I’m surprised to see that Plains Indian Drawings 1865-1935, Pages From A Visual History, edited by Janet Catherine Berlo (1996 Abrams) – a wonderful book – is out of print, so I’ll show a few of the pictures here.
I know very little about the history of the Plains Indians, but it seems that after the US civil war many of them were imprisoned at Fort Marion camp, near St. Augustine, in Florida.
Poster, 1938. The Spanish fortifications were completed in 1695.
In a guide to Florida published in 1875 the poet Sidney Lanier wrote about Fort Marion:
For, alas ! and alas! the old lonesome fort, the sweet old fort, whose pyramids of cannon-balls were only like pleasant reminders of the beauty of peace, whose manifold angles were but warm and sunny nooks for lizards and men to lounge in and dream in, whose ample and ancient moat had converted itself with grasses and with tiny flowers into a sacred refuge from trade and care, known to many a weary soul,—the dear old fort is practically no more: its glories of calm and of solitude have departed utterly away. The Cheyennes, the Kiowas, the Comanches, the Caddoes, and the Arapahoes, with their shuffling chains
IN THE MOAT: FORT MARION
and strange tongues and barbaric gestures, have frightened the timid swallow of romance out of the sweetest nest that he ever built in America. It appears that some time about the middle of 1874 the United States Government announced to the Indians in Northwest Texas that they must come in and give a definite account of themselves, whereupon a large number declared themselves hostile. Against these four columns of troops were sent out from as many different posts, which were managed so vigorously that in no long time the great majority of the unfriendly Indians either surrendered or were captured. Some of these were known to have been guilty of atrocious crimes ; others were men of consequence in their tribes; and it was resolved to make a selection of the principal individuals of these two classes, and to confine them in old Fort Marion, at St. Augustine.
And so here they are—”Medicine Water,” a ringleader, along with “White Man,” “Rising Bull,” “Hailstone,” “Sharp Bully, “and others, in the terrible murder of the Germain family, and in the more terrible fate of the two Germain girls who were recently recaptured from the Cheyennes; “Come See Him,” who was in the murder of the Short surveying – party; “Soaring Eagle,” supposed to have killed the hunter Brown, near Fort Wallace; “Big Moccasin” and “Making Medicine,” horse-thieves and raiders; “Packer,” the murderer of Williams; ” Mochi,” the squaw identified by the Germain girls as having chopped the head of their murdered mother with an axe. Besides these, who constitute most of the criminals, are a lot against whom there is no particular charge, but who are confined on the principle that prevention is better than cure. ” Gray Beard,” one of this latter class of chiefs, leaped from a car-window at Baldwin, Florida, while being conveyed to St. Augustine, and was shot, after a short pursuit, by one of his guards. “Lean Bear,” another, stabbed himself and two of his guards, apparently in a crazy fit, when near Nashville, Tennessee, en route, but has since recovered and been sent to join those in the fort. One of the Kiowas died of pneumonia shortly after arriving at St. Augustine, leaving seventy-three, including two squaws and a little girl, now in confinement. Their quarters are in the casemates within the fort, which have been fitted up for their use. During the day they are allowed to move about the interior of the fort, and are sometimes taken out in squads to bathe; at night they are locked up.*
* The Indians were released in May, 1878, by order of the War Department and turned over to the Interior Department, by which the older ones were sent to Fort Sill, Indian Territory, and the younger ones to Hampton (Va.) Normal Institute to be educated and taught different trades—an experiment that has so far proved very successful.
They have a passion for trying their skill in drawing, and are delighted with a gift of pencil and paper.
INDIAN ART. (DRAWN BY ONE OF THE INDIANS AT ST. AUGUSTINE.)
Criminals as they are, stirrers-up of trouble as they are, rapidly degenerating as they are, no man can see one of these stalwart-chested fellows rise and wrap his blanket about him with that big, majestic sweep of arm which does not come to any strait-jacketed civilized being, without a certain melancholy in the bottom of his heart as he wonders what might have become of these people if so be that gentle contact with their white neighbors might have been substituted in place of the unspeakable maddening wrongs which have finally left them but a little corner of their continent. Nor can one repress a little moralizing as one reflects upon the singularity of that fate which has finally placed these red-men on the very spot where red-men’s wrongs began three centuries and a half ago; for it was here that Ponce de Leon landed in 1512, and from the very start there was enmity betwixt the Spaniard and the Indian…
They were turned much against their will into respectable members of society.
