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

„The black came over the sun...": Lame Bull's spiritual oeuvre IMRE NAGY (János Tornyai Museum, Hódmezővásárhely) After several decades of a serious art historical survey of the North American Plains Indian culture we are still able to identify only a handful of named artists from that area. This paper will introduce a very talented and highly-creative Cheyenne artist Lame Bull, and will make an effort to reconstruct his oeuvre, or at least that part which is documented to some degree. In this respect I shall employ the term „oeuvre" in a broader sense than it is used in art historical texts. Although I will identify designs of painted tipis, shields and even a bandolier originated by Lame Bull, he was not necessarily the actual artist in all these cases. In tribal terms, however, he was considered to be the owner of these designs, even if he only outlined the actual painting of a tipi, shield or rawhide container. We might consider his „spiritual oeuvre" in the sense of concept art. By reconstructing Lame Bull's spiritual oeuvre we shall learn more about the mechanism of Native American art, about its uses and function. In this work of reconstruction I will lean heavily on the unpublished Cheyenne field notes of two ethnologists for the Bureau of American Ethnology, James Mooney and Truman Michelson. These notes are now housed in the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C..

1 Other sources are artworks that are in public and private collections in the U.S. and Europe. Lame Bull in the published literature There is surprisingly little information about Lame Bull. The first mention of him is made in James Mooney's monograph, The Cheyenne Indians. While discussing the medicine societies, he writes: „...According to the testimony of one who took part in this dance (i.e.: the Fire Dance) under the instruction of its most noted leader, Lame Bull, the fire caused an unpleasant sensation... Lame Bull died in 1901, leaving no recognized successor, although one or two persons claim to hold the secret" (1907: 415). (See the Appendix, for a full description of Lame Bull's role in the Fire Dance.) The next mention of a Lame Bull is in Stephen Barrett's Hoistah, a romanticized biography of a Cheyenne woman: „...The ancient order of the Sacred Arrow-Medicine led by Lame Bull came early the next morning,..." (1913: 96). If we accept John H. Moore's supposition that Hoistah's account describes a Cheyenne Sun Dance performed about 1830, this Lame Bull has to be a different person than the one in question. He might be the father or uncle of the Fire Dancer mentioned by Mooney, and it is very instructive that he is associated with the „ancient order of the Sacred Arrow-Medicine."" The Mennonite priest Rev. Rodolphe Petter mentions Lame Bull in his EnglishCheyenne Dictionary as one of his informants on the original Cheyenne term for God (Petter 1915: 516). This suggests that Petter recognized him as an authority on native Cheyenne religion and sacred matters. Lame Bull is mentioned twice in the Life of George Bent, during the turbulent years of 1866-67 (Hyde 1968: 265, 270). However, checking the Bent-Hyde correspondence reveals that Hyde misinterpreted Bent's story, and the two references are to the same war59