Ledger Book Drawing Item Number: 1992.27.1 from the Brooklyn Museum
Description
The ledger drawing scene shows a Native man on a charging horse, clubbing a soldier with a tomahawk weapon. The Native (possibly Cheyenne) has on decorated leggings; his hair wrapped with an elaborate headpiece with a whole bird on top of his head and a flowing trailer alongside of it . The soldier, caught between the legs of the horse, wears a blue army uniform and brandishes a pistol.There is the outline of a wagon in the lower left. These drawings are done by tearing out paper from ledger books that were used by army and reservation post managers as a substitute for using hides- the traditional medium fro such drawingsfor offical art papers.
Label
Depicting the Indian Wars
As gold and land lured non-Native settlers westward, Native Americans fought for their homelands in fierce battles with the U.S. Army, as depicted here. Government pogroms attempted to wipe out Native peoples by deliberately spreading disease and by killing off the life-sustaining buffalo and native sheep. Native warriors, who had traditionally depicted their battles on hide shirts and tipi liners in the 1800s, co-opted ledger books from government agents to draw their war experiences.
General Custer’s 1876 defeat at the Battle of Little Big Horn in Montana and other Native victories were overshadowed by relentless U.S. Army massacres in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including the famous one at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1890. The wars continued until all Native peoples were driven onto reservations.
Credit Line
Gift of The Roebling Society
Item History
- Made between 1888 and 1892
What
Who
- Culture
- Cheyenne
Where
- Holding Institution
- Brooklyn Museum
When
- Creation Date
- between 1888 and 1892
Other
- Location
- American Identities: A New Look, American Art Galleries, 5th Floor, Nations Divided, 1860–1910, 5th Floor
- Classification
- Drawing