A Hide’s Hidden History

What Kinds of Paints Were Used? Paint was applied directly to the hides with no gesso or background preparation. The blue paint is an indigo dye while the other colors are organic materials (clays for red and yellow) or minerals (iron sulfate for green and black) ground and made locally.

Things to Notice Holes in various parts of the picture might be from bullets piercing the bison’s hide.

Things to Notice Seam where the hide was stitched together.

TEXT ADAPTED FROM NEW MEXICO HISTORY MUSEUM: WWW.NMHISTORYMUSEUM.ORG/HIDES/

The Artistic Style The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were the final great period of European battle tapestries, the style of which may have influenced the commissioned Segesser hides. The wide, broadly painted flower and leaf borders simulate carved or gilded frames, which were typical of European tapestries from the same era.

Segesser Hide II has a deep back story.

THE17-FOOT-LONG PAINTING, Segesser II, featured in A Past Rediscovered: Highlights from the Palace of the Governors is one of the most important Spanish Colonial objects in New Mexico. It is the largest of three hide paintings from this period. The hide’s story—its creation, acquisition, and the narrative it depicts—has fascinated historians and prompted them to re-interpret events of the time. WHO WAS SEGESSER? Father Philipp von Segesser von Brunegg, a Jesuit priest with a mission in Mexico, sent the hide paintings to his brother in Switzerland in 1758. The hides depict Spanish, French, Oto, Pawnee, Apache, and Pueblo Indians in a historical battle. Over the years, the paintings changed hands among the Segesser clan but remained in Switzerland.

As Thomas Chavez, then-director of the Palace of the Governors, wrote in Great Plains Quarterly in 1990, the paintings may have been neglected or disappeared had it not been for Seminarian Gottfried Hotz, who was the curator of the North American Indian Museum in Zurich. Hotz researched the paintings’ origins, and reached out to Dr. Bertha Dutton, curator of ethnology at the Museum of New Mexico at the time. Hotz’s research identified Segesser II as showing the Spanish and Pueblo troops surrounded by European soldiers

Things to Notice The complexity of the battle scenes.

Who Painted the Segesser Hides? Colonial census documents list a number of painters in pueblos and Hispanic villages in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nicolás JirÓn de Tejeda, a painter and presidial soldier, was a member of the Segesser expedition. Tejeda was wounded and feared dead, but eventually returned to Santa Fe in 1733. Perhaps he painted this detailed acount of the battle.

during a skirmish thought to have taken place on August 13, 1720. The Pawnee and their Oto Indian allies—illustrated by their painted and unclothed bodies and shaved or close-cropped heads— ambushed the Spanish Pedro de Villasur expedition. The painting also includes thirty-seven French soldiers, identified by their European-style clothing—tricorner hats, coats, breeches, cuffs, and leggings—firing long arms at the Spanish military expedition. The French and Native Americans outnumbered the Spanish contingent—a rediscovered history. Accounts of the time do not mention the presence of the French. Caught off guard, many of the Spanish died in the tall Nebraska grasslands.

HOW DID THE SEGESSER HIDE GET HERE? In 1984, Palace of the Governors staff contacted Dr. Andre von Segesser, then the owner of the paintings, saying

ON VIEW

THROUGH OCTOBER 20 A Past Rediscovered: Highlights from the Palace of the Governors

they felt the paintings belonged in New Mexico. The State of New Mexico purchased the hides in 1988; Segesser I and II are now part of the Palace of the Governors’ permanent collection. The third Segesser is still missing, its fate unknown.