Women and Ledger Art: Four Contemporary Native American Artists by Richard Pearce (review)

The author of Women and Ledger Art, Richard Pearce, applies cross-cultural feminist strategies in examining contemporary ledger art of four Plains Indian women. The book has several strengths, among them a brief history of ledger art, forty-six large and colorful photographs of the four artists’ ledger drawings, analyses of the artwork based on six years of communications between Pearce and the artists, and an engaging writing style. These all combine to make this book an easy and educational read for students, artists, and academics in Native studies.

Ledger drawing is an art form that began around 1874 and expresses such themes as Native warriors and war scenes, heroic and hunting experiences, courting, and other tribal lifeways through colorful figure drawings superimposed on old, used account or ledger book pages. Many of the ledger drawings include the original ledger text entries and numbers, which remain deliberately visible as background or bleed-through in the drawings.

Historically, ledger drawings were a male art form among Plains Indians. Tribal women created art concurrently, but theirs was in quill, beading, and on ceremonial regalia. Men dominated the ledger art world until forty years ago, when women started using the ledgers to stylize their own figurative portraits of dance, ritual, ceremony, historic events, and family and tribal identity.

Scholars consider ledger art a form of cultural and symbolic communication. Paper was a scarce resource on the plains in the late 1800s, and the ledger was one source of paper for writing and drawing. The completed ledger itself—often used by the US military and white settlers—with its documentation of western expansion through accounts of lost Indian lands on land deeds and allotments and loss of the Indian people through census records and captives, was an ideal medium on which Plains Indians could inscribe their own histories and recollections. Further, the fact that the Plains Indians’ drawings and color dominate the page, capture the story, and are done on top of faded ledgers makes strong and diverse interpretations of history in the world of the Plains Indians.

The focus of Pearce’s book is on four women ledger artists. Through phone conversations and e-mails, the women explained their history and culture and the meanings of their ledger drawings. The first chapter highlights Sharron Ahtone Harjo’s Kiowa art; she portrays her family history, sacred traditions, and the history of tribal events. The second chapter includes drawings by Linda Haukaas (Sicangu Lakota); she uses ledger art to illustrate the Lakota traditional female role, gender relationships, and the struggle against colonialism. Delores Purdy Corcoran (Caddo), in chapter 3, uses pencil and ink drawings to demonstrate humor, the roles of Caddo women, and the associations between the Caddo and ledger drawings in their broader setting as an art form. Both Haukaas and Corcoran respond to the demands of consumers at Indian markets and create and make commentary on the impact of the markets that use ledger art as a commodity. In chapter 4, Colleen Cutschall (Oglala Lakota) creates acrylic paintings that simulate beadwork, and she created the bronze Spirit Warriors sculpted piece that is the anchor for the Little Bighorn Aboriginal Monument at the national park near Crow Agency, Montana. Her ledger art resembles quill and beadwork.

These women broke with the past and with tradition by turning toward ledger art, formerly the pictographic style that only men utilized. They were also innovative in that they frequently connected the ledger document and its contents to the images they drew. Their intent is to retell stories, joyfully celebrate, and preserve cultural practices. They also, like the men, depict war and heroics in their drawings. Importantly, though, they portray the honor due women and their families and tribes through their lives and multitudinous achievements.

The book was not intended as an oral history work, so it may disappoint those looking for details on questions and answers and context, but Pearce did an exemplary job of...