Incidentally, there is an oil painting by Joseph Henry Sharp of a Shoshone of that name, leaving many to speculate whether it is actually the same individual. The painting dates to a period when the young Rabbit Tail would have been a middle-aged man. Based on the comparison, I see some similarities, maybe even enough to make the two relatives, but I’m not convinced they’re one and the same.

Shoshone, 14×24 original pastel on suede. (click for larger view)

About the Shoshone

The Shoshone people were originally part of a very large extended family of nomadic peoples in what is today the American West. Their traditional territories centered in the arid Great Basin region, where they migrated seasonally hunting wild game and harvesting wild foods. Each of their main bands identified themselves after the staple food they followed.

Migratory bands of Shoshone were among the first Native Americans encountered by European fur traders and adventurers who ventured West in the early 1800s. Perhaps the most famous Shoshone individual of all is Sacagawea, the young woman who worked as a guide and translator for the Lewis & Clark expedition in 1804-1806.

His most popular works are the official commissioned portraits of Oklahoma legends such as Will Rogers and Jim Thorpe, part of the collection of the Oklahoma Capitol. One of the first pieces to earn him wide acclaim was his 1941 lithograph Freedom’s Warrior, modeled after a Comanche code talker, and later re-created as an oil painting.

Wilson’s exhibit page at the University of Arkansas, Celebrating Native America, says:

Images such as “Cherokee Matriarch,” “Katie ‘Osage’ Cheyenne,” and “Osage Orator” reveal Native Americans caught in the transition between native and white America. Wilson says this transition “was not a popular theme in anyone’s opinion” because “Americans wanted the Indian to remain a nostalgic keepsake, committed forever to chasing the buffalo across the boundless prairies.”

Wilson admits he was a bit baffled when people asked him “why I was making social comments.” He says simply, “I was just painting what my eyes saw.”

“Search for the Purebloods”

His most ambitious project was a catalog of portrait drawings of pure-blooded Native Americans. The resulting odyssey spanned fifty years of work and portrayals of over a hundred individuals, many of whom were the last individuals of their nation to have non-mixed heritage.

Wilson’s close attention to accuracy and solid, intuitive technique – combined with his good nature – earned him a strong rapport with his subjects, who willingly modeled for his portraits. In return, he promised never to sell their likenesses and instead donated the finished original collection to the Gilcrease Museum. The published edition, Search for the Native American Purebloods, was released by the University of Oklahoma Press in 1983.

Wilson was the subject of a public television documentary released in 2006 interviewing the artist and highlighting his major career achievements. (Watch an excerpt here.)

He has exhibited his work in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Museum, and received countless prestigious awards for his art, historical research, and educational & cultural contributions.

University of Arkansas: Charles Banks Wilson’s Celebrating Native America Exhibit

Charles Banks Wilson exhibit at the Will Rogers Museum

A: The most common answer is the Lenape reservation at Indian Mills, established by the New Jersey colonial assembly in 1758. However, the history of reservations in the colonies goes back much earlier, predating the Lenape reserve by at least a century.

Pamunkey-Mattaponi Reservation
(Virginia, 1658)

The first colonial record of an Indian reservation comes from the Virginia colony, where in 1658 – a hundred years before New Jersey’s Lenape reservation was formed – the Virginia General Assembly voted on a land reserve for the Pamunkey and Mattaponi tribes. These were among the most powerful members of the region’s Powhatan Confederacy (of Pocahontas fame).

A 1677 treaty between the English throne and the representatives of the Pamunkey and Mattaponi recognized their rights as autonomous nations. The reservation survived the transition of the American Revolution and has remained a continuously sovereign entity to this day.

Mashantucket Pequot Reservation
(Connecticut, 1666)

Another example of the earliest reservations originated just a few years later, further north in New England. There, in the aftermath of the devastating Pequot War, the Connecticut colonial assembly set aside a land reserve for the Mashantucket Pequot.

Like the Pamunkey-Mattaponi nation of Virginia, the Pequot reservation still exists today, but only narrowly escaped being dissolved on several occasions. King Philip’s War in 1680 pitted American colonists against an alliance of Wampanoag, Narraganset, and other Indian nations of New England, and nearly resulted in the extermination of several peoples, including the Pequot. In the ensuing centuries, the reservation area dwindled from 3,000 to 200 acres, and was nearly liquidated until the surviving Mashantucket band underwent a cultural revival in the 1970s.

