Rindisbacher, Peter “Interior of a Sioux Lodge”

Peter Rindisbacher.  “Interior of a Sioux Lodge”.  From The Casket (October, 1829). 

4 3/4 x 7 (image).  Aquatint by Joseph Yeager.   Short, repaired tear ½” into image from left.  Minor stains right hand margin.   Top margined trimmed into image about ½ inch.  Else, good condition.  

This first printed picture of the interior of a Plains Indian tipi was published in The Casket, a literary gift book published in 1829.  This German artist moved to Saint Louis in 1829 and began making excursions among the Indians west of the Mississippi.  He preceded George Catlin and Carl Bodmer by a number of years and through his paintings began a small trickle of images out of the American West.  One of his illustrations of a Sioux horseman was used in The American Turf Register in 1829, and his most famous image of a buffalo hunt was used as a frontispiece for the McKenney & Hall North American Indian Portfolio in the early 1830s.  Ref.:  Ron Tyler, Prints of the West  (Golden, CO, 1994), p. 39.