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Just like history, often what is called art from the Native American community has been misunderstood. Sandpaintings and ledger art have rich ceremonial, spiritual and story telling routes and are way more meaningful than just art for the natives. Ledger art has deep routes in two realms long before the Europeans invaded their lands. Painting on inside a buffalo robe and tepees, and paintings on hides and war shirts, which told a mans clan story and his exploits in battle. Sandpainting draws negative energy from the sick person put in the middle of the painting by the medicine man which draws the painting in sand with many colours, The spiritual ceremony draws negative from the sick and lets positive energy come through them. The sandpainting has to be destroyed by the end of the ceremony. Because of the beauty and nature of these sandpainting and ledge arts many of them started being kept by Europeans and the white man. Its important that these art forms are understood, here is a comprehensive look into the rich narrative surrounding sandpainitngs and ledger art, from there routes to modern time.

“The creation of drypaintings, often incorrectly called “sandpaintings,” are an integral part of almost all ceremonies. There are five required during the Night Way. Among almost all the Indians of the southwest, the drypainting is an important part of curing ceremonies. But no other people have developed this art to the degree that the Navajo have. The People recognize between six hundred and one thousand separate designs of drypaintings. There are thirty-five different drypaintings for the Red Antway ceremony alone. Most often the Singer directs the “painters” but does not directly participate in the creation of the drypainting. The painting is created on sand or sometimes on cloth or buckskin with, of course, sand, cornmeal, flower pollen, powdered roots, stone and bark. Because of the sacred nature of the ceremony, the paintings are begun, finished, used and destroyed within a twelve hour period. The purpose of the painting is curative and it is believed that the patient, by sitting upon the representations of the Holy People represented in the drypainting, will become identified with them and absorb some of their power. At the ceremonies’ conclusion the sands of the drypainting are carefully gathered upon the buckskin or a blanket. The Singer then walks east, then south, then west and north. With symbolic gestures up to the sky and down to the earth, he scatters the sands to the six directions from whence they came. Sometimes those present are given a small amount of the sacred sand. In some ceremonies all the sand is buried. A drypainting may be a simple affair of three or so feet wide or it may be as large as twenty feet long and almost as wide and require several assistants to execute. The paintings that are executed during a sacred ceremonial follow a prescribed sequence and outsiders are very seldom allowed to photograph it. On the other hand, because of the desire of so many whites to see a “sandpainting,” they are executed for exhibition purposes. In the latter color and direction are usually reversed and many variations brought into effect. Navajo singers considered the creation of an authentic drypainting for exhibition purposes a profanity.” Pgs. 50, 51The Book of the Navajo; 1976, Raymond Friday Locke.

Navajo sacred sandpaintingshave the ability to heal the one-sung-over through their indwelling power as sacred, living entities. They summon their power through the ability of their ritual symbols to help the patient focus inwardly as he or she is surrounded by the coexistent forces of the mythic past and the everyday present,which interpenetrate through the ritual. As the one-sung-over experiences firsthand the mythic chantway odyssey undertaken by the hero of the myth, the patient also experiences the same restoration to a state of harmony and health. Basic to an understanding of how the sandpainting heals is the concept of time as cyclic and circular, a principle fundamental to Navajo thought; this embracing, surrounding quality of time leads to an emphasis on dynamic process over static product. Furthermore, everyday and spiritual realities are fused: the spiritual world informs not only ceremonial experience but also everyday experience.

To understand the sacred, living nature of the sandpainting and its power to heal, it is essential to suspend the Western notion that equates the “real” with the measurable. Only by accepting the possibility that time and space can have richer dimensions than the Newtonian ones can we even begin to grasp the depth of the Navajo sacred sandpainting. Although the sandpainting is visually appealing, the painting is far more fascinating when it is understood in its full magnificence, in its mythopoetic context of layered time, space, and meaning. Furthermore, if we can accept that the Western view of the world is but one possible conception of reality, then we not only open ourselves up to a deeper understanding of the sandpainting but also give ourselves the opportunity possibly to learn something new about the way the world really operates.

