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.