White Swan: On Possible Further Additions to the Oeuvre of a Crow Warrior-Artist

Abstract

Crow warrior-artist White Swan authored more biographic images than any other Historic-period Crow artist. It has even been suggested that he drew one rock art scene at the historically important petroglyphs at Joliet, Montana. Here, the authors evaluate the likelihood that the Joliet scene is a White Swan drawing, and they also evaluate the possibility that one of the “anonymous” ledger drawings in the Barstow collection was drawn by him. Unfortunately, neither drawing has sufficient similarities to known White Swan drawings to be classified as such. Instead, these drawings indicate there were likely far many more Crow men who could execute pictographic narratives of style and content similar to those produced by White Swan than has so far been reported in the anthropological literature.