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Howling Wolf: an Autobiography of a Plains Warrior-Artist by Joyce M

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Howling Wolf: an Autobiography of a Plains Warrior-Artist by Joyce M ALLEN MEMORIAL ART MUSEUM BULLETIN VOLUME XLVI, NUMBER 1, 1992 Contents Acknowledgments 3 Howling Wolf: An Autobiography of a Plains Warrior-Artist by Joyce M. Szabo 4 Museum Staff and Publications inside back cover Publishedtwice ayearby theAllen Memorial ArtMuseum. Oberlin College, Oberlin. Ohio. $15-00 ayear, this issue $7SO; mailed freeto members of the Friends of Art. Back issues available from theMuseum. Indexedin the Art Index and abstracted by BHA (Bibliography of the History of Art) and ARTbibliographies. Reproducedon University Microfilms. Ann Arbor. Michigan. Printed by Austin Printing Company. Akron. Ohio, with vegetable-based inks on recycled paper. COVER: Detail from page two of Oberlin's Howling Wolf Ledger, "Howling Wolf & Feathered Bear Are Courting Two Girls at the Spring Where They Were Getting Water." Ink, pencil, watercolor, and crayon on paper, 8 x 12 >/4 inches. Allen Memorial Art Musuem. Oberlin College. Gift of Mrs. Jacob D. Dox, 04.1180. Cover photograph by John Seyfried (Copyright© Oberlin College. 1992) ISSN: 0002-5739 This project is partly supported by funds from the Ohio Arts Council. Ohio Arts Council ¥• 2- Acknowledgments In 1904, Helen Finney Cox presented Oberlin College with an album of fifty- seven drawings by a Plains Indian artist. Thus the drawings that are the subject of '^: this issue of the Bi illetin came to Oberlin thirteen years before the existence of the Allen Memorial Art Museum itself. Al­ though included in a small exhibition of Native American art in 1978, they re­ mained largely unnoticed until Joyce M. Szabo published an article in the winter 1984 issue of Art fournal on Howling Wolf, a preeminent Southern Cheyenne warrior-artist, citing our drawings as important early examples of his work. Now assistant professor of art history at the University of New Mexico and the leading authority on Howling Wolf, Szabo was persuaded to examine in detail the ledger-book drawings that are the subject of the current exhibition. As guest curator, she has been generous with her time, talents, and research, and she been a most congenial colleague. It is with particular pleasure that I acknowledge the early interest and col­ laboration of Oberlin anthropologist Edith Swan in the realization of this exhibition. From the moment she saw the works she shared my commitment to bring the drawings to the attention of a wider audience, and she has rede­ signed her course on Native American literature to make use of this rare mate­ rial. William J. Chiego, former director of the Allen, and Ralph T. Coe also provided early encouragement for the project. Our sincere thanks are extended to Mark Lansburgh of Santa Fe for his generous loan of comparative drawings from his private collection. The Joslyn Art Museum has been extraordinarily cooperative in making available to us a sheet dating from Howling Wolfs reser­ vation period, for which we are most grateful. The Ohio Arts Council provided fund­ ing that enabled the complete treatment and rehousing of the drawings;—mea­ sures that will ensure their future as well as allow their current exhibition. Anne F. Moore Director Howling Wolf: An Autobiography of a Plains Warrior-Artist Nineteenth-century Plains artists who ings are preeminent examples of an art exploits as the main source of imagery. created vivid images of warriors pursu­ form created by Native American artists They do, however, offer significant in­ ing enemies in the heat of battle left on the Plains during the second half of sights into the changing world of Plains invaluable views of their world. As the nineteenth century. These draw­ art through both the variation in subject biographical and often autobiographi­ ings, referred to as ledger drawings matter and the wide-ranging stylistic cal accounts, these drawings expand the because accountants' ledgers were fre­ experimentation that fill the pages. present understanding of the past and quently used as sources of paper, devel­ Howling Wolf (1849-1927), the South­ the Plains warrior's role in that history. oped from a long history of representa­ ern Cheyenne warrior who created these As drawings and paintings, these images tional painting on buffalo hides. Ledger exceptional drawings probably between speak as do any works of art about the drawings were originally heraldic im­ the second half of 1874 and the first third creativity of the people who made them ages testifying to the artist's or illustrated of 1875, was a singularly important and the aesthetic decisions that prompted protagonist's battle encounters and suc­ figure in the history of nineteenth-cen­ them. Small drawing pages allow con­ cesses in horse raids. During the late tury Plains art (fig. 1). He is the only temporary audiences to see a segment nineteenth century, the subject matter of Plains artist known to have created of time as no other historic sources have ledger art gradually shifted to include ledger images in all three phases of that