Connections: ­The Blackfeet and Winold Reiss

The artworks presented in this exhibition showcase connections between Blackfeet people and German American modernist artist Winold Reiss (1886-1953). Some individuals and families from the Blackfeet Nation formed decades-long relationships with Reiss during his many visits to Blackfoot territory from New York between 1920 and 1948. This exhibition puts nine of Reiss’s original pastel portraits into conversation with the art and belongings of Blackfeet people from the collection of the Museum of the Plains Indian.

Many Blackfeet people worked for Reiss as portrait models. The most recognizable portraits are those that the Great Northern Railway Company purchased from Reiss and reproduced in advertisements for its resorts and tour operations in Glacier National Park. These portraits connect us with Blackfeet individuals who grappled with the imposition of the tourism industry on their traditional territory in the early twentieth century. As iconic images, they circulated widely in North America and internationally. This exhibition reconnects the portraits with their community and families.

Lesser-known connections are emphasized by bringing the portraits together with art and objects from the museum’s collection. As a focal point in this exhibition, the works of some of the Blackfeet artists who studied art and design with Reiss have been gathered and displayed for the first time. During the summers of 1931 and 1934-37, Reiss operated an art school in Blackfoot territory near Glacier National Park. Artists and models from the Blackfoot Confederacy and visiting artists from across North America and Europe were involved in the school. In the mid-1930s, some onlookers referred to this lively intercultural scene as an “art colony.”

Blackfeet artists significantly impacted Reiss’s artistic practice. He appreciated the sophisticated designs and rich vocabulary of forms that he saw in their works. ­This is apparent when Reiss’s portraits are shown alongside the Blackfeet art that inspired him. Just as Reiss achieved a striking likeness in the faces of his subjects, he also faithfully rendered the bold geometries in Blackfoot beadwork and painting, and the figures and compositions used in war art. Th­is influence went beyond Reiss’s portraiture, as he used the motifs and strategies of Blackfeet artists in some of his mural and design projects.

A versatile artist, designer, and teacher, Reiss’s career is hard to categorize. He created hundreds of portraits during his lifetime. In addition to his vibrant, popular images of Blackfeet people, Reiss is also renowned for his 1920s portrait series featuring some of the Black American artists, writers, and intellectuals associated with the Harlem Renaissance. He also painted landscapes, abstractions, and murals, and he was as prolific a designer as he was an artist. His wide-ranging body of design work encompasses everything from graphic designs and illustrations for posters and publications, to furniture and textile design, to the decoration of largescale commercial interiors. Reiss’s eclecticism was rooted in his arts training in Germany. Born in the city of Karlsruhe, Reiss’s first art teacher was his father Fritz, an artist noted for paintings of German landscapes and people. Before immigrating to the United States in 1913, Reiss studied in Munich, where he was immersed in European Arts and Crafts movements and theories. Reiss embraced a variety of disciplines and he rejected hierarchical distinctions between the so-called fine arts (painting and sculpture) and applied arts or craft. It is no wonder that he admired the practices of Blackfeet artists who produced beautiful and meaningful works for a variety of purposes, from artworks for display, to items with everyday uses, to ceremonial objects.

­This exhibition focuses on connections between members of the Blackfeet Nation and Reiss. However, Reiss also engaged with people from other communities in the Blackfoot Confederacy. The Confederacy includes the Blackfeet Nation, Kainai Nation, Piikani Nation and Siksika Nation and its traditional territory stretches from the North Saskatchewan River to the Yellowstone River. We have used Blackfeet names in the exhibition text when they were shared with us. ­The āasāisstto Language Society generously provided some of the translations. We welcome feedback about these individuals and your connections to them. What connections do you see in the exhibition?

Curated by Renee Bear Medicine and Heather Caverhill, this exhibition was made possible through a partnership between the Blackfeet Nation, Glacier National Park Conservancy, the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Foundation, and the Museum of the Plains Indian. The Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Foundation generously loaned most of the portraits in this exhibition to the Museum of the Plains Indian.