We have much to learn from a culture whose ideals are based on harmony with the environment. Navajo spirituality affirms humanity’s place within nature, as Navajo ceremonies restore and celebrate the interconnectedness of all life. The Navajo recognize our profound connectedness with the natural world and believe that illness – disharmony – results from failure to maintain our reciprocal responsibilities with the environment, as well as from infringement of ceremonial rules and from transgressions against our own minds and bodies.Put simply, our future on this planet depends upon our ability to live in a way that honors our mother the Earth and our father the Sky.Mother Earth, Father Sky, Male Shootingway

At the center of Mother Earth is the lake that filled the Place of Emergence. The four sacred plants – corn, beans, squash, and tobacco – emerge from this lake; the roots of these plants firmly connect them to the land and to the earth. The constellations fill the body of Father Sky, whose arms and legs lie over those of Mother Earth, just as the Sky lies above the earth.

“Mother Earth, Father Sky,” to show how one particular sandpainting is endowed with presence and animated with power and life to become a sacred, living entity. By focusing on this particular sandpainting, which brings together the entirety of creation, it is possible to achieve a greater understanding of the Navajo concept of reciprocity: the order that must be reestablished in the spiritual, mental, physical, and social realms of the patient’s life reflects the order, balance, health, and harmony inherent in the timeless, continuous, repetitive motions of the cosmos. As the patient reconnects with this eternal balance of nature, health is restored.

“Modern ledger art is a direct outgrowth of traditional Plains hide painting. Before the Plains tribes were forced to live on reservations in the 1870s, men painted personal feats in battle or hunting. To this day, the depictions of people were drawn first as outlines and then filled in with panels of color.

Women depicted more geometric designs, even at times abstract, while men painted representational designs. The men’s designs depicted their clans (what in Europe would be called “heraldry”) and often as well more spiritual visions depicted on robes, leggings, shirts, tepees and shields, with the shields usually showing the animal spirit that protected the warrior in battle.

As the buffalo hides dwindled in quantity—because of the U.S. government’s intended programs to eradicate buffalo as a food source in order to cripple the Native populations, so that they would not return to their prior nomadic ways and settle down to work at farm labor like good little Indigenous workers—ledger art was forced to switch from buffalo hides to muslin sheets, canvas and paper.

One beneficial development came with the more available supply of ledger books and other material on which to draw, coming from traders, soldiers, government agents and even missionaries. Watercolors, crayons and pencils abounded. These new materials allowed for greater detail and experimentation than the earlier tools, such as bone or wood styluses dipped in mineral pigments. The compact ledger books and pencils were portable, making them ideal for nomadic lifestyles.

There have been many ledger depictions of famous slaughters and battles, most notably in my realm of ledger art, in the work of Southern Cheyenne artist George Curtis Levi’s depictions of the Sand Creek massacre in which several of his own ancestors and those of his wife were murdered by the arch villain of 19th-century Native history: Col. Reverend John Chivington.

I am also well acquainted with the ledger drawings of James Black, another Southern Cheyenne, a direct descendant of the chief who survived Sand Creek, Black Kettle, who was killed a few years later in 1868 in the so-called Battle of the Washita in Oklahoma.

Both of these Southern Cheyenne artists are also direct descendants of the Fort Marion ledger artists, whose drawings constitute the true beginning of the genre of modern ledger art being sold to a non-native market, which were developed at that prison in Floridabetween 1878 and 1880. Before then, the ledger books were bought by military folks for curios and souvenirs.“Earlier examples were done for purely Indian use, with no intention to make it palatable to non-indians,” according to Ross Frank, Rhodes Scholar, PH.D., UC Berkeley, and founder of the Plains Indian Ledger Art Project. “At Fort Marion, there was a ‘summer program’ that let these former warriors out for a bit and let townspeople hire them for yardwork, carpentry, dancing and so on.”

