Plains Winter Count

Plains Winter Count
Name	Plains Winter Count
Type	Historical pictorial calendar
Culture	Lakota people, Dakota people, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, Comanche
Period	18th–20th century
Location	Great Plains, North America

Plains Winter Count

Plains Winter Count is a pictorial annal tradition developed by Plains Indigenous peoples to record years through emblematic events. Winter counts were maintained by designated keepers among Lakota people, Dakota people, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow Nation, Blackfoot Confederacy, Kiowa, and Comanche communities and intersect with documentary sources such as Lewis and Clark Expedition, Fort Laramie Treaty (1851), Fort Laramie Treaty (1868), Mandan, and Ojibwe accounts. Scholars in institutions like the Smithsonian Institution, Library of Congress, British Museum, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, and Field Museum of Natural History have cataloged winter counts alongside material from American Museum of Natural History, National Museum of the American Indian, Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, and regional archives in South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Kansas.

Introduction

Winter counts functioned as mnemonic pictorial calendars kept by a principal historian or keeper such as a designated winter-count keeper in a band or camp. They record sequences of winters by selecting a single defining event year to year, creating entries that parallel narratives found in oral histories recorded by ethnographers like James Henry Redhouse, Frances Densmore, George Bird Grinnell, G.A. Dorsey, and John G. Neihardt. Collections assembled during the 19th century reached collectors and officials including Gov. Isaac Stevens, Indian Bureau (United States) agents, and explorers connected to the Fur Trade, Hudson's Bay Company, and military units like the 7th Cavalry Regiment.

Origins and cultural significance

Origins of winter counts are rooted in Plains cosmologies and social institutions of societies such as the Oglala Lakota, Hunkpapa Sioux, Miniconjou, Brulé, Cheyenne Dog Soldiers, and Arapaho bands. Keepers, often men with ceremonial roles or hereditary positions, served roles comparable to oral historians who interacted with leaders from encounters with Tecumseh-era confederacies or treaties like the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1851). Winter counts were integrated into ceremonial calendars alongside events such as the Sun Dance, Buffalo Hunt, and intertribal councils that involved delegations to places like Fort Randall and Fort Pierre. Their selection criteria for annual events were social memory of battles such as the Battle of the Little Bighorn, epidemics connected to contacts with agents from Hudson's Bay Company, and natural phenomena referenced in meteorological diaries kept by surveyors attached to the Northern Pacific Railway.

Materials and artistic techniques

Winter counts were drawn on surfaces including buffalo hide, deerskin, muslin, ledger paper, and cotton cloth, materials that entered Indigenous material cultures through trade networks with entities such as American Fur Company, Churchill & Co., and trading posts like Fort Union. Artists and keepers used pigments and inks obtained via trade items from merchants in St. Louis, Santa Fe Trail, St. Paul, Minnesota, and from military quarters at Fort Laramie. Styles show influences visible in drawings collected by ethnographers such as Edward S. Curtis and in painted winter count ledgers that parallel ledger art traditions practiced by veterans of conflicts against units like the U.S. Army and participants in events such as the Red River War.

Chronology and notation systems

Notation systems varied: some groups used circle formats with months arranged radially as seen in examples linked to camps near Cheyenne River, while others used linear sequences comparable to cartographic strips recorded by trade intermediaries. Years were counted by winters or moons, aligning with seasonal schedules like bison migrations and agricultural cycles encountered near sites such as Pawnee Reservation and Mandans villages. Notational conventions intersect with ethnographic classifications developed by researchers including James Mooney, Franz Boas, Aleš Hrdlička, and later historians at the American Philosophical Society. Cross-referencing winter counts with missionary journals from Moravian Church missions and military dispatches from officers involved in the Great Sioux War of 1876 enable chronological synchronization with Gregorian calendars.

Notable winter counts and collections

Prominent examples include the winter counts attributed to keepers such as Kȟaŋǧí Šúŋka (Black Elk)-associated counts, the Lone Dog winter count, the Big Elk winter count, and the Good Bear winter count preserved in institutional holdings including the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, American Museum of Natural History, British Museum, Yale University Beinecke Library, and the University of Oklahoma collections. Field expeditions led by figures like William Ludlow, George Catlin, John James Audubon, and William Clark brought attention to Plains pictography. Dealers and collectors, such as George H. Crofts and William H. Jackson, transferred artifacts into museums and private collections cataloged by curators like George Nelson and researchers at the Peabody Museum.

Interpretation and uses in historical research

Researchers use winter counts to corroborate events such as the Smallpox epidemic (1837–1838), buffalo herd fluctuations referenced in reports by the Department of the Interior (United States), and battles like the Fetterman Fight and the Battle of Washita River. Comparative study employs cross-disciplinary methods from historiography practiced by scholars at the University of Chicago, Harvard University, University of California, Berkeley, and Indiana University as well as anthropological frameworks advanced by Claude Lévi-Strauss-informed analysts. Winter counts have informed reinterpretations of timelines involving figures such as Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Red Cloud, Chief Joseph, and Black Kettle, and have been used alongside archaeological data from sites surveyed by teams from Smithsonian Institution and National Park Service.

Preservation, repatriation, and contemporary practice

Preservation efforts involve conservation laboratories at institutions like the Smithsonian Institution Conservation Labs, Library of Congress Conservation Division, and regional museums in Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and Rosebud Indian Reservation. Repatriation dialogues are framed by statutes such as the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and coordinated with tribal governments including the Oglala Sioux Tribe, Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, Crow Tribe of Montana, and Blackfeet Nation. Contemporary artists and cultural practitioners from the Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Kiowa communities continue winter count practices in educational collaborations with universities and cultural centers like the Heard Museum, Autry Museum of the American West, and tribal museums that host workshops, exhibitions, and digitization projects supported by grants from organizations such as the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Category:Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains