Bird Rattler Painted War Record Hide

Ex. James Putt Thompson Collection

Before written military records, Plains warriors documented their lives in paint.

This painted deer hide records the war and raiding exploits of a Blackfoot warrior known as Bird Rattler. Across its surface unfold visual accounts of war parties led, horses taken, enemies engaged, and trophies secured. Such hides functioned as public documents — narrative records displayed within camps or preserved within families to affirm status and memory.

The warrior’s name appears at the top of the hide, represented symbolically through pictographs for “Bird” and “Rattle.” Plains naming conventions were often rendered visually rather than alphabetically. Identity was drawn, not spelled.

The hide is painted in red and black Indian inks, materials commonly acquired through Hudson Bay trade networks. By the late nineteenth century, commercial pigments had begun supplementing traditional mineral paints. The integration of trade inks into war record painting demonstrates adaptation without abandoning narrative tradition.

Historically, painted hides were central to Plains warrior culture. They served as visual proof of achievement. Leadership was not assumed — it was demonstrated through counted coups, successful raids, and visible courage. The hide shows Bird Rattler leading fifteen war parties and sixteen horse raids, tallying accomplishments in accordance with Blackfoot symbolic conventions.

The imagery also recounts episodes that shaped his life. As a youth, Bird Rattler was captured by the Crow and lived among them before escaping and returning to his people. Such captivity narratives were not uncommon in Plains warfare and often produced warriors fluent in enemy language and tactics. The hide further depicts prized trophies: Crow ponies, sacred items, and captured scalps — material evidence of martial success.

One scene records his escape from the Canadian mounted police and the theft of a Crow horse named Apistokinii. These details anchor the hide within the turbulent late nineteenth-century northern Plains, when Indigenous nations contended not only with each other but with expanding colonial authority.

War record hides occupy a crucial historical position. They represent an Indigenous system of documentation — visual historiography created outside written colonial frameworks. They are personal yet communal, biographical yet political.

This hide is not simply a painting.
It is a life rendered in symbol.