A Lakota War Book from the Little Bighorn

“The Little Bighorn wins a place in McLaughlin’s title by accident, because the drawings were found near the battlefield in a funerary lodge a few days after the fight. The details of the discovery are interesting enough, but it is the drawings themselves—what they represent and who made them—that give us a rich and startling view of life on the Northern Plains in the last years before the Indians who thought they owned them were confined to reservations… What’s interesting about McLaughlin’s book, in the way that only an exhaustive inquiry can be truly interesting, is the quantity of fundamental information she manages to wring from these drawings—when they were made, who made them, and what they depicted. McLaughlin makes no broad claims for what she is up to, but A Lakota War Book ought to be in the collection of any serious student of the Northern Plains or the Little Bighorn.”—Thomas Powers, New York Review of Books

“What sets these drawings apart from others of their kind is the persuasive argument made by McLaughlin that most of the drawings, and the book as a whole, represent an Indian account of episodes during the conflict known as ‘Red Cloud’s War’ (1866–1868), and that it may be possible to identify three of the artists… What is perhaps most remarkable is the intensely personal style of each artist, and the attention to identifying detail of weapons, clothing and body paint, thereby allowing the viewer a glimpse of the war from the other side.”—Thomas Powers, The New York Review of Books blog

“McLaughlin’s brilliant contribution to the history, material culture, and art of the Plains provides a transformative understanding of Plains Indian ledger art.”—Candace Greene, Smithsonian Institution