Northern Cheyenne Ledger-Kansas State Historical Society

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ANIMAL, ELK; WAR, WARRIOR on a Blue Horse Carries a Gun

Ethnographic Notes

60 A bull elk runs from right to left across the page (extended legs show motion). The red marking is a smudge from the facing page. He has dark shoulders and yellow body. He has a rack of antlers (four by four points), and his round eye is created by an outlined circle of unpigmented paper, contrasting with the dark hide around it. Penciled details include antlers, ears, beard, split hooves, dewclaws, genitalia, midsection (ribs ?), and tail. Composition of the drawing resembles the same right-to-left, full-page orientation of human warrior portraits. Twelve nearly identical images of this male elk appear in this ledger (plates 19-23; 30, 32, 37-41). See further discussion of bull elk in commentary for plate 19. 61 A warrior on a blue horse rides from right to left across the page. His arms are extended, but no hands are visible. He wears a German silver hairplate ornament with a single immature golden eagle feather attached between the first and second plates. He wears a red cloth shirt with German silver armbands above each elbow. A white blanket is wrapped around his waist. The alternating blocks of black-and-white beadwork that edge his leggings are �old� and �sacred� (Powell, Sacred Mountain: 564); this design appears often on war shirts and leggings (Lanford, 2003: 153, Fig. 15; Cowdrey, 1999: 209). His breech cloth is blue trade cloth with undyed selvedge edging. He carries a short-stocked carbine (red), which �floats� without apparent attachment to his right hand. The blue horse has lowered forelegs to show motion. He wears a silver or German silver headstall; the uncolored face may be white markings. His tail, crowded into the right-hand side of the page, is clubbed and tied with red trade cloth. The blue horse is identical to the horse in plate 30, including the white face. This particular warrior is repeated in this ledger, wearing the same distinctive war bonnet. See Plate 9 for further discussion.


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Provenance

Drawn in 1879 by one or more Northern Cheyenne prisoners in the Dodge City jail held for trial after breaking ...

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Document Info
Plate No: 32
Page No: 60-61
Media: Lead pencil outline, detail, and fill; yellow crayon; Lead pencil outlines, details, and fill; blue crayon; red watercolor
Dimensions: 3.25 x 5 in (8.5 x 12.75 cm)
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Kansas Historical Historical Society

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