Ledger Art in Crash Course Native American History

One of our guiding principles in Crash Course Native American History is to prioritize Native sources, and that extends to the animations we feature in the series. Rather rather than having these designs built by our in-house team, we hired a Native artist, Samantha Sylvers to create animations using ledger art as inspiration. 

Ledger Art

Ledger Art originated as a method for Plains tribes to document their history. Originally, Plains Indians drew pictures on rocks and buffalo hides. But in the 19th century, they started drawing on ledgers, or account books, from settlers on their lands.  These drawings by Native people serve as a visual representation of their history, as well as works of art in themselves. This style of art uses several materials, including ink, pencil, crayon, and watercolor, and depicts stories from oral tradition, accounts of warfare, courtship rituals, and scenes of everyday Native life, both before and during the Reservation Era. 

Often, more than one person contributed to the drawings; it was a communal practice. For example, the “Black Horse Ledger” from the late 1870s was created by several Cheyenne warriors and depicts battles between the Cheyenne and other tribes, as well as European colonizers. 

As more non-Natives became aware of ledger art, Native artists started to sell their work, either to tourists or anthropologists. Native artists today still work with ledger art as a nod to traditions of the past.

Reflections from the Artist

Samantha Sylvers: It’s been a really wonderful and creatively fulfilling process working in the ledger art style to bring each animation sequence to life for Crash Course Native American History, and each sequence presents its own unique challenges. For example, we were tasked with not showing the Wampanoag language as text on screen, so we needed to approach the sequence more abstractly. As I was creating this sequence I decided to depict language as a tangible object and wanted to express the idea of language being a gift that is passed through generations.