A Pictographic History of the Oglala Sioux

Originally published in 1967, this remarkable pictographic history consists of more than four hundred drawings and script notations by Amos Bad Heart Bull, an Oglala Lakota man from the Pine Ridge Reservation, made between 1890 and the time of his death in 1913. The text, resulting from nearly a decade of research by Helen H. Blish and originally presented as a three-volume report to the Carnegie Institution, provides ethnological and historical background and interpretation of the content.

This 50th anniversary edition provides a fresh perspective on Bad Heart Bull's drawings through digital scans of the original photographic plates created when Blish was doing her research. Lost for nearly half a century--and unavailable when the 1967 edition was being assembled--the recently discovered plates are now housed at the Smithsonian's National Anthropological Archives. Readers of the volume will encounter new introductions by Emily Levine and Candace S. Greene, crisp images and notations, and additional material that previously appeared only in a limited number of copies of the original edition.


Author: Helen H. Blish
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: 12/01/2017
Pages: 648
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 7.17lbs
Size: 11.93h x 9.49w x 1.79d
ISBN: 9781496203595

Review Citation(s):
Choice 07/01/2018

About the Author
​Amos Bad Heart Bull (1869-1913) sought to preserve the story of his people through ledger drawings. He began his picture history during the 1890s and continued to add and revise his record until his death. Helen H. Blish (1898-1941) was a trained ethnographer who also taught high school English in Detroit between her visits and research trips to the Pine Ridge Reservation. Mari Sandoz (1896-1966) is the noted author of Cheyenne Autumn, Old Jules, and Crazy Horse: Strange Man of the Oglalas, all available in Bison Books editions. Emily Levine is an independent scholar. She is the editor of Josephine Waggoner's Witness: A Húŋkpapȟa Historian's Strong-Heart Song of the Lakotas (Nebraska, 2013), winner of the American Historical Association's J. Franklin Jameson Award. Candace S. Greene is an ethnologist in the Department of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. She is the coeditor of The Year the Stars Fell: Lakota Winter Counts at the Smithsonian (Nebraska, 2007).