The Ledgerbook
The original book consisted of 144 pages. In addition to the drawing surfaces on its inside front and back covers, the ledgerbook now contains 114 pages—30 less than it presumably had when it came into the hands of the Dog Soldiers. The book was donated to the Colorado Historical Society by Ira LaMunyon on November 30, 1903.
In 1984 the Colorado Historical Society commissioned a conservator to analyze, clean, and rebind the book in its original cover. At that time the conservator noted that the text block was separated from the cover, that only fragments of thread connected parts of the signatures, and that at one time the text block had been sewn on four half-inch cloth tapes pasted directly to the spine. In the process of cleaning and rebinding the book, the conservator joined loose sheets and signatures to protective backing and reglued the text block to the cover, itself cleaned and restored.
Ten years later the Society asked the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to analyze the book’s physical properties—specifically, to examine a red stain on the cover for traces of human blood, to look at the chemical components of the pencil lines and colors used to make the drawings, and to determine if some of the written script in the book predated or postdated the drawings. CBI investigators, subjecting small portions of the book to spectrometer analysis and other chemical tests, determined that the drawings had been made by graphite pencil, colored pencil, and crayon, some of it applied with an unknown type of point or stylus; that the stain on the cover could not positively be determined as blood; and that the writing in the book overlays the drawings. They also identified and presented a brief military history of John Henry Filler, whose handwriting appears in the book, and of Lt. Peter V. Haskins.
Structure of the Ledgerbook
The Dog Soldier Ledgerbook is a complex historical document. Not the least of the many elements it offers for interpretation is the construction of the book itself, and its physical history.
Warrior-Artists and Characteristics of Style
Although a good deal is known about Plains Indian ledger art, the historical information that the Dog Soldier Ledgerbook offers about the pattern of recording deeds of valor is severely limited by an incomplete oral tradition specifically describing how several ledger artists may have worked together. Despite these limitations, however, the ledgerbook suggests avenues for further study.
Fourteen warrior-artists are represented in the Dog Soldier Ledgerbook. Each has been assigned a name based on studies determining that ledger artists were also warriors, and that they recorded their own deeds as well as the deeds of others. Thus, the name of the warrior occurring most often in a single artist’s work, based on the name glyph, has been assumed to be the artist himself.
To identify the artists, the authors compared a range of style characteristics found in the drawings, from treatment of subjects to patterns of outlining and shading. In particular, they looked at three broad elements featured in most of the plates: 1) horses, 2) Dog Soldier warriors, and 3) enemy figures. Each of these, in many cases, showed distinct similarities within groups of drawings. Furthermore, many recognizable similarities in one element appeared regularly with similarities among other elements within the same group of drawings. Thus, when all three elements corresponded over a series of plates, those drawings were assigned to an artist. To verify the attribution of a set of drawings to a particular artist, the authors selected a prototype drawing (such as Plate 81 for Bear Man’s horses or Dog Soldier warriors) and compared elements in other drawings to that prototype. Where the three elements did not coincide in a drawing but could be individually related to others, it was assumed that two or more artists were contributing to the same drawing, as in Plates 48,91, and 114.
While the process of identification was subjective, and while variations were apparent, stylistic consistencies in all three elements tended to reinforce one another for most of the artists represented in the ledgerbook. The authors realize that some differences may be so fine as to suggest nearly arbitrary distinctions, as in the work of White Horse and Brave Wolf, so the prototype numbers in the table serve as guides rather than absolute designations.
Problems of the Ledgerbook
In any case, the blank pages raise problems—as do some of the sequences of drawings—that epitomize the conflicting evidence of the ledgerbook. If, on the one hand, the drawings (and blank pages) are random, why do they occur in such distinct patterns? On the other hand, if they are products of a thoughtful system, why is it so uneven?