The lot features a Colt Model 1851 Navy Richard-Mason Conversion revolver with brass trade tacking and marks from Oglala Lakota Sioux Warrior Buffalo Tail. The revolvers are the iconic and scarce, Richard-Mason conversion from .38 caliber percussion cap to .38 Long Colt metallic centerfire cartridge. This example was examined by The Guns of History and comes with the associating paperwork. The revolver was found to have original brass trade tacking traced back to the Chief Blue Hore Wagluhe Band of the Oglala Lakota Sioux. The gun is also marked in Togia, a Lakota language with the owners name, Buffalo Tail, as well as Blue Horse, the Wagluhe Band, the Heyota Akicita Warrior Society of the Oglala symbol, with much of this repeated across the frame, butt, and grips of the gun. Buffalo Tail was born in 1868 to Oglala Lakota parents who were members of the Wagluhe Band, The Loafer Band. He was at the Red Cloud Indian Agency and later transferred to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and settled in the Wounded Knee district. Buffalo Tail joined Chief Blue Horses’s Wagluhe Band and the Heyota Akicita Warrior Society of the Oglala. He participated in the Ghost Dance movement and became a Stronghold Warior. In 1890 he married Mink an had one daughter, Lucy Buffalo Tail in 1891. This is one of the few Colt 1851 Navy Richard-Mason conversion revolvers that has true authentic trade tacking and marks from the Plains Indians region. This example of conversion has been slightly altered with there being no ramrod on the right side of the barrel or a loading gate, it ahs been commonly documented that Native American’s during the 19th Century would remove ramrod mechanisms, loading gates and often shorten barrels as well as artfully adorn firearms and sign them. In regards to the Richard-Mason conversion: General W.B. Franklin, Vice President of Colt, offered to upgrade existing stocks of M-1851 and M-1861 Navy revolvers to centerfire cartridge via the Richards-Mason conversion system for $3.50 each. In a July 10, 1873 letter to Franklin, USN Chief of Ordnance William N. Jeffers accepted the offer from Colt and noted that he had “advised the Commandant(s) of the Boston, New York and Philadelphia Navy Yards to send to your manufactory 100, 400 and 300 pistols respectively for alteration.”. Thus began the process by which some 2,097 US Navy owned .36 caliber Colt percussion revolvers were altered to metallic cartridge by the Richards-Mason system. The guns were all altered to .38 Long Colt. This is an Antique firearm that does NOT require an FFL. Paperwork from The Guns of History with illustrations included.