• This community needs YOUR help today. We rely 100% on Supporting Memberships to fund our efforts. With the ever increasing fees of everything, we need help. We need more Supporting Members, today. Please invest back into this community. I will ship a few decals too in addition to all the account perks you get.



    Sign up here: https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/account/upgrades

Sitting Bull and Goggles

Muzzleloading Forum

Help Support Muzzleloading Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Joined
Jun 24, 2006
Messages
2,326
Reaction score
1,782
Location
Near Yosemite Park
My Nov. 2018 True West Magazine on page 25 has a picture of Sitting Bull wearing green goggles. Thought maybe he had a eye problem then Laura Winthrop Johnson met a group of Lakotas in 1875 and several of them were wearing blue goggles, has anyone ever read anything like this??
 
http://thepoetryofsight.blogspot.com/2012/06/why-sitting-bull-wore-goggles.html

native_american_heritage_sitting_bull_2.jpg
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Interesting fashion statement.

Since the Natives had been subjected to all the forces of nature their whole lives, it makes one wonder what would have caused a new circumstance. Gamblers, of course, wear shades to hide their thoughts. Drug users also wear shades, both to hide their dilated pupils, but also because their dilated pupils need more protection from bright lights.

I wonder if the practice of Peyote rituals was spreading through the plains at that point in time? That might explain their sudden desire to wear shades.

Other than that, maybe they were just trying to look at the world differently.
 
It is possible it was just a fashion statement or emulation. however they may simply have been the sunglasses available. Or they may have had a hereditary condition like Irlen Syndrome (also referred to at times as Meares-Irlen Syndrome, Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome, and Visual Stress) is a perceptual processing disorder. It is not an optical problem. It is a problem with the brain's ability to process visual information. Tinted glasses, blue in particular help correct this.
 
Volume 4,Rocky Mountain Fur Trade Journal has an article on the use of goggles in the mountains during the fur trade for protection from the elements, particularly snow blindness and dust.
 
pkarr said:
Volume 4,Rocky Mountain Fur Trade Journal has an article on the use of goggles in the mountains during the fur trade for protection from the elements, particularly snow blindness and dust.

Makes lots of sense now, wish we real knew their every day lives.
 
Back
Top