THE PLAINS INDIAN — EWERS 541 



The phenomenal success of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show encour- 

 aged others to organize similar shows, which together with the small- 

 scale Indian "medicine" shows toured the country and the Canadian 

 Provinces in the early years of the present century, giving employ- 

 ment to many Indians who were not members of the Plains tribes. 

 These shows played a definite role in diffusing such Plains Indian 

 traits as the flowing-feather bonnet, the tipi, and the war dances of 

 the Plains tribes to Indians who lived at very considerable distances 

 from the Great Plains. A Cheyenne Indian who traveled with a med- 

 icine show is reputed to have introduced the "war bonnet" among the 

 Indians of Cape Breton Island as early as the 1890's (Shaw, 1945, 

 p. iv). Contacts with Plains Indian showmen at the Pan-American 

 Exposition in Buffalo during 1901 encouraged New York State Seneca 

 Indians to substitute the Plains type of feather bonnet for their tra- 

 ditional crown of upright feathers, and to learn to ride and dance like 

 the Plains Indians so that they could obtain employment with the pop- 

 ular Indian shows of the period.^ Carl Standing Deer, a professional 

 sideshow and circus Indian, is credited with introducing the Plains 

 Indian feather bonnet among his people, the Cherokee of North Caro- 

 Ima, in the fall of 1911.2 



The acceptance of typical Plains Indian costume, of the tipi, and 

 some other traits of Plains Indian culture as standard "show Indian" 

 equipment by Indians of other culture areas is revealed through study 

 of 20th-century pictures. My collection of photographic prints, post 

 cards, and newspaper clippings dating from the turn of the century 

 shows Penobscot Indians of Maine wearing typical Plains Indian garb 

 (women as well as men), dancing in front of their tipis at an Indian 

 celebration in Bangor; a Yuma Indian brass band in Arizona, every 

 member of which wears a complete Plains Indian costume; dancing 

 Zia Pueblo Indians of New Mexico wearing flowing- feather bonnets ; 

 Cayuse Indians of Oregon posing in typical Plains Indian garb in 

 front of a tipi (pi. 16, fig. 1) ; and a young Indian standing in front of 

 a tipi in the town of Cherokee, N.C., to attract picture-taking tourists 

 and to lure them into an adjacent curio shop (pi. 15, fig. 2). 



In 1958 I talked to a Mattaponi Indian in tidewater Virginia about 

 the handsome Sioux-type feather bonnet he was wearing as he wel- 

 comed visitors to the little Indian museum on his reservation. He was 

 proud of the fact that he had made it himself, even to beading the brow- 

 band. With that simple and irrefutable logic which so often appears 

 in Indian comments on American culture, he explained : "Your women 



1 Communication from Dr. William N. Fenton, director, New York State Museum, June 

 12, 1964. 



' Communication from John Wltthof t, anthropologist, Pennsylvania Historical and 

 Museum Commission, August 2, 1964. 



