Thank you guys for the kind comments.
Bruno: As for your remarks, you've got a point. Indeed, the inspiration for the figure is Bill Holm's painting of a Hidatsa warrior (like I already stated in my "How I sculpted My First 90mm Figure" s-b-s thread).
If you'd pushed your research a little further, you would have discovered that the clothing Bill Holm depicted in his painting – the shirt, the robe and the leggings – all come from Colin Taylor's book "The Plains Indians" (ISBN: 0517142503) and are described as being of Crow origin.
The shirt. Caption (page 195): "A magnificent – almost certainly Crow – shirt dating from circa 1860 and made of heavy soft buckskin .... The buckskin is painted with the owner's exploits ... Beneath the neck flap is a quilled disc – a slightly unusual feature for Crow costume –..."
The leggings. Caption (page 183): "A pair of ceremonial leggings, probably Crow and dating from circa 1840...."
The buffalo robe picture is too fuzzy to be scanned, however, here's the caption: "The robe shown below, almost certainly Crow, is now in the National Museum, Copenhagen, and probably dates from circa 1850..."
So at the end of the day, what do we have here?
A warrior dressed almost entirely in clothing attributed by one of the respected Indian experts to the Crow. Bill Holm (another expert AND a fine artist) chose to call him a Hidatsa but to me he's a Crow.
One frequent mistake among the Indian enthusiasts is the mixing and confusion of the timelines/periods.
Re: the remark about the moccasins. The fully beaded models (Crow, Sioux and other tribes) are typical of the late 19th cent. Our figure here is dated 1850 and wears the type of moccasins common to the Upper Missouri tribes of the period.
Likewise, the practice of painting war deeds on shirts was observed only in the mid-19th century, not before nor after.
As a matter of fact, if I'd choose to sculpt a Crow companion to my Yellow Moon figure (set in 1910, the reservation period), he would have looked a whole lot different from this here figure.
Thank you, Bruno for your comments and for giving me the opportunity to clarify my point of view. I'm sorry for the overlong post but it's such a pleasure to deal with another enthusiast.
Quang
