Marino, Cesare, Pontsioen, Robert, and Taylor, Paul Michael. 2019. "Red Cloud, Dog Child, and the "Long Knife" of the Samurai in Indian Country." Tribal Arts, 23, (2) 106–123.
This paper revisits and reassesses two enigmatic archival photographs taken in the 1890s showing Japanese katana, or samurai swords, in situ with American Indians in the northern Great Plains. Both have been published, correctly presented as enticing unexplained oddities in nineteenth-century Indian possession. The katana seen hanging on a wall of the home of Chief Red Cloud of the Oglala Lakota (Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota), which we believe was photographed in November or early January of 1890 (fig. 1), was first discussed in print by Bleed (1987). The second photograph (fig. 2) shows a katana held by Dog Child of the Blackfoot (Siksika) tribe, formerly a scout for the North-West Mounted Police (later the Royal Canadian Mounted Police), photographed in c. 1890–1894 at Gleichen, Alberta, and first discussed by Drew (1980). We attempt here to provide context and likely explanations for the presence of samurai swords in these two only known nineteenth-century in situ American Indian contexts. For that purpose, we first briefly survey the much broader diffusion and integration of the (largely Euro-American) sword-called "long knife" in many North American Indian languages-within American Indian cultures. We then look at possible Japanese sources for these swords and the resulting implications.
