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 obsolete. Unlike the masks, examples of the full armor exist only in illustrations and journal entries, such as when Lewis and Clark noted the antelope’s skin armor that covered the Shoshone’s horses in 1805.
The horse armor was modeled after the Spaniard’s—first seen by frontier Indians when Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and his men rode armored horses from Mexico into present-day Kansas in 1540-42. The first recorded instance of Indian warriors and horses outfitted in leather armor, in imitation of the Spanish, was the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.
To illustrate their abiding respect for the horse, tribes continued to decorate their equines in masks, even after confinement on reservation, and such horse masks can be seen worn in tribal parades to this day.
This piece of history was just one of many Brian Lebel brought to collectors in his 25th anniversary auction, which hammered in at a total exceeding $800,000.
Photo Gallery
Bill Tilghman’s gold No. 1 police suspension badge presented to the pioneer Oklahoma lawman by the citizens of Oklahoma City, modeled after the badge he had worn on duty (see photo of the lawman); $3,250.
An 1893 lithograph for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World bid in for $13,000.
A carte de visite of outlaw Billy the Kid hammered down at $15,000, three years after Brian Lebel sold the tintype of the Kid for a $2 million bid.
The desirability of a Colt 1873 single action in the serial range of 4516 to 5521 is obvious to any George Custer collector, as 755 revolvers from this group were issued to the 7th Cavalry prior to the fatal defeat at the 1876 Little Big Horn battle. Numbered 4895, the Colt that bid in for $45,000 was first purchased by historian Kenneth Leonard on a 1962 visit to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation.
A May 1865 carte de visite of Custer, who died in the battle, also sold at the auction; $900.
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Meghan Saar is the former editor of True West, the world’s oldest, continuously published Western Americana magazine. She has worked in niche publication content development since 2002, and she has a B.S. in Journalism and Creative Writing from the University of Arizona—Tucson.