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Indian Woman Dressing a Deer Skin, 1868 (38 1/2 x 28 in.)

Dressing of deer and buffalo skins for the making of clothing and wigwams was performed by women. The strenuous procedure involved first removing the hair. The hides were then repeatedly dipped in water containing deer brains, stretched on poles (as Eastman has depicted), and scraped with a utensil made of bone, horn or iron. By 1852 when Schoolcrafts second volume appeared, this was a dying art; the Dakota traded small furs for cloth coats, shirts and

her, in great measure, from the dressing of skins; which was formerly quite a labor."

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There is no record of who selected the subjects for Eastman's Indian Affairs paintings. All were themes he had explored more than ten years previously in the watercolors prepared for Schoolcrafts history, which, in turn, were based on works produced in the 1840s at Fort Snelling. These paintings, therefore, depict life on the frontier of at least twenty years before they were made. In the intervening decades, the culture of the Northern tribes as Eastman knew it had been destroyed. In the 1850s a series of treaties compromised Dakota land holdings, fueling revolts that culminated with the Minnesota Sioux Uprising of 1862 in which the Santee Dakota were ultimately defeated by white volunteers. By 1867 when Eastman began the Capitol paintings, the Santee had been removed to a reservation in Nebraska. The neighboring Chippewas, who Eastman occasionally depicted, had been allowed to remain on their own land, but a treaty of 1853 had left them with only a small reservation necessitating basic cultural changes for survival. Eastman's paintings were already records of a lost way of life and were probably the last images of these subjects. After the 1860s, popular, artistic, and historical attention shifted to the western Dakota, whose stubborn resistance to United States control captivated Eastern audiences.

Woman Dressing a Deer Skin, Rice Gatherers, Indian Mode of Traveling, and Spearing Fish in Winter are virtually free of narrative; they are demonstrations to Easterners of the specific methods and implements employed in tasks foreign to their own culture. Eastman was intimately familiar with the nuances of costumes, tools, and other accoutrements, as he had painstakingly delineated them for dozens of plates in Schoolcrafts treatise.

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Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the History, Conditions and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, 6 vols. (Philadelphia: Lippincott,

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The luminous, panoramic river landscape in Feeding the Dead is among Eastman's finest and is particularly appropriate for this theme. The Dakota placed their deceased up on scaffolds, which were erected on elevated sites with breathtaking views. As Eastman has shown, a medicine sack was suspended from one corner of the scaffold to ward off evil spirits. While flags denoted chiefs or warriors, white cotton, as seen here, was used for others. After a lengthy period of mourning, the body was interred beneath a wooden structure like that in the foreground to prevent the invasion of predators and rain.

According to Schoolcraft, "these Indians, believing the soul sensorial abides for a time with the body in the grave, requiring food for its ghostly existence and journeyings, deposit meats and other aliment, at and after the time of interment."3 He also describes a similar ritual in which food is dutifully brought to the graves of ancestors as insurance for a good life.

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Scenes of buffalo hunting proliferated in the nineteenth century. Eastman has heightened the dramatic power of his Buffalo Chase by sharply contrasting brilliant sunlight with long shadows and by including a rapidly moving thundershower on the left.

Since many images of the bison hunt were painted by Eastern artists who had never seen one, they are frequently inaccurate. Eastman's painting exhibits his characteristic precision in its equipment, such as the pad saddles that were preferred by most hunters and omitted by most painters. We also know that the artist had a tame buffalo from which he made several studies.

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Winters were particularly arduous for the northern tribes. Since little game was to be had, they relied on the fish that abounded in the lakes and rivers of the region. The ingenious method of fish ing depicted by Eastman was described by many travelers to Fort Snelling. The fisherman cut a hole in the ice, and then constructed a sort of tent over it with branches and blankets to block out the light and make the bottom visible. To a pole tipped with an iron spike, he attached with string a wooden, often fish-shaped lure. He next dangled the lure in the water, attracting fish which he could then impale. In the painting, the hooded man removes his catch from his spear. Often the fish would be cured so they could be kept for long periods of time.

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