CategoriesCultural and Religious Styles
Cheyenne Art
Quillwork, beadwork, painted hides and ledger drawings of the Cheyenne, a Plains people, and the work of modern Cheyenne artists.
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About
The Cheyenne, a Plains people now living as the Northern Cheyenne in Montana and, with the Arapaho, in Oklahoma, have long expressed status and belief through decorated clothing, shelters and equipment. Women's quillwork societies held great prestige: members flattened and dyed porcupine quills and sewed them in parallel bands on robes, tipi covers and cradleboards, following set ceremonies for the work. Glass beads, traded in quantity from the mid-19th century, took over many of those designs, often sewn in lane-stitch rows on white grounds.
Men painted records of war honours on buffalo robes, tipis and shields. After Southern Cheyenne warriors were imprisoned at Fort Marion in Florida in 1875, Howling Wolf, Bear's Heart and Making Medicine drew in ledger books and sketchbooks, making crisp coloured scenes of battle, courtship and captivity. Twentieth-century Cheyenne artists include the painter Dick West and Edgar Heap of Birds, known for text-based public signs.
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