Yanktonai Sioux Water Colors: Cultural Remembrances of John Saul

Not many Indian artists recorded first-hand the way of life of the old-time buffalo hunters on the Great Plains. Here, for the first time in print, are presented the full-color drawings of pre-contact Yanktonai Sioux life by artist and teacher John Saul (1878-1971). Saul was born in a tipi on the banks of Crow Creek in what is now central South Dakota. His parents were members of the white Ghost band of Minnesota Sioux who were removed to Dakota Territory after the Minnesota Dakota Conflict of 1862. In their new home, the Yanktonai lived near the Lakota and Yanktons and so adopted many practices common to the tribes that had preceded them on the Plains. Considered by Lakota scholar Martin Brokenleg and American West historian Herbert T. Hoover to be of prime ethnographic significance, these water colors, sponsored by the Works Progress Administration in the early 1940’s, depict traditional Sioux religious and social customs, including village games and the making of clothing, footwear, weapons, and parfleche containers.