Ahschüpsa Masihichsi, Hidatsa Man

Description

A portrait of Ahschüpsa Masihichsi ( "Chief of the Pointed Horn") was done on February 28, 1834, at Fort Clark. He objected to Bodmer's retaining the picture because he was about to leave on a military expedition and evidently feared that leaving his image with others might bring misfortune. When Bodmer refused to make a copy; Ahschüpsa Masihichsi countered by drawing a picture of the artist-a very creditable likeness, according to Maximilian. The weapon Ahschüpsa Masihichsi carries is a gunstock club, so named because the wooden handle was copied after the overall shape of a gun. This type of club was noted as early as the beginning of the seventeenth century and was most popular in the eastern woodlands area and on the upper Missouri. The blades, originally made of flaked stone, were later replaced by metal ones obtained from traders. As Maximilian notes in the German edition of Travels in the Interior of North America, Ahschüpsa Masihichsi appears in Tableau 27 of the aquatints, the second figure from the left among the spectators at a scalp dance. He is pictured again among the Hidatsa men greeting Maximilian and Bodmer in Vignette XXVI.