Painted Elk Hide

By 1900, when this hide was painted, Cotsiogo’s Eastern Shoshone band was confined to the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, and the artist turned to the tourist economy as a means of support. This nostalgic work harks back to pre-reservation times with scenes of the Wolf and Sun Dances, a buffalo hunt, women butchering buffalo, and warriors on horseback returning to camp.

Prior to the 1860s, when Native people were forced onto reservations by the U.S. government so white settlers could occupy tribal lands, the vast Shoshone territory encompassed what is now southeastern California, central and eastern Nevada, northwestern Utah, southern Idaho, and western Wyoming.