Minneapolis Institute of Art

Sketchbook

Koba (Wild Horse)

Date

July 1876

Medium

Graphite and colored pencil on paper

Culture

Ka'igwu (Kiowa)

Department

Arts of the Americas

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

A millennia old art form, Plains Indian drawings appear on rocks, hides, muslin, cloth, and paper. Drawings can depict a variety of subjects, including great accomplishments of individual men, important historical events, and ceremonial and daily life on the Plains. Kiowa artist Koba created a sketchbook while falsely imprisoned at Fort Marion, in St. Augustine, Florida. Held for three years (1875–1878) without trial, he then went to school in Virginia and Pennsylvania, as part of a government effort to assimilate Native people into Euro-American society. In 1880 he returned to his people in Oklahoma, only to die two weeks later of tuberculosis. His sketchbook portrays daily life when he was free and lived in Indian Country. In this buffalo-hunting scene, he included himself on horseback, to show his hunting prowess, and cleverly used both pages to indicate how many buffalo he had hunted. Ka'igwu (Kiowa), United States, Americas

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