Faint writing on the top of this ledger drawing notes that it is “Indian” and “Sioux,” 1890, and notes on the bottom is the name, “Afraid of His Horses,” with the Oglala Sioux  name “Tasunka Kokipapi.”  Tasunka Kokipapi was president of the Pine Ridge Indian council during the 1890s and served as a negotiator with the federal government before and after the massacre at Wounded Knee, December 1890. He was well known and his name denotes that others were afraid of his horses.  Often names of this type describe a person’s role in the community or an important event in his life.

This ledger drawing illustrates a narrative art form that flourished from about the 1860s to the 1920s. The term ledger drawing comes from the accounting books that were a common source of paper for Plains tribes during the mid to late1900s.

In Plains Native American art, women used geometric designs and the men used designs representing animal, human, and mythic figures. The majority of ledger art was drawn or painted by men, and the subjects of horses and human figures appear about 90 per cent of the time.

Topics of the ledger drawings depict battles, horse stealing, hunts, and other important events in the life of the artist. But the ledger drawings do not often depict buffalo; that art form began after the government had killed most of the buffalo, leaving the natives to mourn the loss of their primary source of food and raw material. However, ledger drawing builds on a long, long, tradition of painting and decorating buffalo and other animal hides.