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Winter count

A winter count is a pictographic chronicle created and maintained by certain Indigenous communities of the Northern Great Plains, such as the Lakota and other Sioux groups, to record notable events year by year, with each winter (waniyetu in Lakota) serving as the primary temporal marker.^[1]^[2] These records, often rendered on buffalo hides, muslin, or paper using symbolic glyphs, functioned as mnemonic devices to preserve tribal history, facilitating oral recounting of battles, natural phenomena, epidemics, and cultural milestones during communal gatherings.^[3]^[4] Winter counts typically spanned multiple generations, with a designated historian or keeper updating the sequence annually by selecting the most impactful event of the preceding winter to represent that year, ensuring a concise yet vivid narrative of collective experience.^[5] Prominent examples include Lone Dog's Winter Count, which documents Yanktonai Sioux history from approximately 1800 to 1870 and was collected by the Smithsonian Institution, and the Kiowa calendar of Anko, illustrating intertribal conflicts and environmental changes.^[1] These artifacts offer empirical insights into pre-colonial and early contact-era timelines, corroborating events like the 1833 Leonid meteor storm across multiple counts, thus validating their utility as historical corroborants despite reliance on oral verification.^[6]^[7] The tradition underscores a cyclical view of time tied to seasonal survival cycles, contrasting linear Western calendars, and highlights the Plains tribes' adaptive historiography amid nomadic lifeways dependent on buffalo herds.^[2] While interpretations vary due to glyph ambiguity and keeper subjectivity—potentially influenced by post-contact disruptions like U.S. military campaigns—cross-referencing multiple counts reveals consistent patterns in warfare, weather anomalies, and migrations, affirming their causal role in cultural continuity.^[5]^[8]

Definition and Purpose

Core Characteristics

Winter counts consist of sequential pictographs, each representing a distinct winter or year, typically selected for its singular most impactful occurrence within Plains tribal communities. These ledger-style records prioritize events of substantial communal consequence, such as severe natural disasters, intertribal or external conflicts, widespread epidemics, or notable celestial observations, thereby encapsulating pivotal disruptions or markers in the annual cycle.^[3]^[2] Unlike purely oral histories reliant on verbal transmission and subject to mnemonic variability, winter counts furnish a tangible, visual chronology amenable to empirical scrutiny and cross-verification, facilitating the reconstruction of extended timelines without dependence on living narrators. This pictorial format enabled Plains tribes, including the Lakota and Kiowa, to maintain records spanning multiple generations, with several Lakota counts documenting sequences from the early 18th century through the late 19th.^[9]^[2]^[1] The selection of events reflects an empirical orientation toward those with verifiable, widespread effects on tribal sustenance and survival, often revealing causal linkages in Plains ecology and society, such as periods of resource depletion precipitating raids or migrations. This structure underscores a pragmatic historiography grounded in observable impacts rather than mythic embellishment, distinguishing winter counts as data-driven annals amid predominantly narrative traditions.^[5]^[2]

Role in Tribal Record-Keeping

Winter counts functioned as communal annals in Plains societies, serving as mnemonic frameworks to maintain historical continuity by linking annual events to collective memory. These records enabled tribes to track genealogical lineages by tying personal milestones, such as births and deaths, to distinctive yearly occurrences, thereby preserving kinship structures essential for social organization.^[1] They also chronicled alliances through depictions of treaties and peace negotiations, providing precedents for intertribal diplomacy and conflict resolution that informed ongoing relations.^[10] Beyond mere recollection, winter counts demonstrated organizational sophistication by documenting environmental and societal patterns, including harsh winters and resource scarcities that shaped migration routes and warfare timing.^[11] Spanning periods up to 175 years or more, such as records from 1701 to 1876, they allowed communities to reference past cycles—like severe snow events in 1788–1789 or 1852–1853—to anticipate risks, such as famine-induced raids, thereby guiding resource allocation and strategic decisions in pre-contact and early contact eras.^[11] In contrast to European calendrical systems reliant on abstract chronological dates, winter counts emphasized event-driven markers aligned with observable lunar-solar cycles, prioritizing causal sequences over linear abstraction to derive practical insights from historical data.^[2] This approach supported empirical decision-making, enabling tribes to adapt to recurrent threats based on verified precedents rather than ritualized timekeeping.^[11]

