Curriculum Materials: Art in America
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Image 12 Cadzi Cody Questions: |
Painted Hide
In this scene painted on elk hide, Cadzi Cody shows Shoshone hunters on horseback hunting bison with bows and arrows on the outer edges of the hide. In the upper right and left hand corners and the lower left, men butcher the bison on the field. They separate the hide from the carcass and prepare the meat to take back to camp for food. The other parts of the animal are set aside for a variety of purposes. For example, the Plains Indians boiled the bison's hooves (visible in the upper and lower left and to the far right) to make glue.
At the center of the painting is a forked pole with a bison head attached and an eagle hovering above it. This represents the center pole of the sun dance-the most sacred ceremony of the Plains Indians. The poses of the men around the pole, however, indicate that they are performing a social dance called a wolf dance. They wear headdresses called roaches, feather bustles hanging from their waists and backs, and bells attached to their knees and ankles.
The man astride the spotted pinto horse to the left wears a long feather headdress, probably made from the feathers of the golden eagle. This proclaims his heroic deeds and status in the society. Five other men seated on the ground beat a drum, considered the heartbeat of the people. To their right, a woman carries her child on her back in a traditional cradleboard. Surrounding the activity are tepees, portable homes made of poles and hide.
Cadzi Cody described all of the
figures and objects with fluid black contour lines and
colored them with bright commercially prepared paints. He
used different colored paints, including red, pink, and
bright blue, to distinguish various breeds of horses. The
artist greatly varied the horses' appearance, but made the
people look alike. Only their colorful shirts distinguish
them from one another. Cadzi Cody's
composition is very active, with every figure in motion. All
of the activity circles around the central scene. Further,
the deep black bison and the colorful horses keep the
viewers' eyes moving across the hide.
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