| History of Plains Indian
Ledger Art |
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General Introduction
This genre, often called Ledger Art, represents a transitional
form of Plains Indian artistry corresponding to the forced
reduction of Plains tribes to government reservations,
roughly between 1860 and 1900. Due to the destruction
of the buffalo herds and other game animals of the Great
Plains by Anglo-Americans during and after the Civil War, painting
on buffalo hide gave way to works on paper, muslin, canvas,
and occasionally commercially prepared cow or buffalo
hides.
Changes in the content of pictographic art, the rapid
adjustment of Plains artists to the relatively small size
of a sheet of ledger paper, and the wealth of detail possible
with new coloring materials, marks Plains ledger drawings
as a new form of Native American art. As such, ledger
painting portrays a transitional expression of art and
material culture that links traditional (pre-reservation)
Plains painting to the Plains and Pueblo Indian painting
styles that emerged during the 1920s in Indian schools
in Oklahoma and New Mexico.
Beginning in the early 1860s, Plains Indian men adapted
their representational style of painting to paper in the
form of accountants ledger books. Traditional paints and
bone and stick brushes used to paint on hide gave way
to new implements such as colored pencils, crayon, and
occasionally water color paints. Plains artists acquired
paper and new drawing materials in trade, or as booty
after a military engagement, or from a raid. Initially,
the content of ledger drawings continued the tradition
of depicting of military exploits and important acts of
personal heroism already established in representational
painting on buffalo hides and animal skins. As the US
government implemented the forced relocation of the Plains
peoples to reservations, for all practical purposes completed
by the end of the 1870s, Plains artists added scenes of
ceremony and daily life from before the reservation to
the repertoire of their artwork, reflecting the social
and cultural changes brought by life on the reservation
within the larger context of forced assimilation.
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