Treasures from Our West: Photograph of Touch the Clouds

Originally featured in Points West magazine in Summer 2013

Photograph, Touch the Clouds

When you walk into the new Paul Dyck Plains Indian Buffalo Culture Gallery in our Plains Indian Museum, you are drawn to a photo mural of this image. Touch the Clouds, a Minneconjou Lakota, is said to have been an imposing seven feet tall. Although not involved in the Little Bighorn Battle in 1876, he joined with Crazy Horse later that year. In early 1878 he settled at the Cheyenne River Agency in South Dakota, where he was a leader in the Minneconjou band for the remainder of his life.

In this 1877 image, one of hundreds collected by Paul Dyck, Touch the Clouds wears leggings, beaded moccasins, and an impressive full-length war bonnet in mid-nineteenth-century Lakota style. See similar and equally exquisite bonnets, leggings, and other clothing and accoutrements from Plains Indian tribes in the new Paul Dyck gallery at the Center.

Black and white postcard. Touch the Clouds wearing war bonnet and traditional regalia. Photo attributed to Julius Ulke. The Paul Dyck Plains Indian Buffalo Culture Collection, acquired through the generosity of the Dyck family and additional gifts of the Nielson Family and the Estate of Margaret S. Coe. P.320.429

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