A Lakota war book from the Little Bighorn : the pictographic "autobiography of Half Moon"

The Resource A Lakota war book from the Little Bighorn : the pictographic "autobiography of Half Moon"
Label
A Lakota war book from the Little Bighorn : the pictographic "autobiography of Half Moon"
Title remainder
the pictographic "autobiography of Half Moon"
Statement of responsibility
Castle McLaughlin
Title variation
Pictographic "autobiography of Half Moon"
Creator
Subject
Genre
Language
eng
Summary
Houghton Library and Harvard's Peabody Museum Press collaborated on this cultural analysis of the extraordinary composite document titled by its compiler "The Pictorial Autobiography of Half Moon, an Uncpapa Sioux Chief." At its core is a nineteenth-century ledger book of pictographic drawings by Lakota Sioux warriors found in 1876 in a funerary tipi on the Little Bighorn battlefield after Custer's defeat. Journalist Phocion Howard later added an illustrated introduction and had it bound into the beautiful manuscript that is reproduced in complete color facsimile here. Howard attributed all seventy-seven Native drawings to a "chief" named Half Moon, but anthropologist Castle McLaughlin demonstrates that these dramatic scenes, mostly of war exploits, were drawn by at least six different warrior-artists. Their vivid first-person depictions make up a rare Native American record of historic events that likely occurred between 1866 and 1868 during Red Cloud's War along the Bozeman Trail. McLaughlin probes the complex life history of this unique artifact of cross-cultural engagement, uncovering its origins, ownership, and cultural and historic significance, and compares it with other early ledger books. Examining how allied Lakota and Cheyenne warriors valued these graphic records of warfare as both objects and images, she introduces the concept of "war books"--Documents that were captured and altered by Native warrior-artists to appropriate the strategic power of Euroamerican literacy
Member of
Cataloging source
DLC
Illustrations
  • illustrations
  • maps
Index
index present
Literary form
non fiction
Nature of contents
bibliography
Series statement
Houghton Library studies
Series volume
4

Context

Context of A Lakota war book from the Little Bighorn : the pictographic "autobiography of Half Moon"

Work of

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