Assiniboin Medicine Sign

Description

The buffalo was the staff of life to nomadic Plains tribes like the Assiniboins. Other animals were hunted, but it was the buffalo that provided the bulk of the meat necessary for sustenance and the hide and bone with which to fashion shelter, clothing, and tools. This shrinelike arrangement of a buffalo skull on a rock was described by Maximilian as a medicine sign, a magical device intended to attract the bison herds so necessary to the peoples' existence. The scene was painted near Fort Union in the summer of 1822 and was later reproduced as Vignette XV in the atlas of aquatints.