ETHNOARCHAEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY

    Indian Images in Commerce

The name of Red Cloud appears in different advertising media (at least tobacco art and fruit crate labels).  This 1930s-vintage cigar-box inner-lid label memorializes not so much the man but the idea of the Indian, ever dignified and regal, lance and [inauthentic] shield in hand, watching a wagon train below.  Assuming the wagons are heading west, the art suggests either dawn and the “manifest destiny” of Whites or (if geographically incorrect) evening and “the end of the trail” for Indians. 
by Gregory A. Reinhardt

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