قراءة كتاب Hermann Stieffel, Soldier Artist of the West
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him the title "Orator of the Plains." Every feature on his strong face, every line, showed his character—a forceful, untamable savage of a tribe as well known for its lack of honor, gratitude, and general reliability as for its bravery.[33] With great dignity and impact he first denounced bitterly and scornfully the killing for mere sport of a number of buffalo near the council site by some troopers of the 7th Cavalry:
Has the white man become a child, that he should recklessly kill and not eat? When the red men slay game, they do so that they may live and not starve.
In direct relation to the treaty, he continued with obvious sincerity:
I love the land and the buffalo.... I don't want any of the medicine lodges [schools and churches] within the country. I want the children raised as I was.... I have heard that you intend to settle us on a reservation near the mountains. I don't want to settle. I love to roam over the prairies. There I am free and happy, but when we settle down we grow pale and die.... A long time ago this land belonged to our fathers; but when I go up to the river I see camps of soldiers on its banks. These soldiers cut down my timber; they kill my buffalo; and when I see that my heart feels like busting.
Little wonder Stieffel and all those present were impressed. It is appropriate to add that neither the Indians nor the Government of the United States observed the provisions of this treaty.
The remainder of Stieffel's paintings have no such impact as the earlier ones, but nonetheless they are important, especially for their almost meticulous detail of camp and post life and terrain in the West. In that of the camp of peace commissioners he accurately depicts the various types of tentage of the Army at the time—the small slanting wall tents of the enlisted men, the wall tents of the individual officers, the large wall headquarters and officers' mess tents, and the familiar Sibleys, one of which is obviously being used for the guard. The escort wagons and ambulances are regulation transport of the period. The artist has even included a sentry walking post at the ration dump with fixed bayonet, a sound precaution against sticky red fingers. Two Indian camps are shown in the background, and the Indians, as would befit the atmosphere of a treaty council, are moving freely through the military camp to the apparent unconcern of the military.
Figure 10.—The Yellowstone River near Fort Keogh, Montana. (USNM 384191; Smithsonian photo 37925-A.)The landscape of the Wichita Mountains from Medicine Bluffs (fig. 5) on the present-day Fort Sill reservation is noteworthy as a terrain sketch to anyone who has served at that post. I have ridden over this country many times, and the undulating prairie, the meandering of Medicine Creek, the Bluffs themselves—over the highest of which (left centerground) the Apache Geronimo did not ride his horse with the 7th Cavalry in full cry behind—Mount Hinds and lofty Mount Scott are remarkable in their accuracy when one considers that the painting must have been done from sketches made when Stieffel was on escort detail to the Indian Territory in 1869.[34]
The two views of Fort Harker, Kansas (figs. 6, 7), now Ellsworth, must have been painted during 1870 and 1871 while Stieffel was on extra duty as a hospital attendant there. From an artistic standpoint they are the poorest of his work. His detail, however, more than compensates for any deficiencies as a draftsman and gives us an excellent concept of the physical layout and daily routine of a small post in the Southern Plains. The two views are from the east and south, and complement one another nicely. Headquarters, officers' quarters, and barracks, all of typical clapboard construction, are readily discernible, as are the stables, the latter being the long unfenestrated buildings. Even the barrack privies, an outdoor bake oven alongside a mess hall, and earth-covered powder magazines can be easily identified. The long rows of cordwood for cooking and heating were to be seen on any post of the period. In the view from the east (fig. 6) may be seen a detail of cavalrymen with led horses moving out for animal exercise past the camp of a transient unit with its standard tentage and transport. The high white paling fence is difficult to place, being either an animal corral, in which case it would be much too high, or a forage yard, since no hay piles are visible elsewhere. Stieffel seems to have been considerably fascinated by the railroad (fig. 7) with its accompanying telegraph line running southwest of the fort, for again he paints in some detail, although this time with an almost childish conception. The "U.P.R.W.E.D." which he so carefully letters in identifies the line as the Union Pacific Railway, Eastern Division.[35] The naming of the engine "Osage" was as typical of the period as the naming of individual commercial aircraft is today.
