Scalp Dance of the Minatarees
Engraved by Charles Vogel Printed by Bougeard
Tableau 27. Scalp Dance of the Minatarees
$3,800.00

This vivid re-creation of the Scalp Dance of the Minatari or Hidatsa was based on several field sketches and figure studies by Bodmer which are preserved in the Joslyn collection in Omaha.

The Hidatsa performed this dance at Fort Clark on two occasions in 1834: once in February, following a successful retaliatory raid on the Assiniboin, and again in April, after a surprise attack on a Sioux camp.

Women as well as men played prominent parts in these victory celebrations, donning military garb and painting their faces like warriors, brandishing weapons and displaying battle trophies. In this print, several women can be seen wearing coup feathers in their hair. Another wears a horned feather-bonnet of the type reserved only for tribal leaders.

Yet another woman holds aloft a long pole, from which hangs a stuffed bird with a scalp mounted on a hoop fixed in its claws. To the right of this is another scalp ring suspended from a similar pole. A pile of battle trophies, mostly weapons taken from the enemy, is located at lower center, to which a stooping figure appears to be adding another item. The observers standing at extreme left, the figure in the left foreground, and others at the center and right foreground are represented in the Joslyn collection by individual, full-figure watercolor portraits.

Other Plains Indian dances are featured in Vignettes XXV and XXVIII and in Tableau 18 of the atlas.

Hidatsa chief Pehriska-Ruhpa is shown in the regalia of a Dog Society dancer in Tableau 23.

Text by David Hunt, Director, Stark Museum, Orange, Texas, USA

Alecto Historical Editions