What Is Traditional Lakota Art of the Great Plains?

The history of Lakota art is tightly interwoven with the progression of their history, with traditional methods of artmaking changing to adapt to the rapid—and often devastating—cultural, societal, political, and commercial changes around them throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Traditional Lakota art has changed dramatically in the face of ethnic cleansing and mass displacement, yet remains a beautiful and powerful testament to their cultural strength and sense of community.

The Lakota are the largest subgroup of the Oceti Sakowin (Seven Council Fires), also known as the Sioux Nation. The Lakotans are more commonly known by the name Sioux, which acts as an umbrella term for the seven tribes within the nation. However, many members of the Lakota now reject this term, despite its use amongst official organizations, as it was given to them by the Anishinaabe tribe. The Anishinaabe described them as nadowessi, meaning little snake in the Anishinaabe language. The French then made this word plural, adding –oux to the end, creating an entirely new word from two languages completely unrelated to the Lakota. The term Lakota (or Dakota or Nakota, depending on the tribe’s dialect) means friend or ally. To respect the community’s wishes, I will use the terms Lakota and Seven Council Fires in this article.

The Lakota did not always live in South Dakota, nor were they initially traditionally nomadic. French fur traders made the first mention of the Lakota tribe in historical records in 1660, while traveling up the Mississippi River they met the tribe in Wisconsin. Their home in the Wisconsin area was semi-sedentary, and they had yet to adopt an entirely nomadic lifestyle. Today, Wisconsin is home to the Anishinaabe tribe, who played a role in pushing the Lakota out of their ancestral territory alongside the European newcomers. The Lakota had incorporated horses into their lifestyle by 1770, due to an increase in French trappers, settlers, and the Anishinaabe, who were allied with the French at the time. Though bison had always been an essential aspect of Lakota culture, it became increasingly important as they adopted a nomadic lifestyle during their Western movements.

In response, skirmishes erupted, and the white settlers turned to the United States government for so-called protection against the native population. In 1873, General George A. Custer was ordered to South Dakota to assist in protecting a party of white settlers who were in the area building a railroad. A fight broke out between the party of white settlers and a small group of Lakota, resulting in the death of two people, one from each side. In response to the tension between white settlers and the Lakota, the United States government attempted to buy the land from the Lakota. The Lakota refused to sell, instigating a war between the Lakota and the United States government. In 1876, the Battle of Little Bighorn occurred, ending General Custer’s life. It was considered a huge victory for the Lakota, but trouble was only beginning.

The Lakota land was seized in 1877, reducing the reservation to the small area of land that exists today. This loss of territory, along with the mass slaughter of bison by the United States military to starve the Lakota, ended the nomadic lifestyle of the Lakota people. The bison population is still affected today, with the animals being considered endangered. The conflict continued between native and white populations in the region, resulting in an 1890 massacre of the Lakota people at Wounded Knee by the United States Army, in which the military killed nearly 300 innocent men, women, and children. It is considered by many historians to be the largest mass shooting in United States history.

This pouch was made around 1890 using old traditional methods of artmaking. The artwork of nomadic people tended to be objects meant for use, rather than pieces made for art’s sake. It was important that the Lakota could carry their belongings while following the bisons’ movements across the Great Plains, so everyday items would be made beautiful. In Lakota culture, this is called “bringing out the beauty” of an object. This pouch, for example, is made with dyed porcupine quills. The tribe considered this method of creation sacred and it was usually only done by women, who would keep the porcupine quills soft by holding them in their mouths while working. After the piece was complete, the quills would dry and harden.

The pouch’s quills are dyed a brilliant red. It is edged with blue feathers, attached with metal cones that would have tinkled as the wearer moved and walked. Though women typically did quillwork, they also typically only created geometrical designs, while men were responsible for the representational artwork, such as paintings of scenes on tipis or winter counts (historical records using painted images). Women with artistic skills were considered critical members of society, and families took pride in their daughters who could create artwork. In modern Lakota society, gendered roles for artmaking no longer exist.

This pouch is unique for the late 19th century, as it shows the figure of a man wearing elk antlers. This pouch would have been worn by a member of the Elk Dreamer’s Society. Elk Dreamers were believed to have power over love and they held ceremonies in which participants would dress in masks and sometimes carry hoops.

The sudden lifestyle change forced the Lakota to live on a small piece of land and forgo their nomadic lifestyle of the past. With the near extinction of bison in the United States, the government’s refusal of vaccines concerning infectious diseases, and the massive loss of land, Lakota society struggled to adapt, resulting in problems like poverty and health issues, which continue today with little to no support from the United States government. With all of the political and societal changes happening around them towards the end of the 19th century, it is no surprise that their traditional artwork changed, too.

Quillwork fell largely out of use, as the resources were not always available on the reservation. However, trade with white settlers and other tribes increased dramatically, and beadwork began to take over as one of the leading art forms of the Lakota. The first glass beads introduced to the tribe were called pony beads because pony packs brought them. They were larger than seed beads, which are more typical in Indigenous art today.

