Oliver Good Shield (Oliver Newton)

Oliver Good Shield was born in 1868 in the area of South Dakota that would later become the Pine Ridge Reservation. In 1887, at the age of 19, he left his community to attend the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. It is most likely at the Carlisle School, where art classes were offered as part of the curriculum, that Oliver Good Shield first began creating drawings using pencil and ink on paper. His works are elegant and spare. One sees a relaxed realism, especially in the artist’s rendering of horses, distinguishing these drawings within the larger context of ledger Art. Yet like many Ledger Drawings of the late 19th century, in each image the artist evokes nostalgia for a bygone time, when young warrior were free to ride together in acts of valor and victory on the Great Plains. In 1893, Oliver Good Shield returned home to South Dakota, to a world forever changed on the Pine Ridge Reservation.