Gathering of the Clans, also known as Lakota Encampment

Tavernier based this work on firsthand experience of the events leading up to the Sun Dance ceremony in June 1874. Working several years later in his studio, he consulted his field sketches and collection of Indigenous attire, and set the scene with a backdrop of the Crow Buttes in Nebraska. Members of the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes arrive in a seemingly endless stream for the weeklong ceremony. Addressing the group of women at left is the Oglala lieutenant headman Sitting Bull of the Southern Lakota. The structure at right, marked by the leader’s headpiece and shield hanging on a pole, may belong to Chief Red Cloud. The artist quickly found a buyer for this highly detailed painting, but he never fully completed it, leaving areas unfinished.

Tavernier’s encounter with the Lakota in 1874 came at a critical time in the history of the tribe, composed of seven major bands. They were nearing the end of their tenure, evolved over millennia, as free, far-ranging gatherers and hunters of the bison on the Northern Plains; the US government and White settlement had begun to threaten their very existence. They shared a common ethos and traditions, and a belief that they were descended from the same spiritually and mythologically defined ancestors. This mutual Lakota ancestral knowledge and understanding of the world was celebrated periodically in great tribal reunion gatherings such as the Sun Dance ceremony. In Tavernier’s painting the tribes are seen camping together in welcome reunion, shared hospitality, and customs of social renewal and bonding, before separating again. The Crow Buttes landmark in the distance remains a spectacular and dominant feature of the region.


—Arthur Amiotte (Oglala Lakota)