Inspection of Indian Prisoners, Fort Marion, Fla 1876-77. Artist: Making Medicine (Cheyenne)
Here is one of the saddest pairs of before-and-after pictures you’ll ever see:
Tom Torlino (Navajo) 1885.
I confess I’ve never read the text, I love this book for its pictures. They depict the lives that the artists and their fellow tribesmen had led including their recent encounters with the United States soldiers. The first ones here are Cheyenne:
Cheyenne warriors count coup on Sioux women & a Crow counts coup on a Cheyenne 1890
Here’s the Wikipedia explanation of the phrase “to count coup”:
Counting coup refers to the winning of prestige in battle by the Plains Indians. Warriors won prestige by acts of bravery in the face of the enemy, and these acts could be recorded in various ways and retold as stories. Any blow struck against the enemy counted as a coup, but the most prestigious acts included touching an enemy warrior, with the hand or with a coup stick, then escaping unharmed. Counting coup could also involve stealing from the enemy. Risk of injury or death was required to count coup. Coups were recorded by notches in the coup stick, or by feathers in the headdress of a warrior who was rewarded with them for an act of bravery.
The artists are known to us collectively as Ledger Artists. They were drawing in army accounting ledgers, sometimes on pages that already had sums or lists of supplies scrawled on them. The names of some artists aren’t known. Of those names we know we have either the English version of their actual name or the incongruous English name they were assigned instead. “Frank Henderson” is an example of the latter.
A close encounter with a soldier 1878-81 (Cheyenne) Artist unknown.
Attack on a teamsters’ camp 1878-81 (Cheyenne) Artist unknown.
A Cheyenne Warrior Confronts The Pawnee c.1890
Counting Coup on a Crow Man & Woman 1871-76 (Cheyenne) Artist Unknown
Last Bull Captures a Horse 1871-76 (Cheyenne)
Here are three Arapaho drawings:
Artist: “Frank Henderson”. 1882 (Arapaho).
Little Shield. c.1876 (Arapaho).
Kiowa portraits, 1877. By Wohaw.
Warrior Engages Enemy. 1871-76.
I probably ought to read the text. Some overlapping of images and the even continuous lines around the horses (most of them) make me think the artists were cutting out stencils and tracing their outlines. They got more movement into their battle scenes than many European artists have achieved. Uccello’s horses are chess pieces or rocking horses by comparison.
- Paulo Uccello. Niccolò Mauruzi da Tolentino at the Battle of San Romano, c. 1438–1440
I have photographed pages from the book here. There’s a dreary greyness in the reproductions that isn’t helped by the work having been drawn in old accounts ledgers. Try and imagine the work as it was when it was first made 140 years ago: the colours were brighter and the lined brownish paper wouldn’t have intruded on the image, making it look a bit like a palimpsest.
There’s a 1997 article by Janet Catherine Berlo here.
On the influence of the Plains Indians’ ledger drawings, MMcM directed me to Paul Tsosie’s delightful “Horse Race”, made sixty years later. I believe it’s in the collection of the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture’s Laboratory of Anthropology as item #53970/13 (though this reproduction of it is from a Santa Fe cookbook). It’s so much a 1930s American image as well as being in the tradition of the ledger artists.
Horse Race, by Paul Tsosie (Navajo). 1937.
Thanks to MMcM for the description of Fort Marion in FLORIDA: ITS Scenery, Climate, And History. WITH AN ACCOUNT OF CHARLESTON, SAVANNAH, AUGUSTA, AND AIKEN, AND A CHAPTER FOR CONSUMPTIVES; BEING A COMPLETE HAND-BOOK AND GUIDE, by Sidney Lanier.
A Bad Guide 
I did not understand the term “count coup” until reading the respective Wikipedia article.
It seems as if the Sioux women were longing for the coup of the brave Cheyenne warrior, aren’t they?
The horses are just as “flying” (and thus far from the real movement of the horses) as on early 19th-century European paintings (Gombrich has a chapter on this in his Art and illusion).
And yes, a very, very sad couple of photos.
Hang on, you haven’t seen them all yet!
Wow!
Apparently they were drawn in something like a grocer’s book of credits, each page beginning with the name of the debtor followed by his debts. These items are written with a very practiced hand, and on these pages there are no explaining captions under the pictures. But the images drawn on empty pages have captions, and in a quite different, rather uneducated hand.
An excellent MetaFilter post about ledger artists.
Thanks, Language. They seem to be moving the pictures about or something. I’ll check them again tomorrow.
a quite different, rather uneducated hand
Yes, that would be the Indian prisoners who were just learning English, I supposed. Whereas the practiced hand was that of the grocer whose ledger it had been.
