Original Life-size
"Ceremonial Pony"

Cathy Smith is a historian and scholar of the American West. She is also an authentic costumer who has worked on such films as Dancing with Wolves and All the Pretty Horses. Her original Pony was adorned with a Crow woman’s Horse Trappings Outfit, circa 1870s. The keyhole-shaped ornament on the forehead was a classic Crow design, the beaded rosette surrounded with horsehair tassels and wrapped in dyed cotton string. Made to carry a short buffalo lance or captured cavalry sword, the case was fashioned out of buffalo rawhide painted with natural earth pigments. Outfits similar to this are still paraded today at the Crow Fair in Crow Agency.

 

Designer, historian and scholar of the American West, with expertise in Plains Indian Art and Culture, Cathy Smith has written extensively, non-fiction as well as screen plays, consulted on a majority of the Western genre films of the last twelve years, created and designed authentic costumes for film, western artists and documentaries, and lectured at museums and historical re-enactments nationwide.