Good point, and a very interesting one!
On the Plains there were a fair amount of admixture, people marrying into each others tribes, being adopted or captured, or being from mixed blood. Looting, trading and exchanging presents between tribes made it also difficult adscribe someones to a tribe according to his belongings BUT tribal style *tendences* did exist, even if they weren't applicable for every individual. It also depends on the area of the Plains and on the time.
Osage looked indeed very similar to Pawnee, and these to Iowa, Otto, Ponca, Kansa, Sauk and Fox (eastern Prarie peoples). There are some minor details or tendences (certain items of dress, use of colors, adornments) that sometimes enable to tell individuals of these tribes apart even if the general style is similar, even if that doesn't has to work always.
In a similar fashion, a Crow warrior *could* be hardly distinguishable from a Nez Perce or from some Blackfoot or Shoshone, and they all share a sort of cultural area, so to speak, that englobes part of the northern Plains, the Platteau and part of the Rockies.
At some point I doubt someone could tell a Teton Sioux from a Cheyenne and these from a Arapaho apart (and some southern Cheyenne from some Kiowas, etc.), but again, they lived relatively close to another in the same area, were allies and had the possibility of sharing items, customs, etc. very intensively.
I would say it depends on the individual and the time...When the century went on (specially with the advent of the reservation period and the mixture of tribes) some tribal styles became homogeneous and warriors tended to grow more and more indistinguishable from another. Some later photos show Pawnee warriors with the hair parted in the middle, two braids and a hairpipe necklace of whom you would think they are Cheyenne (but I doubt someone would think they are Crow ;-))
That also occurs at earlier times: if you look at pictures of Plains warriors in the 1830's (Bodmer, Catlin, Miller), Crow, Blackfoot, Hidatsa and Arikara (and in a minor extent, Mandan), all neighboring tribes at some extent. share a common style too and sometimes it's hard to tell them appart (even if differences exist). Others again, like Pawnee or Osage and other Prarie tribes, stand clearly appart from the rest. According to some scholars, some tribal styles apearead after these days (with the growing availability of trade goods), and some others got blurry 30-40 years later, so there is a certain narrow window, say roughly between 1840s-1870s when it could have been a bit easier to distinguish peoples (with exceptions, as always).
Personally I suppose it was always easier to distinguish a group of people than an only individual though, because there were more probabilities of seeing several „tribal“ characteristics in the group, even if some warriors didn’t look so “characteristic” at all. In the case of an only warrior is a bit of a hit or miss, I think.
In the case of wargaming and, above all, sculpting wargame figures, I think a compromise has to be made and tribal tendences have to be acentuate so we can distinguish both forces on our tiny battlefields. With wargame figures it happens all the time, almost in every „wargame-able“ age: some characteristics are exagerated so the forces look a bit more homogeneous (I'm looking at you, Romans!) or at least easier to tell appart from another. There are lots of examples in wargame figures because so it’s easier to handle and it somehow pleases esteticaly, even if it’s maybe a tad less accurate.
In my case, I want to portray warriors who „clearly“ belong to a tribe, because I think there are enough generic Plains indians figures out there that can be mixed with mine to add variety if someone wishes so, but not enough figures that you can identify with a certain tribe (appart from Conquest-now-Warlord magnificent Comanche). In doing so, I try to furnish every figure with at least one element that yells „Crow!“ or „Pawnee!“ but keeping things as realistic as possible
. I was inspired by the way Plains Indians portrayed themselves in ledger drawings, where they often acentuate some characteristics so the people seeing them quickly identify who the enemy are (Crow wear almost always the pompadour hairstyle, Pawnee have high-cuffed moccasins and normaly more or less roached hair, etc.). I started making figures that looked like the Crow portrayed by Catlin and Bodmer in the 1830’s and quickly realized, most people wouldn’t identify them as Crow, so a compromise was to be made. It’s the same in case of Pawnee: some wore long hair, some hadn’t the roach, but when people think of Pawnee, they think of the roached warriors on „Dances with Wolves“ 😊
Whops, my digression turned out very long, sorry about that!
I just like the subject
01 August 2010, 10:38:01 PM