Bodmer_Publication

A red-painted, carved wooden knife in the Stuttgart Wied collection is closely
associated with this memorable fight. As a reminder of him seizing his enemy’s
knife with bare hands and thus saving his life, Mato-Tope tied the wooden knife
into his hair as a visible sign of his victory. Tableau 14 shows a portrait of Mato-
Tope titled “Adorned with the emblems of his war deeds.” There the knife can be
seen very clearly, as well as the six yellow, blue and red painted wooden sticks,
which are also in the Linden-Museum Stuttgart (Acc. No. 36076 a – f).
Accurately Documented by Fine Lines
The buffalo robe shown on Tableau 21 is surrounded by 13 objects, seven of
which belong to the collection of the Linden-Museum. On the far left is a bundle
with lovesticks which resembles the one collected from the Hidatsa (Acc. No.
36127). Next to it on the right is a pouch made of white badger skin decorated with
rosettes made of early blue beads, metal cones, red woolen fabric, and quillwrapped
leather fringes (Acc. No. 36146). Two feathers in the upper part of the tableau
were also incorporated in the Stuttgart Wied collection; however, they show
distinct traces of damage by insects. The eagle feather on the right is decorated
with small, quill-wrapped sticks that are tied together (Acc. No. 36126 a). It, too,
has suffered from insects. Of the eagle feather on the left, however, only the decorative
stick fixed to the center has survived (Acc. No. 36126 b). Here it should be
noted that the colors and patterns exactly correspond to the right-hand feather
in the headdress of the Arikara Pachtüwa-Chtä portrayed on Tableau 27. Because
the original watercolor represents these details so precisely, there can be no doubt
that the object is linked with the portrait. In the upper right-hand corner of
Tableau 21 the signal whistle once owned by Mato-Tope and used mainly in ceremonies
is to be recognized (Acc. No. 36082). Karl Bodmer’s watercolor painting of
an unidentified man (probably Mandan or Hidatsa) shows how such a whistle was
worn on a leather string around the neck. 16 The tobacco pouch shown below on
the tableau has in the meantime been deaccessioned and has gone to a private
collector (Inv.-Nr. 36118).
The leather bag in the bottom right-hand corner of the tableau has also been
damaged by insects (Acc. No. 36131). The quill application worked in linear technique
and the quill-wrapped fringes have suffered most. Mark Halvorson, curator
at the North Dakota Historical Society has confirmed that this object clearly
resembles a Hidatsa tobacco pouch. These were usually worn at the belt, and the
picture even draws attention to the method of fastening. Schulze-Thulin assigned
this object to the Gros Ventre, apparently in reference to the inventory book where
the “Grosventre” are identified as provenance. Prince Maximilian had already
pointed out that the French used the term Grosventres to refer to both the Atsina
(Grosventre des prairies) and the Hidatsa. 17
In the bottom left-hand corner is a leather knife-sheath with quill decoration
(Acc. No. 36114). The original entry in the inventory book lists a “scalp knife” that
went with the knife-sheath, but in a list that was made to record the objects’ exact
location in storage cabinets only the sheath is mentioned. The whereabouts of the
knife remains a puzzle.
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