Stone Carving Of Bison
date: label: Accession Date
content: 1961
name: label: Donor Name
content: Mr. Glenn M. Staley
notes: label: Notes
content: From card: "Carved of limestone, this is a very good likeness of a bison [buffalo], except that the legs are present only as very short stumps; color is variegated brown; much striated, but well polished, and can not have been long underground or exposed to weathering; steel file marks visible on edges of belly. Probably a fairly recent piece and possibly, as J.C. Ewers suggests, a Crow Indian "rock medicine".
label: Notes
content: Buffalo effigy is illustrated and described pp. 41 - 42, Figure 13, pp. 123 - 124, and Color plate 1, p. 18 in Ewers, John C. 1986. Plains Indian sculpture: a traditional art from America's heartland. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. Ewers identifies it as probably Crow and possibly hunting medicine. He indicates it " ... was found by Glenn M. Staley, a geologist of the U.S. Geological Survey, in the course of field work in central Wyoming in 1911. It was partially exposed in the wall of a dry wash emptying into the Wind River about sixty miles northwest of Riverton, Wyoming. ... Marks visible on the right side of the buffalo's belly may indicate that it was carved with metal tools, which probably did not reach the Indians of this interior region before the eighteenth century."
label: Record Last Modified
content: 7 Jul 2021
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Fremont County, Wyoming, United States, North America
topic: label: Topic
content: Archaeology
culture: label: Culture
content: Historic
label: Culture
content: Crow (Apsaalooke) (?)
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 240229
label: USNM Number
content: A431143-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Figure
physicalDescription: label: Length - Object
content: 21.3 cm