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PrintC.M. Russell Museum's bison exhibit: another great reason to get to Great Falls, Montana
It features more than 1,000 objects — artifacts such as clothing, regalia, tools, and weapons, as well as works of art and a wide variety of objects crafted from bison — that reveal the crucial history and cultural role of the bison in the American West.
On Thanksgiving Day, 1925, Charles Marion Russell sketched a lone American bison at the top of a piece of stationery and proceeded to pen a note to a friend advocating that as Turkey Day is celebrated in the East, Bison Day should be celebrated in the West:
Photos courtesy C.M. Russell Museum
Life-size diorama of an Indian on horseback trying to kill a galloping bison with an arrow
turkey is the emblem of this day and it should be in the east but the west owes nothing to that bird but it owes much to the humped back beef the Rocky mountains would have been hard to reach with out him he fed the explorer the great fur trade wagon tranes felt safe when they reached his range he fed the men that layed the first ties across this great west Thair is no day set aside where he is an emblem the nickle weares his picture dam small money for so much meat he was one of natures biggest gift and this country owes him thanks.
Though his writing was unschooled, Russell's observation was perfectly accurate. Now the C.M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, Montana, has made good on the country's debt of gratitude with an outstanding permanent exhibit — The Bison: American Icon, Heart of Plains Indian Culture.
Opened in December 2008, it features more than 1,000 objects — artifacts such as clothing, regalia, tools, and weapons, as well as works of art and a wide variety of objects crafted from bison — that reveal the crucial history and cultural role of the bison in the American West. Seen from many perspectives — in the art of Russell, in the frontier experience, in the lives of the Northern Plains Indians who relied on them for survival and regarded them as sacred — the iconic bison is revealed in all its impressiveness, importance, and tragedy.
Russell's robust bronzes and oil paintings, which present snapshots of life in the West, take center stage in this display, along with objects from his home and studio. An avid collector of Plains Indian artifacts, Russell filled his home and log-cabin studio — both of which are part of the C.M. Russell Museum — with items that are unveiled here to the public for the first time.
Charlie Russell's headdress displayed in front of the photo of the artist himself wearing the actual headdress, circa 1900
A fan of the West from a young age, Russell left St. Louis in 1880 when he was just a teen and headed for Montana, where he found work as a wrangler. In his new home, he quickly developed a tremendous affection for the burly bison, and his bison-related works take up a good quarter of the museum space.
With more than 1,000 pieces on view, the galleries present plenty to look at — as much from the Native American perspective as from Russell's.
Like many Native American groups, the Plains Indians were resourceful in finding uses for all parts of the animal. Hides were indispensable for shelter, saddles, and clothes; food was prepared from the meat; bones served as paintbrushes; horns metamorphosed into tools, weapons, and even furniture.
But it's not just look-and-don't-touch artifacts. Here you are encouraged to be hands-on: "Discovery Drawers" display original artifacts under glass with touchable replicas beside them. With bison-skin moccasins and rattles in hand, the connection between the bison of thundering hooves on wide-open plains and the materials so critical to the survival and culture of the Plains Indians becomes clear. Having "touched" that history, visitors can also hear it.
Various creation stories are told in the tongues of Native Americans as well as in English, and you can observe — in 3-D — the last bison roundup in Flathead, Montana, where Charlie Russell himself was on hand for the drive.
The most exciting and impressive bison encounter takes place in the narrow corridor between the first gallery and the second, where visitors get the extraordinary sensation of being smack in the middle of a bison stampede. A film of the powerful creatures surrounds you while the roar of a multitude of hoofs and the beasts' snorting and grunting fills your ears. You can even feel the floor shake with the weight and enormity of the herd.
Although no live bison are part of the presentation, a commanding life-size diorama dominates one gallery. Beside a running buffalo is an Indian on horseback, his face transfixed on his mission, bow and arrow aimed and ready to take down the prey. Three artists collaborated on the piece: The bison was done by taxidermist Bruce Babcock, the American Indian by Allen Chronister, and the brown and white mustang by Neal Deaton.
Also created specifically for this show is a tepee made of three hides, which was fashioned by Larry Belitz. He hand-scraped and tanned the hides, following the ways of Native Americans in the 1800s.
A bison robe, loaned by the Museum of the Plains Indian in Browning, Montana, is another noteworthy piece. About 125 years old, it is decorated with horizontal strips of yellow and red beadwork.
Another robe — a replica based on an 1870s Sioux robe from the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma — tells the story of the life of a Sioux warrior. It was reproduced by Darrell and Angelika Norman, who used computer mapping to re-create the robe's painting and symbols.
A relatively small museum by national standards, the C.M. Russell Museum has nonetheless designed a nationally significant exhibit. Opened in 1953 after Josephine Trigg left a large family collection to the people of Great Falls with the stipulation that a public museum be built to display it, the museum has always been worth the trek to Great Falls; the new bison exhibit makes it even more so.
The Treasure State's third-largest city, the town is the perfect setting for the display. Russell made his home here, and one can easily envision herds of the shaggy-maned beasts roaming nearby under Montana's big sky. In fact, just 30 miles or so from the museum is the Buffalo Jump, one of the country's largest kill sites.
If Great Falls is not on your itinerary, an endowment will help to duplicate a smaller version of the exhibit that will travel to small and midsize museums throughout the United States. But if Montana is in your travel plans, more than 2,000 pieces of C.M. Russell art, personal objects, and artifacts await you, many of them part of this special and long-overdue tribute to the bison that were so much a part of the Western frontier Russell revered and re-created in his art.
