Ohettoint and Family
Ohettoint, 1852-1934Bear's Heart and Ohettoint Drawing Book
Kiowa
Central Plains
Hyperallergic
In his review of our exhibition Fort Marion and Beyond: Native American Ledger Drawings 1865-1900, on view during Master Drawings New York, John Yau reflects on a shameful chapter of American history through the lens of Plains Ledger Art. Against the backdrop of brutal military campaigns and forced cultural assimilation, the author writes, “drawing became a concentrated point of resistance, an expression of individual and communal pride, a form of preservation and the continuation of each Indigenous culture’s pictographic tradition, an alternative history of their imprisonment, and more than that.”
The core of the presentation is formed by the works of two artists: Nokkoist (Bear’s Heart, 1851–1882) and Ohettoint (1852–1934) of the Cheyenne and Kiowa nations. They were created during their incarceration - without trial - at Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Florida. Drawing on the United States Army’s insistence on conformity, the fort commander Captain Richard Henry Pratt had cut the prisoners’ hair and dressed them in military garb. Conversely, he also provided a group of warriors with art supplies and permitted them to sell their drawings to white tourists and visitors to the fort. Nokkoist’s images are “as powerful as anything being made in the U.S. at that time,” the author observes, noting that his decision to draw only on one side of the paper “marks a shift in his intentions, from using art to record events to claiming ownership over his creative property — both of which are acts of resistance.” Also on view are a number of highly important Ledger Drawings dating from the pre-reservation to the reservation periods. Two-thirds of the drawings in the exhibition have never been shown in North America. “This alone makes it the most important gathering of ledger drawings on view in New York since the 1996 touring show Plains Indian Drawings, 1865–1935: Pages from a Visual History, organized by the Drawing Center,” Yau writes.