Ledger Narratives: The Plains Indian Drawings of the Lansburgh Collection at Dartmouth College by Colin G. Calloway (review)

Native Americans from the Great Plains, including Cheyennes, Crows, Kiowas, and Lakotas, created the genre known as ledger art in the late nineteenth century after contact with European American traders and settlers. The paper in ledgers or account books served as a convenient platform for pencil and crayon drawings that not only commemorated the achievements of Native heroes but also recorded the details of daily life on the plains and on reservations. Such drawings depicted Plains customs and events as Native Americans perceived them and/or wanted them to be seen. Hunting, warfare, courtship, ceremonies, assimilation by classroom education, imprisonment, and traveling by foot, horse, train, and boat are among the scenes portrayed. In ledger art, the outpouring of expression that previously decorated large rocks, buffalo robes, or tepees was consigned to bound volumes filled with lined pages.

Ledger Narratives, edited by Colin Calloway, is based on a 2010 exhibit and symposium (Multiple Narratives in Plains Indian Ledger Art) at Dartmouth College. The book reproduces in color the entire Lansburgh collection at Dartmouth’s Hood Museum. Erudite essays by contributors to the symposium address specific aspects of the collection as well as more general perspectives pertaining to Native American experiences and creativity. The drawings document cultural traditions as well as the identity struggles and transformations that resulted from coerced acculturation to white ways, abandonment of traditional economies and customs, removal to reservations, and the confinement of recalcitrant males.

One of the key functions of ledger art was the visual recitation of war deeds. Many images highlight the importance to a warrior’s reputation of counting coup: “One of the most prestigious acts was counting coup, which entailed making physical contact with an enemy or striking him with an object held in the hand, such as a quirt or bow” (22). Such reckless proofs of bravery conveyed higher prestige and community status to a man than killing enemies from a distance. Native Americans could acquire protective medicine through visions, and ledger art often documented the “ownership” of medicine and access to “spiritual power” (30), as indicated by the iconography on painted shields.

Some pictures call attention to the uneasy process of assimilation, for example, an image of Natives being taught by white schoolmarms in a regimented classroom (101). Much of the art is supplemented (or defaced) by handwritten captions in English added at unknown times by unidentified whites who may or may not have understood what the artists intended to represent. Unfortunately, the inscriptions, which purport to identify people or describe actions, “often take precedence over the visual information provided by the work itself and lead viewers to accept what the words say, rather than what the visual language says” (12). Critical examination of ledger art and its associated captions is therefore essential to decrease the likelihood of misinterpretation.

Specific years are hard to pinpoint, but many of the drawings in the Lansburgh collection seem to have been made during the reservation era, depicting characteristic reservation activities. But without reliable correlating dates or verifiable information about people and places, ledger art depictions of warfare cannot be accurately dated. “Representations of war are not confined to drawings from the pre-reservation era. . . . Battle images [continued] to be made, particularly by men who had earned the right to illustrate their successes” (18).

Ledger drawings seldom show landscapes or even ground lines, a surprising omission when one considers the well-known attachment of Native Americans to the environment and their traditional homelands. Colorful horses and riders seem to float across the page, traversing evenly spaced parallel lines designed to help European Americans keep orderly records of business. Figures in motion leave trails of footprints or hoofprints on the page, indicating where they have been. Bullets and arrows are...