Three Fingers – Cheyennes

This portrait vase of Three Fingers, a Cheyenne Chief, was created by one of Rookwood Pottery’s most talented artists, Grace Young. It belongs to a larger group of vases depicting Native Americans portraits made at Rookwood Pottery in the 1890s; in style and technique it relates to a distinct body of work that copied known portraits as subjects for vessels, including photographs of Native Americans, Black figures, and Old Master paintings. Both the photographic likenesses and Rookwood’s portrait vases were created and consumed primarily by White Americans.



Three Fingers is shown wearing a fringed shirt, holding feathers and a pipe, and wearing one of the 18 silver Benjamin Harrison peace medals issued to members of the Cheyenne and Arapahoe tribes by President Harrison in 1890 (Proclamation 327). The slip painted composition closely copies a portrait of Three Fingers by American photographer Frank Albert Rinehart that was taken at the 1898 Indian Congress in Omaha, Nebraska, a gathering held in conjunction with the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition. Young’s ceramic version is sensitively rendered with great attention to detail and overall fidelity to Rinehart’s photograph.