Historical Development

Origins Among Plains Tribes

![A copy of the winter count kept by Yanktonai Sioux Lone Dog][float-right] The emergence of winter counts among Plains tribes coincided with the widespread adoption of horses in the early 18th century, which enabled a transition from semi-sedentary woodland existence to fully nomadic lifeways dependent on large-scale buffalo hunts and expansive intertribal raids. Southern bands of the Lakota first encountered horses around 1700 through trade or capture from tribes like the Shoshone and Crow, with acquisition becoming common by 1715, fundamentally altering mobility, warfare, and economic patterns across the region.^[12] This shift demanded reliable mechanisms for historical recall in decentralized bands lacking alphabetic writing, leading to the development of pictographic annual records that prioritized events with direct bearing on group survival, such as successful hunts yielding abundant meat or decisive victories averting starvation.^[3] Earliest verifiable winter counts appear among the Lakota (Teton Sioux) in the mid-18th century, though some extended reckonings trace sequences backward to the late 17th century via oral-augmented pictographs. These initial records, often painted on hides, incorporated symbols for European-derived trade goods like firearms, evidencing indirect contact through fur trade networks as early as the 1700s, prior to direct Anglo-American expeditions.^[5] For instance, depictions of guns in counts reflect their integration into Plains warfare following influx via northern routes in the early 1700s, serving as chronological anchors corroborated by archaeological evidence of metal trade items.^[13] Such markers underscore the pragmatic utility of winter counts in orienting kinship ties, alliance formations, and resource strategies amid volatile annual conditions, without reliance on mythological embellishments.^[14] This practice remained confined to horse-mounted nomadic groups like the Lakota, Dakota, and later Kiowa, distinguishing it from pre-equine tally systems in eastern woodlands, as the scale of post-1700 migrations and conflicts necessitated condensed, event-driven timelines for intergenerational transmission.^[2] By the 1730s, consistent annual marking had solidified, with counts like those preserved in Battiste Good's ledger extending over five centuries but anchoring verifiable Plains history to equine-facilitated eras.^[14]

Evolution and Adaptation

![A copy of the winter count kept by Yanktonai Sioux Lone Dog][float-right] Following initial European contact in the 18th century, winter counts increasingly incorporated events involving Euro-American settlers, such as devastating smallpox epidemics that decimated Plains populations. For instance, the 1779-1780 winter, recorded as "Smallpox-used-them-up," depicted afflicted individuals alongside symbols of suffering, reflecting mortality rates estimated at 50-70% in some tribes due to lack of immunity and rapid disease transmission via trade routes.^[15] Subsequent outbreaks, including those in 1801-1802 and the 1830s, were similarly memorialized, underscoring causal links between introduced pathogens and demographic collapse, which disrupted traditional economies reliant on buffalo herds and inter-tribal warfare patterns.^[16] By the mid-19th century, counts began chronicling diplomatic and conflictual interactions, including treaties like the 1868 Fort Laramie Agreement, which promised land reservations but often failed amid ongoing encroachments, as well as military clashes and migrations forced by settler expansion. These records balanced external pressures with internal tribal dynamics, documenting victories in battles against rivals and U.S. forces alongside losses, thus providing a causal narrative of adaptation through warfare, alliances, and resource shifts rather than unidirectional victimhood. Preservation challenges arose with the near-extinction of buffalo by the 1880s, prompting transitions from hides to paper or muslin in reservation-era counts, as seen in late-19th-century Lakota examples where lined ledger sheets replaced scarce traditional media.^[3]^[18] The massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890, frequently marked in surviving counts, symbolized the erosion of nomadic lifeways and the decline of active winter count production amid forced assimilation policies, yet the practice persisted into the early 20th century. Keepers adapted by copying older hides onto durable formats for transmission, enabling later use in corroborating oral histories against written records for land claim disputes and epidemiological studies, where the pictographs' inclusion of pre- and post-contact events refuted oversimplified colonial narratives by evidencing tribal agency in conflicts and recoveries.^[2]^[5]

