Paul Kane--Self Portrait
Courtesy of the Stark Museum of Art, Orange, Texas
"Medicine Pipe-Stem Dance" (1849)
Courtesy of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto Canada
Assiniboine Hunting Buffalo c. 1851-1856
Courtesy of the National Gallery of Canada
Scalp Dance by Spokane Indians
Scalp Dance by Spokane Indians was done in 1847 in a village near Kettle Falls. The woman in the center had been widowed when the Blackfeet killed her husband. The stick she waves has a Blackfoot scalp on top of it. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
On "Scalp Dance by Spokane Indians"
The Canadian artist Paul Kane, 1810-1871, whose oeuvre consists largely of sketches and paintings depicting landscapes and scenes of Indian life in Canada and the Pacific Northwest, plays a central role in Alexie's "Scalp Dance by Spokane Indians," named after Kane's painting of the same title. Much like Wendy Rose's "Truganinny," the poem begins with a quoted epigraph and subsequently takes on the voice of the woman portrayed in Kane's painting.