Sioux Camp

Description

Conflicting inscriptions are associated with this watercolor, one identifying the camp as Sioux, the other as Assiniboin. A woodcut obviously based on this painting illustrates the section of Travels in the Interior of North America dealing with the stay at Fort Pierre in June, 1833, and the watercolor therefore most likely depicts one of the Sioux camps that Maximilian and Bodmer visited at that time. The scene is a domestic one, with smoke rising from the smoke hole of the central tipi and a woman in the foreground scraping or softening a small hide. Maximilian was told that the construction of a single tipi required about fourteen large buffalo hides. These and all the other skins required for clothing, containers, and trade were laboriously tanned by the women, who did "all the work" while the men led "a comfortable and easy life."