The Great Northern Railway Company began distributing calendars using Winold Reiss's portraits in 1928 in an effort to encourage tourism at Glacier National Park. This calendar depicts Chief Short Man, a Blackfeet warrior.

Gift of Florence L. Atkinson

This Blackfeet-style stand-up bonnet has 27 eagle feathers adorned with red horsehair pendants. Many of the feather ribs, which were originally quilled, have been covered with colored thread. The headband is decorated with white and brown weasel tails. An arrow is placed along the feathers of the bonnet.

Chief Wades In The Water received the bonnet by transfer.  He believed this bonnet was originally owned by Lame Bull due to the arrow on the bonnet. Lame Bull was shot in the head with an arrow, which was later attached to his feather bonnet by his wife.

Purchased from Chief Wades In The Water, 1942

This Tribal Police Chief uniform includes a jacket, two hats, a hat pin, and a set of jail keys. Wades In The Water was appointed Chief of the Blackfeet Tribal Police by 1905. He then appointed his wife, Julia, to the Tribal police force, where they would serve together from 1905 into the 1930s.

Purchased from Chief Wades In The Water’s daughter, Nora Spanish, 1968

This small handbag is fully beaded on both sides, with centered designs and blue background colors.

Purchased from Julia’s daughter, Nora Spanish, 1967

Connections: The Blackfeet, Winold Reiss, and The Great Northern Railway Company

Reiss visited the Blackfeet Nation’s Reservation for the first time in the winter of 1920. His expectations of Blackfeet people were shaped by the wild west fictions popular during his childhood in late nineteenth-century Germany. But he did not encounter characters from the novels of Karl May and James Fennimore Cooper in Browning. Instead, he met some of the Blackfeet individuals who continued to work with him for the next three decades. After getting to know Reiss and watching him work, some Blackfeet people gave him the name Ksisskstukiipo’ka (Beaver Child) because of the swiftness with which he completed his pastel portraits, sometimes two in a day.

Among the Blackfeet people who modelled for Reiss during his first trip to Browning, many also worked for the Great Northern Railway Company. In 1893, the company completed the construction of the rail line that connects St. Paul, Minnesota, to Seattle, Washington, passing through the Blackfeet Nation’s Reservation on its route. After Glacier National Park was created through an act of Congress in 1910, the Great Northern Railway Company expanded its enterprise to build luxury resorts in the area. Blackfeet people responded to the rapid development of the tourism industry on their traditional lands in different ways. Some Blackfeet people negotiated employment with the railway company. For example, numerous Blackfeet families were paid to set up tipi camps near its hotels during the summers. Some of the people who modeled for Reiss were hired to perform stories, songs, and dances for resort guests. Blackfeet people sold artworks to the Great Northern Railway Company and to tourists, and some people found service and labor jobs in the Park. The railway company also hired Blackfeet people to travel and make appearances at special events.

The Great Northern Railway Company used a variety of themes to market its passenger service and hotels, but its promise of experiences with Blackfeet people and culture was the most enduring and popular. The company advertised Glacier National Park as a spectacular Rocky Mountain wilderness, where visitors could encounter Blackfeet people on their traditional lands. These marketing claims sidestep the fact that Blackfeet people were denied their rights to hunt and harvest on the land after the area was designated as a National Park in 1910. Blackfeet people continue to contest these restrictions today.

When Reiss made his second trip to Blackfoot Territory in 1927, he entered into a financial agreement with the Great Northern Railway Company. The company commissioned its first portraits from Reiss that summer. At that time, he was one of many artists who sold art to the rail company. However, more than any other artist’s work, Reiss’s vibrant representations of members of the Blackfoot Confederacy became entwined with the Great Northern Railway Company. The company purchased close to one hundred portraits from Reiss during his lifetime. Its marketing department used these works in different forms of publicity, including advertisements, souvenir items like postcards and calendars, and printed matter for its facilities such as rail schedules and menus. The company also displayed Reiss’s original pastel portraits at its resorts and rail stations and circulated them in exhibitions.

