Читать книгу The Book of Duels - Michael Garriga - Страница 29

Bloody Hands, 16 & 54,

Muskogee Artist & Alleged Witness to the Duel

This controversial piece of ledger art was uncovered by Professor Scott Gage in an antique store outside St. Augustine, Florida. It is a fine specimen; however, its authenticity is disputed and has come under some level of scrutiny. The artist purportedly witnessed this event when he was a teenager and a participant in the Second Seminole War. Some forty years after the event, according to Dr. Gage, Bloody Hands created this art piece while serving in a US government internment camp for Aborigines. Interestingly, he is one of the few ledger artists who are not of Plains Indian origin. In support of the artwork’s integrity, Dr. Gage argues that, after the Second Seminole War, many Florida peoples were forcibly relocated to the Oklahoma Territory where, perhaps, Bloody Hands fell in with Sitting Bull and participated in the hit-and-run attacks on US forts in the upper Missouri area during the 1860s. In support of this claim, Dr. Gage points to the fact that Bloody Hands was incarcerated in Fort Yates, where his name appears on various government documents. Later, he was shipped back to Florida and imprisoned in Fort Marion, where he purportedly composed this picture and, later, in 1898, died of pneumonia, accompanied by what doctors at the time described as dementia praecox or, by today’s nomenclature, acute schizophrenia.