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Abstract
German silver jewelry has a historic and ongoing role in the social and ritual life of Indian people on the Southern Plains. A remarkably well-documented collection of German silverwork assembled in central Oklahoma in 1966 reveals much about the economics and social context of the craft at that time. The collection, now at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, includes the work of seven smiths from five tribes, together with information on production and circulation. In addition to biographies of the craftsmen, the documentation positions the objects within social processes involving craftworkers, commercial outlets, the Peyote religion, Native consumers, and an elusive non-Native market.
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the families of the smiths who made the material discussed here, including those whom I was not able to reach. Thank you to Don Tofpi, Thomas Silverhorn, Preston Tone Pah Hote, Bruce Caesar, and Fred Schneider for sharing their memories, and to Tahnee Ahtone Growing Thunder, heather ahtone, and Justin Tone-Pah-Hote for helping me make connections. Information on institutional holdings and history was kindly provided by John Lukavic, Jenny Hord, Chelsea Herr, Claire Nicholas, Ella Crenshaw, Eric Singleton, Ann McMullen, and Meredith Stanton. Daniel Swan graciously reviewed a draft of the article and offered several useful suggestions and corrections. All illustrations are courtesy of the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. Photography by Will Greene.
Notes
1 Coverage of the German silver traditions of the Midwest and the Southeast is beyond the scope of this article, although both were brought to Oklahoma through the tragic displacement of Indian removals.
2 Information on the early student project is from a telephone interview with Fred Schneider, August 2022. While Schneider and Gallagher remained in the field as archaeologists, Davis found a different direction. After earning a master’s degree from OU and working on archaeological projects in various parts of the world, he settled in New York City and became a boat builder and a hands-on advocate for making recreational boat usage available on the Hudson River (Hevesi Citation2008). (N.B.: Michael Kincaid Davis should not be confused with Michael Gary Davis, who received a PhD in Anthropology at OU in 1988).
3 Portions of this exchange can be found in the William C. Sturtevant Papers in the National Anthropological Archives, Box 397, hereafter WCS Papers; carbons of additional correspondence were found with the collection and associated manuscript herein referenced as Davis 1966.
4 Sturtevant to Davis 9/4/1965, WCS Papers.
5 The Sturtevant collection is registered under accession number 2049174. The German silver referenced here as the Davis collection is cataloged under numbers E437,518 through 437,554. I was fortunately able to share the material with Jenny Tone-pah-hote, a descendant of one of the smiths, when she was conducting research at the museum for her dissertation in 2008.
6 The muslin is recorded as George “Dutch” Silverhorn Collection. I have been unable to obtain catalog reference numbers for all of the Peyote boxes I saw at the Museum of the Great Plains, but one is published in (Swan Citation2010:172–173).
7 Davis’ professor Alex Ricciardelli was working in the Kickapoo community and may have provided an introduction.
8 Sturtevant had acquired another item made by Tonepahote, separately from his commission to Davis. He entered it into his personal catalog as: “Tweezers for plucking beard. German silver, with punch and roullette design. Made 1962 or 1963 by Murry [sic] Tonepahote, Kiowa silversmith of Anadarko, Okla., for J.C. Tingley Oklahoma Indian Store, 128 W. Main, Anadarko, Okla. 73005 (an old “trading post” with many Indian customers) – one of two pairs still in stock, of an original stock of 18 ordered by Tingley's from Tonepahote. Purchased May 1, 1965, at Tingley's by W.C.S. for $2.04.” (Accession 2049174).
9 According to Bruce Caesar, his father first began marking his pieces with a personal stamp and then moved on to sign with an electric engraver (personal communication, 2022).
10 This would have been Pascal Poolaw Jr., whose father was the most decorated American Indian veteran of all time, having served in WWII, Korea, and Viet Nam, where he was killed in action (United States Army Citationn.d.). Davis described him as a member of the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma (then commonly called the Kiowa-Apache), although community members identify him as Kiowa.
11 Since Davis’ time, the museum has produced a series of exhibits and associated leaflets featuring German silverwork, most notably by Ellison (Citation1976).
12 American Museum of Natural History, Anthropology Accession 1911–1946.
13 The Haungooah winter count that I published in Greene Citation2009 was part of the Roberts collection.
14 Ironically, given the connection between German silver and Peyotism, the Mohonk Conference parent organization was at one time a major political force advocating for the prohibition of Peyote use by Indians (Moses Citation1978).
15 This history is based on (Dornaus Citation2003; New York Tribune Citation1901; Wright Citation1955) and information provided by Daniel Swan. Marriott and Rachlin (Citation1977) devoted a chapter in their memoir of Mary Inkanish to the Mohonk Lodge, offering insights from her Cheyenne perspective.
16 This organizational distinction was not always evident to purchasers, and the Oklahoma Indian Arts and Crafts Cooperative appears under a range of variant names in museum records.
17 For a discussion of changes in powwow dancing, see Ellis (Citation2003).
18 In an interview at the Coe Center in 2019, Bruce Caesar reported that he had little time to make anything besides crowns for which he had a long order list. https://www.coeartscenter.org/project/tiara/.
19 See figures 2.4 and 7.4 in Greene (Citation2001).
20 In the 1990s, I had an opportunity to purchase items made by the late Max Silverhorn, Jr. in an Anadarko store, which presented me with a dilemma. They were all Peyote jewelry, and I wanted something I could wear without fear of giving offense. I ultimately chose a chapel slide in the form of a cross, which could be understood as simply referencing Christianity, the religion in which I was raised.
21 Letter of 2/23/66, Davis to Sturtevant, WCS Papers.
22 Curiously given its official position, the IACB collection that was acquired by the National Museum of the American Indian in 2000 also included few names of makers.
23 Personal communication from Preston Tone Pah Hote, December 2022.
24 Of the pieces illustrated there, about half are from Marriott’s personal collection and half are from the Museum. Illustrated pieces often include the names of smiths, and this information has been entered into museum records, while items not in the article lack such detail. This raises the hopeful possibility that a deep dive into paper-based museum records might yield information that has not yet made it into the database. I do not know the ultimate disposition of Marriott’s collection.
25 Catalog number 1949.120, Native Arts, Denver Art Museum.
26 A supplemental donation was received in 2022.
27 Personal communication, Daniel Swan, November 2022.
28 Each generation of the family has chosen a slightly different version of their last name, violently ripped from its original Kiowa form by agency officials long ago.
29 Here I follow the foundational work in material culture studies of Appadurai (Citation1986) and Kopytoff (Citation1986), who first proposed tracking the social life of objects as an analytical method, and Myers (Citation2001), who brought scholars together to explore how differential regimes of value are ascribed to objects.
30 Dan Swan believes that careful study of the business records of the Roberts Store will enrich the museum’s records (personal communication, December 2022).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Candace S. Greene
Candace Greene holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Oklahoma (1985). She specializes in Plains Indian material culture, historic to recent, with an emphasis on the Southern Plains. Her publications include numerous journal articles and the books Silver Horn: Master Illustrator of the Kiowa (2001), The Year the Stars Fell: Lakota Winter Counts at the Smithsonian (2007), and One Hundred Summers: A Kiowa Calendar Record (2009). She is retired from the Smithsonian’s Department of Anthropology, where she now holds an emeritus research position. She founded and continues to participate in the Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology at the Smithsonian.