Makúie-Póka, Piegan Blackfoot Man

Makúie-Póka (Wolf Child) was the son of a Kootenai man and presumably raised by his mother’s Piegan community. Over the course of three days at Fort McKenzie, Bodmer detailed Makúie-Póka’s lavish attire. In his hair he wears fashionable bows in the Mandan and Hidatsa style and long tubular beads called hair pipes manufactured of shell and bone on the East Coast. Perhaps most notable is his necklace made of grizzly bear claws, a revered animal that neared extinction when Euro-Americans settled in the region. According to some sources, only claws from the forepaw of the bear were used in adornments like the one here. A braided sweetgrass choker nestled above the necklace would have emitted the plant’s characteristic sweet smell.