In a 2015 article in the Great Falls Tribune by Briana Wipf, Frank posited that ledger art was a product of oral culture. Ledger artists realized that the drawing was their intellectual property, which told the story of a warrior’s exploits, with the warrior owning the right to tell the story, but he also promoted his band or tribe by his actions. If the warrior wasn’t a particularly good artist, he may ask someone else in the band to record his deed and warriors not from the band or tribe were not allowed to reproduce that deed. Thus, ledger art became a distinct historical record. Some Native artists consider the ledger artists of the 19th century as the journalists of their day. Traditional ledger art featured the counter-narrative, the depiction of events through Native Americans’ eyes, and thus usually very different than the non-native sources who wrote the history books, Frank said. Both concepts are alive and well in modern ledger art, as artists use the medium to react to the modern world. “All of it is connected in very specific ways to ideas about [the] collection and passing on of cultural ideas and stories, active recasting of contemporary and recent historical events,” Frank explained.

Before launching into a more thorough description of the Fort Marion and its contributions to modern ledger art, we must look more carefully at the early progenitors of ledger art, both the Sioux and the Cheyenne tribes. They must have had some very zealous Indian agents loading them up over several decades with thousands of sheets of used and unused ledger paper, some with numbers and entries and some entirely blank. Most of the exhibitions of ledger art in the past 50 years have highlighted the accomplishments of those early artists, for good reason, I say, because they had a natural tendency to record events, accomplishments, family life and battle exploits. They became highly mobile as a result of the ongoing onslaught by the white soldiers that preceded the notoriously corrupt Indian agents.

These ghastly stories of battles and massacres are integral to the historical heritage that is celebrated to this day at the heart of modern ledger art, with the hope that history will not be forgotten.Many people say that the fiercest tribes make the best artists, for example, T.C. Cannon (Kiowa) and Rance Hood (Comanche). In ledger art, Terrance Guardipee (Blackfeet) and John Isaiah Pepion (Blackfeet) are considered by many to be among the foremost living ledger artists. However, exceptions to such a postulation jump to mind right away, like Donald Vann and Virginia Stroud, who are both Cherokee.

Many fine artists were more important in retrospect as teachers, guiding the birth of entire artistic movements, like Oscar Howe (Yankton Sioux), and like my old friend, Fritz Scholder (Missionluiseño), and the truly heroic progenitor of modern ledger art, Spokane artist George Flett.

Some could make the case that the best Native Artists are not from the most war like tribes. Two artists come from the Omaha tribe, which was always outnumbered by fiercer neighbors like the Lakota.

Historically, about 1770, the Omaha were the first tribe to master the use of horses, and also, the Omaha were a tribe that never once took up arms against the United States Army. Two are from the same Omaha tribe in northeast Nebraska, Travis Blackbird and Eddie Encinas.

Travis is a direct descendant of a hereditary Omaha chief named Blackbird, one of the first of the Plains chiefs to trade with explorers. Born about 1750, Blackbird was the first of the Plains Indian chiefs to challenge the benefits of the American invasion and encroachment. Using trade to enrich his people, while Chief Blackbird was alive, the Omaha were arguably the most powerful tribe in the Great Plains.

Encinas is a member of the Omaha Hethuska Society as an Army veteran, a warrior society. He says, “I do not believe the Lakota or any tribes would have adopted our Warrior Society songs or dances if we were not a worthy foe. The modern Powwow Men’s Traditional dance category has its roots from the Omaha Tribe.”

By 1900, ledger art had almost died out, as it was considered an inferior form of prison art from about 1900 to 1975, when one of the best of these artists, Flett, essentially revived modern ledger art. He was a bronc rider on the Indian rodeo circuit in the tradition of his personal hero, Jackson Sundown. Legend has it that in a fierce competition, Sundown drew a very fiery horse named Angel; the horse bucked so furiously that Sundown

removed his cowboy hat and fanned the horse to get it to cool off, and then he and the horse merged into one being.

While Flett was recovering from injuries from that rough sport, he passed time by doing sketches on old ledger paper. His fellow rodeo stars liked them and shared them with their white friends and in due course, they became popular with many artists and collectors. I had the honor of knowing Flett and showing his art during the last two years he was alive. He passed on January 23, 2013, but what a brave battle this giving, gentle genius fought to stay alive and to keep doing his drawing, surviving against all odds from many years of frequent dialysis, and producing some of the most beautiful modern ledger drawings in existence.

