The Segesser Hide Paintings

In the early 1700s, the French and Spanish were competing for spheres of influence on the North American plains. French traders working from Canada and New Orleans had reached the Rockies to the west and the Arkansas River to the south. This alarmed the Spanish authorities in New Mexico, who considered the plains a natural extension of their own empire. In the summer of 1720 they sent an expedition northward to what is now Nebraska to offer friendship to the Pawnee and Oto Indians, run off any Frenchmen they encountered, and scout out possible locations for a permanent fort. Instead, they were ambushed by Indians, possibly with French help, and nearly wiped out.

This minor frontier skirmish would have been long forgotten had not unknown artists in New Mexico created the wonderful record now called the Segesser Hide Paintings. Painted on tanned buffalo hides, the two works show many marvelous scenes of life on the eighteenth-century plains.

The centerpiece of the first hide is a battle between Indians.

The second hide depicts the 1720 skirmish in great if somewhat fanciful detail. Both were probably painted by American Indian artists who had some experience of or training in European-style art.

The expedition was led by New Mexico Lieutenant Governor Pedro de Villasur, who commanded 43 royal troops, three Spanish civilians, and 60 Pueblo Indians. (Above, the Spanish at bay in the center of the painting.) According to the Museum of New Mexico,

The Villasur expedition headed north from Santa Fe to Taos, turned east, then northeast into present-day Kansas. They followed a Pawnee route to the Platte River, moving north into eastern Nebraska. Beyond the junction of the Platte and Loup rivers, they encountered a large Pawnee Indian encampment. Villasur initiated a dialogue and asked Juan de Archibeque (Jean l’Archévêque), a Frenchman and expedition interpreter, to write a letter in French to a European within the Pawnee camp. The efforts failed and sensing a potentially hostile situation, the expedition retreated and camped at the confluence of the Loup and Platte rivers.

The Segesser II painting can be pinpointed to the August 13, 1720, skirmish at the expedition camp. After daybreak, the Pawnee and their Oto Indian allies—illustrated throughout the painting by their painted and unclothed bodies and shaved or close-cropped heads—ambushed the Villasur party. The painting also includes 37 French soldiers, identified by their European-style clothing—conical hats, coats, breeches, cuffs and leggings—firing long arms at the Spanish military expedition.

Te Villasur expedition was caught off guard, and the pitched battle left many of them for dead in the tall prairie grass. The attack was a major catastrophe for New Mexico and casualties amounted to a third of the province’s best soldiers. The center of the painting portrays French soldiers with Pawnee and Oto supporters surrounding the camp. At the right of the painting, Villasur expedition members who were guarding the animals are shown running to assist their Spanish comrades.

Interestingly, oral and written accounts of the battle do not mention French soldiers in the area of the encounter. Several Villasur survivors reported a volley of musket fire, but in the confusion of the battle, they did not know who was attacking them. It is possible that French traders took part in the ambush. Governor Valverde y Cosio, perhaps in an effort to defend the actions of Villasur, reported “two hundred Frenchmen had fired, supported by a countless number of Pawnee allies.”

The paintings were in Switzerland for over a century -- nobody knows hot they got there -- but then in 1983 the owners sold them to the State of New Mexico.

What an astonishing thing to survive after so much time. You can explore both paintings in detail here.