A Móra Ferenc Múzeum Évkönyve: Studia Historiae Literarum et Artium, 1. (Szeged, 1997)

Nagy Imre: „The Black Came over the Sun...” Lame Bull’s spiritual oeuvre

tion of the Cheyenne drawings in this drawing-book reveals that Chief Killer seems to be a more likely artist and the internal evidences (shield and tipi designs) support this.

6 Since the drawing exhibits strong influence of European artistic traditions alien to Plains Indian pictographic art, we might conjecture that it was prepared during the latest part of Chief Killer's incarceration, or shortly after that. We might further surmise that the drawing illustrates a Cheyenne Sun Dance camp prior 1874, the year of the beginning of the Fort Marion prisoners' exile. Until the present time, the most thorough analysis of this drawing has been that prepared by Moore (1987: 47-48), although he concentrated on the ethnosociological aspects of the artwork, rather than on the historical facets. The illustrated camp circle shows about twenty painted tipis, and eight of them have the name of the owners written beside them. In the upper left corner, - which represents the southeastern end of the camp circle - we read the name 'Lame Buffalo' which marks an outstanding painted tipi with multicolored stripes at the bottom and at the smoke flaps, while its black central part is sprinkled with white dots and further embellished with a multicolored crescent (Fig. 2). This design is strikingly different from the one collected by James Mooney in 1906, and described by Fagin (Fig. 3): This three-part tipi has connecting blue columns from the top to the bottom section. The top is black with a single blue star on the top back. The center section is yellow with two facing brown bull buffaloes. Between them is a red disk with a green ring and tail decorations. The bottom section is black and just above it is a white line with a single row of buffalo tracks (Fagin 1988: 270). Now, if we turn to the James Mooney notes we find a quite detailed description of the design, right beside the drawing of his tipi painting. Since these notes were never published before, and because they are extremely important in understanding the origin of Cheyenne visionary designs, and the rules regulating their use, I will quote them in their entirety. Mooney used special abbreviations and unique phonetic forms in his notes, so I have corrected and completed these peculiarities according to standard English, to make them readable. However, I retain Mooney's orthography of Cheyenne names and terms, since it differs from the orthographies used by George B. Grinnell and Rodolphe Petter, both contemporaries of Mooney, and each of whom developed idiosyncratic methods of transcribing Cheyenne language terms. At the same time, throughout the main text - wherever possible - I will use the modern orthography of the Cheyenne language (Glenmore and Leman 1986, Leman /ed./

1987). Lame Bull tipi No. 26. Green circle around Indian red sun = White man's green. Formerly used grasses for green dye. Light blue morning star (Moon crescent by mistake.) Poles plain. Body should be yellow instead of red. Lame Bull also another of White Shield's tipi. Back - two buffalo bulls - Sun in five buffalo tails. Perpendicular lines rooted down to black border. Buffalo tracks from each side approach central sun. 61