The Battle at Little Big Horn

In 1898, more than twenty years after the event, Kicking Bear painted his account of the Battle at Little Big Horn at the request of artist Frederic Remington. Battle at Little Big Horn is Kicking Bear's personal narrative of one of the many battles the Lakota fought to protect their land. General George Armstrong Custer can be seen in yellow buckskins on the left side of the painting. Sitting Bull, Rain-in-the-Face, Crazy Horse, and Kicking Bear stand in the open center area. The figures rendered in line in the upper left corner represent departing spirits of dead soldiers.

A spirited tradition of painting thrived among the Lakota long before contact with Europeans. In keeping with the demands of a nomadic culture, hide painting was a tradition allowing for both ease and mobility, filling both personal and social functions. For the individual, the representational paintings on buffalo hides recorded heroic deeds and battles. For the group, they documented conquest, ritual, and celebration. Early drawings adorned shields, robes, and tepees; however, when the buffalo had been hunted to the brink of extinction by European-American settlers, canvas and muslin cloth obtained through trade were substituted. Eventually European Americans interested in these pictorial accounts supplied art materials to these Lakota warriors, creating a market for their narrative paintings.

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