Methods of Creation

Materials and Pictographic Techniques

Winter counts were traditionally created on tanned buffalo hides, which provided a durable, flexible medium suitable for painting and long-term preservation.^[1] These hides, often brain-tanned for suppleness, were painted using natural pigments derived from minerals, clays, plants, berries, roots, and animal sources such as buffalo gall or blood, mixed with binders like tallow or fat to form paints applied via bone or wood styluses.^[19]^[20] Pictographic techniques emphasized simplified, iconic symbols arranged in patterns such as spirals starting from the center and extending outward counterclockwise, or linear and serpentine sequences, facilitating rapid visual scanning and mnemonic recall.^[1] Each annual glyph was stylized for immediate recognition within tribal conventions, as seen in depictions of the intense 1833 Leonid meteor shower—recorded across multiple counts with falling star motifs—demonstrating standardized symbolism for verifiable events.^[14]^[21] The longevity of tanned hides enabled multi-generational accumulation of records, with symbols repainted or copied onto new surfaces as needed, supporting communal verification through shared visual codes.^[1] By the late 19th century, buffalo scarcity prompted shifts to alternatives like muslin, linen, or paper, including ledger books where inks, pencils, and colored pencils replaced pigments for finer detail while maintaining pictographic traditions.^[22]

Event Selection and Annual Marking

Events selected for winter counts emphasized those with profound tribal impact, such as major conflicts, astronomical anomalies, or severe environmental challenges like prolonged famines during harsh winters, which were collectively experienced and thus amenable to verification by numerous witnesses across bands.^[23]^[9] This criterion ensured the chosen occurrence served as a reliable reference point for the year, distinguishable from routine happenings and capable of evoking shared recollections in oral traditions. The marking process relied on communal deliberation among elders to forge consensus on the definitive event, countering tendencies toward solitary invention through collective scrutiny and affirmation of the event's authenticity within Lakota societal norms prioritizing group accord.^[24]^[8] Following agreement, a symbolic pictograph was inscribed to encapsulate the event's core features, often implying antecedent causes—such as trade interruptions precipitating scarcity—to anchor causal narratives in the visual record. While selections could incline toward valorizing warrior feats, the alignment of analogous events across independent counts from multiple Plains tribes underscores an empirical foundation, where overlapping depictions of verifiable phenomena prevail over potential propagandistic exaggeration.^[2]^[25]

Responsibilities of the Winter Count Keeper

The winter count keeper, often a trusted elder male possessing both historical knowledge and artistic skill, held the primary responsibility for maintaining the tribe's pictorial record.^[3]^[19] This individual was designated within the community, such as a Lakota band or tiyospaye, to serve as the official historian, ensuring the continuity of tribal memory through annual updates and oral explanations.^[26] Central to the keeper's duties was the annual addition of a pictograph representing the most significant event of the preceding winter, selected through consultation with tribal elders to achieve communal consensus.^[14]^[19] The keeper then designed and painted this glyph onto the hide, cloth, or paper medium, preserving the sequence of prior symbols while safeguarding the physical artifact against damage or loss by creating copies when necessary.^[1]^[27] Beyond documentation, the keeper provided detailed oral histories for each pictograph, recounting associated events to educate the community and pass knowledge to successors, thereby preventing errors in transmission and upholding the count's fidelity.^[1]^[4] This role extended to sharing interpretations publicly, reinforcing collective recall and informing practical decisions grounded in historical precedents, such as past conflicts or environmental challenges.^[19]^[26] Accountability was enforced through reliance on elder input for verification, with the keeper's selections and narratives subject to group scrutiny to maintain accuracy over generations, often via inheritance of the count and its lore to a trained apprentice.^[1]^[19] Until the early 20th century, this position was exclusively held by men, reflecting traditional gender roles in Plains tribes.^[3]

