It is however to be noted that “Shield,” an Oglala Dakota, says the character signifies Feather-Shield, the name of a warrior formerly living at the Pine Ridge Agency, Dakota.
AN OGALALA ROSTER.
Plates LII to LVIII represent a pictorial roster of the heads of families, eighty-four in number, in the band or perhaps clan of Chief Big-Road, and were obtained by Rev. S. D. Hinman at Standing Rock Agency, Dakota, in 1883, from the United States Indian agent, Major McLaughlin, to whom the original was submitted by Chief Big-Road when brought to that agency and required to give an account of his followers.
BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY FOURTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. LII
AN OGALALA ROSTER—“BIG-ROAD” AND BAND
Chief Big-Road and his people belong to the Northern Ogalala (accurately Oglala), and were lately hostile, having been associated with Sitting-Bull in various depredations and hostilities against both settlers and the United States authorities. Mr. Hinman states that the translations of the names were made by the agency interpreter, and although not as complete as might be, are, in the whole, satisfactory. Chief Big-Road “is a man of fifty years and upwards, and is as ignorant and uncompromising a savage, in mind and appearance, as one could well find at this late date.”
The drawings in the original are on a single sheet of foolscap paper, made with black and colored pencils, and a few characters are in yellow ocher—water-color paint. On each of the seven plates, into which the original is here divided from the requirements of the mode of publication, the first figure in the upper left-hand corner represents, as stated, the chief of the sub-band, or perhaps, “family” in the Indian sense.
On five of the plates the chief has before him a decorated pipe and pouch, the design of each being distinct from the others. On Plates LIV and LV the upper left hand figure does not have a pipe, which leads to the suspicion that, contrary to the information so far received, the whole of the figures from Nos. 11 to 45 inclusive, on Plates LIII, LIV, and LV, constitute one band under the same chief, viz., No. 11. In that case Nos. 23 and 36 would appear to be leaders of subordinate divisions of that band. Each of the five chiefs has at least three transverse bands on the cheek, with differentiation of the pattern.