Blackfeet people had different reasons for modeling for Reiss during his trips to Browning and Glacier National Park. For one thing, Reiss paid fairly. His accounting records from the 1930s, when he operated his school in Blackfoot Territory, show that he typically paid from fifty cents to a dollar per hour, depending on the model’s experience. This was a decent wage during the Depression era, roughly ten to twenty dollars today. In the 1940s models would have been paid a little more. For some people, portrait modelling was a means to express their identity and status. Working for Reiss had social and cultural benefits. The models and artists involved in Reiss’s school, for example, all camped or stayed in chalets near the art studio for weeks at a time. Some members of the Blackfoot Confederacy remembered these gatherings fondly, as they were opportunities to connect with members of their families and community. Why do you think that Blackfeet people chose to model for Reiss’s portraits?

In the later decades of the twentieth century, the Great Northern Railway Company merged with other railroads in the United States becoming Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway. Many of Reiss’s portraits of Blackfeet people are in the art collection of the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Foundation.

Buckskin Pinto Woman

Cora Bull Child Arkinson (Buckskin Pinto Woman, Kwaikisstsipimyaakii, c.1930s–1960s) is remembered by her family as kind, mild mannered, and a beautiful traditional dancer. When she modeled for this portrait, she was in her late teens. She posed for Reiss during his last trip to Browning in 1948. Cora was likely receptive to participating in portraiture because Reiss paid his models fairly, and also because of her family’s connection to Reiss. Her father George Bull Child worked as a life model and translator for Reiss. He also helped Reiss hire other Blackfeet models.

This portrait of Cora was purchased by the Great Northern Railway Company to use in promotional items, including its annual calendar in 1956. But Cora’s connection to the company began earlier in her life. As a child, her family spent their summers working for the Great Northern Railway Company. Her father and mother (Gypsy Little Leaf) set up their tipi in Glacier National Park where they met and interacted with resort guests and performed stories and songs.

Cora’s great niece Renee Bear Medicine recalled seeing a copy of this portrait at one of the hotels in Glacier National Park when she was a child. While Bear Medicine was familiar with the portraits the Great Northern Railway Company reproduced and circulated, her grandmother helped to provide the artworks’ connection to the Blackfeet people, her community, and her family. “My grandmother pointed at the portrait and said, ‘do you know that she is your aunt?’ That is how I learned that she is a Blackfeet person who I am connected to through my family.”

Cora’s portrait is shown with a set of stick figures created by her father for the Museum of the Plains Indian. George Bull Child was an artist, known for his winter counts and war story paintings. Photographs from the 1930s show him at Glacier National Park demonstrating the technique of painting on hide. The Great Northern Railway Company purchased and displayed some of his war story paintings in its hotels, and he also sold artworks to private collectors and museums.

Dan Bull Plume

Blackfeet advisor and historian Ernie Heavy Runner described Dan Bull Plume, Stumiksaapoopi (c.1876–1965) as a spiritual leader who is remembered as a mentor and guide to younger generations of Blackfeet men.

Dan Bull Plume modeled for this portrait during Reiss’s final trip to Blackfoot territory in 1948. At that time, he had known Reiss for almost thirty years. He met Reiss during the artist's first trip to Browning in 1920.

Reiss’s innovative approach to portraiture is showcased in this striking image. He used pastels to naturalistically represent the skin tone and texture in Dan Bull Plume’s face and hand. He rendered the blanket using contour line and masses of red. Reiss left the background of the portrait blank, but he outlined Dan Bull Plume’s head and shoulders with thick blue lines that suggest a shadow.

