Shield with Guardian Spirit, ca. 1850. North Dakota. Arikara. Buffalo rawhide, native-tanned leather, pigment. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, Purchase: the Donald D. Jones Fund for American Indian Art (2004.35)
Flourishing in Dangerous Times, 1820–60
Plains Indians experienced unprecedented mobility, wealth, and power during this time. Buffalo provided meat and the materials for making tipis, clothing, tools, and weapons. Horses, able to pull longer lodge poles and carry more weight than dogs, enabled their owners to live in larger tipis and to transport the new wealth acquired from buffalo hunts and trade networks.
War became an integral part of Plains Indian life. Tribes clashed over hunting grounds, and warriors raided for horses and fought for honor and status. But it was Americans, not other Indians, who threatened the Plains Indians' way of life. Between 1840 and 1890, the United States realized its Manifest Destiny to occupy the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Emigrants on the overland trails degraded the environment, killed buffalo, and brought cholera, measles, and scarlet fever.
—Colin G. Calloway, Scholar
By the early 1800s, Plains Indian art expressed both the culture's worldview and its wealth. Spiritual power and beauty imbued ceremonial clothing, headdresses, horse gear, and weaponry. Pictographic histories of men's achievements in war adorned robes, shirts, and tipis. Visionary images appeared on shields and drums. The sacred geometric imagery used on objects made for women was quilled, beaded, and painted on robes, dresses, moccasins, containers, and ritual objects. Plains Indian art had come of age.
—Gaylord Torrence, Curator
Flourishing in Dangerous Times, 1820–60 section of the exhibition
