A Móra Ferenc Múzeum Évkönyve: Studia Historiae Literarum et Artium, 4. (Szeged, 2004)
Nagy Imre: A Preliminary Report on the Friedman Kein Canvas
Another unidentified Fort Marion artist depicted a Little Buffalo Thigh shield. In 1990, the Morning Star Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico, sold a drawing book filled with Cheyenne drawings. The scene „Cheyenne Medicine Lodge" shows a tiny image of this shield type as one of the shields taken into the Sun Dance Lodge. The present location of the drawing is unknown. In 1997, a small sized notebook, 7,2 cm (2 7 /s") high and 13,5 cm (5%") in width, was sold by Trotta-Bono Gallery, which contains 146 pages and from these 105 pages have significant images by Cheyenne artists (Coleman in press). The small notebook - which Coleman called the Little Shield Ledger - is now in the Schoyen collection of the National Library of Norway, Oslo Division (MS 4457). On page 82, the mounted Cheyenne hero is depicted with a Little Buffalo Thigh shield variant, while he is carrying a feathered banner lance of the Southern Cheyenne Bowstring Society (Fig. 15). He counts coup with this lance on a Pawnee enemy, who protects himself with a bow and arrow. It is tempting to identify this scene with R1C3 of the Friedman Kein Canvas, because there are several corresponding details. The Cheyenne hero is dressed in a black shirt and black leggings in both drawings. He carries the Little Buffalo Thigh shield, and is armed with the same type of feathered banner lance of the Bowstring Society, too. The horse is a yellow bay in both scenes, and its tail is tied up with a strip of red cloth. The enemy is a Pawnee male in both cases. There are, however, disturbing differences. The Cheyenne hero has an upright eagle feather in his hair on the Friedman Kein Canvas, but the Little Shield notebook does not. The hero has a red breechcloth on the canvas, while it is black in the notebook. The Cheyenne is also armed with a pistol on the canvas but that weapon is missing from the notebook. The Pawnee is armed with a gun on the canvas, while in the notebook he carries a bow and arrow. In conclusion, we cannot exclude the possibility that these two drawings depict the same historical event, but without any substantial textual evidences we cannot be sure in this either. It is also highly probable that both drawings depict Little Shield, although possibly in different actions. The National Museum of the American Indian, New York, holds a series of Cheyenne drawings which were copied for John G. Bourke by Yellow Nose, a captured Ute Indian who grew up and lived as a Cheyenne. The original drawings of these tracings can be identified in many cases, but there are drawings whose originals are now lost. The tracing No. 23/4481 is one of these (Fig. 16). The mounted Cheyenne hero is armed with a saber while carrying a Little Buffalo Thigh shield. He counts coup on a pedestrian Pawnee whose gunshot went astray. Dashed lines connect the name glyph of a small female figure to the hero, and to make it even more precise, „Little Woman" is written beside the glyph. Once again, James Mooney' s name list of Cheyenne shield owners helps us to solve the problem of identity. „#52 Little Man - Hächi- does not know meaning but thinks refers to 'small'. Cantonment. Medicine Arrow Keeper. 'Small Woman' but understood = a man" (Mooney MS #2538, Box 1). Little Man (1847-1917), who became the Keeper of the Sacred Arrows about 1883, after the death of the former Keeper, his cousin Black Hairy Dog (Powell 1981, 1: 61), was born two years before the 1849 cholera epidemic, that is about 1847. He counted twenty-five first coups, and from these three on Indian enemies. The Yellow Nose tracing might be the depiction of one of these. As he declared to Mooney: 116
