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Buffalo Bird Girl: A Hidatsa Story, 2015. All images for educational use only.
History in Buffalo Bird Girl: A Hidatsa Story
History in Buffalo Bird Girl: A Hidatsa Story
Buffalo Bird Girl: A Hidatsa Story by S.D. Nelson depicts the true story of Buffalo Bird Girl, a Hidatsa woman, utilizing a biography published in 1927 called Waheenee: An Indian Girl's Story; Told by Herself to Gilbert L. Wilson (Reese). The book utilizes a mix of art and primary sources, such as photographs, to tell the story of Buffalo Bird Girl and what it was like to live in the Hidatsa settlement.
"Illustration of the painted passages of a Hidatsa buffalo robe executed by Two Ravens." All images for educational use only.
The spread on pages twenty-four through twenty-five depicts the harvesting of corn in the Hidatsa settlement. The art has clear roots in Hidatsa art in the late 1800s through early 1900s, such as the “Illustration of the painted passages of a Hidatsa buffalo robe executed by Two Ravens” (Brownstone 62), based in the shape of the figures, horses, patterns, and colors. According to Brownstone, the colors of red, black, and yellow are used in traditional Hidatsa artworks (Brownstone 62). The bright colors depicted on the right page in Buffalo Bird Girl attract the reader's eye to the important activity of harvesting corn. Accompanying the beautiful illustration on the left page are two photographs of actual Indigenous peoples participating in the harvesting of food. The use of a primary source, photographs, ties back to the themes in the book, preserving the story of Buffalo Bird Girl and the Hidatsa people.
I Am a Pueblo Indian Girl, 1939. All images for educational use only.
While the Hidatsa and Puebloan people live in different areas and speak different languages, acknowledging the book I am A Pueblo Indian Girl is key for understanding potential influences on Buffalo Bird Girl. According to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, I Am A Pueblo Indian Girl is considered to be the first, or one of the first, books to be published that was written by a Native American. The text in the book is poems written by E-Yeh-Shure herself with accompanying illustrations by other indigenous people (“Louise Abeita on Native American Authors”). On the page, different Indigenous experiences are centered with Puebloan in the middle. The comparison present on the page might reference the similarities and differences between Indigenious peoples, such as shared importance of certain crops such as corn but also highlighting different methods of living such as a Tipi vs. a Pueblo. This could reflect the use of a primary source in Buffalo Bird Girl as a way to give context to the topic of Indigenous life. In the other excerpt, readers can see life connected through corn, just as in Buffalo Bird Girl. The book depicts life in the Pueblo, just as Buffalo Bird Girl depicts life in a Hidatsa settlement. As I Am A Pueblo Indian Girl is one of the seminal works in Indigenious children’s books, there is a possibility that the education and artistic format influenced Buffalo Bird Girl.
Word Count: 457
Works Cited:
Bader, Barbara. American Picturebooks from Noah’s Ark to the Beast Within. Macmillan, 1976, 164-165.
Brownstone, Arni. “European Influence in the Mandan-Hidatsa Graphic Works Collected by Prince Maximilian of Wied.” Native American Art Magazine, vol. 39, no. 3, 2014, pp. 58–30, https://www.rom.on.ca/sites/default/files/publication/pdf/european-influence.pdf.
E-Yeh-Shureʼ, et al. I Am a Pueblo Indian Girl. W. Morrow and Co., 1939. Historical Society of Pennsylvania, https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1394650183703609344.
“Louise Abeita on Native American Authors.” Ipl: Information You Can Trust, https://www.ipl.org/div-natam-bin-browse-pl-a147/. Accessed 1 Dec. 2021.
Nelson, S. D. Buffalo Bird Girl: A Hidatsa Story. Harry N. Abrams, 2015.
Reese, Debbie. “Buffalo Bird Girl: A Hidasta Story, by S.D. Nelson.” American Indians in Children’s Literature (AICL), 23 Feb. 2013, https://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/search/label/Buffalo%20Bird%20Girl.
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