NO. 7 SOHON S PORTRAITS 01- IN'DIANS — EWERS I3 



barely visible. A selection of tbcsc drawinjjs, comprising tiiose that 

 have been identified and are sufficiently clear to be reproduced, has 

 been employed in the illustration of this paper. In their present 

 condition these drawings have scientific value, but do not constitute 

 a fair representation of Mr. Sohon's artistic ability.* 



THE FL.\Tin:AD INDIANS 



They called themselves the Salish. However, the people of this tribe 

 have been known to white men for more than a century as the Flat- 

 head Indians. The origin of this name is uncertain. The neighboring 

 Pcnd d'Oreille have a tradition that the Flathead practiced artificial 

 head deformation when they arrived in the Bitterroot \'^alley from 

 the west, at an undetermined time centuries ago. Yet the modern 

 I'lathead deny that their ancestors deformed their heads. (Turney- 

 Iligh, 1937, p. 12.) Some writers have used the term "Flatheads" 

 loosely to designate the entire group of small Salishan tribes of the 

 Upper Columbia River drainage. In 1851 Anson Dart, Superinten- 

 dent of Indian AlTairs for Oregon Territory, explained the application 

 of the name to these tribes thus: "These Indians received the name 

 Flat Heads from the fact that their heads were not sharpened by 

 pressure on the forehead, as the Chinooks." (Ann. Rep. Comm. Ind. 

 Aff., 1851, p. 478.) This suggests that the "Flatheads" were so named 

 to designate people whose heads remained in the natural condition. 

 flat on top, to distinguish them from the tribes of the Lower Columbia, 

 whose custom it was to deform the heads of infants by artificial 

 pressure in cradling. 



1 Although Gustavus Sohon's drawings comprise the most extensive and 

 authoritative pictorial series on the Indians of the Northwestern Plateau in pre- 

 reservation days ; although he possessed remarkable talent ; and although some 

 52 of his drawings have been published, his name does not appear in any of the 

 standard biographies of American artists. Louise Rasmussen's "Artists of the 

 Explorations Overland, 1840-1860," devotes three short sentences to Sohon. 



This biographical sketch has been prepared on the basis of the published Gov- 

 ernment reports on the Pacific Railway Explorations and Surveys and the Mili- 

 tary Wagon Road, on material in Hazard Steven's life of his father, on informa- 

 tion in the files of War Department and State Department Archives in the Na- 

 tional Archives, on a typed biographical sketch written by his son. the late 

 Henry W. Sohon, in 1918, which is now in the William Andrews Gark Me- 

 morial Library, Los Angeles, and information graciously supplied by his 

 daughter, Dr. Elizabeth Sohon, of Washington, D. C. 



For valuable biographical information on the subjects of Sohon's Indian 

 portraits, the writer is indebted to Pierre Pichctte, Martina Siwahsah, and 

 Baptiste Finley, Indians of the Flathead Reservation, Montana, interviewed in 

 September 1947. 



