542 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 64 



copy their hats from Paris because they like them. We Indians use the 

 styles of other tribes because we like them too." 



The trend toward standardization m Indian costume based upon 

 Plains Indian models has also been reflected in the art of some of the 

 able painters of the Taos, N. Mex., art colony, for whom a sensi- 

 tive interpretation of "Indianness" was more important than tribal 

 consistency in detail. Likewise, it appears in prominently placed 

 paintings purporting to commemorate significant historic events of 

 the colonial period in the East. It is not difficult to recognize the 

 Plains Indian costumes in Robert Reid's mural "Boston Tea Party," 

 in the State House, Boston, or in Edward Trumbull's "William Penn's 

 Treaty with the Indians" in the Capitol at Harrisburg, both of which 

 were executed in the first quarter of this century. So perhaps it should 

 not seem strange to see 19th-century Plains Indians sitting at the feast 

 in Jennie Brownscombe's appealing painting "The First Thanks- 

 giving," which hangs in Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth, Mass. (pi. 16). 



THE PLAINS INDIAN AS A NATIONAL SYMBOL 



It is a fact that every American coin bearing any resemblance to 

 a representation of an Indian has strong Plains Indian associations. 

 Both the Indian-head penny, first minted in 1859, and the $10 gold 

 piece designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens for issue in 1907 represent 

 the artists' conceptions of the Goddess of Liberty wearing a feathered 

 bonnet. A nmnber of Indians have claimed they were the models 

 for the fine Indian head on the famous "buifalo nickel." However, 

 its designer, James Earle Eraser, in a letter to the Commissioner of 

 Indian Affairs, dated June 10, 1931, stated: "I used three different 

 heads : I remember two of the men, one was Irontail, the best Indian 

 head I can remember; the other one was Two Moons, and the third 

 I cannot recall." 



Significantly, the two models remembered by the artist were Plains 

 Indians. Two Moons, the Cheyenne chief, had helped to "rub out" 

 Custer's force on the Little Big Horn. Strong-featured Iron Tail 

 had repeatedly led the Sioux attack on the Deadwood Coach in Buf- 

 falo Bill's Wild West Show. (See pi. 17.) For 25 years after tliis 

 coin was first minted in 1913 — during the days when a nickel would 

 purchase a ride on the New York subway, a cigar, or an ice-cream 

 cone — this striking Indian head in association with the buffalo on the 

 opposite side of the coin served to remind Americans of the Plains 

 Indians. 



The only regular issue United States stamp to bear the portrait of 

 an Indian is the 14-cent stamp issued May 30, 1923. Titled "American 

 Indian," it bears the likeness of Hollow Horn Bear, a handsome Sioux 

 from the Rosebud Reservation, South Datota, who died in Washing- 



