Winter Sentry By Z.S. Liang

Howdy folks and greetings from the Great Plains of North Texas!

During my research for the series on Hermann's story of being captured by the Indians and living with them for 9 years I kept coming across paintings by Z.S. Liang and he soon became one of my favorite Western and American Indian artists.

I want to do a series about his story because he is Chinese and came to the United States to study art in 1982 and became obsessed with Native Americans. He devoted himself full time to study, research, and painting Indians from various tribes.

His research is relentless

He's spent years traveling and meeting with tribal leaders in consultation for his work, including Sitting Bull's great, great, great Grandson. His dedication to historical accuracy is total and it shows in his paintings.

He even took riding lessons so he could better understand horses and their muscular form in order to paint them as accurate as possible. The only book I've found about his life costs $60 so I haven't bought it just yet. lol.

One of my favorites

Today I just wanted to share one of my favorite paintings called Camp Sentry which is a seemingly simple scene of a lone sentry in the winter.

Something about this one strikes me as magnificent. (Although I think it should be called Winter Sentry so I'm kinda renaming it for my post, lol)

I love the contrast in colors of the warrior's coat against the mountains, the subtle colors of the sky, the way he painted the snow and grass. I think it's just perfect.

Historically accurate

It was very important for the tribes to maintain security so they used sentries to stand guard, hopefully at all times although I was amazed in Hermann's story with how many times their villages had surprise attacks because they didn't have scouts or sentries posted.

With the image that Z.S. Liang gives us I can almost feel like I'm with the sentry. The painting is of a Piegan war chief.

Side note:

The Piegan were the largest band of the Blackfoot confederation, based in Montana. They were also one of hundreds of tribes starved by the decimation of the buffalo herds by the U.S. government.

Piegan Indians in 1910, photo by Edward S. Curtis

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Their numbers were greatly reduced by starvation and one of many massacres took place in 1870 when a U.S. Army unit attacked a Piegan village, killing 173 innocent natives.

This is not the village which was attacked but is indeed a Piegan village around 1900:

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Almost all were women, children and old men showing no threat or resistance. This is known as the Marias Massacre.

After they were forced onto the reservations about a quarter of them starved to death at Fort Shaw and Fort Belknap, under the "care" of the federal government.

Another photo by Curtis S. Edwards in 1910, these are Piegan women:

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By that time their numbers were down to about 2,000. Most live in Northwestern Montana today in the Blackfeet Nation whose population is about 100,000.

Here is "Camp Sentry" by Z.S. Liang, portraying a Piegan war chief:

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Thanks for reading folks, God bless you all!
-jonboy
Texas