Indigenous artworks portraying ceremony

Ceremonial life continues to be an integral component of Indigenous lifeways. While many sacred or spiritual activities are specific to their communities, these artists depict moments of songs, dances, and prayers for a wider audience. A few paintings meditate on quieter aspects of ceremonial life, including participants gathering for a shared meal and a dancer cleansing his face with medicinal water.

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How the Boy Medicine Came to the Kiowas

How the Boy Medicine Came to the Kiowas by Jimalee Chitwood Burton references the cosmological frameworks of the Kiowa (Cáuigù)¹ worldview, and tells the story of Záidètàlyì (Sun Boy Medicine). For her tapestry-like narrative, Burton appropriates a combination of symbols (pictorial and figurative) from various Great Plains and Southwest Indigenous nations, transposing them onto canvas in an amalgamation of storytelling sequences. The tale begins in the center of the painting, where a beautiful woman climbs a tree. She is following the Sun’s son, who is disguised as a porcupine. In the story, the tree continues to grow as the woman climbs up, and it gets so tall that it transports her to the upper world. The painting is separated into distinct sections containing four composite images representing different episodes in the Záidètàlyì story. Burton’s depiction represents one of several known variations that have been passed from one generation to the next, primarily through oral histories.

Collision of Heavenly Structures

Collision of Heavenly Structures explores the space between Osage concepts of cosmology and elements of Western religion. The abstract Neo-Expressionist painting combines symbolism and a metaphoric diagram of the Osage universe created by Ha pa shu tsi (Redcorn), and references Osage ethnographic records compiled by anthropologist James O. Dorsey.¹ The painting is situated within the nuanced dichotomy of the two-worlds concept, where Indigenous and colonial realities collide.

The Cactus Men

The Cactus Men by Ben Adair Shoemaker (Quapaw, Shawnee, Cherokee) references the peyote cactus (Lophophora williamsii), one of many cacti indigenous to the southern Plains and southwestern regions of North America.¹ The flowering cactus and other plant species have been utilized for their medicinal properties by various Indigenous American nations for thousands of years. The peyote cactus is known for yellowish green shoots shaped like flattened spheres, with rounded or hump-like bumps along the surface.

Touched by the Spirit

Kiowa (Cáuigù)¹ and Comanche artist Kevin Connywerdy painted his memory-based portrait Touched by the Spirit from his life experience as a member of the Native American Church. The work was commissioned by former Gilcrease curator Dr. Daniel C. Swan for an exhibition titled Symbols of Faith and Belief: The Art of the Native American Church (1999).

Ribbon Dance

The removal of Indigenous people to Indian Territory in the nineteenth century posed myriad challenges for the continuation of Native cultures, because the cultivation and practice of Indigenous lifeways, languages, and religious ceremonies were banned. Ribbon Dance, a diptych by Ruthe Blalock Jones (Delaware, Shawnee, Peoria), is a joyful tribute to cultural continuity and embodied resilience, and the vibrant colors contribute to the sense of a celebration of ceremonial dance.

Blalock Jones’s scene, which honors the unconstrained practice of Indigenous ceremonies, emerges within a historical and intergenerational tradition of Indigenous innovation in the visual arts. Electric-green trees billow behind the dancers engaged in the Ribbon Dance, with the middle ground divided by oscillating bands of green and orange. The painting highlights a collective female experience, and the unspoken cultural elements that each Ribbon Dancer brings with her to the moment through movement.

—Jordan Poorman Cocker, Henry Luce Foundation Curatorial Scholar for Indigenous Painting Collection Research, 2021

Prayer to the Sun

Sculptor, muralist, and painter Parker Boyiddle Jr. was educated by artists such as Allan C. Houser (1914–1944) and Fritz Scholder (1937–2005) at the Institute of American Indian Arts (Santa Fe, New Mexico). He is recognized for his use of symbolism to portray oral histories and lore. In this work, a Kiowa man offers a prayer to the sun. Boyiddle’s two-dimensional paintings frequently reference three-dimensional sculptural techniques, seen here in the subject’s dynamic pose as well as the transitions between light and shadow, especially in the folds of the cloak. This narrative painting underlines the relationships between active prayer, horse traditions, and the American bison within Indigenous Plains cultures.