I’m going to have to buy another copy of Art & Illusion. All I’ve got is A Little History Of The World and though I love it dearly, there’s not much about art in that.
I love the details of the shields and ornaments.
Sorry, I can’t say it in English:
I mean “me encanta la precisión con que están detallados los adornos y decoraciones de los escudos. Esos detalles debían ser señales importantes para los artistas.”
There are a number of dead links, so I may have missed it, but it doesn’t look like any of those page discuss the influence of those 19th century artists on 20th century Native American Art. This page has some, mentioning, for example, the Kiowa Five. For one thing, ledger artists had influences on other tribes. For instance, Paul Tsosie, Navajo, has a painting titled Horse Race (1937). The evidence for influence on American non-Native artists is more ambiguous.
M., I can’t find Paul Tsosie’s Horse Race (1937), though I would like to. Have you seen it?
Up to now I’ve liked the Ledger work more than its influence, but maybe I’m being too persnickety.
Living in the state that was taken from the American Indian, after it had been promised to be their land after they were moved from other lands, I’ve always been sad at the plight and the lies they were told. That their children were taken away so they could be raised “white”. I have always felt a great disservice was done. I’m also of Choctaw descent but it was never mentioned while growing up because being “white” was better than Indian here. My great-great grandmother was full blood Choctaw, married a white preacher, and the family history was put in a closet so there would be no prejudice. It’s a shame.
Yes, it certainly is a shame. That’s putting it mildly.
It’s a cookbook, but try this.
Oh, that’s fantastic! And you would find it in a cookbook!
Apparently they were drawn in something like a grocer’s book of credits
I did not know this was called “ledger art”. So I have invented the Spanish wax. Why did they draw typically in ledgers?
The illustrated cookbook is genial, indeed.
They were given these old ledgers as drawing material in their prison. They found accounts paper a lot easier to draw on than animal hides, presumably and so their work, in recording their history this way, flourished. Unfortunately old accounts ledgers didn’t contain thick acid-free high-quality drawing paper and the pages have gone brown and transparent in places.
It’s just what was available. They aren’t in fact all in ledger books: some where army rosters, daybooks, memorandum pads, that sort of thing. Some had been used, some had not.
They got them as gifts, in trade for what little they had, or found / pilfered them.
One of the earliest accounts is in Florida, a travel guide written under contract by the Southern poet Sidney Lanier, who saw the Indians arriving in St. Augustine.
Julia: me encanta la precisión con que están detallados los adornos y decoraciones de los escudos. Esos detalles debían ser señales importantes para los artistas. (I love the precision with which the ornaments and decorations of the shields are detailed. These details should be important signals for artists.)
Yes, the precise details are similar to the verbal description in a well-told story.
I wonder if birds ever show any reaction towards Indians wearing feathered headdresses? My little parrot can get quite worried by things like that.
Perhaps your parrot is the canary in the coalmine?
He’s quite a daredevil around the dogs, who try and sneak up on him. He’s too fast for them, and then later he divebombs them.
Thank you for the translation, AJP!
Do you think Tango would attack those feathered ornaments if he see them?
Of course, you remember his name! No, would just look worried: he would swivel his head and fix them with one eye, like a pirate, and then he would pace backwards and forwards for a bit. The thing that worries him the most is big birdlike objects (e.g. a cross shape) overhead.
Well, I’m bocabadada.
Nobody seems to have drawn a parallel with the Bayeux Tapestry yet. I carefully read all the comments before daring to write. Because that’s what all these images just seem to be crying out at me. And they ARE beautiful. (And we’ve got a selection of old ledgers given us just ’cause other people can’t imagine the waste of paper if they chuck them. Me neither.)
So: stunning. Thank-you. And never forget: Nobody can have too many Gombrich books. everything he says should be graven on our … whatever lobe is suitable.
And the more I look – this is not art. This is a record and a practicality. So obviously people who deal with horses see horses like this. It’s a revelation. Or a confirmation.
It is called Ledger Art because it was often drawn in ledger books used by traders and the military.
The Cheyenne were the most prolific artists, especially the Northern Cheyenne, followed by the Lakota (Oglala, Brule, Minneconjou, Hunkpapa, Sans Arc) of the Sioux nation. The Kiowa and Arapaho were next. There are so many details in ledger art, every mark was purposeful and represented some actual thing, nothing is random or for effect, for they were drawing actual people they knew, often themselves, and actual events they witnessed or were a part of.