History Gallery - Robert Walker's West

“Sits with Thoughts” Framed Acrylic Painting

Plenty Coups was the principal chief of the Crow Nation and a visionary leader.

He allied the Crow with the whites when the war for the West was being fought because he had experienced a vision when he was very young that non-Native American people would ultimately take control of his homeland (Montana). He wanted the Crow to survive as a people and their customs and spiritual beliefs to carry on. His efforts on their behalf ensured that this happened, and he led his people peacefully into the 20th century.

The Acrylic Painting is framed in a 38X28 inch frame and is ready to hang on your wall.

The Last Hunt

Upon arriving in the Ohio Country, the Delaware Tribes formed alliances with Frenchmen engaged in the fur trade. The French provided the natives with European cookware and guns, as well as alcohol, in return for furs. The French and British colonists struggled for control of the Ohio Country beginning in the 1740s, and as the British gained control of the Ohio Country, the Delawares chose to ally themselves with the stronger party. This was the case until the French abandoned all of their North American colonies to Britain. The Delawares thereafter remained loyal to the British and the American colonists until the American Revolution.

“The Last Hunt” depicts a hunting party of Delaware Indians in their final days before they were displaced to the Oklahoma Territory. The old chief and his party are having a good hunt in what is now the Mohican State Park in Ohio. It will be their “Last Hunt before their way of life changes forever.

This acrylic painting is on a 36 X 36 X 1 gallery-wrapped canvas, and may be hung without framing.

The Healing

The False Face Society is probably the best known of the medicinal societies among the Iroquois, especially for its dramatic wooden masks. The masks are used in healing rituals which invoke the spirit of an old hunch-backed man. Those cured by the society become members. Also, echoing the significance of dreams to the Iroquois, anyone who dreams that they should be a member of the society may join.

The size of the original is 16X20 and is painted on a stretched canvas.

Ten Horse Team on the Overland Trail

The Overland Trail (also known as the “Overland Stage Line”) was a stagecoach and wagon trail in the American West during the 19th century. While portions of the route had been used by explorers and trappers since the 1820s, the Overland Trail was most heavily used in the 1860s as an alternative route to the Oregon, California, and Utan trails through central Wyoming. The Overland Trail was famously used by the Overland Stage Company owned by Ben Holladay to run mail and passengers to Salt Lake City, Utah, via stagecoaches in the early 1860s. The stage line operated until 1869 when the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad eliminated the need for mail service via stagecoach.

The original “Ten Horse Team” is an acrylic painting on a 2 X 4 foot canvas 

"Counting Coupe"

Among the Plains Indians of North America, counting coup involved the winning of prestige against an enemy. Native American warriors won prestige by acts of bravery in the face of the enemy, which could be recorded in various ways and retold as stories. Any blow struck against the enemy counted as a coup, but the most prestigious acts included touching an enemy warrior with a hand, bow, or coup stick.

Counting coup could also involve stealing an enemy’s horses tied up to his lodge in camp. Risk of injury or death was required to count coup. Escaping unharmed while counting coup was considered a higher honor than being wounded in the attempt.

After a battle or exploit, the people of a band would gather together to recount their acts of bravery and “count coup”.

Cheyenne Elder

Between 1900 and 1930, Edward Curtis traveled deep into Indian territories and lived among dozens of Native tribes. He captured the authentic ways of life of over 80 Native cultures. One of his photographs was the reference for this acrylic mono-color. I see this old man, thinking that his way of life that he knew in his early life was gone forever, and would never return.

The size of this original is painted on a 16X20X1 stretched canvas. It is a mono-color using only raw umber acrylic paint

Ghost Drums

The basis for the Ghost Dance is the circle dance, a traditional dance done by many Native Americans. The Ghost Dance was first practiced by the Nevada Northern Paiute in 1889. The practice swept throughout much of the Western United States, quickly reaching areas of California and Oklahoma. As the Ghost Dance spread from its original source, different tribes synthesized selective aspects of the ritual with their own beliefs.

The Ghost Dance was associate(Wovoka’s) prophecy of an end to white expansion while preaching goals of clean living, an honest life, and cross-cultural cooperation by Indians. Practice of the Ghost Dance movement was believed to have contributed to Lakota resistance to assimilation under the Dawes Act.

Geronimo was a Bedonkohe Apache leader of the Chiricahua Apache, who led his people’s defense of their homeland against the military might of the United States.

"Geronimo"

Geronimo was an Apache leader who continued the tradition of the Apaches resisting white colonization of their homeland in the Southwest, participating in raids into Sonora and Chihuahua in Mexico. After years of war, Geronimo finally surrendered to U.S. troops in 1886. While he became a celebrity, he spent the last two decades of his life as a prisoner of war.

This 16 X 20 mono-color painting is of Geronimo in his last years, maybe thinking of his days in Arizona, fighting for his tribal lands.

Nampeyo (1859 –1942) was a Hopi-Tewa potter who lived on the Hopi Reservation in Arizona. Her Tewa name was also spelled Num-pa-yu, meaning “snake that does not bite”.

She used ancient techniques for making and firing pottery and used designs from “Old Hopi” pottery and sherds found at 15th-century Sikyátki ruins on First Mesa.

A world record for Southwest American Indian pottery was declared at Bonhams Auction House in San Francisco on December 6, 2010, when one of Nampeyo’s art works, a decorated ceramic pot, sold for $350,000.

This monocolor is an acrylic painting on a 16X20 gallery-wrapped canvas.

Red Cloud (Lakota: Maȟpíya Lúta) (born 1822 – December 10, 1909) was one of the most important leaders of the Oglala Lakota from 1868 to 1909. He was one of the most capable Native American opponents that the United States Army faced in its mission to occupy the western territories, defeating the United States during Red Cloud’s War, which was a fight over control of the Powder River Country in northeastern Wyoming and southern Montana. The largest action of the war was the Fetterman Fight, with 81 U.S soldiers killed, and was the worst military defeat suffered by the United States Army on the Great Plains until the Battle of the Little Bighorn ten years later.

After signing the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868), Red Cloud led his people in the important transition to reservation life.

This original acrylic painting is on an 18 X 24 gallery-wrapped canvas, and is a Raw Umber Mono-color.