Lakota Women's Artistic Strategies in Support of the Social System
Abstract
The role of the Lakota (also known as the Teton Dakota or Western Sioux) woman has been so completely overshadowed by that of the flamboyant Lakota warrior in ethnographic literature and elsewhere that we know very little regarding her thoughts and behavior during the tremendous societal upheaval which occurred during the move onto the reservation in the late nineteenth century. However, one feminine manifestation, the costume arts, provides us with information about her reaction to social change. At first glance it appears incongruous that, precisely when the traditional order was under its greatest stress in Lakota history, the women produced their most elaborate artwork, indeed lavishly covering everything in sight with beadwork. In 1889 an Anglo female missionary teacher at Standing Rock Agency on the Sioux reservation observed: "Under this shade the women did fancy work with buckskin, beads and porcupine quills brightly dyed, or sewed while the children played and the men loafed after sporadic attempts at farming or caring for a few cattle" (Jacobsen 1959: 46). In order to explain this behavior on the part of the women, clearly divergent from that of the men, it is first necessary to determine the function of the arts in Lakota society before the move to the reservation.