully photographed at the request of the agency’s superintendent, John Brennan, reveals that this horse mask was a standout during the celebration.
In context, this beaded horse mask and others like it speak to the resilience of Lakota society during a difficult period of cultural change. No doubt this significance was not lost on New Jersey-based amateur archaeologist and avid collector and scholar of Indigenous beadwork Carl Francis Schondorf (18901945), who likely attained this piece in the early 20th century. (Some of his collection now resides in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, after the institution made attempts to buy his collection outright in the 1920s.) As a July 4th give-away item, the mask dramatically confirmed the status of both a generous, high-status giver and an honored recipient. It made visible the creativity, innovation, and change that was thought necessary for the preservation of historic Lakota traditions and group identity.
This exceptional horse mask will be available for viewing by private appointment with Thomas Cleary LLC during the Santa Fe – August 2020 art walk and sale this August 14 to 18.
For additional information, references and citations, contact Thomas Cleary at www.thomasclearyllc.com or (505) 670-2945. For the purposes of the formatting of this article, specific citations have been omitted.