Talk:Paul Kane

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Contents 1 "For variety" and the pound hunt 2 Bison hunting 3 Image placement 4 Other personalities mentioned 5 References vs. Footnotes 6 Reverted 7 Congratulations 8 Um, blatant contradiction.

[edit] "For variety" and the pound hunt

I have changed this sentence back to "For variety, he continued from there on horseback to Fort Edmonton, witnessing a Cree buffalo pound hunt along the way" because it is true. The canoe brigade Kane was traveling with continued on to Ft. Edmonton, too, but Kane found traveling by canoe boring by that time and also wanted to meet the Cree. He didn't have to ride from Ft. Carlton to Ft. Edmonton, he chose to do so voluntarily for reasons unrelated to travel logistics. Thus I think the "For variety" is justified. Lupo 07:57, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

The second point in this sentence concerns the Buffalo hunt. It was a "pound hunt": the Cree had constructed a wooden impounding and drove a herd of Buffalos into it. Then they closed the opening and killed all impounded animals. That's quite different from Buffalo hunting in the open prairie, and thus the full term "pound hunt" should be used. (Admittedly, that's Kane's own term. I do not know whether there is a better term for this.) For the time being, I have simply (red-)linked this expression. Do we already have an article about hunting techniques of Native Americans somewhere? Lupo 07:57, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bison hunting

Still haven't found anything on Wikipedia on Buffalo hunting (except a section in American Bison, but that doesn't cover Native American's techniques), but for starters, you might want to check out the competition: Buffalo Hunt at the Canadian Encyclopedia or Buffalo Hunting by Indians from the The Quebec History Encyclopedia (originally from the 1907 Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico from the Bureau of American Ethnology), and the Britannica seems to have extended coverage of the subject (see [1], I presume they also have an article "...with horses"). Hunting at the Encyclopedia of North American Indians is also interesting, and the Smithsonian has a literature list. Lupo 09:10, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image placement

Jengod, I have reverted your changes to the image placement in the "Works" section. With your placement, these images were suddenly in places completely unrelated to the text; it just didn't make sense. What problem are you trying to solve anyway? I use a large window and a fairly small font size (and also on PC/Firefox), and it looks reasonably well on my screen. I did not revert your "alternating left-right" placement in the "Travels" section, although I must say I don't like it very much either; I think it is a very bumpy and fragmented layout that actually makes it more difficult to read the article. But as it leaves the logical coherence intact, I don't care enough to revert it—it's a matter of taste. We'll see what others think about this alternating placement. Lupo 07:29, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Other personalities mentioned

On Daniel Fowler, see his entry at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography online.

Lupo 12:10, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

On Nicholas Flood Davin, see the Dictionary of Canadian Biography and The Canadian Encyclopedia, and also here.

John William Garvin seems to have been only noteable as a publisher and editor. I have not found any extended biography on him.

Lupo 15:43, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] References vs. Footnotes

Somebody thought it was a good idea to convert all references and footnotes to the "Cite.php" format. I must say, I don't like that at all. References and footnotes were separated on purpose and used different numbering schemes. Now both are mixed up, and one cannot easily figure out which are true footnotes (i.e., slightly off-topic short explanations of a few facts mentioned in the main text) and which are references (i.e., pointers to external sources backing up certain statements). Furthermore, it now looks as if only one reference was used, which is simply not true. I have played around with Cite.php myself, and while it may be ok for simple articles, I do not think it is currently flexible enough for serious work. Are there any reasoned objections to my changing the reference formatting back? Lupo 08:05, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Apparently not. Lupo 14:28, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reverted

I just noticed this topic on the main page, I clicked it and noticed it had been vandalized, that is why I reversed the edit.

[edit] Congratulations

You all did a marvelous job on this article. It is thoughtful, well-written, highly informative and beautfully illustrated. Good work! I was especially taken by the wonderful illustrations.

Thanks! Littenberg 15:34, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Um, blatant contradiction.

Flathead indians are defined in the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Nation article as called such due the fact they did not practice head flattening, yet this article states "One well-known example of this process is Kane's painting Flathead woman and child, in which he combined a sketch of a Chinookan baby having its head flattened with a later field portrait of a Cowlitz woman, also from a Flathead tribe, but living in a different region" and then goes as far as to link to the Salish article. Someone should fix that. I would but I am not familiar with the editing process here.

Uh, maybe a problem of how "Flathead tribe" is defined today and was defined back in Kane's times? The statement comes from Eaton/Urbanek. For now, i'll just take out ", also from a Flathead tribe, but ": that still leaves a correct sentence, but avoids the problem altogether. Note that we can't change the name of the image: we didn't name it. Lupo 20:37, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Oh, now I see what you meant. Took me a moment to find out that you were referring to our article Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Nation. Ho-hum. In that case, the link must go altogether. Lupo 20:51, 1 March 2006 (UTC)