Subject: wic'âša 'shirt wearer' warrior
Culture: Lakota Sioux
Setting: Plains wars, 1862-1890
Western Art
Period Photography
Ledger Drawings
* Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology > Wiyohpiyata - Lakota Images of the Contested West
"LEDGER ART Plains men drew pictographic accounts of their important experiences in war, hunting, and religion on rock walls, tipis, and garments before they acquired paper. In contrast to Euro-American artists, their drawings focus tightly on action between a few actors, and seldom include background or context. In early ledger drawings, the presence of other fighters is suggested only by muzzle blasts and passing arrows. Artists wanted most to record successful outcomes, such as shooting an antelope through the heart. Conventions such as drawing a sequence of horse tracks allowed them to show the progress of events and to communicate 'before and after' stories. Some artists creatively used the edge of paper leaves to 'freeze-frame' time, as seen here in the drawing of horses galloping off the page. 'Name glyphs,' smaller drawings above and attached to a person, were devices for identifying the hero of the story -- often, although not always, the artist himself."
* Metropolitan Museum of Art > Americas
"Ledger Drawings Men of the Great Plains long recorded their histories in images inscribed on rock or painted on animal-skin robes and tipis. The pictorial chronicles usually proclaimed personal exploits -- heroic battles, triumphant hunts, visionary experiences -- but they also preserved family and tribal histories. During the nineteenth century, as whites first arrived and then settled into the Plains, Native men began to draw their chronicles on the pages of the ledger books used by arriving traders and military men for accounting. During the 1870s, when numerous Plains warriors were imprisoned, many drew narratives in ledger books of specific events from their lives. Individual deeds that validated rank, position, and abilities were included in the narrative images. The small jewel-like drawings, often extremely inventive and executed with exquisite artistry, not only reveal the traditions of the Plains but also, poignantly, illustrate historical events that transformed those traditions forever."
