Crafting an Indigenous Nation: Kiowa Expressive Culture in the Progressive Era by Jenny Tone-Pah-Hote

Abstract

Reviewed by: Crafting an Indigenous Nation: Kiowa Expressive Culture in the Progressive Era by Jenny Tone-Pah-Hote Benjamin R. Kracht Jenny Tone-Pah-Hote, Crafting an Indigenous Nation: Kiowa Expressive Culture in the Progressive Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018. 142 pp. $29.95 (paper). After 1875, Kiowas in southwestern Oklahoma faced rapid cultural change precipitated by the collapse of the Plains horse and buffalo culture; the influx of Indian Office personnel and missionaries who imposed assimilationist policies; the nefarious Jerome Commission and forced allotment; and attacks on dancing, ceremonies, and Native healers. In Crafting an Indigenous Nation, Jenny Tone-Pah-Hote examines her people's expressive culture—art, music, dance, and performance—to demonstrate how Kiowas navigated and shaped individual, intratribal, and intertribal identities during the Progressive Era and the early twentieth century. In the intertribal arena of fairs, powwows, and expositions, Kiowas formed a distinctive tribal identity observable in war dancing, beadwork, "Indian flat style" paintings, silverwork, and other mediums. Utilizing archival materials, anthropological field notes, and stories about her grandparents, Tone-Pah-Hote describes Kiowa survival and assertion of tribal identity during this challenging era. Images of people and art appropriately frame the introduction and subsequent chapters, setting the tone for discussing Kiowa expressive culture. For instance, chapter one begins with an image that depicts a man and woman on horseback leading a pack horse; both carry weapons because women often accompanied men on war expeditions (16). The presence of Western-style saddles, German silver bridles, trade cloth, and guns elucidates the melding of Western and traditional accoutrements in mid-nineteenth century Plains societies. Kiowa art production was gendered in that men painted scenes of warfare, a marker of male rank and status, whereas women tanned hides and painted parfleche bags. This particular ledger drawing was made between 1875 and 1877 when twenty-six Kiowa men—some were captives—served prison terms in Fort Marion, Florida, at the conclusion of the Southern Plains wars that ended the horse and buffalo [End Page 193] culture. While imprisoned, the men performed war dances and sold art to tourists visiting St. Augustine, in part because they were "objects of display and assimilation" (17) but also to make money. Upon their release in 1878, most of the prisoners returned to a rapidly changing homeland where the formerly nomadic Kiowas were settling in communities. Within two decades, individuals were selecting 160-acre allotments according to provisions of the 1892 Jerome Agreement that opened their reservation for homesteading. Bison hunting, raiding, and trading were replaced by a mixed economy of subsistence farming, foraging, leasing, and wage labor. Despite Indian Office harassment and threats of jail sentences for those participating in tribal dances and festivities, some men were drawn to Wild West shows, fairs, and expositions where they could make money by war dancing. By the 1920s, older war dances transformed into newer forms, including the faster-paced fancy dancer style performed by men donning feathered dance bustles, porcupine hair roaches, beaded clothing and moccasins, and bells attached to their legs that sounded with their dance moves. Perhaps the most popular fancy dancers in the emergent intertribal powwow arena were the male members of the Kiowa Six—Stephen Mopope, Monroe Tsatoke, Jack Hokeah, Spencer Asah, and James Auchiah—noted artists who, along with Lois Smoky, studied art at the University of Oklahoma, where they perfected "Indian flat style" painting. Theirs was an "autobiographical style learned from their relatives" (64), although instead of combat scenes, they painted war dancers at powwows and worshipers at peyote, or tipi, meetings. Peyotism, along with Christianity, arrived in Kiowa country towards the end of the nineteenth century and helped fill the void left by the death of the tribal Sun Dance. After its official charter in 1918 as the Native American Church, the peyote religion spread throughout Oklahoma and beyond. Adherents of the new religion attended all-night tipi meetings, ingested peyote buttons, and sang fast-paced songs accompanied by a water drum and rattle; their songs and prayers traveled skyward, assisted by Water Bird, the intermediary between humans and spirits. By the 1920s, peyote attire and jewelry, including Water Bird and Morning Star motifs...