Cultural Sovereignty: Two Northern Cheyenne Ledger-Art Notebooks

FAIN: HB-50006-11

Denise Low
Haskell Indian Nations University (Lawrence, KS 66046-4800)

This project will create an online resource of 1879 ledger notebooks with my researched commentary. Wild Hog and six other Cheyenne men, while in a Dodge City jail, recorded their experiences in unique narrative drawings. These indirectly refer to the tragic 1878 Ft. Robinson Breakout conflict. They also depicted other topics, including environmentally descriptive entries. This project annotates the Northern Cheyenne drawings for future scholars. The final product will be an online posting at the Plains Indian Ledger Art Project site (University of California-San Diego) and a manuscript addition to the Kansas State Historical Society Library and Archives. I have discussed this project with Norman Frank of UC-San Diego, director of the PILA project, and with Nancy Sherbert, Curator Special Collections of the Kansas State Historical Society. The Jan. 1, 2011 to July 31, 2001 project contributes primary historic/literary texts from the point-of-view of Cheyenne people.

Associated Products

NORTHERN CHEYENNE WARRIOR LEDGER ART: Captivity Narratives of Northern Cheyenne Prisoners in 1879 Dodge City (Article)
Title: NORTHERN CHEYENNE WARRIOR LEDGER ART: Captivity Narratives of Northern Cheyenne Prisoners in 1879 Dodge City
Author: Ramon Powers
Author: Denise Low
Abstract: On February 17, 1879, Ford County Sheriff W. D. “Bat” Masterson arrived at the Dodge City train depot with seven Northern Cheyenne men as prisoners. The state of Kansas was charging them with forty murders in the last “Indian Raid” in Kansas. In 1877, the government had ordered all Northern Cheyennes to move to Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, which most had found intolerable. A group of about three-hundred Northern Cheyenne men, women, and children escaped in September of 1878 and finally were imprisoned at Camp Robinson in Nebraska. After an attempt to break free on January 9, 1879, more than a dozen men remained alive. The U.S. Army authorities sent a few prisoners to the Pine Ridge Agency, and seven Northern Cheyenne men arriving in Dodge City faced Ford County charges. While in Dodge, this group created four ledger notebooks, which they bartered or sold. The images they created include many game animals, female animals with young, groupings of men and/or women, and local wildlife. Few images of war or warriors occur. Implicitly, these texts record the remarkable recovery and adaptation of seven men who experienced extreme hardships and loss. In Dodge City, somehow, they were able to renegotiate their situation, interact with former enemies and friends, and find self expression. The desperate and depressed group of men incarcerated in Dodge City overcame obstacles to reclaim their place within sovereign North American political entities.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: http://www.kshs.org/p/kansas-history-forthcoming-issue/12442
Primary URL Description: Kansas History (journal). Article to appear in the print and online versions of the journal when published in January of 2012.
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains
Publisher: Kansas State Historical Society

"Narrative and Lyric in Ledger Art" (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: "Narrative and Lyric in Ledger Art"
Abstract: This lecture traced changes in Northern Cheyenne ledger art, focusing on books created in 1879 by imprisoned artists. The 1879 books mark the cusp of a significant change in ledger art, from the war narratives that previously dominated the genre to a more lyrical and descriptive mode with an increased emphasis on ceremony.
Abstract: Northern Cheyenne ledger books from 1879, created while in prison, mark the cusp of genre changes in ledger art. The war narratives of earlier ledger art change to lyrical descriptive and ceremonial topics and presentation.
Author: Denise Low
Date: 04/16/2011
Location: Haskell Indian Nations University
Location: Haskell Indian Nations University at the library

Two American Indian Heroes of Kansas: Wild Hog, Northern Cheyenne and Opothleyahola, Creek Nation (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Two American Indian Heroes of Kansas: Wild Hog, Northern Cheyenne and Opothleyahola, Creek Nation
Abstract: Program of 3 scholars: "150 Years of Tall Tales, Heroes and Outright Lies," The history of two 19th-century Native American heroes, one of whom went on to help establish a lasting reservation in Montana, and the other of whom led Creek Indians from Confederate Oklahoma to Kansas, helping to prevent the spread of the Civil War in Kansas.Co-sponsored by the Kansas Humanities Council, Kansas State University, and the Manhattan Public Library.
Abstract: Program of 3 scholars: "150 Years of Tall Tales, Heroes and Outright Lies," The history of two 19th-century Native American heroes, one of whom went on to help establish a lasting reservation in Montana, and the other of whom led Creek Indians from Confederate Oklahoma to Kansas, helping to prevent the spread of the Civil War in Kansas.Co-sponsored by Ks. Humanities Council, Ks. State Univ., Manhattan Public Library
Author: Denise Low
Date: 09/25/2011
Location: Manhattan, Kansas, Public Library
Primary URL: http://www.k-state.edu/today/announcement.php?id=254&category=events&referredBy=K-State%20Today%20Archive
Primary URL Description: Sponsor publicity release