Other options included making beads from teeth, bones, and organic seeds from animals and plants they had hunted or found. Seed beads, made of glass in Venice and transported to the Americas, soon took over pony beads in popularity as they became more available. Beading became incredibly important to Lakota society. As poverty increased, selling beadwork to white settlers brought in much-needed income. Today, there has been a resurgence of quillwork in Indigenous art across tribes in the United States and Canada, though beadwork remains the most prominent on a commercial scale.

Beadwork began to be used in the creation of ceremonial apparel, such as this dress. The beaded yoke is a brilliant blue, beaded with Venetian seed beads. The round, beaded shape in the middle, over the heart, represents a turtle, an animal that was viewed as a protector of women’s health. The seed beads are amazingly tiny, making the work tedious but rewarding. The intricate and expansive designs that use seed beads in Indigenous art are a testament to the skill of the Lakota women of the 19th and 20th centuries, and Lakota women and men in the present day.

Other materials that could be acquired by trade became useful for artmaking as well, including repurposed materials such as small metal cones made from rolled-up tobacco lids. In 1918, the Anishinaabe began using these on traditional dresses called jingle dresses in response to the spreading of the Spanish Influenza. These would create a jingling sound while dancing. The dresses would use brightly colored cloth to inspire health in their wearers. The jingling cones were also added to other objects, such as a dancing wand, to use during ceremonial dances.

Dancing was a common form of praying across various Indigenous tribes of the Americas. Legend says that an Anishinaabe man had a dream of a colorful dress that jingled and brought health to the wearer while his daughter was dying of the illness. Upon waking, he set to work creating it, and when it was finished, he gave it to his daughter to wear. She was able to gather enough strength to dance in the dress and made a full recovery. This story spread across tribes, and the jingle dress spread with it, reaching the Lakota in the 1920s. Some white settlers saw it to be an act of rebellion, as ritualistic dancing was illegal on reservations in the United States.

This ban on their traditional dances was a tactic that was enacted in an attempt to assimilate the remaining Indigenous population with the white settlers. This occurred in tandem with residential schools in which official authorities forcibly removed children to be relocated and barred from speaking their native language. People were made to dress and sleep like white settlers, converted to Christianity, beaten into submission, and sometimes outright killed by means of violence or neglect. Indigenous people could be prosecuted for ritual dances in the United States until 1978, when the American Indian Religious Freedom Act was passed, despite receiving full American citizenship in 1924, which should have included the right to freedom of religion according to the US Constitution. Today, jingle dresses are worn primarily at powwows and during other traditional ceremonies.

However, there are cases where jingle dresses are created as an artistic act of rebellion. In 2020, Abigail Echo-Hawk of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma requested personal protection equipment for the facility, but the government sent only body bags instead, signaling their continued lack of empathy for Indigenous communities in the United States. She voiced her frustration by turning one of the body bags into a healing dress decorated with toe tags and mirrors to reflect back onto the government officials who made the decision.

This bison hide shows the Battle of Custer’s Last Stand, a huge victory for the Indigenous population in 1876. It is one of the rare historical accounts of the battle from an Indigenous perspective. Before the near-extinction of bison, they were the most crucial resource for the Indigenous tribes of the Great Plains. They used all parts of the animal for various necessities, including using the hides for artwork. The artwork on hides was usually meant to record things, like important historical events. A hide could depict a singular event or multiple events that would be added throughout the years, forming a pictorial historical record.

Annual pictorial accounts of significant events for that year were recorded on bison hides called winter counts. Traditionally, only men painted them, though gender restrictions no longer apply. The images would be recounted with oral memories of the event. This has often been criticized as an inefficient way of recording history, but recently, historians have been speaking out in support of oral history, finding it is often far more accurate than people assume it to be, due to traditions surrounding the keeping of those memories.

Lakota Art and Ledger Art

In 1869, General William Sherman recommended hunting the bison of the Great Plains in large numbers, taking their hides for commercial use and leaving the rest to rot in large piles. His reason for doing so was not the hides, but the Indigenous population of the Great Plains that he wanted to suffer. He claimed that by depriving the local tribes of bison, their primary source of food, the United States government would be able to conquer them in “one grand sweep of them all.”

When the bison were hunted to near-extinction by white settlers backed by the US Army in an attempt to starve the Indigenous people of the Great Plains into submission, Indigenous artists needed to record their stories elsewhere. Ledger books were convenient, as they were available to buy through trade when bison hides were not. Thankfully, they were preserved well to exist today as testaments to Indigenous life through their own perspective in the late 19th century and throughout the 20th century.

The Lakota have a long history with art that underwent dramatic change in the 19th century. In the face of broken treaties, ethnic cleansing, forced religious conversion, the mass spreading of disease, and more, Lakota art has continued to thrive and branch out to incorporate both traditional and non-traditional materials and techniques.