Verification and Empirical Analysis

Cross-Corrobation with Non-Native Records

The reliability of winter counts as historical records is evidenced by their alignment with contemporaneous non-native documentation, such as U.S. Army dispatches and fur trader ledgers. For instance, the Jaw Variant Dakota winter count depicts the winter of 1866-1867 with an illustration of "one hundred whites killed," directly corresponding to the Fetterman Fight on December 21, 1866, in which U.S. military logs confirm the deaths of 81 soldiers and civilians ambushed by Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors near Fort Phil Kearny, Wyoming.^[28] This match extends to other conflicts, where pictographs of soldier engagements and battle outcomes in Lakota and Dakota counts parallel army after-action reports detailing troop movements and casualties during Red Cloud's War (1866-1868).^[28] Mandan winter counts similarly corroborate events from the Lewis and Clark expedition's overwintering at Fort Mandan (1804-1805), with pictographic entries marking the arrival of the pale-faced strangers and their encampment near Knife River villages, as referenced in expedition journals and subsequent trader accounts of intertribal trade disruptions caused by the visitors.^[29] Hugh Dempsey's analysis of Blackfoot winter counts further demonstrates chronological precision, as their sequences of epidemics, treaties, and horse raids align with dated European fur trade records and missionary diaries from the late 18th to mid-19th centuries, establishing parallel timelines without reliance on shared oral transmission.^[30] Celestial events provide additional verification points; numerous Plains winter counts, including Lakota examples, illustrate the "Year the Stars Fell" with showers of falling stars, matching the exceptional Leonid meteor storm observed on November 13, 1833, and documented in settler newspapers and astronomical logs across the Midwest and Plains.^[31] These alignments, analyzed in studies of 71 winter counts for astronomical phenomena, confirm the counts' utility in anchoring tribal chronologies to independently verified dates.^[31] Winter counts also record recurrent intertribal violence, such as raids and battles depicted annually from the 1700s onward, which correspond to patterns in early trader journals noting horse thefts, scalping parties, and revenge cycles among groups like the Lakota and Blackfoot—evidence that supports high pre-contact conflict rates rather than idyllic harmony, as cross-checked against archaeological sites yielding mass graves and fortified villages.^[32]

Applications in Modern Historical and Scientific Research

Winter counts have been employed in 20th- and 21st-century climate research to reconstruct historical weather patterns, particularly droughts, by analyzing pictographic depictions of scarcity, starvation, and harsh conditions alongside instrumental and proxy data.^[11]^[33] A 2015 study by Gallo and Wood examined 69 winter counts from Plains tribes spanning 1777–1869, identifying 28 drought events through keywords such as "drought," "dry," and "starvation," which were cross-referenced with Euro-American settler records and paleoclimate proxies to map spatial and temporal drought extents in the Great Plains.^[34]^[35] These analyses revealed prolonged dry intervals, including clusters in the 1780s–1790s, aligning with independent dendrochronological evidence of aridity from tree-ring widths, thereby validating winter counts as empirical archives for pre-instrumental climate variability.^[33] Quantitative historical studies, such as James H. Howard's 1960 analysis of Dakota winter counts, applied systematic event tabulation to trace intertribal relations, migrations, and cultural shifts, treating the records as verifiable datasets rather than solely narrative artifacts.^[28] Howard cataloged events across multiple counts, quantifying overlaps to establish chronological alignments and demographic patterns, which informed reconstructions of Plains social dynamics independent of biased Eurocentric interpretations.^[28] In recent applications, tribal historians have integrated winter counts with oral traditions for refined empirical insights; for instance, in April 2024, Cheyenne River Sioux scholar Donovin Arleigh Sprague presented interpretations of Chief Hump's winter count, correlating pictographs with corroborated events from allied tribes' records to enhance historical precision.^[36] Such data-driven approaches prioritize pattern verification over interpretive revisions, extending winter counts' utility in scientific modeling of environmental and societal resilience.^[11]

