Contributions from
The Museum of History and Technology
Paper 12
Hermann Stieffel, Soldier-Artist of the West
Edgar M. Howell
By Edgar M. Howell
Hermann Stieffel,
Soldier Artist
of the West
A number of gifted artists painted the West and the colorfulIndian-fighting army of the post-Civil-War period, but since noneof these were military men their work lacked the viewpoint that onlya soldier could provide.
German-born Hermann Stieffel, for 24 years a private in theU.S. Infantry, painted a series of water colors while serving inthe Indian country in the 1860's and 1870's. Although Stieffelcould never be called talented, and certainly was untutored as anartist, his unusually canny eye for the colorful and graphic andhis meticulous attention to detail have given us valuable pictorialdocumentaries on the West during the Indian wars.
The Author: Edgar M. Howell is curator of military historyin the United States National Museum, Smithsonian Institution.
The American West has never wanted forartists with a high sense of the documentary.Through the talented hands of men like GeorgeCatlin, Carl Bodmer and Alfred Jacob Miller,Frederick Remington, and the cowboy painter CharlesM. Russell the trans-Mississippi regions have beenpictured as have few other areas on earth.[1] Fromhistorical and ethnological standpoints these menmade tremendous and timeless contributions to ourAmerican heritage. But the West held an estheticfascination for the untutored and less talented as well,and not a few soldiers, miners, stage drivers, and justplain adventurers recorded their impressions on paper[Pg 4]and canvas. Crude though many of these works are,they are nonetheless significant, for they are a graphicrecord of what these men saw, where they lived, andwhat they did, in many cases the only record ofparticular places and events, for the camera of L. A.Huffman and his colleagues did not come into its ownuntil the late 1870's.[2] Without them we would haveno description, graphic or otherwise, of much of theWest both before and after the Civil War—the earlytrading posts and forts, the Oregon, Santa Fe, andOverland Trails, the Bozeman Trail, the stage stations,all of which played a part in the opening anddevelopment of the West....