Canadian Indians at the Stampede - old photos

 Salvete Omnes,

Great Plains People aka Plains Indians have been represented at the Calgary Stampede - they are mostly or entirely the Canadian Indians (they use the First Nations in their Canadian parlance) , but before they were Canadian they were just Plains People.. the border is an artificial separation of these nations of the Great Plains of North America.

at Wiki Commons and on Archive World Library there are photos of olden days, when some of the native participants had been active warriors during the horse riding and coup counting days of pre-reservation times. 

 

Here are some photos, including from the 1960s Stampede pamphlets -

and one very beautiful representation of the Plains Indian horse mask and buffalo/bison horned 'helmet' and the remnants of horse armor in these breastplates

Valete

Plains Indians sketches - shield and armour

Salve,
some sketches of the Plains Indians and ways of carrying the shield:  work-in-progress

horse armor in concept

idea of the Plains Indian horse armour of XVIII century, especially Comanches, Plains Apaches (then Lipan, Mescalero, Jicarilla etc) and Shoshones

Comanche shield of the mid-XIX century, and some sketches showing ways of carrying the shield

Crow warrior, horse with a pad saddle and long shabraque - old sketch

Cheyenne mounted on a horse with a bison hide horse mask, early 1800s

Lakota warrior

late XIX century generic war chief mounted on a horse with a leather mask and breastplate

Red Shield

Upon re-reading, somewhat closer than before, of works by Dorsey,'Cheyenne', Grinnell 'The Cheyenne Indians', Cowdrey, 'Arrow's Elk Society Ledger' etc., I decided to repaint my Red Shield warrior already shown here a few weeks ago.
I started with the buffalo (bison) horse mask, and this particular item completely changed the way this image feels, I think. I recently photographed the whole book on the subject, Cowdrey et al., 'Indian Horse Masks', at the American Indian Museum library downtown Manhattan. The mask is identified as of Blackfeet origin, and since both tribes, Cheyennes and Blackfeet were so closely related, I decided to give his horse such a mask.
In the near future I will repaint his shield, the medicine (war) paint on his horse, lengthen the lance etc. I already started repainting his headdress, eg the red horns that were, according to Grinnell (and Bent :) ), painted separately one by one on the event of the wearer counting coup on his enemies.
To be continued