A Móra Ferenc Múzeum Évkönyve: Studia Historiae Literarum et Artium, 4. (Szeged, 2004)

Nagy Imre: A Preliminary Report on the Friedman Kein Canvas

The fourth scene showing the shield design was depicted by another artist, identified by Afton (1997: 164-166) as Bear Man

9 (Fig. 11). The name glyph indicating the identity of the Cheyenne hero is a small figure of a black predatory bird with spread wings and legs. Afton identified this Cheyenne as Whirlwind (1997: 164, 327; 356-357), thus connecting the drawing with an actual shield (Fig. 18) collected by Col. Daniel B. Dyer, and now in the collection of the Kansas City Museum

10 (Cat. no. 40.616). However, the James Mooney fieldnotes clearly demonstrate that this hero can be positively identified with Black Hawk, the Dog Soldier warrior, or with Black Hawk, the younger brother of Little Buffalo Thigh. In three cases of the four, the enemies are White men, primarily civilians, and in one case they are Pawnee warriors (Fig. 10). Taking the known collection date of the ledger into consideration these encounters might be connected to the Indian depredations following the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre, while the single image depicting an encounter between a Cheyenne (White Bird) and two Pawnees could illustrate any of the tribal conflicts between the two tribes. The National Anthropological Archives preserves a Cheyenne ledger (Cat. no. 4653), whose primary artist is the same one who contributed two scenes to the Friedman Kein Canvas (R1C1 & R1C2). The drawing on pages 62-63 of this ledger depicts an encounter where two Cheyenne warriors are chased by four Osages shooting with guns. One of the pursued Cheyennes protects himself with a variant of the Little Buffalo Thigh shield, while he wears a long trailing warbonnet (Fig. 14). Because of the accoutrements of this Cheyenne hero none of the encounters of the Summit Springs Ledger can be related to this scene. However, the shield unmistakably shows the major characteristics of the Little Buffalo Thigh shield: the bear paws on the right half, and the horizontal stripes on the left half. The Massachusetts Historical Society preserves a notebook filled with drawings prepared by Fort Marion prisoners. Buffalo Meat, one of the Cheyenne inmates, drew a fight between pedestrian Pawnees and mounted Cheyennes. One of the Cheyenne warriors carries a Little Buffalo Thigh shield while he is counting coup with his lance on one of the Pawnees. He wears a horned, single tail bonnet, which might be an insignia for one of the leaders of the Southern Cheyenne Bowstring Warrior Society. The identity of the Cheyenne must remain a mystery, as no glyphs, nor inscriptions indicate personal names on the sheets. 9 If we try really read the visual language of Cheyenne name glyphs, the present author considers the „Bear That Goes Ahead" identification more probable (cf. Afton, et. al., 1997:324). 10 In the early 1990s, it was me who suggested - inspired by the Cheyenne cosmology studies of John H. Moore (1984; 1986) - that this black bird glyph might be deciphered as moxtavovetas „black whirlwind" (Afton, et. al., 1997: 327;356-357), indicating vultures (Cathartidae), or the common nighthawk {Chordeiles minor) (Moore 1986: 182). At that time, however, I have not yet deciphered James Mooney's Cheyenne fieldnotes, which clearly demonstrate that Moqtä'vwi-ai-nuchi or Moqtávi-aínoi means 'Black Hawk'. Its modern Northern Cheyenne orthography is Mo'ohtáveaénohe (Glenmore and Leman 1986: 111). Although logically the interpretation of the black bird figure as „black whirlwind" was valid, historically it is completely wrong, because two owners of the Little Buffalo Thigh shield were named as Black Hawk. Further, according to the 1881 Cheyenne census, the original Cheyenne name for Chief Old Whirlwind (1821-?) was E-wo-we-tas-tow-e-osts, while Young Whirlwind (1833-?) was called E-wo-voe-tas-sah. The modern Cheyenne orthography for whirlwind and dragonfly is hevovetäso (Glenmore and Leman 1986: 20; 209). 115