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Dream or Vision of Himself Changed to a Destroyer or Riding a Buffalo Eagle
Black Hawk Native American
Not on view
This work is one of seventy-six drawings by Black Hawk that were bound into a book by William Edward Caton. Here, the artist depicts himself as a powerful supernatural being called a Destroyer. He rides a Buffalo Eagle, whose tail is represented by an arching rainbow. Spots representing hail cover both Buffalo Eagle and rider, and jagged power lines connect them.
The Black Hawk Ledger
Black Hawk’s style is typical of the early reservation period (ca. 1880–1900). Here, he uses minimal outlining and pattern, textured surfaces, and pale translucent color to animate his renderings of visions, ceremonies, battles, and animals of the Plains. He did not draw in a bound book, as was common, but on various sizes and types of lined paper. William Edward Caton, a trader at the Cheyenne River Sioux Agency in central South Dakota, offered Black Hawk fifty cents for each image, and later bound the seventy-six drawings into a book with a leather cover.
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