Cover Art Description:
On the front cover:
Black Hawk's Ledger Book, plate 58 (1881, pencil and ink on paper, 16.25" x 10.25," Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection, Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, New York, photograph by John Bigelow Taylor, New York City) offers a Sans Arc medicine man's view of his world. Unlike most published ledger art, which typically portrays acts of warfare, Black Hawk's drawing reflects the complicated interplay of tribal cultures and rituals. This emphasis on internal dynamics is the approach Kingsley Bray takes in his article about the political fallout among the Lakotas as they wrestled with questions raised by the killing of Crazy Horse and adaptation to reservation life.
On the back cover:
Thom Ross's Moving Robe Woman (2004, oil on plywood, 12' to top of crook, painting Copyright 2005 Thom Ross, photograph Copyright 2005 Patrick Bennett), one of two hundred sculptures to be erected on the Little Bighorn battlefield this summer, offers us a new way of thinking about the Custer fight. Despite hundreds of published accounts, debates, and reinterpretations of what happened on that hot, grim June day, specific details continue to elude us. As an artist, Ross feels comfortable with elusive facts: he thinks it is important to see the battle as part of the grand flow of human history and the "last stand" fights of the last two millennia as an opportunity to appreciate the individual's ability to face overwhelming adversity with courage.
© Montana The Magazine of Western History, Montana Historical Society. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission is prohibited.