Harvest Celebration of the First Fruits

Here, Joan Hill’s use of color-blocking and dry-brush techniques echoes the Flatstyle depictions of ceremony by early twentieth-century Indigenous Oklahoma artists. The composition of Harvest Celebration of the First Fruits is like a single frame from a storyboard sequence, and Hill has included a wealth of detail that offers viewers a glimpse into this celebration.

Half Moon Night and Remembrance

Yatika Fields created Half Moon Night and Remembrance for Recall/Respond (2019), a collaborative exhibition by Gilcrease Museum and Tulsa Artist Fellowship. The show featured works by contemporary artists—present and past fellows—that responded to Gilcrease’s collections of the art, history, and culture of greater North America.

Contest Dance

Contest Dance depicts two Kiowa men in mid-motion, performing what is sometimes referred to as the War Dance. (The War Dance in its contemporary form is a type of contest dance.) The dancers wear ornate headdresses made from deer-tail hair or porcupine hair adorned with two eagle feathers, jewel-toned breechcloths, and bustles made of eagle wings. Over their shoulders are loom-worked beaded strips, which are fastened at the belt. Both wear beaded armbands tied at the biceps and beaded cuffs tied at the wrist, as well as silver-bell garters tied at the knees and around the ankles. Groups, and occasionally two people (as seen here), perform many types of contest dances today, always with musical accompaniment. Both men and women can compete, although the dancers are primarily men. Powwows with contest dances take place annually during the spring, summer, and fall.

Medicine Man with Patient

Allan Bushyhead’s Medicine Man with Patient is in the Flatstyle, recognizable by its flattened perspective and lack of shading. The tempera painting portrays an interior view of a home, with a backdrop composed of a stretched and decorated panel separated into five sections. A Civil War cavalry saber in a leather sheath hangs on the right; below, a brightly colored parfleche satchel is propped on the floor. On the left hangs a shield of painted rawhide adorned with red trade-cloth wool and five eagle feathers. The patient lies comfortably on the floor, receiving healing treatment from the medicine man.

Noon Meal after Peyote Meeting

The scene in Noon Meal after Peyote Meeting, a watercolor by Frank Knickerbocker (Otoe-Missouria), derives from the artist’s experiences with the Native American Church (NAC). Following a peyote meeting, men and women sit in a semicircle to dine under a brush-arbor shade. The abundant meal is served by the elderly woman wearing the pale blue dress. The others—with each figure defined by vibrant, painterly strokes—are formally dressed in striped wool blankets and collared shirts, and some wear cowboy hats. A cooking fire on the right is surrounded by pots and utensils used to prepare the meal. Only hours before, the peyote meeting took place in the tipi, now with its poles still erect but uncovered. A drying rack full of meat has been prepared for meeting attendees, so that no one will leave empty-handed. Beyond the gathering, a thin line of deep green spans the horizon and fades into the distance.

Song of Victory

Cornstalk Match

Franklin Gritts’s tempera painting Cornstalk Match portrays four Indigenous men shooting arrows fashioned from cornstalks, a game won by the person who shoots the farthest and the most accurately. The Flatstyle¹ background is void except for a sparse ground line registered by green patches of grass. Each of the competitors is equipped with a Plains-style longbow made of wood from the Osage orange tree. Skill-based Indigenous games such as lacrosse, stickball, double ball, lance toss, and canoe races were created for myriad social and cultural purposes including diplomacy, as events connected to ceremonial celebrations, and for well-being and health, in addition to simply lifting the spirits of the people in the community.

Man and Pipe

George Kishketon was a survivor of the Carlisle Indian School, an infamous colonial residential institution in Pennsylvania that opened in 1879. Kishketon attended Carlisle between 1898 and 1903, and he lived through the brutality of the federally mandated institution, which had been intentionally designed by a colonial militarized regime to “kill the Indian and save the man.”¹ Very little information was recorded about this artist, perhaps due to the anti-Indigenous political climate throughout the U.S. during Kishketon’s lifetime, primarily stemming from the desire of federal and state governments to possess the lands of Native people.

