The history of North American horse culture is epitomized by the full-face horse mask in red trade cloth, with black velvet trim and seed blue star and sunburst, that hammered down for $40,000 at Brian Lebel’s Old West Auction in Denver, Colorado, on June 28. Photographic provenance that begins circa 1890 documents this horse mask among the Nez Perce, Blackfeet, Crow, Cayuse and Lakota, roughly 85 years after the increased availability of European firearms had made full-horse leather armor


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