The bronze portrait bust of Ojibwa (Chippewa) Chief Be sheekee (Buffalo) was cast after the portrait made from life by Francis Vincenti. Be sheekee is shown with lines of age in his face. He appears alert, with his eyes looking upward and slightly toward the side. His downturned mouth and protruding lower lip impart a sense of seriousness, and his jaw is firm. He wears a roach headdress (a traditional warrior’s headdress usually made of stiff animal hair), and five tubes to hold feathers are attached to a strap tied in a bow under his chin. Octagonal hoop-like earrings hang from his ears along with strings of beads, which fall over his shoulders with the braids in his hair. A blanket covers his proper left shoulder and is wrapped under his proper right arm. On his chest is a medallion, reminiscent of an Indian peace medal, inscribed:
Beeshekee the BUFFALO
A Chippewa
Warrior from Sources of the
Mississippi after nature by
F. Vincenti AD 1854
Copied in Bronze by
Jos. LasSalle
AD 1858
Originally, a chain passed through the medal’s eyelet and around the figure’s neck, as shown in early photographs.
Be sheekee, c. 1759–1855, was Chief of the Lake Superior band of Ojibwa Indians and a member of Native American delegations for treaties and grievances with the U.S. Government. It was during an 1855 trip to Washington, D.C., to negotiate a land treaty that Be sheekee, then in his 90s, sat for a portrait bust by Francis Vincenti; Be sheekee died in September of the same year and was buried on Wisconsin’s Madeline Island. The bust was carved in marble the following year, and is now on view in Senate wing of the Capitol. In 1858 Joseph Lassalle cast a similar portrait in bronze.
Joseph Lassalle was foreman of the Capitol’s bronze shop between 1857 and 1859, during which time he produced a variety of objects, including the bronze bust of Be sheekee. The bronze version differs from the earlier marble in the details of the tubes of the headdress, tassels at the end of the beads, design of the earrings, placement and texture of the blanket, and the medal. These differences suggest that Lassalle may have worked from Vincenti’s clay or plaster version, and made his own modifications, or he could have made a copy of the marble in clay. He was assisted by Vincenzo Fontana, who worked for seven days in 1857, probably making the mold for the bronze.
