Top of page

Category: Manuscripts

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Lakota “Winter Count” Artistry

Posted by: Mark Hartsell

The winter counts created by some Native American peoples chronicle centuries of their history in pictures: battles fought, treaties struck, buffalo hunts, meteor showers, droughts, famines, epidemics. The counts — painted mostly on buffalo hides until the species was hunted to nearextinction in the late 19th century — served as a way for tribes of …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Amelia Earhart, in History’s Hands

Posted by: Mark Hartsell

A shorter version of this story appeared in the July/August edition of the Library of Congress Magazine.  The best clues to a person’s character lie right in the palms of their hands. That, at least, is what Nellie Simmons Meier believed. Meier, you see, was one of the world’s foremost practitioners of the “science” of …