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 Mooney notes, that Red Cloud and Bear Cap both prepared their own tipi designs in red and yellow variants.

9 The Black Tipi of Lame Bull Although James Mooney did not collect any descriptions of this tipi, the original text describing Lame Bull's vision corroborates the testimony of the Fort Marion drawing. During the second day, at „sunset that evening the sun changed into a crescent moon in black sky, and the Pleiades appeared above it, and the Morning Star below. The black came over the sun, and that changed it to a moon." The actual depiction of the tipi on the panoramic drawing (Fig. 2) finely illustrates this phenomenon, with the black background sprinkled with white dots representing stars, and with the crescent in the center. The strange, crescent-shaped form above the top of the tipi poles represents a némoheo 'о, or a 'family badge hanging from top of tepee pole' (Glenmore and Leman 1986: 29). This is a sacred object hung to „deflect" evil or sickness from the family who lives in that tipi. In Rodolphe Petter's mammoth dictionary we find the following under the entry for 'badge': „nimhoyo, badge or heraldic emblem, usually consisting of a bunch of hair or a feather suspended on the tip of one of the lodge poles" (Petter 1915: 82). This is an important identifying marker of Lame Bull's tipi, since there is another visual evidence for the existence of his Black Tipi, also with a némoheo 'о above it. This drawing was prepared by a different Cheyenne artist, who was also incarcerated at Fort Marion. The drawing book containing this village scene was collected by General William M. Hazen, and now is preserved in the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. (cat. no. 154,064-C). Originally, according to the information of the donátor Mrs. Hazen, this set of drawings was attributed to the Sioux; however, during the 196Q's the drawings were re-attributed as Cheyenne for the suggestion of Karen D. Petersen.

10 It was published previously by Barbeau (1960: 202; Pl. 106), and in full color by Maurer (1992: 257; Pl. 255). The village scene is situated in a landscape, placing the camp on both sides of a river. The second tipi from the right in the upper row displays the symbols already referred to in Lame Bull's vision, and quite similar to the other black tipi in the large, panoramic drawing (Fig. 6). There are some minor changes, however. The most remarkable differences are the presence of the yellow circle (outlined in blue and vermilion) at the back, and the row of smaller white spots at the top of the black field. A blue, fourpointed star is also depicted at the top of the tipi, just between the smoke flaps. Unfortunately, because of the landscape composition, this artist could not depict the painting at the bottom of this tipi. However, the némoheo 'о above the poles corroborates that this is the tipi of Lame Bull, already familiar to us from the large panoramic drawing. The némoheo 'о has no colored decoration on the Hazen composition, but the alternating hairlocks and eagle tailfeathers are the same on both drawings. The „family badge" on the Hazen drawing is completed with a black predatory bird, that holds a scalp in its beak. We know from the Mooney notes that Burnt All Over, and Red Cloud both had a stuffed bird above their tipi as a family badge (see Maurer 1992: Fig. 143). In conclusion, we can say that Lame Bull's Black Tipi is documented only from the two Cheyenne drawings, while the description of his vision supports this visual evidence. Very probably, Lame Bull's Black Tipi, or the variants of it, were prepared well before 1874, the last free year of the Fort Marion prisoners, since the two drawings can only reflect Cheyenne historical and ethnographical situations prior to that date. On the other 66