The Winter Count

Battiste Good (1821-ca. 1907)
[Winter Count, 1230-1907]
Enlargement
Pictograph watercolor on
paper panels, ca. 1907
Manuscript Division

A "winter count" was a Native American mnemonic device passed from one generation to another marked with pictographs that recorded noteworthy events in tribal life that took place each "winter" or year. Battiste Good, a Brulé Dakota living at the Rosebud Agency in South Dakota, probably made this winter count at the turn of the twentieth century based on original records kept on hides (he introduced Arabic numerals). Special characters denoted famines, the introduction of the horse, buffalo hunts, severe winter storms, smallpox epidemics, and other significant events.

Pictured is Chief High Hawk, Battiste Good's son, and who presumably finished the "winter count" after Good's death.