Ledger Drawing

This drawing, attributed to Cedar Tree of the Southern Arapaho nation, is described in the ledger’s original 19^th century text as: “Bird and Big Tree talking.” By his red face paint we are able to identify the figure on the right as Big Tree, also known as Cedar Tree. The two warriors have dismounted their well accessorized horses and face one another. The spontoon-style tomahawk which hangs from Cedar Tree’s saddle, as a well as the small black crow feather that is tied to his horse’s unwrapped tail, may not transmit exactly what is being said in this social encounter but they do provide insight into the great care Cedar Tree took in presenting himself, and the close attention to detail that are characteristic of his drawings.

This drawing is page 25 from the Cedar Tree Ledger Book. The fifty-six drawings comprising the Cedar Tree Ledger are the result of a collaborative effort between five or six Native American artists of the Kiowa, Southern Arapaho and Southern Cheyenne nations. Collected in 1882, at the Cheyenne and Arapaho Agency in Darlington, Oklahoma, the ledger book contained, on the last page, a list handwritten in English by one of the ledger’s first non-Indigenous owners. For each folio, the author briefly describes the content of the drawing as well as the tribal identity of its artist. Compellingly, this list shows that this ledger was drawn by artists from different Native nations; Kiowa, Arapaho, and Cheyenne. We can infer, given the groups’ geographic proximity to one another, and where the ledger was collected, that latter artists are in fact Southern Arapaho and Southern Cheyenne respectively.