Northern Cheyenne Ledger Art by Fort Robinson Breakout Survivors
Northern Cheyenne Ledger Art by Fort Robinson Breakout Survivors
Denise Low and Ramon Powers
Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press
288 pages
43 color ledger drawings, 3 photographs, 3 tables, index
Hardcover 978-1-4962-1515-4
Published November 2020
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.