Catalog of Known Winter Counts

Lakota and Dakota Examples

The Battiste Good winter count, compiled in the late 1870s by Brulé Lakota historian Wapostan-gi (Brown Hat, born circa 1821), records over 500 years of Lakota history extending to the pre-horse era prior to the 18th century, with glyphs depicting annual events up to approximately 1878.^[14] ^[5] It includes illustrations of intertribal conflicts and environmental markers, such as the "scarce robes winter" of 1833–1834, reflecting oral traditions verified through consultation with elders.^[3] The High Dog winter count, maintained by a Hunkpapa Lakota keeper and documented in 1912, spans from 1798 to 1912 and features events tied to Hunkpapa leaders like Sitting Bull, including the 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn depicted as a major victory over U.S. forces.^[37] ^[38] This count, originally on hide and later transcribed, aligns with non-native records on specifics like the "smallpox winter" of 1782–1783.^[39] Lone Dog's winter count, from a Yanktonai Dakota keeper active in the mid-19th century, covers 1800 to 1870 on a muslin copy now held by the Smithsonian, emphasizing Dakota-Sioux interactions such as the 1832 "star that fell winter."^[1] Variants among Oglala, Brulé, Miniconjou, and Hunkpapa counts demonstrate convergence, particularly on the 1876–1877 Little Bighorn event marked uniformly as "Long Hair defeated," corroborating the June 25–26, 1876, clash where Lakota and Cheyenne forces overwhelmed Lt. Col. George Custer's command of 268 soldiers.^[40] ^[37]

Other Plains Tribes

The Kiowa, a southern Plains tribe, preserved history through winter counts like that of Set-t'an, covering the winters from 1832-1833 to 1892 on a buffalo hide painted with pictographs spiraling clockwise.^[41] This record emphasizes raids into northern Mexico, intertribal conflicts with Comanche and Apache groups, and celestial events such as the November 1833 Leonid meteor shower depicted as "the winter that the stars fell," which aligned with Kiowa oral accounts of skies filled with falling lights.^[42] Unlike northern Siouan counts focused on Lakota-Dakota migrations, Kiowa versions reflect a horse-mounted nomadic lifestyle with frequent southern expeditions for horses and captives, as documented in James Mooney's 1898 ethnographic study drawing from multiple Kiowa calendars.^[43] Blackfeet (Siksika) winter counts from the northern Plains highlight harsh subarctic winters, buffalo hunts, and warfare with eastern Algonquian tribes like the Cree, differing from southern emphases by prioritizing survival in treeless prairies and tipis clustered against extreme cold.^[44] Examples include pictographic records at sites like Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, which chronicle multi-generational events from pre-contact periods through reservation eras, with symbols for mass buffalo drives and smallpox epidemics in the 1830s. Recent analyses, such as a 2025 University of Lethbridge thesis, verify pre-reservation accuracy by cross-referencing pictographs with oral histories and dendrochronological data from lodgepole pine used in earth lodges, confirming event timings within one to two years.^[45] These counts adapt Siouan techniques but incorporate Blackfeet-specific motifs like piskuns (buffalo jumps) absent in arid southern records. Mandan winter counts, associated with the Missouri River villages, feature events tied to semi-sedentary agriculture and hydrology, such as the 1833-1876 record attributed to Butterfly, which notes river floods, corn crop failures, and Hidatsa-Mandan alliances against upstream foes.^[46] Distinct from nomadic horse raiding in Kiowa or Blackfeet counts, Mandan pictographs depict earth lodge communities, bull boats for trade, and leaders like Four Bears (Mato-Tope, c. 1784-1837) leading parties that killed six enemies and captured ponies in specific summers, reflecting fortified village defenses rather than open-plains pursuits.^[47] This riverine focus, corroborated by George Catlin's 1832 sketches of Mandan life, underscores adaptations to floodplain farming, with annual marks for ice jams and keelboat arrivals disrupting trade cycles.^[48]