A year after Flett died, I published a memory of him in the Spokane Spokesman Tribune, excerpted here: He had an incredible will to live; you’d have to, to make it through dialysis three times a week. He also had an amazing unstoppable intent to create and preserve Native traditions, especially the stories, memories, and heroes of his Spokane Tribe. I miss his enlightened soul and his gentle way of dealing. Of course, the world was enriched by his existence, and I hope many more remember George Flett because of your newspaper publishing this remembrance. His efforts to create and sustain the Prairie Chicken Dance Festival through both paintings and through dancing must be mentioned and fondly remembered.

In June 1876 Hunkpapa leader Sitting Bull subjected himself to receive visions through a sun dance, including fasting and self-torture by enduring great pain. Sitting Bull saw a vision of a large number of white soldiers falling from the sky upside down, and resulting from this vision, he predicted that his people were about to rejoice in a great victory. Later that month, on June 1876, Gen. George Crook and his 1,000 troops, supported by 300 Crow and Shoshone, fought against

1,500 members of the Sioux and Cheyenne tribes. The Battle of Rosebud Creek lasted for over six hours. This vision of Sitting Bull’s and the battle itself have often been celebrated in ledger art.Just eight days later and 30 miles away, Rain-in-the-face was a leading warrior in the defeat of Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in southeastern Montana. Wounded in the battle, Rain-in-the-face walked with a limp the rest of his life.

Earlier, while accompanied by 100 men, George Custer’s brother, Captain Thomas Custer had detained Rain-in-the-face and returned him to Fort Abraham Lincoln, just south of Mandan (near Bismarck), on the Missouri River. Rain-in-the-face confessed to the murder of a veterinarian. He was then put in prison but secretly released by a sympathetic soldier. He returned to the Oglala reservation, and then fled to Powder River Country on the high plains east of the Bighorn Mountains in southeastern Montana and northeastern Wyoming.

(Some years later, charged with the murder, Rain-in-the-face was arraigned in a federal court. His defense attorney effectively argued that it was in an act of war that the men died, and therefore not murder. The judge concurred and permanently closed the case.)

In the Sioux language, Rain-in-the-face’s name is Itonagaju. Not only a great leader who earned his chiefdom through bravery rather than inheriting it as a title, he was also a superb ledger artist.

There is a huge amount of ledger art from about 1860 on that depicts the growing number of war exploits and deeds during battles.The beginnings of modern ledger art appearing in the non-native art market were launched by the prisoners of war at St. Augustine, Florida’s Fort Marion. In 1874, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Comanche, Arapaho and Caddo warriors fought the U.S. Army in the Red River War, in order to protect the last free herds of buffalo from the wanton slaughter, and to manifest their independence and autonomy. Many tribal members surrendered to Indian agencies in the fierce winter of 1874 to 1875.

The army had intended to prosecute those Indian leaders before a military commission. After the Indian wars slowed down a bit, President Grant’s attorney general, Amos Tappan Akerman, concluded that a state of war could not exist between a nation and its wards; therefore, the Native leaders would be sent as prisoners of war for permanent imprisonment at Fort Marion, Florida.

The Red River War Indian leaders were imprisoned without charges, without due process, without habeas corpus and without so much as a phony kangaroo trial. To house these prisoners, the army reconditioned an old Spanish fort in St. Augustine, Florida, rechristened it as Fort Marion, and named Lt. Richard Pratt as its first commander.

From Native American Netroots, a forum for the discussion of issues affecting American Indigenous peoples of the United States, including their lack of political representation, economic deprivation, health care issues and the ongoing struggle for preservation of identity and cultural history, the following description of these leaders’ agonizing suffering from these injustices could not be improved by me:

In addition to arresting known leaders, army officers had arbitrarily singled out young men from the line of surrendering Indians, labeled them ring leaders, and arrested them. In one instance on the Cheyenne Reservation, a drunken army officer simply lined up the Indians and counted out eighteen from the right of the line. All of these eighteen

Cheyenne men were sent to prison with no review of their cases, nor any concern for any possible crime they might have committed. For many of the young men their primary crime was that they were Indians who had led a traditional Plains Indian life.

