Includes bibliographical references (pages 224-231) and index.

"A profound sense of history has long compelled Indian peoples of the Great Plains to chronicle their lives pictorially. As the nineteenth century progressed, the trickle of white explorers and traders across the continent and up the great rivers turned into a veritable flood tide of soldiers and settlers. Their presence changed Plains life irrevocably. Plains Indians adopted a new medium for recording their visual histories, obtained through their contacts with whites: they began to draw in bound ledger books - commonly used for inventory by traders and military officers - using pens, pencils, and watercolors. They also worked in small notebooks and on drawing paper. This lavish volume is the most comprehensive treatment to date of late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century Plains Indian drawings. It is published on the occasion of the first extensive exhibition of this material, organized by The Drawing Center, New York, and The American Federation of Arts. Featured are thirty-six artists from the Lakota, Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Arapaho tribes, such as Black Hawk, Making Medicine, Wohaw, Little Shield, and White Bull. Many of the artists were previously unknown even to experts in the field, and dozens of the drawings are published here for the first time. The eight essays, four artist statements, and catalogue entries on 153 works provide a wealth of information on Plains Indian culture, religion, and individual artists during the reservation era." --,Dust Jacket.

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