"Ledger art is the term used to describe Plains Indian drawings and paintings on paper from the second half of the nineteenth century because they were often made on ledger paper readily available from military outposts. Howling Wolf is arguably the single most important ledger artist to emerge from the anonymity of this period. The Southern Cheyenne warrior was not only an extremely skilled artist, he was also the only Plains artist known to have created ledger art in all three phases of the art form: the pre-reservation era, the years from 1875 to 1878 when Indians of the southern Plains were confined at Fort Marion in Florida, and the reservation period. Howling Wolf's drawings while he was a prisoner at Fort Marion and those he made upon returning to the reservation were known, but this book presents the first in-depth examination of his previously undiscovered work from before his incarceration. The author shows ledger art to be a significant record of cultural attitudes of Plains Indian artists at a time when their societies were in great upheaval. She examines the works of art not only as historic documents but as visual statement reflecting the time, place, and society in which they originated. In contrast to the belief that ledger art was a stagnant form adhering to tradition, the author presents ledger art as a dynamic and inventive means of expression."--Book jacket.

The largest known collection of ledger art ever acquired by one individual is Mark Lansburgh’s diverse assemblage of more than 140 drawings, now held by the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College and catalogued in this important book. The Cheyennes, Crows, Kiowas, Lakotas, and other Plains peoples created the genre known as ledger art in the mid-nineteenth century. Before that time, these Indians had chronicled the heroic achievements of their warriors and chiefs on rock, buffalo robes, and tipi covers. As they came into increasing contact with American traders, the artists recorded their experiences in pencil and crayon drawings on paper bound in ledger or account books. The drawings became known as ledger art. This volume presents in full color the Lansburgh collection in its entirety. The drawings are narratives depicting Plains lifeways through Plains eyes. They include landscapes and scenes of battle, hunting, courting, ceremony, incarceration, and travel by foot, horse, train, and boat. Ledger art also served to prompt memories of horse raids and heroic exploits in battle. In addition to showcasing the Lansburgh collection, Ledger Narratives augments the growing literature on this art form by providing seven new essays that suggest some of the many stories the drawings contain and that look at them from innovative perspectives. The authors—scholars of art history, anthropology, history, and Native American studies—touch on such themes as gender, social status, sovereignty, tribal and intertribal politics, economic exchange, and confinement and space in a changing world. The Lansburgh collection includes some of the most arresting examples of Plains Indian art, and the essays in this volume help us see and hear the multiple narratives these drawings relate.

Who says women don’t go to war? From Vikings and African queens to cross-dressing military doctors and WWII Russian fighter pilots, these are the stories of women for whom battle was not a metaphor. The woman warrior is always cast as an anomaly—Joan of Arc, not GI Jane. But women, it turns out, have always gone to war. In this fascinating and lively world history, Pamela Toler not only introduces us to women who took up arms, she also shows why they did it and what happened when they stepped out of their traditional female roles to take on other identities. These are the stories of women who fought because they wanted to, because they had to, or because they could. Among the warriors you’ll meet are: * Tomyris, ruler of the Massagetae, who killed Cyrus the Great of Persia when he sought to invade her lands * The West African ruler Amina of Hausa, who led her warriors in a campaign of territorial expansion for more than 30 years * Boudica, who led the Celtic tribes of Britain into a massive rebellion against the Roman Empire to avenge the rapes of her daughters * The Trung sisters, Trung Trac and Trung Nhi, who led an untrained army of 80,000 troops to drive the Chinese empire out of Vietnam * The Joshigun, a group of 30 combat-trained Japanese women who fought against the forces of the Meiji emperor in the late 19th century * Lakshmi Bai, Rani of Jhansi, who was regarded as the “bravest and best” military leader in the 1857 Indian Mutiny against British rule * Maria Bochkareva, who commanded Russia’s first all-female battalion—the First Women’s Battalion of Death—during WWII * Buffalo Calf Road Woman, the Cheyenne warrior who knocked General Custer off his horse at the Battle of Little Bighorn * Juana Azurduy de Padilla, a mestiza warrior who fought in at least 16 major battles against colonizers of Latin America and who is a national hero in Bolivia and Argentina today * And many more spanning from ancient times through the 20th century. By considering the ways in which their presence has been erased from history, Toler reveals that women have always fought—not in spite of being women but because they are women.

War Dance at Fort Marion tells the powerful story of Kiowa, Cheyenne, Comanche, and Arapaho chiefs and warriors detained as prisoners of war by the U.S. Army. Held from 1875 until 1878 at Fort Marion in Saint Augustine, Florida, they participated in an educational experiment, initiated by Captain Richard Henry Pratt, as an alternative to standard imprisonment. This book, the first complete account of a unique cohort of Native peoples, brings their collective story to life and pays tribute to their individual talents and achievements. Throughout their incarceration, the Plains Indian leaders followed Pratt’s rules and met his educational demands even as they remained true to their own identities. Their actions spoke volumes about the sophistication of their cultural traditions, as they continued to practice Native dances and ceremonies and also illustrated their history and experiences in the now-famous ledger drawing books. Brad D. Lookingbill’s War Dance at Fort Marion draws on numerous primary documents, especially Native American accounts, to reconstruct the war prisoners’ story. The author shows that what began as Pratt’s effort to end the Indians’ resistance to their imposed exile transformed into a new vision to mold them into model citizens in mainstream American society, though this came at the cost of intense personal suffering and loss for the Indians.

Looks at drawings in Indian ledger books, depicting traditional dances and war losses, and includes scholarly commentary

"Originally published in 1967, this remarkable pictographic history consists of more than four hundred drawings and script notations by Amos Bad Heart Bull, an Oglala Lakota man from the Pine Ridge Reservation, made between 1890 and the time of his death in 1913. The text, resulting from nearly a decade of research by Helen H. Blish and originally presented as a three-volume report to the Carnegie Institution, provides ethnological and historical background and interpretation of the content. This 50th anniversary edition provides a fresh perspective on Bad Heart Bull's drawings through digital scans of the original photographic plates created when Blish was doing her research. Lost for nearly half a century--and unavailable when the 1967 edition was being assembled--the recently discovered plates are now housed at the Smithsonian's National Anthropological Archives. Readers of the volume will encounter new introductions by Emily Levine and Candace S. Greene, crisp images and notations, and additional material that previously appeared only in a limited number of copies of the original edition." -- Publisher's website.

In 1952 and 1953 as he wandered around America, Jack Kerouac jotted down spontaneous prose poems, or "sketches" as he called them, on small notebooks that he kept in his shirt pockets. The poems recount his travels—New York, North Carolina, Lowell (Massachusetts, Kerouac’s birthplace), San Francisco, Denver, Kansas, Mexico—observations, and meditations on art and life. The poems are often strung together so that over the course of several of them, a little story—or travelogue—appears, complete in itself. Published for the first time, Book of Sketches offers a luminous, intimate, and transcendental glimpse of one of the most original voices of the twentieth century at a key time in his literary and spiritual development.