(Candace Green, Anthropologist) Winter counts
are a form of historical recording and documenting.
They were created by the Lakota.
Every winter was given a distinctive name,
which was a way of referring to time when something happens.
The Lakota are one large division of a group of people that most people know of as “The Sioux.”
Or, “The Sioux Nation.”
They certainly had a very strongly developed and formalized
sense of history. These winter counts encapsulated that
and are very strongly connected to peoples’ sense of identity, both in the past and in the present.
(Emil, Curator, in background) “So if we begin here in…” (Greene) Other events that people knew had happened that were carried into oral tradition
could placed in time by reference to those years.
So, I see winter counts as primarily an oral tradition.
(Emil, Curator, in background) “What this winter count depicts is the battle with the crow
and we know that by the hairstyle.”
(Emil Her Many Horses, Curator) Winter counts were usually real history.
The
Winter Counts Keeper
documented
the events for the Tiyospaye. The Tiyospaye is large family unit
and it was from that family unit that the came together to decide what event
to
document for that year. I think by looking at the Winter Counts you can see what was happening
within that community. The depiction of what happened that particular year
would probably spark all these other
memories
of things that happen
throughout that time.
(Greene) Each new keeper
followed very closely
the sequencing of years, the names of years that had been chosen,
so that the Winter Count Keeper could always be sure
over time to keep these dozens, and even in some instances, hundreds of years
in the proper sequence by referring to the pictorial record.
There are a number of levels in which we can read
winter counts.
You can interpret a certain amount just from looking at the pictures. One can recognize
the picture of a horse. The different kinds of hair styles and clothing
were used as a shorthand to represent different tribes. Many of the figures are quite simple.
Many of the
years are represented by individual people.
Without
a text, you really can't go any further than that.
Fortunately,
a number of tax some were recorded directly from the Winter Count Keepers. When one has
a winter count, such as the Rosebud Winter Count, that came to us with no explanatory
text,
it's still possible to figure out what's going on and recognize the years. The thing that one looks for
is a particular event that’s recorded in all of the Lakota Winter Counts that
we know of.
And that's known as the year the stars fell.
That was an event that is also known
in the western calendar
as the “Leonid Meteor Shower,” which occurred in November of 1833.
It's very difficult to know in a given year when you're recording something that
is memorable,
whether twenty years from now it will still be considered important or not.
For that reason, among others, the counts themselves
can't be taking as a synthesizing history.
They are framework
in which of much broader history can be attached.
They are primary documents. They are raw materials
just as many other kinds of physical, written documents are preserved in western culture.
There are a number of widespread misconceptions about winter counts that tie into
misconceptions about Native-American cultures in general, I think.
One is that
they
were always a primitive and unchanging people.
In fact, Indian cultures
have changed a lot over time and continue to change. The winner counts,
both the pictures and the text that were recorded with them,
give us the Lakota perspective on events at the time. It's quite a different idea of history, where the
physical, written record,
is not the most important.
(Emil, in background) “Sitting Bull's cabin where he was killed
by
Indian police”
(Greene) It's also a wonderful window into the Lakota culture and ways of thinking, a
different way of viewing
the world.