Black Hawk's drawing of a vision

Magazine Antiques, Jan, 1997 by Gilbert T. Vincent, Janet Catherine Berlo

Visions and dreams are vital to American Indian culture. Viewed as messages from the spirit world that might predict the future or reveal certain spirit helpers, visions are often used as a basis for personal names. One of the most unusual pictures in the corpus of American Indian art is a vision drawn by Black Hawk, a member of the Sans Arc band of the Sioux, or Lakota [ILLUSTRATION FOR PL. I OMITTED]. The work is remarkable for its imagery, the quality of its drawing, and the story of its creation.

For the Plains people, Thunder Beings are powerful supernatural creatures who appear to supplicants in vision quests. While each image is personal, depictions often combine the attributes of the eagle, horse, and buffalo, all sacred animals. Black Hawk's composition is based on the image of a horse and rider - a ubiquitous theme in the iconography of the Great Plains - yet neither steed nor rider is ordinary. Their arms and legs have been transformed into eagles' claws, and buffalo horns curve from their heads. The intensity of the riders clenched teeth in the round, buffalo-like head is enhanced by mesmerizing yellow eyes. This is echoed in part by the horse's flaring red nostrils. Both Thunder Beings are covered with small dots, perhaps representing hail. In addition, they are connected to one another by lines of energy between the rider's talons and the animal's mouth. These lines are more like electrical charges or lightning flashes than reins. The emotive energy of both Beings is emphasized by small jagged or hatched lines - black above and red below - that radiate from each figure. The unusual staff held by the rider also quivers with energy. The Beings are depicted flying through the sky and seem to be passing through a rainbow formed from the tail of the beast.

This is one of two similar images by Black Hawk entitled Dream or Vision of Himself Changed to a Destroyer or Riding a Buffalo Eagle. The drawings, which exhibit a firm, practiced hand, are bound with the seventy-three other known drawings by Black Hawk in a book now in the Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art in the Fenimore House Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Each drawing is created from a single line in ink or pencil with scarcely a break in the flow. Interior details are drown in pencil or ink and use simple blocks or patterns of color.

In Lakota cosmology, visions of animals, natural phenomena, and potent ancestors are means of attaining wisdom and personal power. Black Hawk's image of his vision graphically conveys the potency of the awesome sky dwellers. The rainbow is an entrance to the spiritual world as well as a symbol of the Thunder Beings themselves.(1) The Lakota believe that the power derived from such a transforming spiritual experience must be used for the good of the people. By deciding to record his vision Black Hawk may have felt that he was fulfilling the promise of the vision. By trading the drawings for food, he was able to provide for his people in a time of dire need. He was said to have been a medicine man, and such visions may also have been a reaffirmation of his healing powers.

The best-known Lakota vision, that of Black Elk, an Oglala Lakota, was recounted in John Neihardt's book Black Elk Speaks... (1931; New York, 1972). It corresponds remarkably closely to Black Hawk's drawings. Black Elk saw horses of different colors assembled in the sky wearing buffalo horns and neighing like thunder. He described passing through a rainbow to encounter the grandfathers, or spiritual ancestors, who told him that the power of the Thunder Beings was to be used to defend oneself.(2)

On the Great Plains in the nineteenth century artists made the transition from drawing on animal hides to drawing on paper and in bound books. Thousands of drawings have survived from this era, most chronicling warfare and the capture of horses. A smaller number depict scenes of daily life and courtship. Only a handful endeavor to convey the transformative power of religious experience.(3)

A typescript by the granddaughter of William Edward Caton documents the creation of Black Hawks drawings. Bound into the front of the book of drawings, it states that Black Hawk, a medicine man, had an extraordinary vision during the winter of 1880-1881, which is said to have been particularly severe. Caton, the owner of the local trading post, heard the story and promised Black Hawk a credit of fifty cents at the trading post for each drawing of his vision, As Black Hawk had few resources and was responsible for many women and children, he agreed. Caton supplied him with pencils, ink, and sheets from a common schoolbook As a result, the binding creases are still visible in the center of every drawing.

The first two drawings are indeed depictions of the vision, but soon Black Hawk began drawing social customs [ILLUSTRATION FOR PL. II OMITTED], hunting scenes, war exploits, courting scenes, careful studies of local animals and birds, and four extraordinary drawings of supplications for spiritual aid and power [ILLUSTRATION FOR PL. III OMITTED]. When Black Hawk finished it is said that Caton took the drawings to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to be backed by linen and bound in a handsome leather cover. This book descended in his family until purchased by Eugene and Clare Thaw in 1994.