Cultural and Scholarly Significance

Traditional and Contemporary Interpretations

In traditional Plains tribal societies, particularly among the Lakota and other Siouan groups, winter counts functioned as mnemonic devices and communal repositories of history, consulted by elders to recount significant events and impart lessons on survival, kinship, and societal norms. These pictographic records, often created on bison hides or ledger paper with elder input, emphasized recurring themes of warfare, communal hunts, and environmental hardships, reflecting a cultural ethos centered on martial prowess and pragmatic adaptation to the Plains' volatile ecology.^[5]^[24] Such interpretations positioned winter counts not merely as calendars but as sacred aids for intergenerational transmission, where symbols evoked oral narratives of resilience amid cycles of scarcity and conflict.^[1] Contemporary Native perspectives have revived winter counts as tools for cultural reclamation and education, framing them within decolonizing frameworks that prioritize Indigenous epistemologies over Western linear historiography. For instance, a 2017 scholarly proposal advocated "re-visioning" winter counts to restore their role in facilitating elder-led community dialogues on identity and adaptation, countering colonial disruptions to traditional knowledge systems.^[31] This approach underscores their utility in modern tribal settings for fostering discussions on historical agency, as seen in educational initiatives like the April 2024 presentation by Cheyenne River Sioux historian Donovin Sprague at Sheridan College, where interpretations of Chief Hump's winter count linked pictographs to broader Lakota narratives of endurance.^[36]^[49] Academic interpretations, while acknowledging winter counts' value as primary Indigenous sources, often apply empirical scrutiny to assess event selection biases toward dramatic occurrences like battles or anomalies, cautioning against uncritical romanticization that overlooks their selective, non-exhaustive nature. Historians treat these records as complementary to oral traditions, emphasizing cross-cultural comparisons for contextual reliability rather than standalone veracity, though institutional tendencies in academia toward narrative-driven analyses can introduce interpretive overlays misaligned with the originals' terse, event-focused symbolism.^[50]^[2] This dual lens—insider reverence for holistic wisdom versus outsider demands for falsifiable anchors—highlights ongoing tensions in balancing cultural sanctity with analytical rigor.^[5]

Achievements in Historical Preservation

Winter counts have documented epidemic outbreaks with precise annual markers, such as smallpox occurrences in 1800–1801 and 1818–1819 among Dakota bands, preserving timelines of population impacts that align with broader demographic reconstructions of Native American declines in the Northern Plains from the late 18th to early 20th centuries.^[28] ^[51] These records capture localized effects of diseases like measles in 1844–1846, details vulnerable to erosion in oral transmission alone, thereby maintaining empirical sequences of events otherwise unrecorded in written histories.^[28] By chronicling specific tribal encampments, migrations, and territorial assertions—such as winter camps along the Heart River in 1834–1835 or conflicts over regions near Bear Butte—winter counts provide verifiable evidence of long-term occupancy and intertribal boundaries predating extensive European settlement.^[28] This has supported tribal assertions of historical jurisdiction in sovereignty disputes, demonstrating continuity of presence through pictographic accounts of events like battles with Crows and Gros Ventres groups in the 1820s and 1840s.^[28] Independent winter counts from multiple keepers exhibit high consistency in denoting shared events, including astronomically datable solar eclipses and comet sightings, which validate their chronological accuracy spanning over two centuries.^[11] This internal corroboration, coupled with superior granularity in recording band-level incidents like horse raids or Sun Dance initiations, surpasses the often sparse or regionally limited perspectives in contemporaneous settler journals, enabling reconstruction of fine-scale historical narratives.^[11]

