The wildest accounting of the Indian wars for Dakota Territory is in the art Donald Montileaux draws on ledger paper. On the pages of cracked old leather volumes that once recorded sales of seed and plows to homesteaders, Montileaux now draws ponies that bound off into space, carrying Lakota warriors on journeys that have nothing to do with dollars and cents.

“Ledger art is a traditional form of drawing,” says Montileaux, a Rapid City-based artist who has been drawing images on aged paper for more than 20 years. “The only thing that makes it ledger is it’s done on ledger and accounting books.”


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