SANTA FE, N.M.- A pictographic painted muslin tipi liner attributed to Mato Luta (Red Bear), a Lakota Hunkpapa, sold for $90,000 at Santa Fe Art Auction’s February 6-7 Native American Art sale. It had been estimated only $10/15,000 and came out of a collection where it had resided for nearly 20 years. Dating to the late Nineteenth Century, the nearly 10-foot-long liner is believed to have been created at Fort Yates during the final years of the Sioux-Cheyenne campaign.

“The pictograph includes some intimate and aesthetic moments, which is rare in this sort of object,” said Josh Rose, senior vice president at the auction house. “We see a horse peeking through a field of tipis, several horses with heads turned facing out and a Lakota woman holding a child. There are also many scenes of Lakota warriors battling Crow warriors and those individuals are carrying shields, rifles, knives, lances, bows and arrows.”

The auction house said, “According to Christina Burke, curator of Native American art at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the pictograph includes depictions of Mato Luta (Red Bear), Mehaka Ciqala (Little Elk), Mato Nape Ska (White Paw Bear) and Kangi Ohitika (Brave Crow). All of these men are listed as heads-of-household on the 1885 ration rolls for the Standing Rock Reservation. A few of the other inscriptions are actually phrases referring to historical events, meaning that part of this muslin is probably a Lakota ‘winter count.'”

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