Kindred by Choice: Germans and American Indians since 1800

8. Receptions in Native America

252 chapter 8 Receptions in Native America The Red Cloud Indian School on the Pine Ridge Reservation is an oasis on the prairie. Nestled behind a rise just off of Highway 18 about four miles north of the town of Pine Ridge, it makes a stunning impression. Tourists approach it from Hot Springs and Wind Cave National Park on the edge of the Black Hills to the west, drive down from Rapid City or the Bad Lands in the north, come up from Nebraska to the south, or traverse east to west across the reservation on Highway 18 before hooking up north to the school. Regardless of the approach, the vast grasslands they cross make it hard not to notice the trees lining the road to the school buildings, whose clean lines and well-kept grounds compliment the curious faces that often congregate around the main entrance. People come for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the Heritage Center Museum, which hosts the Annual Red Cloud Indian School Art Show and boasts an impressive gallery of American Indian art. During my first visit, I came to see Brother C. M. Simon, who not only was responsible for the show’s success but also managed to amass one of the country’s most impressive collections of American Indian art while directing the museum. In addition, he seemed to know everyone and everything about the reservation , and he was keenly aware of Germans’ affinities for American Indians. He had met so many Germans while working there. It was, in fact, Brother Simon who introduced me to the European Review of Native American Studies, a journal organized by Christian Feest, which frequently draws out the ironies in interactions between American Indians and Europeans. He had one of the few collections in the United States at that time. He also encouraged me to visit a number of Germans who were living on the reservation, some of whom had been there for many years. He was kind enough to provide me with considerable historical orientation as well, discussing the history of the Receptions in Native America 253 show Indians who had been to Germany and naming some of the families whose relatives had been to Europe. He was incredibly generous with his knowledge and his time. One of the families he mentioned descended from Standing Bear and Louise Rieneck, the Austrian nurse he had met while traveling with Buffalo Bill in 1889. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was already familiar with one of their descendants, Arthur Amiotte. While surveying Liselotte WelskopfHenrich ’s collected papers in Berlin, I had read some of the correspondence between her and Amiotte when he was a young art instructor at the Porcupine Day School on the Pine Ridge Reservation from 1969 to 1971. I had also seen tapes of interviews made during his visit to the Karl-May-Museum in Radebeul over three decades later, where he made a favorable impression with both its personnel and the public who came to hear him speak. I was eager to learn more about him. As I read up on Welskopf-Henrich’s correspondent, I became familiar with his art. His talent immediately transfixed me. I was especially taken by the series of Ledger Art Collages that capture, among other things, the history of his family as well as the history of the many transitions the Lakota negotiated during the early reservation period (1880–1930). figure 33. Arthur Amiotte, “This place reminds us of home . . .” (Courtesy of the artist.) 254 Consistencies Most striking for me was the mix of European and American Indian sights and symbols in the collages, particularly those he created while working in Europe and those that drew on his relative’s own travels there with Buffalo Bill. Standing Bear had returned to Europe several times between his first excursion in 1887 and his last trip in 1891. His tours of palaces, castles, cathedrals , and his encounters with royalty and other Europeans had become part of his family’s lore.¹ Indeed, to a certain degree, it was Standing Bear’s stories, passed down across generations, that drew Amiotte to Europe and inspired his Ledger Art Collages.² Art historian Janet Catherine Berlo has called these collages “mnemonic works of cultural memory, which unlock narratives of personal and cultural survival.”³ It is an astute assessment; his collages are multilayered historical works...