Unity

A cowboy and a Plains chief clasp hands on open ground, and neither looks away. The picture is an emblem rather than the record of one day, but a handshake like this has a real place in the history of the West.

In September 1851, between 10,000 and 15,000 people gathered at the mouth of Horse Creek, in what is now western Nebraska, for the largest meeting of Plains nations on record. Delegations of Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, Assiniboine, Gros Ventre, Mandan and Arikara came, nations that had often been at odds, and met U.S. commissioners. The treaty signed on September 17 pledged "good faith and friendship" in all their dealings. Whatever followed, it was a gathering called to make peace.

The feathered bonnet in the picture carries its own history. On the Plains, a war bonnet was never decoration. Each eagle feather marked a deed, and only a man whose community judged he had earned it wore one. Not every nation wore them, either; films and nineteenth-century portraits made them look more common than they were.

The cowboy stands in shadow in a wide-brimmed hat and dark coat, his hand locked with the chief's. The chief faces him in profile, red, gold and blue feathers streaming down his back, with a strip of blue-and-gold prairie behind them under a sky of short, bright strokes.