 Winter counts are a form of historical record or document that were created by the Lakota. Every winter was given a distinctive name, which was a way of referring to the time when something happened. The Lakota are one large division of a group of people that most people know of as the Sioux, or the Sioux Nation. They certainly had a very strongly developed and formalized sense of history. These winter counts encapsulated that and are very strongly connected to people's sense of identity, both in the past and in the present. So if we begin here... Other events that people knew had happened that were carried in the oral tradition could be placed in time by reference to those years. So I see winter counts as primarily an oral tradition. What this winter count depicts is a battle with the crow. And we know that by the hairstyle, another nuke left, and he was probably... Winter counts were usually a communal history. The Winter Count Keeper documented the events for the Teospray. Teospray is a large family unit. And it was from that family unit that they came together to decide what event to document for that year. I think by looking at the winter counts you can see what was happening within that community. The depiction of that particular year could probably spark all these other memories of things that happened throughout that time. Each new keeper followed very closely the sequencing of years, the names of the years that had been chosen. So that the Winter Count Keeper could always be sure over time to keep these dozens and even in some instances hundreds of years in a proper sequence by referring to the pictorial record. There are a number of levels at which we can read winter counts. You can interpret a certain amount just from looking at the pictures. One can recognize a picture of a horse, different kinds of hairstyles and clothing. We're used as a shorthand to represent different tribes. Many of the figures are quite simple. Many of the years are represented by individual people. Without a text you really can't go any further than that. Fortunately a number of texts were recorded directly from the Winter Count Keepers. When one has a winter count such as the Rosebud Winter Count that came to us with no explanatory text it's still possible to figure out what's going on and recognize the years. The thing that one looks for is a particular event that's recorded in all of the Lakota winter counts that we know of and that's known as the Year the Stars Fell. That was an event that is also known in the Western calendar as the Leonid Meteor Shower which occurred in November of 1833. It's very difficult to know in a given year when you're recording something that is memorable whether 20 years from now it will still be considered important or not. For that reason among others the counts themselves can't be taken as a synthesizing history. They are a framework in which a much broader history can be attached. They are primary documents. They are raw materials just as many other kinds of physical written documents are preserved in Western culture. There are a number of widespread misconceptions about winter counts. They tie into misconceptions about Native American cultures in general I think. One is that they were always a primitive and unchanging people. In fact Indian cultures have changed a lot over time and continue to change. And the winter counts, both the pictures and the text that were recorded with them give us a Lakota perspective on events at the time. It's quite a different idea of history where the physical written record is not the most important. Sitting Bull's Cabin where he was killed by Indian police. It's also a wonderful window into Lakota culture and ways of thinking. Different way of viewing the world.