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Provenance:

By repute Chief Red Cloud (Mahpiua Luta), gifted to Othniel Charles Marsh, New Haven, CT, gifted to Mc Hughes, Cambridge, UK, thereafter possibly to Collection of Harry Seeley, Cambridge, UK
Collection of C. Frank Turner, Toronto, ON
By descent to the present Private Collection, Toronto, ON

Note:

An important, and ornately beaded pair of 19th century Plains moccasins in the Lakota style, the present footwear is identified in C. Frank Turner’s collection notes as having belonged to the important Oglala Lakota Chief Red Cloud (Mahpiua Luta). An early tag accompanying the moccasins bears a pen and ink inscription reading: "Moccasins given by Professor O.C. Marsh to Mc Hughes, said to have belonged to Chief Red Cloud Sioux Indians".

Othniel Charles Marsh (1831-1899) [O.C. Marsh] was a Yale University professor, and pioneering paleontologist most commonly remembered for his contributions to a period of frenzied discovery, and bitter rivalry with Harvard professor and fellow paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope (1840-1897). Over the years 1877 to 1892 the two paleontologists vied for preeminence in the burgeoning field of paleontology in what has come to be known as “The Bone Wars”.

Marsh first met Red Cloud in 1874 initiating a series of sometimes tense but ultimately peaceful encounters near the border of the Dakotas, south of the Black Hills (Pahá Sápa). The two met again when Red Cloud traveled as a guest of Marsh to Yale in 1883.

Red Cloud was a principal chief of the Oglala Lakota who in the late 1860s successfully resisted the U.S. government’s development of the Bozeman Trail to newly discovered goldfields in Montana Territory. Not subject to a hereditary title, Red Cloud emerged as a leader and spokesman of his people through the force of his own character, and exploits of bravery in a time of violent transition and change. Red Cloud led his people to peace with the U.S. Government, and settlement at the Red Cloud Agency, in Nebraska in 1868 before decamping to Pine Ridge Agency in 1878 due to poor conditions at Red Cloud Agency.

It is not clear at what time Marsh may have acquired the moccasins from Red Cloud, however both interactions might have afforded Marsh the opportunity to acquire a pair of moccasins. The two men required something of each other in 1874, and their exchange seems to have fostered a lasting relationship. Marsh had sought protection, and right of passage from Red Cloud. The protection was needed for Marsh’s planned excavation and extraction of fossils from the disputed Black Hills. Red Cloud in-turn sought from Marsh much needed leverage lobbying the U.S. Government to uphold the terms of the Fort Laramie Treaty. The implementation of the treaty had been subject to gross neglect and consistent corruption on the part of the Government.

The early tag accompanying the moccasins indicates that they were gifted by Marsh to an Mc Hughes, presumably Thomas McKenny Hughes (1832-1917), a Professor of Geology at the Woodwardian Museum of Cambridge, with whom Marsh had a lasting correspondence.[1] While the path of the footwear from Hughes to eventual ownership by C. Frank Turner is unknown, an additional collection note from Turner offers the name “Seeley”, along with a Toronto address, and a purchase price for the moccasins. While “Seeley” may refer to Harry Govier Seeley (1839-1909), an assistant at the Woodwardian Museum of Cambridge, the significance of the further address of an unidentified Toronto resident remains as yet unknown.[2]

[1] “Hughes, McKenny, 1891-1899”, From the Collection: Marsh, Othniel Charles, 1831-1899, Archives at Yale, https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/12/archival_objects/2020180
[2] Douglas Palmer, “Thomas McKenny Hughes - a hundred years ago”, The Geological Society of London, https://web.archive.org/web/20211024161657/https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Archive/March-2018/Thomas-McKenny-Hughes-a-hundred-years-ago
Othniel Charles Marsh, “A statement of affairs at Red Cloud Agency : made to the President of the United States”, Smithsonian Libraries, https://archive.org/details/statementofaffai00mars/page/n3/mode/2up
Arthur Mullen, “Red Cloud Visits a Friend.; The Great Indian Chief the Guest of Prof. Marsh in New-Haven.”, Roger Sherman House, https://rogershermanhouse.com/2019/10/21/red-cloud-visits-a-friend-the-great-indian-chief-the-guest-of-prof-marsh-in-new-haven/
Url Lanham, The Bone Hunters: The Heroic Age of Paleontology in the American West (New York: Dover Publishers, 2011)

Cyril Francis (C. Frank) Turner was an individual of many talents, and a remarkably varied life. A wartime commando, and flying officer, peacetime militiaman, author, editor, and amateur historian (who could trace his ancestry to 14th century Mawddwy Bandits in Wales), he is perhaps most remembered for authoring the popular 1973 book Across the Medicine Line: The Epic Confrontation Between Sitting Bull and the North-West Mounted Police.

An adventurer with a hands-on approach to the study of history, Turner assembled a collection of historical First Nations objects, and traveled to many of the far flung, and at times dangerous locations covered in his book, interviewing first-hand, and keeping correspondence with descendants of participants in the events. Speaking in 1973 of the urgency of preserving stories, Turner expressed, “The land is still there. So are the descendants, Indians and Whites. It is the heritage that is fading away.”

Waddington’s is pleased to present the research archives, and First Nations collection of Cyril Francis Turner.