Pehriska-Ruhpa, Moennitarri Warrior in the Costume of the Dog Danse (Dance)

Information on the image:

Perhaps the greatest image to emerge from the picturing of the American West, and certainly Bodmer’s most famous, this highly-charged portrait of Péhriska-Rúhpa (“Two Ravens”) presents the warrior and chief of the Hidatsa in way that encapsulates the vanished era of the Plains Indian. The portrait has a great sense of immediacy, intensity, of noise and movement. A moment in time is captured–when we look away, the Dog Dance continues. Péhriska-Rúhpa dances in his regalia as a principal leader of the Dog Society of his village. The white tips on the glossy black feathers of the headdress indicate the attachment of a tiny down feather to the point of each plume. The central vertical plume is painted red. Dyed horse hair floats from coloured sticks attached to the shafts of the turkey feathers. All this will shortly be in motion again as the dancer resumes his movement to the cadence of drum and the rattle (made of small hooves or claws attached to a beaded stick) held in his right hand.

The Dog Society was one of seven such societies among the men of the Mandan and Hidatsa Tribes. They were one of the main tenets by which Hidatsa society lived. As an individual progressed through life, it was necessary for him to purchase his entry into successive societies, starting with “the foolish dogs” at about ten to fifteen years of age and graduating to the society of the black-tailed deer for men over fifty. The Dog Society was the fourth of these progressions. Each society had a set number of members, so that an individual from a lower society could only buy entry to the higher society if there was a member of that society who was himself ready to move to the society above his. They all had individual rules, rituals, dances and regalia. All this information was carefully recorded by Prince Maximilian during the travellers’ winter stop-over at Fort Clark in 1833-1834. This portrait, Bodmer’s masterpiece, was painted in March 1834 towards the end of this stay.

Description of the work:

This rare engraving is from Karl Bodmer’s Travels in the Interior of North America. The work was published in Leipzig by Schmidt & Guenther in 1922. The aquatint engraving was completed by Rene Rollet after Karl Bodmer. From the scarce Leipzig edition printed from the original copper-plates. Limited in number, the prints from the Leipzig edition are more scarce than, and compare favorably to, the first edition (David C. Hunt, “Karl Bodmer and the American Frontier,” Imprint/Spring 85, p.18).

Karl Bodmer’s images show great versatility and technical virtuosity and give us a uniquely accomplished and detailed picture of a previously little understood (and soon to vanish) way of life. Swiss-born Bodmer was engaged by Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied specifically to provide a record of his travels in North America, principally among the Plains Indians.

In the company of David Dreidoppel (Prince Maximilian’s servant and hunting companion), their travels in North America were to last from 1832 to 1834. They arrived in Boston in July 1832, traveled on to Philadelphia, where they stayed with Napoleon Bonaparte’s elder brother Joseph. From here they headed west across Pennsylvania across the Alleghenies to Pittsburgh and the Ohio country, visiting all the important German settlements en route.

Their most important stop on their route west was at the utopian colony of New Harmony in Indiana. The Prince spent five months there in the company of some of the country’s leading scientific men, and studying all the relevant literature on backcountry America. On 24 March 1833 the party reached St. Louis, Missouri, and the start of the journey into Indian country.