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''Shawnee Raider'' first appeared on the September/October 2005 issue of "On The Trail" Magazine. Tecumseh, the great Shawnee warrior was 17 years old in 1785 when he began leading attacks on pioneers traveling down the Ohio River.
The original 24x36 oil was exhibited at the Phippen Museum 32nd Annual Western Art Show & Sale May 27, 28, & 29 2006 Prescott , Arizona
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Features...
- A Shawnee Raider rides on the crest of (1) Alanant-O-Wamiowee, an ancient buffalo trace, which salt-seeking prehistoric animals had carved in the wilderness. It is one prong of the Warrior Path that leads south to the lower Blue Licks. Men once called this area Northern Kentucky “Limestone” and in the distance, Limestone Creek empties into the Ohio River. The warrior’s raid has been a successful one, for he proudly displays a fresh scalp and has it stretched and drying on a bone hoop.
- The medicine bag fastened around his neck contains herbs and charms to aid his quest. He has plucked hair, and a small area the size of a silver dollar is left near the crown of his head. Hawk feathers and a deer hair roach further embellish his hair. Permanent tattoos marking zigzag lines and mythological figures also adorn his head. Face painting and dark coloration around his eyes make him appear more fierce and frightening to an enemy during battle.
- (2) Shortly after birth, Indian boys had their ears split, and a piece of bark was placed in the slit to hold out and absorb the blood. After removal of the bark, the warrior would often wrap the distended lobe with quills, silver rings, ear wires, and ear wheels. Silver rings in the nose septum were signs of masculinity.
- The gun, a Northwest trade gun, (3) became the premier smoothbore weapon of the frontier. The red military coat shows this warrior’s allegiance to the British, who would reward him with trade goods for the scalps he brought to Detroit. The Shawnee leader (4) Tecumseh often wore a “scarlet coat”. He wears a breechcloth, which consists of a 12-inch wide piece of cloth that passes between his legs, and is held in place at the waist with a leather thong.
- His leggings are of black trade wool; the beads decorating the outside are trade beads. His moccasins are center seam, of one-piece Woodland style and decorated with beads and quills. There is a matchcoat draped over the horse’s withers. It is made of Stroud cloth and decorated with ribbons. Often, the warrior wrapped the Matchcoat around his body for additional warmth, fastening it under his chin with a brooch.
- (5) In the middle of the Eighteenth Century, a steady stream of horses began to flow from the Texas Plains across the Mississippi near Natchez, and a smaller number passed over near St. Louis. Southern horses first went to the Chickasaw tribe, then they and their progeny either spread eastward through Tennessee and into Virginia and the Carolinas, or moved northward into Kentucky and the Ohio Valley.
- (6) In 1519, the Spanish explorer Hernando Cortez and his entourage of Conquistadores had sailed to the New World in search of glory and gold. They brought horses to help in their search of the vast land for riches. The Spanish historian Diaz de Castillo, who traveled with the Cortex expedition, described one of the horses as a “pinto” with “white stockings on his forefeet”. De Castillo described another horse as a “ dark roan horse” with “white patches”. These are the first descriptions of early paint horses in the New World.
- (7) These horses were a mixture of Barb, Arabian, and Andalusian blood, and were considered the best horses in the world. In time, with the spread of these horses from Spanish ranchos, Indians of the Southwest acquired the “Big Dog”. They contributed to the development of a number of American breeds, such as the Morgan, Quarter Horse American Saddlebred, and the Tennessee Walker. This early Spanish horse is the genetic source for the coloration among many horses breeds.
- (8) Osage and Pawnee Indians, who lived on the edge of buffalo country, were middlemen of the horse trade for years.
- Governor Patrick Henry of Virginia, on December 12, 1778, wrote to George Rogers Clark, Commander of Virginia forces west of the mountains, directing him to purchase two stallions and eight mares of the best Spanish blood. In reply, Clark wrote, “The finest stallion by far that is in the country I purchased some time ago and rode him on the expedition from Kaskaskia to Vincennes. He came first from New Mexico. I could soon get five or six mares at the Illinois (settlements) very fine but I think they are hurt by usage.
- After the Charlestown English Colony was established on the east coast in 1670, the port there became important to the trade in deer hides. Settlers there bought “Chickasaw horses” from the Indians. (9) In 1774, naturalist John Bartram visited the horse-using tribes of the south. He described their horses as being “descended originally from the Andalusian breed, brought here by the Spanish when they first established the colony of East Florida. From the forehead to the nose is a little aquiline, and so are the Choctaw horses among the upper Creeks, which are said to have been brought across the Mississippi by those nations of Indians who emigrated to the west, beyond the river”. The Shawnees, who were driven from Tennessee north into Kentucky and Ohio, also had horses of the Chickasaw stock.
- In the Eighteenth Century, horse racing became popular for short distances on straightaway tracks, dirt strips with trees and brush removed. These were usually about a quarter mile in length. Southern gentlemen usually found the Chickasaw horse to be very good for this type of racing, especially if bred for larger size with imported stallions. (10) In 1746, Janus, a spotted stallion was brought to Virginia, where he sired a large number of exceptional colts. Most of these were spotted like their sire. The mothers were either Virginia-raised mares, most carrying a heavy infusion of the Chickasaw strain, or by mares from the West Indies and Rhode Island.
- In Kentucky the spoils of raiding was so great that both whites and Indians resisted efforts at peace. (11) “when I was on my way home from escorting prisoners I met with two men who live in Mason County in the State of Kentucky on the Ohio near a place called Limestone, who told me they were on their way to Indian country to steal horses from the Indians. I strove to dissuade them from it telling them we and the Indians had now made peace and conduct like they were about to engage in might irritate the Indians and likely provoke them to distress some hapless families, on the frontier…before I left the country…. I saw one of the same two men who then told me they had taken off three of the Indians valuable horses, two of which they got into Kentucky and sold them, and they had pushed up river until the alarm was over
- Steve White
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