Mandan Shrine

Description

In his diary Maximilian describes this shrine just as it appears in the watercolor. In the published aquatint (Vignette XIV) the knives were moved from the rear to the foreground of the picture and, in one version of this plate, the sinister effect of the snake on the buffalo skull was heightened by the addition of black carrion birds. Both the shrine depicted here and the one in the previous plate were originally painted in November of 1833. Both were located near the burial ground of Mih-Tutta-Hang-Kusch. The human skulls in this shrine were probably removed from that burial ground. Skull shrines, observed by several travelers, were related to beliefs regarding the human body after death and were used as fasting grounds for those seeking supernatural powers.