"Indigenous Ledger Literacies" (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: "Indigenous Ledger Literacies"
Abstract: Glyphs have a continuous tradition among Algonquin peoples from the East Coast to the 19th century Plains region. The Walking Purchase Treaty of 1784 has signatures of Delaware leaders in glyphs similar to rock art in the area. Cheyennes, an Algonquin people, continue this tradition onto the Plains. The Dodge City 1879 ledgers created by Norther Cheyenne survivors of the Fort Robinson Breakout illustrate this indigenous literacy.
Abstract: Glyphs have a continuous tradition among Algonquin peoples from the East Coast to the 19th century Plains region. The Walking Purchase Treaty of 1784 has signatures of Delaware leaders in glyphs similar to rock art in the area. Cheyennes, an Algonquin people, continue this tradition onto the Plains. The Dodge City 1879 ledgers created by Norther Cheyenne survivors of the Ft. Robinson Breakout illustrate this indigenous literacy.
Author: Denise Low
Date: 10/19/2011
Location: Spencer Art Museum, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Ks.
Primary URL: http://www.spencerart.ku.edu/exhibitions/heartland-reverberations.shtml
Primary URL Description: Spencer Art Museum announcement of art exhibit Heartland Reverberations and associated events

Online Director for two ledgers ("Hagetta" and "Northern Cheyenne Indian") hosted by the Plains Indian Ledger Art Project (https://plainsledgerart.org/) at the University of California, San Diego. (Staff/Faculty/Fellow Position)
Name: Online Director for two ledgers ("Hagetta" and "Northern Cheyenne Indian") hosted by the Plains Indian Ledger Art Project (https://plainsledgerart.org/) at the University of California, San Diego.
Name: Directorship of Plains Indian Ledger Art ledgers "Hagetta" and "Northern Cheyenne Indian"
Abstract: This position at the Plains Indian Ledger Art website, sponsored by U of Cal-San Diego, allows me to comment upon each image of the posted ledger and also to facilitate discussion. The site also has a virtual "research station" for ongoing research with their 20 posted ledgers.
Abstract: Duties include commenting on the images in the ledgers and facilitating online discussion of them.
Year: 2011
Primary URL: https://plainsledgerart.org/ledgers/index/1/0/466
Primary URL Description: PILA website -- sample page of Hagetta ledger with my name as director

Northern Cheyenne Ledger Art by Fort Robinson Breakout Survivors (Book)
Title: Northern Cheyenne Ledger Art by Fort Robinson Breakout Survivors
Author: Denise Low
Abstract: Northern Cheyenne Ledger Art by Fort Robinson Breakout Survivors presents the images of Native warriors—Wild Hog, Porcupine, and Left Hand, as well as possibly Noisy Walker (or Old Man), Old Crow, Blacksmith, and Tangled Hair—as they awaited probable execution in the Dodge City jail in 1879. When Sheriff Bat Masterson provided drawing materials, the men created war books that were coded to avoid confrontation with white authorities and to narrate survival from a Northern Cheyenne point of view. The prisoners used the ledger-art notebooks to maintain their cultural practices during incarceration and as gifts and for barter with whites in the prison where they struggled to survive. The ledger-art notebooks present evidence of spiritual practice and include images of contemporaneous animals of the region, hunting, courtship, dance, social groupings, and a few war-related scenes. Denise Low and Ramon Powers include biographical materials from the imprisonment and subsequent release, which extend the historical arc of Northern Cheyenne heroes of the Plains Indian Wars into reservation times. Sources include selected ledger drawings, army reports, letters, newspapers, and interviews with some of the Northern Cheyenne men and their descendants. Accounts from a firsthand witness of the drawings and composition of the ledgers themselves give further information about Native perspectives on the conflicted history of the North American West in the nineteenth century and beyond. This group of artists jailed after the tragedy of the Fort Robinson Breakout have left a legacy of courage and powerful art.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://www.worldcat.org/title/northern-cheyenne-ledger-art-by-fort-robinson-breakout-survivors/oclc/1228511242&referer=brief_results
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Type: Multi-author monograph
ISBN: 9781496215154
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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