Medicine/Warrior Shields:

A Native American 'resume'

The shield bears a remarkable relationship to the individual to whom it belongs.  Indeed the relationship is so immediate, so intimate, as to be virtually impossible to define.  In a real sense the American Indian warrior is his shield.  It is his personal flag, the realization of his vision and his name, the object of his holiest quest, the tangible expression of his deepest being.  In bearing his shield he says, "My shield stands for me, and I stand for my shield.  I am, and I am my shield!"  See complete account