Dog dance - Sioux

Catlin, George (1796-1872)


Item type:
painting
Date of creation:
1861
Height:
44.5 cm  (17 1/2 in.)
Width:
59.7 cm  (23 1/2 in.)
Technique / Medium:
oil on card mounted on paperboard

    Item location

  • National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC)
    Paul Mellon Collection[Museum inv. no.: 1965.16.6]

Description

16 men dancing, two men playing frame drums and singing, and another man singing. --- From the artist's own catalog: A singular custom peculiar to the Sioux tribe. For this a dog is killed, and the heart being taken out, it is cut into hanging bits, suspended from a stake. To enter the dance, each dancer makes his boast that in this way he has swallowed a bit of the heart of an enemy killed in battle. No one denying it, he dances up to the stake, and, biting off a piece of the heart and swallowing it, he enters the dance.

Instruments [MIMO Code] (notes)

Frame drum [2598]

RIdIM images


Image URLs

image link 1

RIdIM record id

150