Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Plains Indian Ledger Art

Are you familiar with Native American "ledger art"?
Well, it's about time you got wise to these incredible books of drawings.
They were made by people from plains tribes - Kiowa, Lakota, Cheyenne, etc. after they were forced onto reservations. The artists kept the same style of painting they had used on buffalo hides and adapted it to new materials like colored pencil on paper. The books date from between about 1860 to 1900.

These are from a book by Walter Bone Shirt aka "Never Misses".







This next batch is from the "Bad Eye Sketchbook".







I could keep going with these for days but you should just go look at them here.

1 comment:

partly cloudy said...

check out:

http://www.nmnh.si.edu/naa/kiowa/target.htm

http://www.nmnh.si.edu/naa/kiowa/calendar.htm

the calendar is amazing.