Antoine Tzapoff – that great connoisseur of Native American culture – offers a detailed portrait of a member of the Absaroka or Crow Nation, from the plains of Montana, pictured here in late 19th-century dress.
The costume is remarkable for its rich ornamentation, carefully maintained by the Crow as a way of safeguarding their precious identity. Dressed in buckskin decorated with strips of beadwork, the man wears a headdress of eagle feathers and ermine. The horses either side of him wear dress harnesses and bridles decorated with metal pendants – a relic of the bits used by 17th-century Spanish colonists. A remarkable testimony to the pride of the Crow Nation.
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