From an Indian perspective, no crimes had been committed.When the Indian captives arrived at Fort Marion, Lt. (later Capt.) Richard Pratt had the prisoners’ hair cut and issued them Europeanstyleclothing.Thusly, these accused leaders of the Red River War were rounded up by Pratt and removed in cattle cars to Fort Marion. From 1875 to 1878, the 71 men and one woman were under the command of Pratt, who took it upon himself to try to educate these prisoners with a “Western” education, plus giving them paper, pencils, ink, crayons and watercolors.

According to historian Kathleen Mcweeney, at the beginning of their incarceration, Pratt at first disallowed the captives’ desire to make ledger art while at Fort Marion. But, in due course, he chose to allow the practice, bringing in Western artists to teach the prisoners perspective and composition. He asked that they entirely forsake tribal symbols, yet many ignored him; the strongest of their works focused on their memories of their prior happier days and their village life.

Perhaps, in order to help the prisoners retain their sanity in the face of such ghastly injustices, Pratt eventually encouraged them to do art for sale, and allowed these former leaders of their tribes and clans to visit the nearby beaches and even do yardwork for the Methodist ladies group, if they didn’t find that to be too humiliating. The Indian artists used ledger books and their drawings sold for $2 per book. Pratt instructed the prisoners to use captions, encouraging them to sign their work in accordance with the collectors’ expectations.

These ledger books by the prisoners at Fort Marion continued their Plains art traditions with drawings of counting coup and other battle narratives. That was formerly done on skins and tepee covers, if the artist had also earned the right to depict such things through their bravery in battles. They also drew memories of village life, and some depicted their brutal journeys from Oklahoma and Texas to the Florida prison; some drew images of the prison life itself.

Although Fort Marion housed individuals from five tribes, the artists were all either Cheyenne or Kiowa—the two tribes that dominated the prison. Their drawings depicted camp life, hunts and battles, and some showed scenes of Indian prisoners interacting with teachers and soldiers. Their drawings stemmed from a long tradition of Native American art drawn on animal hides, rocks and cave walls.

The booklets they produced were given as gifts to visiting officers and sold to tourists for $2 a volume. How ironic that the individual drawings in the books, not the books themselves, now sell for as much as $25,000! Frank has pointed out that many of the Fort Marion drawings were given to museums, thus establishing in the non-native world a strong and early presence of ledger art.

In the Massachusetts Historical Society collection is a ledger book that belonged to Francis Parkman, the historian who wrote a several volume history of the French and Indian War. This book contains 28 drawings, most of which are the work of Making Medicine (O-kuh-ha-tuh) and by Bear’s Heart (Nock-ko-ist). Making Medicine was the ancestor of today’s Southern Cheyenne ledger artist James Black, and he was a great warrior in his earlier years, but after leaving Fort Marion, he chose to be baptized and took a Christian name (David Pendleton Oakerhater) in 1878; he then recruited students for Pratt’s Carlisle Indian School, and then returned to Oklahoma in 1881 as an Episcopal deacon until he died in 1931.

In 1878, Indian prisoners of war held at Fort Marion were released to the custody of the Indian Office (now called the Bureau of Indian Affairs). While most “returned to the blanket” in spite of the intense efforts to assimilate them to non-indian ways, 17 of the released prisoners went to Virginia to attend the Hampton School for Negroes.

Moving toward the 20th century: No discussion of ledger art should go without mentioning Amos Bad Heart Bull, also known as WaņblíWapȟáha (Eagle Bonnet) (Oglala Lakota, 1868-1913). He was the Oglala tribal historian, as his father, Bad Heart Bull (TȟatȟáŋkaČhaŋtéšiča), was before him. (A translation of the Lakota word čhaŋtéšiče is “he has a bad heart,” but an idiomatic meaning is “he is sad.” TȟatȟáŋkaČhaŋtéšiče would have been understood in the same way “Sad Bull” would be in English.)

