Pocatello Entertainment

Bernhardt’s subject matter most certainly was a native Shoshone-Bannock tribal member with her baby strapped into his cradleboard.

Early Native American cradleboards usually sell very quickly when they are offered up for sale on the antiques market. They are very popular.

Modern Native American women take great pride constructing their cradleboards to traditional standards and tribal methods.

Most antique cradleboards that survive today were made and adorned with the best beads and leather that was available to the makers. It is common for cradle board makers to embellish their creations with ornaments and sacred amulets. Dream catchers and medicine wheels are sometimes attached to some cradleboards to stimulate and protect the child.

Drusilla Gould and Maria Glowacka have further expanded on the relationship between mother, baby and the cradleboard in a 2004 JSTOR Journal article, Nagotooh(Gahni): The Bonding between Mother and Child in Shoshoni Tradition. The article discusses a traditional model of the maternal nurturing of newborn babies in the Shoshoni tradition from a native-language perspective. It examines the 30-day period of confinement called nagotooh(gahni), which was viewed as a symbolic extension of a mother’s womb (no’aabi). Nagotooh(gahni) implied behavioral and dietary prescriptions and recommendations that guided a woman during a socially structured transition to motherhood.

Cradleboards are built with a broad, firm protective frame with a footrest at the bottom of the board. They have a rounded cover over the top similar to a canopy or a modern baby carriage hood.

The cradleboard in native American life is not something into which the child is placed to rest and sleep, but it is a device upon which he is bound for a large part of the first six months of his existence. It is more a baby carrier than a cradle, but it serves both purposes.

Apsáalooke (Crow) woman and baby, photographed by Edward S. Curtis, 1908. The beadwork on this cradleboard is done in the lane stitch. Note how the wrappings can be lashed more or less tightly, depending on the size of the baby. The wrappings can also be drawn around the head for extra protection. Photo from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Bernhardt Wall
1872-1956

Wall began a career as a lithographic illustrator in 1889 working primarily as a commercial artist in New York and Buffalo. He soon became known as the “Postcard King” and designed over 5,000 comic cards.

The year 1915 marked a defining point in Wall’s artistic career. Wall visited Colorado, Nevada and California making etchings of Native Americans, cowboys and major cities which were later published in a portfolio entitled, “Under Western Skies.” These proved to be very successful and the artist shortly thereafter moved to California permanently.

Wall continued to produce many fine etchings of the American West and by 1930 had also become a much respected historian of the region.

Bernhardt Wall was unique in that he not only drew the etchings for his books, but he also printed and bound them. His books are in libraries and universities around the world including the British Museum, Library of Congress, the libraries of Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Brown Universities. His works were also in the private collections of J. P. Morgan, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Henry C. Frick and Dr. N.C. Mathewson.

IDAHO MUSEUM OF
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