One of the oldest educational institutions in Oklahoma, Bacone College—formerly known as Indian University—was founded in 1880 by Almon C. Bacone (1830–1896). Indian University was originally intended to assimilate and Christianize[1] what were called the Five Civilized Tribes: members of the Cherokee Nation, Muscogee Nation, Choctaw Nation, Seminole Nation, and Chickasaw Nation. When Bacone arrived in Indian Territory[2] in 1878, nearly three decades prior to Oklahoma’s 1907 statehood, he was there to direct the Cherokee Male Seminary. However, in 1881 Bacone received 160 acres from the Muscogee Nation—land intended as the site of Bacone’s proposed Indian University. The university changed its name to Bacone College in the early twentieth century. At that time, it was the only institution of higher learning to admit Indigenous students in the state of Oklahoma[3] until desegregation. It was also the first university to offer degrees in the arts to Indigenous students.

Many of the Indigenous artists in Gilcrease Museum’s collection were graduates of the school, or were influenced by artists who attended the school. Bacone created an art department, and the instructors drew upon Flatstyle techniques,[4] sometimes referred to as Bacone style, which in large part were deeply informed by Plains traditions and techniques for creating pictorial and figurative narrative-based artworks. During the 1920s, shortly after the rise to fame of the Kiowa Six,[5] a wave of Indigenous artmaking swept the territory. Bacone College quickly became a confluence of Indigenous cultural and artistic practice, and this would greatly impact the canon of Indigenous art.

Today, Bacone College remains a key stakeholder in the past, present, and future of Indigenous art. Some of the most well-known Bacone alumni in Gilcrease’s collection include W. Richard West (Cheyenne, Arapaho), Woodrow Wilson Crumbo (Muscogee, Citizen Band Potawatomi), Acee Blue Eagle (Muscogee, Pawnee), Alfred Momaday (Kiowa [Cáuigù]), Antowine Warrior (Sac & Fox), C. Terry Saul (Chickasaw, Choctaw), Calvin Larvie (Lower Brule Sioux Tribe), Enoch Kelly Haney (Muscogee, Seminole), Fred Beaver (Muskogee, Seminole), Joan Hill (Cherokee, Muscogee), Jerome Tiger (Muscogee, Seminole), and Marian Terasaz (Comanche).

—Jordan Poorman Cocker, Henry Luce Foundation Curatorial Scholar for Indigenous Painting Collection Research, 2022

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[1] Neuman, Indian Play, 29–30.

[2] For a contemporary map of the area, see Gray’s Atlas Map of Indian Territory (3926.744) by G.W. & C.B. Colton and Company, 1872. 

[3] Neuman, Indian Play, 3–5.

[4] Flatstyle was developed by the Kiowa Six, an early twentieth-century artist collective under the tutelage of Professor Oscar Jacobson at the University of Oklahoma. The collective birthed an Indigenous art movement known as the Kiowa Style of painting, also called Flatstyle and Oklahoma Style, which is recognized by its lack of figural shading, and backgrounds that have a shallow or indistinguishable depth of field. The Kiowa Six artists were Spencer Asah, James Auchiah, Jack Hokeah, Stephen Mopope, Lois Smokey, and Monroe Tsatoke.

[5] You can find out more in The Kiowa Six: Painting Oral Histories.