Miniature Tipi

In Western movies, theme parks, and roadside attractions, tipis have often symbolized an overly general version of Native American identity. In this case, the artist used the tipi form and its popular associations for his own purposes. Across this hide tipi cover sprawls a series of unrelated scenes, executed in varying scales. The artist used a sparing pictographic style to show animals and human beings, as well as figures from spiritual visions. A number of triangular shapes evoke the iconic tipi silhouette, an image used rarely—if at all—in full-size tipi painting. Typically Plains artists miniaturized painted tipis for use as toys and ethnographic models, though this artist likely experimented with tipi imagery to create a new painting for the tourist market.