Reiss limited the details of this portrait to the model’s facial features, used bold lines and blocks of color, and exploited negative space to indicate shape and form. These are all hallmarks of the style that he employed in hundreds of portraits. He used these strategies to represent his Blackfeet models, the people who posed for him in his studio in New York, and many others who he encountered during his travels throughout the United States, Mexico, and Europe.

This portrait of Dan Bull Plume is displayed alongside two paintings created by his son Daniel Bull Plume Jr., which are in the Museum of the Plains Indian’s collection. Daniel Bull Plume Jr. was a noted artist. He created murals in Browning and Glacier National Park, and his artworks are in a few private and museum collections. The painted portrait on velvet by Daniel Bull Plume Jr. is untitled. However, it is suspected to be a representation of the artist’s father.

This individual portrayed in this painting is believed to be Dan Bull Plume Sr. (Stumiksisapo; also known as Green Grass Bull), the father of Dan Bull Plume Jr. Reiss included images of Bull Plume, Sr., in a series of portraits for the Great Northern Railway Company.

John Ewers, the first Curator of the Museum of the Plains Indian, commissioned these tweezers. Several items in the museum’s collection were made by Rueben Black Boy in the 1940s under the guidance of Weasel Tail who shared his cultural knowledge with younger Blackfeet artists.

Turtle

Turtle, Spoopii (1877–c.1950s) is remembered as a great Blackfeet hunter, as well as a storyteller, ceremonialist, and artist. As a young man Turtle served with the United States Armed Forces. Later in his life, he worked for the Great Northern Railway Company performing dances and songs for visitors to Glacier National Park.

Turtle also worked as a life model for Reiss. He was the first Blackfeet person that Reiss met in Browning in 1920. Turtle and members of his family modeled for Reiss many times over the next three decades. Reiss created more portraits of Turtle than any other Blackfeet person. He also included Turtle’s likeness in mural and interior design projects. In 1933, Reiss featured Turtle in the glass mosaics in the rotunda of the Cincinnati Union Terminal, which is Reiss’s best-known large-scale mural project. Turtle also worked at Reiss’s summer art school in Blackfoot territory, and he appears in drawings and sculptures made by some of the students.

In this portrait by Reiss, Turtle is wearing a striking red beaded shirt, which is now part of the Museum of the Plains Indian’s collection. It is made from thick woven red cloth, which Blackfeet and other Native American people acquired through trade with Europeans in the nineteenth century. In the 1940s, a Blackfeet elder named Three Calf shared that this shirt belonged to a person from the Blackfoot Confederacy, and he suggested that a Blackfoot artist created the distinctive designs in the beadwork. Little else is known about its origins. What can you share about the beaded shirt worn by Turtle?

Viewing these two works together, it is possible to see how faithfully Reiss rendered the bold geometric designs in the beadwork, the texture of the ermine skins, and other elements in the attire. This pairing demonstrates tangible connections between Reiss’s portraits and the belongings and art practices of the Blackfeet people who knew him.

Day Rider, Montana Blood Boy

Little is yet known about the child represented in this pastel portrait. When Reiss created this work in 1937, he was operating his summer school in Blackfoot territory. As members of Blackfeet Nation and Kainai Nation were involved in the school, the child in the portrait might have been from either community. Reiss created at least two other portraits of the same child, one in 1937 and the other in the 1940s.

Among Reiss’s portraits, few represent small children. Life modeling involves holding a pose for an extended period, which is a difficult task for a very young child. This artwork represents a toddler with remarkable stamina, and it also exemplifies how quickly Reiss could produce his pastel portraits. He mainly focused on rendering the details of the face of his model, often suggesting the body of his subjects with only a few contour lines. When the model wore attire with complex details and patterns, Reiss would sometimes render just a section of those elements and complete them later. It was because Reiss was able to produce his pastel portraits so quickly that some Blackfeet people referred to him as Ksisskstukiipo’ka (Beaver Child).

This portrait is displayed with an eagle bone whistle and a buffalo hoof rattle from the Museum of the Plains Indian’s collection. Both works were purchased from a Blackfeet person named Mike Day Rider. We are not certain if there is any direct connection between the child named Day Rider in Reiss’s portraits and Mike Day Rider. We invite you to offer your insights. What can you share about the child represented in this portrait?

This rattle is made from six buffalo hoofs tied together with buckskin and red flannel, with a black horse tail decoration. Buffalo hoof rattles were often used in Blackfeet ceremonial settings.

Albert Racine was a painter, illustrator, and sculptor. He is best known for his wood relief carvings. In the 1930s he took classes at the Winold Reiss Art School. He also apprenticed with Blackfeet sculptor and carver John C. Clarke. Later in his life he operated an art gallery in Browning.

Victor Pepion (1908-1956)

Among the Blackfeet artists who took classes at the Winold Reiss Art School in the 1930s, Victor Pepion became the most eclectic and prolific. The artworks gathered here show the scope of his interdisciplinary practice.

Pepion’s works are in several private and public collections, but the Museum of the Plains Indian has the largest number of his artworks dating from the 1930s to the 1950s. The museum benefitted from Pepion’s practice in other ways as well. When it opened in 1941, Pepion was commissioned to create The Buffalo Hunt mural series and the painted hide that are in the museum’s lobby. He also designed some of the museum’s original displays and contributed to the dioramas.

Pepion created the concept for The Buffalo Hunt mural series under the guidance of his great uncle Mountain Chief, who was part of the generation of Blackfeet people who had experienced buffalo hunts. Pepion was a skilled muralist when he proposed the series. He apprenticed with the Swedish muralist Olle Nordmark who supervised the installation of fresco murals for many public buildings in the 1930s.

Like Reiss, Pepion was a versatile artist, designer, and teacher. In the years after he attended Reiss’s summer school, he seized opportunities at several colleges and universities to study many disciplines in the arts, including figural and abstract painting, mural painting, sculpture, design, ceramics, jewellery, leatherwork, engraving, and lithography. He also studied history, literature, and biology. He attained a Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees, and later became a post-secondary art instructor.

David Dragonfly, who was the curator of the Museum of the Plains Indian from 1994 to 2019, has described Pepion’s art practice as “a kind of Blackfoot modernism.” Pepion developed a distinctive style that combines the strategies of culturally continuous Blackfoot art with many other aesthetic forms and genres.

In 1943, Reiss travelled to Browning to paint portraits of Blackfeet people, including some that are included in this exhibition. During the trip, he visited the Museum of the Plains Indian. Reiss did not encounter Pepion who was serving in WWII at the time, but he was able to view his art. According to the museum’s curator John C. Ewers, Reiss was delighted by the work of his former student.

Victor Pepion designed this poster to advertise the Museum of the Plains Indian, which opened its doors in 1941. The poster showcases Pepion’s skills as a portraitist and graphic designer.

Medicine Man’s Dream is part of a series of tempera paintings that Victor Pepion created in the early 1950s. After his death in 1956, one of the paintings in his series was awarded first honorable mention in the Philbrook Museum’s juried exhibition. Except for The Buffalo Hunt murals in the lobby of the Museum of the Plains Indian, Pepion’s series of tempera paintings from the 1950s are his most widely viewed works.

Howard Pepion is a Blackfeet artist and the nephew of the renowned Blackfeet artist, Victor Pepion. Howard produces variations of art including acrylic paintings, and oil paintings both on canvas and other mediums such as buffalo skulls.

Howard also re-created Victor Pepion’s Blackfeet tipi sketches, which are part of the Museum of the Plains Indian collection. 

This dog travois is among several items made by Cecile Last Star and Rueben Black Boy through a project commissioned by the Museum of the Plains in 1942-1943. Travois were used to transport tipis and household items as Blackfeet people moved camp.