Black Hawk

Čhetáŋ Sápa (Black Hawk) (c. 1832 c. 1890) was a medicine man and member of the Sans Arc or Itázipčho band of the Lakota people. He is most known for a series of 76 drawings that were later bound into a ledger book that depicts scenes of Lakota life and rituals. The ledger drawings were commissioned by William Edward Canton, a federal "Indian trader" at the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation.

Cheyenne River Indian Reservation Knowledge of the Sioux Indians was first recorded by the French explorer Jean Nicolet in 1640. Originally the Sioux occupied the region that is now Minnesota; however, they moved west in the 18th century to avoid conflict with neighboring tribes who had been armed by French fur traders. The Sioux Nation is made up of many different groups so it is unlikely that Black Hawk was the chief medicine man for the entire population which at the time was around 35,000 to 50,000 people. Black Hawk lived with his family in the southernmost part of the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation known as the Cherry Creek District. The last record of Black Hawk at the Cheyenne River Reservation was in 1889. Nothing is known about Black Hawk's death but due to the last known date of his existence it is suspected that he died in the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890 on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Medicine men were thought to have been blessed with "holy vision" and it was common practice for them to share their vision with their fellow Lakota people. Individuals who had visions of the same wakan beings organized together forming societies of holy men, inducting new members when they had the appropriate vision. While spirit quests were usually a solitary activity, Black Hawk's drawings serve to share his vision with other members of the community. Black Hawk's ledger book is unusual in the history of Lakota tourist art. According to scholarship on the subject it was very rare for a white man to commission a work of art. Typically the Lakota people created works with white buyers in mind and used their wares to trade for goods and services. Only a handful of drawings depicting Lakota religious experience remain today. Perhaps in providing such a comprehensive account of the animals Black Hawk viewed on the Great Plains he was attempting to share some of their beauty and power with Canton.

Provenance In 1993 the ledger book was discovered in a filing cabinet donated to Goodwill Industries. Questions of whether the organization was in violation of the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) were raised. Ultimately in 1994, the ledger book was sold in an auction by Sotheby's Fine American Indian Art division in New York for nearly four hundred thousand dollars and later that year became part of the Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art of the Fenimore Art Museum where it remains today.

Legacy Black Hawk's comprehensive account of Lakota life created at a time when the Lakota tradition had never been more threatened has endured over 100 years and remains relevant today. Many contemporary Native American artists look to the art of ledger books as inspiration for their work. Francis Yellow, a contemporary Lakota artist wrote a poem entitled Cetan Sapa Tatehila (Black Hawk's Love). In the poem Yellow writes "Cetan Sapa's love made real on paper across time beyond death with pencil and crayon and something that's moving unseen." Black Hawk's ledger book is a helpful source for the ethnographic examination of Lakota culture.