Wáh-Menítu, Lakota Sioux Man

Bodmer met Wáh-Menítu (Spirit/God in the Water) during a brief stay at Fort Pierre in present-day South Dakota. He was Lakota, the westernmost tribe of the Oceti Sakowin (Seven Council Fires), often called the Sioux. The European travelers experienced Lakota hospitality and were invited into family lodges to share meals and smoke tobacco. For his portrait, Wáh-Menítu positioned three painted feathers horizontally in his hair, each signifying an enemy he had touched in battle. Bodmer gave him vermilion, a highly prized red pigment imported from China and distributed through the fur trade, "so that he might freshly paint himself and make himself more handsome," as Maximilian noted in his journal. Many of the sitters posed wearing vermilion face and body paint.