Amos’ father was a brother of the headman, He Dog, and a nephew of the famous Oglala chief Red Cloud. The boy was 8 when Custer’s troops attacked the Indian village at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1875, followed by the Sioux completely destroying Custer and all of his soldiers.However, after the massive U.S. Army reprisals in the subsequent Sioux War of 1876 to 1877, the Bad Heart Bull family surrendered at Red Cloud Agency in April, 1877. Then Crazy Horse was killed in September 1877, causing the family to move again, with other northern Oglala to the Spotted Tail Agency, then they moved north with other Oglala, to join Sitting Bull in Canada, but after a few years, the Bad Heart Bull family returned to the U.S. with other Oglala Lakota, surrendering at Fort Keogh in 1880. In 1881, they were transferred to the Standing Rock Reservation, and they were then sent to join the rest of the Oglala at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the Dakota Territories (now South Dakota).

Amos Bad Heart Bull drew traditional lifeways and events. In 1890, he enlisted in the Army as a scout learning to speak English and serving at Fort Robinson. He purchased a ledger book in Crawford, Nebraska, and used it to draw in the traditional pictograph style.

After returning to Pine Ridge, Bad Heart Bull worked as a cattleman, and received his land allotment along Black Tail Creek, South Dakota, after the allocation of lands of the Pine Ridge Reservation under the Dawes Act. Amos died on August 3, 1913.

Amos’ sketchbook was given to his younger sister, Dolly Pretty Cloud. In the ’30s, she was contacted by a graduate student from the University of Nebraska, Helen Blish, who asked to study her brother’s work for her master’s thesis in art. Then Pretty Cloud died in 1947, and one of her brother’s ledger books full of drawings was buried with her.

In the 1930s, Hartley Burr Alexander, Blish’s professor, had Bad Heart Bull’s drawings photographed as a record, and published them in a book, Sioux Indian Painting, from 1938. Because of Alexander’s appreciation of Bad Heart Bull’s work, and because of his position as aesthetic consultant for the construction of the Nebraska State Capitol, Bad Heart Bull is considered to be a design influence on the Nebraska State Capitol, the original Senate chamber. In 1967, the University of Nebraska Press published Blish’s thesis as A Pictographic History of the Oglala Sioux, including Amos’ drawings. The reproductions were based on copies of the original prints of the photographs of the drawings. In the years since, scholars recognize that Amos Bad Heart Bull images were a very important contribution to Lakota history.” Insubordination, Narration and History: Modern and Historical Ledger Art, by Stephen Fox, Aug 1^st 2019 Native American Art Santa Fe August issue

“Today, the Navajo uses the sand to make a painting for the crowds who have come to the Heard Museum in Phoenix to learn more about his tribe’s customs.He prepares the ground, covers it with the fine, clean riverbed sand and slowly, evenly, creates pictures known as sand paintings. Finely ground charcoal, corn meal, pollen, mudstone, gypsum and turquoise run gracefully through his fingers to form animals, plants, sunbeams and rainbows.Working from the center out – because that is the way a flower grows – he creates an intricate scene, leaving an opening at the east side of the painting for the ”holy people” to enter.Because he is simply demonstrating his art and not taking part in a healing ceremony, he makes his sand paintings with a deviation -such as transposing colors or eliminating a figure – so as not to offend the deities. The audience does not see the mistake but the holy people would know it was there.

The Navajo artist is called a hataali or singer, though the commercialization of sand painting has meant that the craft is no longer confined to the singer; anyone can create sand paintings.”The singer is a little more than a medicine man; he’s also a doctor and a historian,” explained Nancy Parezo, curator of the Arizona State Museum in Tucson and author of the book, ”Navajo Sand Paintings: From Religious Act to Commercial Art.”

Even before the commercialization of the art form, there were about 1,200 designs used in a wide range of ceremonies, which varied according to the illness being treated.Historians say that the sand painting designs were probably borrowed from Pueblo Indians, who created huge murals. Navajos give a more religious interpretation to the origin of sand paintings, believing them to be gifts from the deities.

Until the 1960’s, a person who lived off the reservation could observe the creation of a sand painting only by visiting the reservation when someone was ill and gaining permission to enter the hogan, a round dwelling of sticks and mud where the ceremony is conducted. There were a few sand painting demonstrations as early as the turn of the century, but not many.”With the Navajos, illness means something’s gone wrong in the universe, and they have to try to put in back in order,” Ms. Parezo said. ”People do something wrong -they accidentally break a rule – then they get sick. The first half of the ceremony is a cleansing, to drive out evil. The sand paintings are the second part, the means by which the singer calls the deities so they will come and cure the patient.”

