“The idea for this painting came from a particular day about thirty years ago. The big roan horse is one we raised and all three of our kids learned to ride on him. The Cowboy is in full Wyoming winter plumage. The wolly leggins are sure cozy and awful punchy lookin'. Although this painting has a kind of humorous title, the fact is that cowboying in the winter can get serious in a hurry if the weather turns bad. The cattle in this painting are going through the last gate of the day. They'll be dropped in a trap where they'll get some hay to fuel up for the next day. Two more days on the trail and they're home for the winter. The old black cow in the back is bawling for her calf to keep moving-even though he's "pooped". He's not the only one! But there's hay for the cattle and home-made tortillas and frijoles for the crew and we're back at it tomorrow.”

A profound sense of history has long compelled Indian peoples of the Great Plains to chronicle their lives pictorially. Images inscribed on rock walls, narrative scenes on buffalo robes and tipis were personal history made public. In the later half of the nineteenth century Plains men adopted a new, smaller-scale medium of their pictorial histories: They began to draw on paper, using pens, pencils and watercolors. Explorers and traders, military men and Indian agents provided these new mediums. Indian artists appropriated the large, bound ledger book – a pedestrian item used for inventory by traders and military officers – as a new surface upon which to draw. While recording personal and tribal history, these drawings provided an artistic record of the profound changes occurring in indigenous life in the nineteenth century. The drawings executed by Cathy Smith recreate this Plains artistic style using original antique ledger books.

A profound sense of history has long compelled Indian peoples of the Great Plains to chronicle their lives pictorially. Images inscribed on rock walls, narrative scenes on buffalo robes, and tipis were personal history made public. In the later half of the nineteenth century Plains men adopted a new, smaller-scale medium of their pictorial histories: They began to draw on paper, using pens, pencils and watercolors. Explorers and traders, military men and Indian agents provided these new mediums. Indian artists appropriated the large, bound ledger book – a pedestrian item used for inventory by traders and military officers – as a new surface upon which to draw. While recording personal and tribal history, these drawings provided an artistic record of the profound changes occurring in indigenous life in the nineteenth century. The drawings executed by Cathy Smith recreate this Plains artistic style using original antique ledger books.

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