Embodiments of power: Nineteenth-century warrior art among the Cheyennes and Kiowas.

Abstract

Events recorded in ledger book drawings served to indoctrinate boys and youths into a culturally prescribed martial mindset. Scenes centering on warfare, hunting, or courtship expounded a set of social behaviors that were intended to be emulated and imitated. Vision imagery supported such behaviors by illustrating transcendent themes of supernatural-mortal empowerment. These cosmological associations and sanctions were expressed visually through the designs and compositions made up of these elements, and were applied to shields and their covers, lodge covers and liners, robes, articles of clothing, and society equipment and paraphernalia. Cosmological sanctions rested within a context of permeable time in which mythic events from the past constantly informed the present. This study examines how the Cheyenne and Kiowa warrior societies utilized art as a means for validating their positions of status and authority in their respective cultures. Embodiments of Power: Nineteenth-Century Warrior Art Among the Cheyennes and Kiowas is an interdisciplinary examination of the role which color/symbol systems played in Cheyenne and Kiowa cultures of the nineteenth century. Art, as a symbol system, provided a ready vehicle for statements of identity, place, and purpose in the universal order for members of the Cheyenne and Kiowa warrior societies. These statements were produced during a period in which both cultures were experiencing rapid changes to their socio-cultural systems. Art provided a psychological anchor during this period of change by continuously referencing the underlying cosmological foundations of Cheyenne and Kiowa cultures.