Back to the Indian Mills Reservation
(New Jersey, 1758)

In the mid-1700s, the Lenni-Lenape people (also known as the Delaware) had lost access to most of their traditional grounds and petitioned for a land reserve on which to form a small autonomous community. Known as Brothertown, or Brotherton, it was organized largely under Christian missionary efforts and became an amalgam of members from various nations, including Pequots, Narragansets, and Mohegans, who associated on the basis of their common religious practices.

The reservation was formally dissolved in 1801, but by that time they had reorganized on land donated by the Oneida Nation of New York. Eventually they were forced to move again, resettling in Wisconsin along with much of the Oneida Nation during the Indian Removals of the 1830s.

The “Proto-Reservations” of New England

The case of the Brothertown Indians closely resembles the so-called “Praying Indian Towns” of Puritan Massachusetts that were a precursor to the first reservations. The first of these was founded in Natick in 1651, followed by many others over the next couple of decades.

The original intent of the Praying Towns was to give Indians who had converted to Christianity a separate environment where they could pursue a more European lifestyle apart from their Indian counterparts, while still being segregated from the colonists – and also to make these communities a buffer between the Indian territories and outlying white settlements.

This became a precarious position when hostilities broke out between the Indians and New Englanders in the later 1600s, and both sides mistrusted the loyalties of the “Praying Indian” converts. Because the praying towns were under Puritan administration, they essentially became internment camps when they were put in lock-down at the outbreak of King Philip’s War. Many of the Indian inhabitants were later deported to Deer Island, where the majority perished from exposure and starvation.

Sadly, these early incidents became a template for the later reservation dealings.

Reservation Policy

The term “Indian Reserve” was first put to official use in 1763, after the French and Indian War when England secured control of the bulk of American colonial territory. All the land between a Proclamation Line (drawn at the edge of the original 13 colonies) and the Spanish claims in the American West was designated an Indian Reserve, past which colonial settlement was not allowed.

This lasted only up to the time of the Revolution, when the new American government considered the proclamation null and settlement quickly expanded into the Mississippi and Ohio river valleys. This in turn led to a new wave of desperate and bitter conflict between settlers and various Indian alliances. In 1851 the Indian Appropriations Act set aside what remained of the reserve area in the lower Midwest, including what is today Oklahoma, as the location for a mass-scale relocation program for Indians from all over the country.

Gradually, all the federally allotted lands were either confiscated, opened to settlement, or drastically reduced in size. This era saw the rise of the notoriously corrupt “Indian agents” who brokered deals for the supply of the Plains reservations.

In 1887, the Dawes Act discontinued the practice of granting land parcels to Indian nations altogether. This ruling was partly reversed in the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, which reinstated many of the legal rights of Indian nations on reservation and changed the regulations regarding land privatization by restricting sale of land to or by individuals.

Many of the nations mentioned above who faced removals and tribal reorganization in the past, such as the Narraganset and Oneida, have consequently encountered legal quagmires involving the status of land held in trust.

Today, there are over 300 federally-recognized reservations in the United States.

My latest pastel is about halfway finished. Next I’ll be working on the armbands and hands, and finishing his leather vest. After that, some detail work and a few finishing touches and I’ll consider it done.

A quick trick I learned for imitating metallic objects, like the silver-studded border on his vest:
use a plain white colored pencil.

Colored pencils are terrible on suede, but they come in very handy for this one purpose. I use them wherever I need to indicate points of light or very small areas of brilliant white. It’s so much easier than trying to achieve this with chalks. The best part is that the combination of textures works very well – the pencil won’t smear on the suede, so I can cover it with chalk and it still shows up well. Besides, I like the effect.

More to come…

A painting or drawing, even if it is proportionally correct, looks flat and lifeless without shading. Chiaroscuro is an essential element, especially in portraits and still life, where it is not only functional – giving the shapes depth and definition – but a potentially explosive means of conveying drama and emotion.

The basis of chiaroscuro stems from the observation of the way light behaves on surfaces. By reproducing this behavior accurately on paper or canvas, you can create an image that is visually authentic to the eye of the viewer. We all have an intuitive grasp of how light interacts with the world around us – for instance, we all expect to see an area of brightness where light reflects off an object, or a patch of shadow where light is blocked. But light sometimes behaves in more subtle ways of which we aren’t always conscious. The artist can take advantage of these subtleties to create a convincing chiaroscuro effect.

