Art at the Confluence

The confluence region witnessed some of North America’s most significant movements of people and materials for over 1,000 years. The continent’s three most powerful rivers—the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio—meet within its boundaries. Indigenous trade routes stretched through the region from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. The Mississippi River provided a major north-south artery. The Missouri River and, later, western overland trails made the confluence region the “Gateway to the West” for non-Indigenous commercial, scientific, and military explorers.

St. Louis, founded in 1764, and its surrounding area soon resembled a busy cosmopolitan hub despite its distance from other major colonial settlements. Europeans, Americans, and Native Americans gathered in the city to connect with suppliers, guides, government officials, and traders. Many artists departed from St. Louis on their journeys to provide a visual accounting of western lands and peoples. The development of this hub also led to the removal of Native American groups such as the Osage Nation.

Some communities came to the confluence region to stay. Their artists produced works that are, at times, a stylistic mix derived from the area’s diverse cultures. At other times, these artworks sustained a community’s resilience by maintaining its distinct visual traditions.

Mató-Tópe, Mandan, c.1784–1837
Robe, c.1835
hide, pigment, hair, and quills

Bernisches Historisches Museum, Bern  2021.95

Eight battle scenes surround a sun-like circle of abstracted eagle feathers. For the war leader Mató-Tópe and his fellow Mandan peoples, this robe constitutes a powerful narrative self-portrait. A devoted artist, Mató-Tópe carefully studied the work of European and American artists who visited him. In his robe, he incorporated European techniques of pictorial volume and depth into the pictographic conventions of Plains narrative art.

Mató-Tópe’s most famous battle is depicted next to the red cloth strip in the lower left corner of the robe. A grueling contest between a Tsistsistas (Cheyenne) chief, in green, and Mató-Tópe, on the right in red, ended in hand-to-hand combat. Mató-Tópe received a deep wound in his hand before killing the Tsistsistas enemy with their own knife.

Mató-Tópe and over 90% of the Mandan peoples tragically perished in 1837 during the smallpox epidemic. His robe, considered a pivotal work of Plains art, traveled down the Missouri River along trade routes from his winter home, in what is now North Dakota, to Kansas City, Missouri.  It was purchased there later that year by merchant Alphons Schoch and displayed in his St. Louis home.