Criticisms, Limitations, and Debates

Winter counts, while valuable indigenous records, exhibit notable limitations due to their selective and subjective nature, as keepers chose events deemed most memorable or impactful to their band, often prioritizing dramatic occurrences such as battles, epidemics, or natural disasters over routine or less localized happenings.^[5] This selectivity introduces potential biases toward sensationalism, with discrepancies arising across counts maintained by different individuals or groups, even for major events like the 1837-1838 smallpox epidemic, where timings or details vary slightly despite broad agreement.^[45] Such inconsistencies stem from oral transmission prior to full pictographic recording and the decentralized structure of Plains societies, where events might reflect band-specific experiences rather than tribe-wide phenomena.^[2] Interpretation poses further challenges, as the pictographs are highly symbolic and mnemonic, requiring deep cultural knowledge that may be lost over generations, leading to ambiguous or contested meanings without corroborating oral traditions.^[52] Translations of winter counts have occasionally been inaccurate, complicating scholarly analysis, particularly for events predating direct ethnographic contact.^[51] Dating alignments with the Gregorian calendar also present issues, since winter counts delineate years from first snowfall to first snowfall, often spanning parts of two European calendar years, which can shift event chronologies by up to a year in cross-referencing.^[6] Scholars debate the epistemological status of winter counts in historiography, with some viewing them as robust indigenous chronologies comparable to European annals in their demand for veracity, yet others critiquing their divergence from Western standards of comprehensive, impartial documentation, dismissing them as insufficiently "real history" without independent verification.^[53] ^[54] Ethnohistorians argue for their integration into broader narratives via cross-corroboration with archaeological, climatic proxy data, and Euro-American records to mitigate these gaps, emphasizing that uncritical reliance risks perpetuating unverified traditions or localized myths as factual.^[6] ^[55] This tension underscores ongoing discussions about privileging empirical triangulation over singular source authority in reconstructing pre-colonial and early contact-era Plains history.^[56]