Image: University of Evansville

Adding the dimension of color creates a whole new set of complexities in working with chiaroscuro. Because the level of intensity in the lighting changes the way we perceive a given hue, color chiaroscuro is more challenging for artists to work with than just black and white or gray-scale (more on light and color here). But black and white is the best way to learn chiaroscuro, since it illustrates how powerful a tool it is even in the absence of color. With a little study, it is a simple and effective application of the comparatively difficult science of optical physics.

Chiaroscuro first came to prominent use during the Italian Renaissance. An especially popular form known as tenebrism, pioneered by painters such as Caravaggio, used exaggerated lighting contrast for heightened effect. This was a favorite style of painters like Rembrandt and El Greco and heavily influenced later styles of painting in the 19th and 20th centuries.

It is interesting to note that many of the famed artists who made the strongest use of chiaroscuro were also great draftsmen, having first mastered the use of shading through drawings in mediums such as pencil or silverpoint.

Rembrandt, The Philosopher in Meditation

More on this subject:

Chiaroscuro in Painting: The Power of Light and Dark – illustrated article from Empty Easel

WebExhibits: Color Vision & Art – fully interactive, with lots more on the history of contrast & color in art

HINTS OF COLOR: Light & Color

Vultures can fly for six hours without flapping their wings.

The hummingbird is the only bird that can fly backwards.

A honeybee can reach speeds of 15 mph; a dragonfly can fly up to 36 mph.

There are more caribou in Alaska than there are people.

Male kangaroos are known as boomers and females are known as flyers. It is impossible for a kangaroo to walk backwards.

The starfish is the only animal that can turn its stomach inside-out.

Porcupines float in water.

Thanks to Snapple.com for these wildlife tidbits (yes, I’m a huge Snapple fan!) They print these “Real Facts” on the inside of the lids. See their website for more.

-Career

After graduating, Parker worked at a law office, but was refused admission to the bar because he was not a legal citizen (Indians were not granted US citizenship until 1924). Later he used his college training to obtain work as a civil engineer; his resume included major construction projects in the Great Lakes region and maintenance of the Erie Canal.

At the outbreak of the Civil War he enlisted in the Union army as an engineer, but was refused because of his race. He brought his case before a friend – future general U.S. Grant – who interceded on his behalf. Parker was later appointed Grant’s adjutant, served as his personal secretary under the rank of lieutenant colonel, and was eventually promoted to Brigadier General. He was the highest-ranking Native American in the Union Army.

It was Parker who wrote the final draft of the Confederate terms of surrender that were served at the Appomattox courthouse. (It is also interesting to note that on the opposing side, it was another Native American – Cherokee chief Stand Watie – who was the last Confederate general to surrender.) At the surrender at Appomattox, General Lee is said to have remarked, “I am glad to see one real American here” – to which Parker replied, “We are all Americans, sir.” It was this kind of open-minded and forward-thinking mentality that marked Parker’s entire career.

-Indian Affairs

As one of the ten chiefs of the Seneca nation (a post which he had held since 1851), Parker served as a cultural liaison between the US and his Seneca people. After the Civil War he continued to distinguish himself through his efforts as a diplomat and translator, becoming an attaché for the Office of Indian Affairs.

He was a powerful proponent of Indian’s rights in a time when few people were willing to speak on their behalf. He used his unique influence in politics to address the pressing issues arising with the white migration and settlement of the Plains. In his Report on Indian Affairs released in 1867, he opened with this bleak and forthright assessment:

“…as the hardy pioneer and adventurous miner advanced into the inhospitable regions occupied by the Indians, in search of the precious metals, they found no rights possessed by the Indians that they were bound to respect. The faith of treaties solemnly entered into were totally disregarded, and Indian territory wantonly violated. If any tribe remonstrated against the violation of their natural and treaty rights, members of the tribe were inhumanely shot down and the whole treated as mere dogs. Retaliation generally followed, and bloody Indian wars have been the consequence, costing many lives…”

In 1869 he was appointed Commissioner of Indian Affairs – the first Native American to hold the post (and the first Native American to hold any cabinet-level government office). Despite his efforts for reform, his advice went largely unheeded, and after two years he resigned from the post. He became increasingly disillusioned and even disgusted with American policies towards Native Americans.

In a letter to a friend, poet Harriet Maxwell Converse, he wrote, “I have little or no faith in the American Christian civilization methods of healing the Indians of this country. It has not been honest, pure or sincere. Black deception, damnable frauds and persistent oppression has been its characteristics, and its religion today is that the only good Indian is a dead one.”

