In 1875 Buffalo Meat, a young Southern Cheyenne man, was arrested and transferred to Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Florida, where he was imprisoned alongside roughly 40 Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, Kiowa, and other Native Americans who had been detained following altercations with army soldiers in Oklahoma Territory. At the fort, Buffalo Meat and his fellow prisoners were encouraged to make autobiographical drawings on sheets of repurposed ledger paper. This experimental project was initiated by prison commander Captain Richard Henry Pratt, an early proponent of off-reservation boarding schools, a coercive educational system that attempted to assimilate Indigenous peoples into White society and culture.

Buffalo Meat and his companions produced scores of drawings at Fort Marion, many of which they sold to curious visitors. Although created in repressive conditions, ledger drawings afforded a space for imprisoned men to portray scenes that asserted their status within their own communities—a form of cultural self-preservation that resisted Pratt’s assimilationist aims.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023).