We've Got The County Covered
We've Got The County Covered
This serigraph titled Antelope Tipi was recreated with ink on paper by artist Jessie Wilber. Although its owner is unknown, the tipi was observed at Blood Encampment near Cardston, Alberta, in 1944.
This serigraph titled Antelope Tipi was recreated with ink on paper by artist Jessie Wilber. Although its owner is unknown, the tipi was observed at Blood Encampment near Cardston, Alberta, in 1944.
The Blaine County Museum's current travelling exhibit "Blackfeet Indian Tipis: Design and Legend" is set-up and ready for viewing. Museum Director Samantha French invites all Blaine County residents and their summer guests to come check it out. The exhibit will be on display in the museum lobby through October 2022.
Much of the summer exhibit was installed by museum volunteer Julia Briere. "Blackfeet Indian Tipis: Design and Legend" arrived in Blaine County from the Western Heritage Center in Billings and consists of twenty silkscreens of Blackfeet tipi designs recorded in the 1940s by Olga Ross Hannon. Although Hannon started the project in 1944, it was revived and completed for the Museum of the Rockies during the period spanning 1974-76 and funded in part by a grant from the Montana Arts Council, an agency of State government.
French travelled to Billings earlier this month to retrieve the exhibit. She stated that while no specific details have yet been clarified, the museum does hope to host some programs to complement the display.
Based on the art of Jessie Wilber, many of the prints are accompanied by stories associated with the symbolism depicted on the tipis. Archival notes at the museum explain that "the painted tipi was formerly an important traditional art form among most Plains Indian tribes; but with the destruction of the great buffalo herds in the latter part of the 19th century, and the change from buffalo cow-hide tipis to canvas tipis, the tradition died out except among the Blackfeet Indians.
"These tipis were of religious significance, being a part of a complex of sacred objects and rituals and taboos surrounding the Indian owners as long as they possessed the tipis. According to the origin legends relating how each painted tipi was acquired by its first owner, many painted tipis were given to their first Indian owners in dreams or visions.
"Grouped in a large circle, with their doorways facing the east and the rising sun, and their backs made steeper to brace the structures against the prevailing west winds, they made an impressive sight on the low sweeping hills of northwestern Montana and southern Alberta, with the Northern Rockies rising in the distance."
Although the Jessie Wilber collection housed at the Museum of the Rockies (MOR) in Bozeman features twenty-six tipis observed at one of the encampments on either the Blackfeet or Blood Reserves in 1944 or 45 at the time of the annual Sun Dance early in July, the Blaine County Museum only has 20 of the prints. The entire collection has been digitized and can be viewed online at the MOR website: arc.lib.montana.edu/mor/mor_art/.
