Mad Bull Ledger Book

The Mad Bull Ledger Book was collected at Fort Reno, Cheyenne and Arapaho Agency, Oklahoma, by Palmer Tilton, Lieut. 20th U.S. Infantry and subsequently gifted to E.F. Riggs, Esq. on March 27, 1884. Mad Bull’s name as well as his national identity have been extrapolated from the stylistic features of the Ledger Drawings themselves. Ben Clark, a settler who was assigned as “post interpreter” at Fort Reno in 1878, has translated the bison glyph associated with one of the protagonists into English as “Mad Bull.” Only a handful of the many warriors depicted in the book were identified by their glyphs. Thus, it can be concluded that Mad Bull is the name of the Southern Arapaho warrior artist who created the extraordinary drawings of this ledger.

The fifteen drawings comprising the Mad Bull Ledger are closely related to two books of drawings collected between 1882 and 1884 at the Cheyenne and Arapaho Agency, Oklahoma (see: Sotheby’s, New York, June 4, 1997, lot 97, and Sotheby’s, New York, December 4, 1997, lot 447).