56. The warriors making their grand entry into the Medicine Lodge before beginning the dance. They fire first at the image hanging from the center pole. One band has just arrived and another is approaching the Lodge.; 55. [blank page]; 65. [blank page];

The nineteenth-century Plains Indian artist Howling Wolf documented the life of his Southern Cheyenne people through colorful and detailed drawings. A total of fifty seven powerful images, all probably made between 1874 and 1875, comprise the gift the AMAM received in 1904. Because they were made on lined ledger paper used by accountants, drawings of this type are called ledger drawings. Howling Wolf drew a variety of historic scenes that often occurred as long as ten years or more before their depiction, and the drawings in the ledger are not in chronological order. The history, meaning, and importance of Oberlin's ledger drawings have been fully described by scholar Joyce M. Szabo.

Among the individuals shown in these drawings are Howling Wolf himself; his father, Eagle Head, a Southern Cheyenne Council chief and respected warrior; and Sitting Bull, the prominent Sioux leader and medicine man. The drawings' attribution to Howling Wolf is made both on stylistic grounds-in particular the characteristic rendering of horses, a tendency toward foreshortening, and the vividly colorful immediacy of execution, all of which appear in known works by the artist-and because of the inclusion of his name sign: a wolf with lines extending from its open mouth, suggesting sound.

Entry into the Medicine Lodge shows Howling Wolf as a specially honored warrior coming into the sacred lodge on horseback, while other warriors fire at an effigy hanging from the center pole. The Sun Dance ceremony in which they are taking part was an annual life-renewal rite for many Plains tribes; the drawing shows the Sun Dance that took place in summer 1874, Howling Wolf's last before being confined at Fort Marion, Florida, for three years with his father and seventy other captive war leaders.

Howling Wolf's drawings of the Southern Cheyenne people's attempt to preserve their land and way of life comprise a fascinating visual record. They illustrate Howling Wolf's retrospective interpretation of his life before his exile to Florida. While he and the other warriors were imprisoned, their families at home were forced to live on reservations. After his release in April 1878, he returned to a very different-and dispiriting-life on the reservation, and he apparently made almost no further drawings. Following his father's death in 1881, Howling Wolf became a strong advocate and spokesman for the rights of the Cheyenne. He died in an automobile accident in 1927.

Howling Wolf's ledger drawings were given to Oberlin College in 1904 by Helen Finney Cox (OC 1846), daughter of Oberlin College's second president, Charles Grandison Finney. The drawings had come to her through her son-in-law, whose father, John Pope, was commander of the Department of the Missouri from 1866 through 1883. General Pope, whose headquarters was at Fort Leavenworth, may have acquired the ledger drawings when Howling Wolf and the other prisoners from the Southern Plains wars passed through during their enforced journey to Fort Marion in 1875.