NO. 7 SOIION's portraits of INDIANS — EWERS 27 



appeared to offer such potentialities for rapid conversion to the white 

 man's way of Hfe. Yet I^^latlicad history is one of ohstinate resistance 

 to acculturation. Their well-meaning white friends apparently failed 

 to understand that the Flathead cherished certain primitive practices 

 as traditional rights. Stubbornly they clung to their insistence on 

 their right to hunt buffalo on the plains, despite the deadly opposition 

 uf the more powerful Blackfoot, and the kindly advice of their white 

 friends, until the buffalo were gone. Persistently they asserted their 

 right to remain in their beloved Bitterroot \'alley homeland until 

 their own poverty forced them to leave it. With equal courage they 

 resisted efforts to introduce among them alien economic and social 

 practices which were antithetic to their own cultural experience. No 

 trait was more markedly characteristic of the primitive Flathead 

 than was their independence. As a people they passionately desired 

 to live their own lives and to make their own decisions. 



Probably no one expressed more concisely the simple objectives 

 of primitive Flathead life than did Father Mengarini, for many years 

 their missionary, who wrote: "Generally the prayers of our Indians 

 consisted in asking to live a long time, to kill plenty of animals and 

 enemies, and to steal the greatest number of (the enemies') horses 

 possible." (Mengarini, 1871-1872, p. 87.) 



GUST.WUS SOIIOX'S PORTR.MTS OF FL.\THEAD INDIAN 



LEADERS 



The series of nine pencil portraits of Flathead leaders, drawn by 

 Gustavus Sohon in the Bitterroot Valley in the spring of 1854, in- 

 cludes the likenesses of the majority of the responsible leaders of 

 that remarkable little tribe in the middle of the nineteenth century. 

 Most of these men were born before their tribe met white men. All 

 were well known to the Catholic missionaries who founded St. Mary's 

 Mission, and many of them were mentioned prominently in the writ- 

 ings of Father De Smet and his colleagues. They comprised the ma- 

 jority of the Flathead leaders who negotiated the tribe's first and only 

 treaty with the United States a year after Sohon drew these portraits. 

 Many of them also signed the important Blackfoot Treaty of 1855. 



In the following biographical sketches of the subjects of Mr. 

 Sohon's portraits, the artist's own brief but informative characteriza- 

 tions, written in his own hand on the same sheets as the portraits, 

 are printed in smaller type beneath the name of the subject. 