Preparation for the Ribbon Dance

The prolific painter Solomon McCombs (Muscogee) graduated from Bacone College (Muskogee, Oklahoma), where he studied Indigenous art under the direction of Acee Blue Eagle. McCombs’s casein on paper Preparation for the Ribbon Dance centers on a Muscogee woman who is attended by two matriarchs as they prepare for a Muscogee ceremony.

Stomp Dancer Taking Medicine

“An important part of the Stomp Dance is the taking of medicine for both physical and spiritual benefits.”—Peggy Tiger, wife of Jerome Tiger

Moon of Growing

Benjamin Harjo Jr. (Seminole, Absentee Shawnee) attended the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) and went on to graduate from Oklahoma State University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1974. While at IAIA, Harjo was under the direction of influential Indigenous artists such as Allan C. Houser (1914–1944), as well as Fritz Scholder (1937–2005) and his mentor Seymour Tubis (1919–1993). Harjo’s art practice focuses on printmaking, painting, and sculpture, and this gouache painting resembles the artist’s woodblock prints. The vibrant, color-field background complements the dark and light greens of the subject’s Seminole garments.

Keeper of the Fire

“When some of the Southeastern Indians were removed into Oklahoma, they would bring an ember from the ceremonial fire, keep it alive, and bring it into the ceremonial ground that they established here. . . You have someone that keeps the fire and makes sure that it never goes out. Each time a ceremony is performed, they take an ember and relight the fire.”
—Benjamin Harjo Jr., July 27, 2021

Dancer

This painting depicts a man dancing in the War Dance or Fancy Dance style, which has origins in the Southern Plains Nations and was popularized by twentieth-century Powwow or intertribal social dance gatherings. His white deer-tail-hair or porcupine-hair headdress is adorned with a green-tufted eagle feather. He has a green fabric headband and scarf, and wears two large eagle-feather bustles, also green-tufted, on his shoulders and waist. The dancer’s wrists and forearms are covered by hide cuffs, and he carries a carved-wood mirror and a flute. He wears a beaded belt and red breechcloth; a pair of bells tied to both legs below the knee; and sheepskin hides around his calves.

The lack of shading and background in this painting exemplifies the Flatstyle technique, and Osage artist Jim Lacy Red Corn’s use of color-blocking emphasizes the subject.

—Jordan Poorman Cocker, Henry Luce Foundation Curatorial Scholar for Indigenous Painting Collection Research, 2021

This text was developed from an interview with Talee Redcorn, Jim Red Corn’s son, by Jordan Poorman Cocker, January 19, 2021

Dancer Wearing Otter Cap

In this painting, an Osage man performs in the Straight Dance style that is prominently tied to the I’n-Lon-Schka, an Osage ceremonial dance. His Osage otter cap, adorned with an eagle feather, is reserved for men of distinction. He also wears a scarf, a cloth shirt, and a wool vest decorated with beadwork along the waist seams. There are two medicine ties on the back of his bandoliers. Around both biceps are German-silver armbands decorated with ribbons. The dancer’s black wool leggings and breechcloth feature white and blue ribbonwork along the outside seams. Two sets of bells and yellow garters are tied below his knees at the top of the calf. His Osage-cut moccasins are identifiable by their elongated side flaps. The contours and shapes of the dancer’s body and clothing are emphasized in this Flatstyle painting.

In his left hand, the dancer holds a flat fan of eagle feathers. In addition to painting, Osage artist Jim Lacy Red Corn also made fans such as these.

—Jordan Poorman Cocker, Henry Luce Foundation Curatorial Scholar for Indigenous Painting Collection Research, 2021

This text was developed from an interview with Talee Redcorn, Jim Red Corn’s son, by Jordan Poorman Cocker, January 19, 2021

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