The sand painting portion of the ritual begins with the cleaning of the hogan and proceeds to the creation of the paintings, which may be as small as a foot in diameter or as large as 12 feet in diameter. Most are about six feet by six, approximately the floor area of the average hogan. Paintings also vary in complexity, some requiring the assistance of helpers and taking hours to complete.When the painting is finished, the sick person sits on it, and the singer transfers the goodness and wellness to the patient from the holy people in the painting and puts the illness into the painting. The sand painting is discarded afterward.

The ceremony can last from three to nine days, depending on the illness, accident or catastrophe being treated. Among the more common ceremonies are the Wind Way, for example, which is sung over several days to treat several diseases, including those related to the eyes. The Mountain Way, another long ceremony, is performed to treat problems with the stomach.

Both sacred and commerical sand paintings use natural pigments on a tan sand base, resulting in pictures largely composed of earth tones, with some black, white, red and yellow for emphasis. Both feature angular figures, made of straight lines and zigzags. Both traditionally are bordered on at least three sides, either with a straight or circular border. Subject matter, in addition to the Navajo deities and scenery, are animals, the sun, the sky and rainbows.

A popular motif is a line of sticklike figures (the holy people) adorned with sashes, jewelry and kiltlike skirts, and carrying bows and arrows. Sacred animals like bears, coyotes, deer and eagles frequently are drawn, as are sacred domestic plants such as corn, beans, squash and tobacco. Although snakes are sacred animals, they are seldom found in any Navajo artwork because they represent danger and unpredictability. All the figures are geometric in design.By the 1930’s the beauty of the paintings had drawn the attention of some visitors to the reservation, but sporadic attempts to preserve them in a more permanent way were unsuccessful. In the 1960’s production of Navajo sand paintings soared, spurred by the economic needs of the Navajo people and the growing interest of tourists.

But something else was needed before sand painting could become widespread -the development of a process that would hold the painting together. ”What it really took was Elmer’s Glue hitting the market in the Southwest,” Ms. Parezo said. Two men developed the process that remains used today. They were Fred Stevens, a Navajo artist, and Luther Douglas, a pilot in the United States Air Force and painter who had developed an interest in the Navajo culture. First, a piece of particle board is spread with diluted glue, then sand is sprinkled on it. Excess sand is padded off, and the painting is allowed to dry. Another coat each of sand and glue is administered.

The artist uses a knife or other sharp object to cut a fine line, then another color is layered onto the painting. Ground materials similar to those used in the sacred ceremonies are added (though charcoal is not used because it smears too much). Each layer of color is applied separately and with great care. Today men and women both make sand paintings for sale, though the sacred ones are the province of men only. These sand paintings draw prices ranging from about $3 to several thousand dollars, and in size from about six by six inches to several feet square.

When sand paintings first became available as permanent products, the designs usually echoed those from the ceremonies, and pictures of the Navajo deities remain popular among tourists today.But in the 1970’s Navajo craftsmen began to draw other figures, and in the 1980’s they expanded the subject areas even further. Today, sand paintings are as diverse as any other form of art.” The Art of Navajo Sand Paintings, By Athia L. HardtOct. 2, 1988, The New York Times

In conclusion, there are several modern female ledger artists that have brought the art back from its battle ground routes and since 1955 many designs of drypainting has been slightly changed to be sold. Many of these designs have been used in rugs and pictures, but it is important that at least in the art world we understand where the beginnings of these art forms come from and respect the routes of them. The art world is a white man’s world and seeing more of these designs in museums is great, yet the purpose of this paper is to understand the routes of these paintings.

Earth is My Mother, Sky is My Father: Space, Time, and Astronomy in Navajo Sandpainting By Trudy Griffin-Pierce

Ceremonial of HasjeltiDailjis and Mythical Sand Painting of the Navajo IndiansBy James Stevenson