McLaughlin honors Howe

Crazy Horse’s uncle may be depicted in a Lakota ledger from Little Bighorn, social anthropologist Irene Castle McLaughlin said during this year’s annual Oscar Howe Memorial Lecture.

About 70 were in attendance in Farber Hall last week for the lecture, “Riders of the Storm: A Plains Indian Ledger from Red Cloud’s War.”

“It’s a real honor to give the Oscar Howe Memorial Lecture,” McLaughlin said. “When I was a child, he had a huge influence in the community.”

McLaughlin said details in the pictures, including the type of horse the figure she believes is Crazy Horse’s uncle is riding, led her to her conclusion.

“All the pieces kind of fit,” McLaughlin said.

McLaughlin, who is now a curator of the Native American Ethnology at the Peabody Museum at Harvard University, studied wild horses for the National Park Service, work that aided her in recognizing horse breeds in the ledger.

The ledger was found in a Harvard library seven years ago and contains 77 drawings by six different artists. McLaughlin said it is one of about 20 early ledgers still in existence, and maybe one of the only ones still complete.

Ledgers became popularized among American Indian tribes on the edge of western civilization because of increased trade and the decline of bison, McLaughlin said.

The ledgers and drawings, often on top of documents or diary pages, were popular between when American Indians painted on bison hide and when art was moved to an easel.

“It’s sort of a transitional era,” McLaughlin said. “People see connections both going back and going forward.”

The ledger McLaughlin studied has an introduction stating the book is an account of a fictional chief named Half Moon. The book was obtained by Harvard in 1930 by a man from Chicago, who had paid for the introduction. The man said the book was found on the battlefield of Little Big Horn, on top of a canvas bag filled with stamped letters.

McLaughlin said one clue about the history of the ledger was on a page with the name J.S. Moore, a man who had kept the book as a diary but was later killed after he was jumped by American Indian warriors while traveling. Pages of the diary were torn out, and McLaughlin thinks the book was passed among a group of tight-knit warriors.

“Instead of thinking about them as artists, I think of them as warriors,” McLaughlin said.

The pictures are all about warfare, a subject that became rare in ledger art after the U.S. government began using art as evidence against American Indians.

Senior Amy Feucht has been to multiple Oscar Howe Memorial Lectures. As a ceramics major, she said she was inspired by the drawings.

“It’s nice to see the linework,” Feucht said. “It’s nice to see where it came from.”

Junior Sophia Mermers said she connected to the drawings because they relate to where she feels her art is going. Also a ceramics major, Mermers creates objects that could be used in rituals.

“I really connected on that,” Mermers said.