Máhchsi-Karéhde
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numak'aki figure
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2023-01-08T15:02:08+00:00
Máhchsi-Karéhde (Flying War Eagle) was a young Numak'aki warrior. Individuals of the Awatíkihu (Five Villages) could be given multiple names over their lifetimes, often marking extraordinary events or achievements, and Máhchsi-Karéhde was also known as Kuhá-Hándeh, a name that Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied translated as “I Hear [Someone] Coming.”[1] He was a member of the Káua-Karakáchka Óhate, a society whose members were charged with policing their respective villages. During the winter of 1833–34, this óhate (society) transferred their earlier rights to a younger cohort over forty days of festivities, which the Europeans attended at its endpoint.
The tallest resident of the Numak'aki villages, at just over five-foot-ten-inches tall, Máhchsi-Karéhde stopped at the Europeans’ quarters with visitors—other Numak'aki warriors, small hunting parties of Minitari warriors, and once a “kidnapped” woman (although the meaning of this term in Wied-Neuwied’s notes is unclear)—just as often as he came alone. He and his parties occasionally stayed the night, sharing fort mónute (food) and pi'he (smoke), and on several visits he asked to view Karl Bodmer’s paintings. Máhchsi-Karéhde also seems to have encouraged his younger brother and father to visit the Europeans. It was Máhchsi-Karéhde who gave Bodmer his Numak'aki name of Kapúska , and his own portrait sitting stretched over four months, from late December 1833 to early March 1834. He left the red-painted coup feather seen at the back of his head in his portrait at Bodmer’s studio, perhaps at the Europeans’ urging for consistent dress, and Mató-Tópe later borrowed it for his own ceremonial dress when passing through. A month before the Europeans left the Awatíkihu, Máhchsi-Karéhde commissioned Wied-Neuwied for drawings of hussars (mounted European light calvary), potentially as a parallel to the coup battle deedmarks worn by Awatíkihu warriors, as Wied-Neuwied had served in the Prussian Army during the Napoleonic Wars.[2]
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