made possible. greater emphasis on genre scenes, espe­ art form: before the reservation era; Fifty-seven drawings of Southern cially courting images of young men during his prison exile at Fort Marion in Cheyenne origin in the collection of the pursuing women. The Oberlin illustra­ Saint Augustine, Florida; and following Allen Memorial Art Museum are vital tions date from the last decades of Plains his return to the reservation. His draw­ documents of both Plains history and an life prior to the reservation era, and they ings tell viewers much about Southern individual artist's career. Oberlin's draw­ reflect the older importance of battle Cheyenne life and history. This is a history made alive and vivid, narrated in visual fashion from a point of view infrequently represented in the existing written historical record. The images are, as well, the work of a skilled artist who created them as any self-conscious artist would—with determined atten­ tion to subject and composition, clarity of message, and constant investigation of new representational possibilities. These drawings belie anthropological views of individual artists as unimpor­ tant, or nonexistent, components of a traditional Plains whole. Such views present an unchanging Plains-art aes­ thetic, frozen in time without the effec­ tive contributions of individual artistic personalities.1 Assessments of Plains art, particularly those of representational painting, frequently attribute alterations in style or pronounced changes in art forms solely to Euro-American influ­ ence, as if Plains artists never explored new artistic directions on their own. The Oberlin drawings by Howling Wolf are the largest-known single body of his work, and they offer new insights into how he developed as an artist—adjust­ ing scenes, exploring landscape, and Figure 1. Eagle Head, left, and Howling Wolf, right, at Fort Marion in Saint Augustine, Florida, c. 1877. Photograph courtesy of the Saint Augustine Historical Society. 5- J.D. Cox served as a trustee of Oberlin College from 1875 to 1888 and again from 1889 to 1900. Following his retire­ ment in 1897, the Coxes returned to live inOlierlin. Four years after her husband's death in 1900, Helen Finney Cox gave the drawing book to the college. The drawing book originally con­ tained 120 commercially stamped num­ bered pages, each eight by twelve and one-quarter inches. A variety of colored pencils, inks, and watercolors appear on the lined ledger pages. At some un­ known date, the individual drawings were separated from their binding. Currently fifty-six pages filled with draw­ ings and one incomplete sketch are in the collection of the Allen Memorial Art Museum. The artist generally used only Figure 2. Helen Finney Cox. Photograph Figure 3- Jacob Dolson Cox. Photograph one face of each drawing page; it is the courtesy of the Oberlin College Archives. courtesy of the Oberlin College Archives. even-numbered page that most often bears the illustration. The few instances altering the previous dimensions of led­ became president of the Toledo. Wabash, in which he began a drawing on the ger art. They also provide a view of and Western Railroad. After lieing elected reverse of an already completed page Plains representational art in general as to Congress in 1876, Cox was appointed resulted in signs of ink bleeding through one that did not have to be directed from dean of the Cincinnati Law School in from one side to the other. Presumably, outside to change. As part of their 1880, a post he held until 1896, when he this effect limited his use of drawing cultural position as warriors and hunt­ was named president of Cincinnati Uni­ pages to one face only. ers, artists such as Howling Wolf con­ versity.2 stantly investigated the potential of art In 1897, the Coxes' youngest daugh­ Vivid images of Plains warriors bat­ forms like these drawings, but they also ter, Charlotte Hope Cox, married the son tling their enemies—both Anglo sol­ drew and experimented because they of another national military figure, John diers and other tribal foes—fill the Oberlin were concerned with their perfonuance Pope.3 Briefly the commander of the ledger pages. Many of the drawings as artists. The two roles—warrior and Anny of Virginia during the Civil War, include handwritten captions that iden­ artist—were not separate but rather were John Pope became commander of the tify various participants or describe the interwoven into the whole of Plains life. Department of the Missouri in 1866. A activities represented.6 Such handwrit­ major portion of that department's focus ten captions were frequently added by throughout the late 1860s and the 1870s The History of the was Indian Territory, the area that in­ Howling Wolf Ledger cluded present-day Oklahoma. General Pope remained in his western command Helen Finney Cox, an 1846 graduate of position until 1883.4 At some point Oberlin College and daughter of Oberlin's during that command on the Central second president, Charles Grandison Plains, Pope acquired the ledger draw­ Finney, presented the fifty-seven ledger ings now in the Allen Memorial Art drawings to the college in 1904 (fig.
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