Native American Painted Hide Hand Game Drum with Eagle and Flags -

Native American, possibly Comanche. A single-headed frame drum made of rawhide stretched over a bentwood hoop and fastened with metal nails. Its face is painted with a pale blue shield, the field scored with radiating strokes. At the center an eagle with spread wings, in ochre and brown, perches on a domed orb (perhaps a globe), flanked by two red, white, and blue striped flags. The eagle takes the heraldic pose of the Great Seal, so Plains honor imagery and American patriotic emblems share the same surface. The underside carries a dated inscription reading "Pebo's hand game," along with a further line that has not been deciphered. The inscription records at least one working occasion for the drum: keeping time for the songs of the hand game, a guessing contest of hidden bones and quick wits. Weathering has softened the pigments to a muted, ghostly palette. The hand game is one of the most widespread Native gaming traditions in western North America. It was played across the Plains, the Plateau, and the Great Basin. Two teams face each other, and one side hides a pair of small bones or sticks, one marked and one plain, in the hands of its players. The other side tries to guess where the unmarked piece is. Tallies are kept with counting sticks, wagers are often staked on the outcome, and the hiding side sings and drums the whole time. The songs are meant to steady their own players and break the guessers' concentration. A drum like this one was therefore part of the game's tactics as well as its music. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the hand game also took on ceremonial meaning in some Southern Plains communities. Among the Pawnee and their neighbors it became tied to the Ghost Dance movement, and games were sometimes held in fulfillment of visions. A named and dated hand game, like the one recorded in this drum's inscription, fits the social calendar of gatherings that continued on reservations and allotments in Oklahoma and elsewhere well into the twentieth century. From the reservation period onward, Plains artists often painted American flags, eagles, and shield emblems on drums, beadwork, and hide. Scholars read these motifs in several ways. They may signal loyalty or diplomatic standing, they may borrow the prestige of a powerful visual vocabulary, or they may extend existing honor symbols, since the eagle already carried deep spiritual weight. Here the eagle sits inside a shield form, which in Plains art is itself an emblem of personal protection. This piece was exhibited at the Historical Museum of the Wabash Valley, Indiana in April 1992. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids. Item # 206140

Estimate:£375.77

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