| Sitting
Bull (Limited Edition: 8.500)
When Christopher Columbus “newly”
discovered America in 1492, he was under the mistaken impression that he
had found the western sea passage from Europe to India. The original
inhabitants of America, from the Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of
South America, to far beyond the Great Lakes of North America, owe their
name lndians to this faulty assumption.
Many tribes at that time inhabited the
forest lands of the East and then gradually retreated back into the
western prairie, living in an area stretching from Sasketchewan to about
the Mississippi. In place of the difficult-to-pronounce Indian names,
substitute French “corruptions” of the various tribes’ names soon
appeared, until before long, all the tribes came to be generally
referred to as “Sioux”.
“Sitting Bull” (1834 — 1890) was
one of the famous tribal Indian Chieftains, like the ones described by
the German writer Karl May (1842 — 1912) in his adventure novels,
which managed to achieve sales of 11 million copies. “Old Sure- hand”
and “Winnetou” were characters from Karl May’s works that were
included among these select Indian Chieftains.
The painter, Sascha Schneider, created
imaginative sketches of the “Redskins” in full “feather-dress”
and with a “tomahawk” for the jacket covers of Karl May’s works.
In reality of course, red was simply the color of the body paint
commonly used by the numerous native tribes in the New World.
Only at the relatively late age of 66
years did Karl May first get to finally travel to America. Because of
his great contributions in making the Indian lifestyle known to the
world “at large”, the Sioux Indians presented him with their Peace
Pipe as an honorary testimonial.
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