References

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Winter counts are essentially calendars that visually represent Lakota oral histories. Each pictograph on the winter count symbolizes an important event that ...
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Lakota winter counts were yearly records using twelve moons, with a year spanning parts of two Roman years. They were used for daily purposes and social ...
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Waniyetu wówapi, or 'winter counts,' are pictographic calendars used by Great Plains Indian cultures to record events, including unusual weather and climate.
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Lakota winter counts are pictographic chronicles, often named after a memorable event, like "Hoises arrived stampeding winter" or "Crazy Horse killed winter".
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8 Winter counts served as 'community annals' that document the winter-by-winter experiences of a tribal community.
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Jun 7, 2017 · Waniyetu wówapi, or winter counts, are pictographic records of Native Americans of important events in their history, including unusual ...
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Battiste Good's winter count is based on an oral history that extends back to 900 A.D. the southern bands of Lakotas first saw horses around 1700. By 1715, ...
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Dec 17, 2020 · Starting at the center and spiraling outwards, Lone Dog's Winter Count covers 70 years of history. The first image, in the center (representing ...
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The winter counts record twelve outbreaks not listed by Taylor: diphtheria in I836, an unspecified disease in I846, smallpox ("scabby rash") in I86z, scarlet.Missing: treaties | Show results with:treaties
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[20]
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Plains Indians applied color as a paint, a dye, or a stain. They created paints by blending pigments with tallow, or fat, and steeping organic materials in a.<|control11|><|separator|>
[21]
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The Leonid meteor shower took place on November 13, 1833, this event was witnessed and documented by many famous Americans of the time including, Harriet ...
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For the Lakota, pictographic calendars of a community's history, called winter counts, were important mnemonic devices, helping community historians remember ...
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The images on winter counts helped Lakota historians recall the details of past events. Choose a topic you are studying in history and draw a sequence of images ...Missing: structure | Show results with:structure
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For many people to choose one main event would require cooperative decision-making, and the elders would have to reach a consensus. The job of record keeper, ...
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Jan 26, 2009 · The pictographs thus served as mnemonic aids. The term 'winter-count' derives from the Indian custom of reckoning time by means of 'winters' ...
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[PDF] What are Winter Counts?
Winter counts are histories or calendars in which events are recorded by pictures, with one picture for each year. The Lakota call them waniyetu wowapi.<|control11|><|separator|>
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The Winter Count: Keeping History Alive in Pictographs
Oct 24, 2018 · These storytellers were very important to the oral tradition because it was their job to preserve and pass along the community's memory. By using the winter ...
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There's a Mandan winter count on a buffalo skin. It's a calendar, it's an ideogrammatic chronology of the Mandan year when Lewis and Clark came through. There ...
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[37]
High Dog's Winter Count - the State Historical Society of North Dakota
High Dog was the keeper of this winter count, but he probably did not originate the pictograph or the count which likely began before 1798. He might have ...Missing: duties | Show results with:duties<|separator|>
[38]
Timeline-Standing Rock | North Dakota Studies
High Dog's winter count represents the years 1798 to 1912. An earlier version of this count (probably drawn on animal hide) was passed on to High Dog from a ...
[39]
The High Dog Winter Count - The First Scout
Dec 7, 2015 · High Dog's winter count as presented here includes Rev. Aaron Beede's original transcription for each entry, which has been re-rendered using ...
[40]
Winter Count of Crazy Horse's Life - Astonisher.com
Here are selected Sioux Winter Counts covering the 37 years from 1840 to 1877, the probable lifespan of the great Sioux war chief, Crazy Horse. These Winter ...
[41]
Set'tan - The Kiowa Calendar Project
The Set'tan Calendar, kept from 1832-1890 and sourced from National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. The Kiowa Calendar project is a ...Missing: count tles- high
[42]
"Winter that the stars fell", Winter 1833 - The Kiowa Calendar Project
The Winter 1833 entry from the Set'tan calendar, one of several Kiowa Calendars depicting events in the history of the Kiowa people during 19th and early ...Missing: count high
[43]
calendar history of the kiowa indians by james mooney
West of the Mississippi the first extended Indian calendar history discovered was the "Lone-dog winter count," found among the Dakota by Colonel Garrick Mallery ...Missing: tles- | Show results with:tles-
[44]
Blackfoot "Winter Count" Buffalo Hide Designs - a faithful attempt
Jun 27, 2019 · Grade 6-12 students learned about the Blackfoot tradition of winter counts and created their own version using traditional Blackfoot and Plains pictographs.Missing: tanned | Show results with:tanned
[45]
[PDF] Thesis: A Contemporary Winter Count - OPUS
Aug 16, 2025 · The Winter counts of the Blackfoot Indians, like those of other Plains tribes, were simple but effective methods of reckoning time. One.
[46]
[PDF] BUTTERFLY'S MANDAN WINTER COUNT: 1833-1876.
Big-turtle struck an enemy. Next summer Four-bears killed six enemies and captured one white pony. Four-bears was leader of the war party.Missing: 1799-1882 | Show results with:1799-1882
[47]
Online Junior Ranger: 1784-1837 with Four Bears
Oct 19, 2020 · The Second Chief of the Mandans, Mato-Tope, or Four Bears, was born in 1784 at On-A-Slant-Village and was widely known, loved, and respected.Missing: 1799-1882 | Show results with:1799-1882
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[PDF] Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara - Smithsonian Institution
“Butterfly's Mandan Winter Count: 1833-1876.” Ethnohistory 7(1): 28-43, 1960 ... Four Bears' son see Bad Gun (Rushing War Eagle) or Rushing War Eagle ...
[49]
Sprague to speak on 'Lakota Winter Count' - The Sheridan Press
Mar 28, 2024 · Sprague's presentation “A Lakota Winter Count” will focus on the winter buffalo count that is a yearly historical record of the most important ...
[50]
Hinápxiŋ Ohúŋkaŋkaŋ: Ancient Stories of Emergence
Aug 27, 2023 · Historians studying Lakxóta history in recent years have begun to treat the pictographic record, winter counts, as primary source documents.
[51]
[PDF] American Indian Culture and Research Journal - eScholarship
Winter counts, however, contain ambiguous information that calls for a careful, simultaneous examination of figures and descriptions in order to enable a fairly ...
[52]
HISTORY THROUGH OUR WINTER COUNTS - Lakota Times
Oct 3, 2019 · Winter counts – the year by year account of Lakota history – is not viewed as “real history” by American History standards.
[53]
Mandan "History" as Reflected in Butterfly's Winter Count - jstor
up with what we call 'history.* Judging from what we know of Plains winter counts they show a level of accuracy which must reflect a similar demand for ...
[54]
Plains Indian Winter Counts and the New Ethnohistory
Hence, winter counts do provide scholars with a "research tool," as. Howard stated, but the "research tool" is not, as Howard believed, the explicit ...
[55]
Lakota Society - Project MUSE
... studies of winter counts by James H. Howard. Page 122 →. In order to minimize confusion I give only one calendar year for each winter, although the reader ...