He remarked, “It is very evident to my mind that all schemes, to apparently serve the Indians, are only plausible pleas put out to hoodwink the civilized world that everything possible has been done to save this race from total annihilation, and to wipe out the stain on the American name for its treatment of the aboriginal population.”

-Balancing two worlds

Throughout his career Parker faced castigation and criticism, not only from whites who responded with racism and prejudice, but from Indians who saw him as a traitor.

Parker’s diplomatic writings reflect the view that the only way for Indians to survive the onslaught of colonization was to adapt to white society; he advocated educational programs that would help acclimate the younger generation of Native Americans to Western civilization and equip them for modern lifestyles. This was in direct contradiction to those who feared the loss of traditional life ways, inherited knowledge, and Indian identity to the forces of assimilation. For this, many fellow Indians labeled him an accommodationist or a collaborator, one who was helping this destructive process along.

But his actions consistently reveal a deep and urgent desire to preserve the sanctity of traditional culture and sovereignty – not just of his own Seneca people but of Native Americans across the continent. His life and career in the world of white America never caused him to abandon his responsibilities as one of the chiefs of the Seneca, or to compromise his own Native identity.

Later in his life, disillusioned with politics and the business world, he increasingly questioned the merits of modern culture and all its trappings, and developed a renewed appreciation for his Indian heritage. As he grew older he seemed to long for the simplicity and fulfillment of the traditional Iroquois lifestyle. Whether or not he ever regretted the path he chose, he helped to blaze a trail for a new era in Native American history. He once said, “Spend no time mourning the failures of the past. Tears make a bitter throat. Look ahead, there is more work to do.”

Parker died peacefully in his sleep in 1895 and was buried in his Seneca homeland.

-Resources

Warrior in Two Worlds: Ely Parker
This documentary was put out by PBS several years ago. The soundtrack done by a fellow Iroquois, Joanne Shenandoah, was a huge success. This companion Flash website is an enjoyable and exhaustive reference (also comes in a non-Flash version).

We Are All Americans: Ely S. Parker–Two Worlds, One Man
by Jeffrey R Gudzune (Suite101.com)

Civil War Times: Lieutenant Colonel Horace C. Porter, Eyewitness to the Surrender at Appomattox; also Images of Peace at Appomattox

Ely Parker’s Report on Indian Affairs to the War Department (1867)

Letter to Harriet Maxwell Converse (1885) on Indian policy reform

1. Contrast
2. Gradient
3. Pattern

The primary goal of art is to draw the eye of the viewer in order to capture their attention, and then focus it on the detail and meaning of the piece. Since this principle is the same whatever medium or genre you work in, it’s good to be familiar with the fundamentals of aesthetics.

Generally, we are most attracted to things that display these elements:

► CONTRAST:
Contrast, next to color, is possibly the most striking feature in visual art. As a rule, the stronger the contrast, and the sharper the dividing edge, the higher the visual attraction.


Photo: interfacelift.com

► GRADIENT:
A smooth gradient from one color to another, or between tints (color > white) or tones (color > black) suggests light and depth. The sense of texture it creates is a powerful and appealing visual element.


Photo: US Fish & Wildlife Service – public domain

► PATTERN:
Patterns – including implied patterns, such as broken lines – create symmetry and direction for visual interest.

They’re found everywhere in nature (a good example is fractals, for instance) and our brains are hard-wired to recognize them – so unless you’re working in something completely abstract, it’s important to work some kind of pattern into every composition.


Photo: Wikimedia Commons

You can take advantage of these simple elements to make any artwork more compelling.

Click on the “Artist’s Tip Bag” tag below for more posts like this one.

Native American Public Telecommunications: Choctaw Code Talkers film

View the trailer here:

Although the Choctaw units of the first World War were the original “code talkers,” their work was highly covert and today is often overlooked in favor of the more famous Navajo code talkers of World War II. In reality dozens of Indian nations and other indigenous peoples participated in these secret language programs, contributing vastly to the Allied efforts in both wars.

Click here for more on the Code Talkers

Visit my Links page for more great Native documentaries like We Shall Remain and March Point.

My reference photo is an old black and white of a young Shoshone scout, taken in the 1870′s. More on that later…

They traditionally ranged through the American Southwest and northern Mexico. The surge of human population that accompanied white settlement and development of the region led to the decline of natural prey populations. When the wolves turned to livestock as a food source, they were essentially hunted to extinction. By 1950 none were known to exist in the wild.

Today about 300 exist in captivity. Attempts have been made recently to reintroduce them into the wild, but they remain a highly endangered species.

Lobos of the Southwest: The Official Site of the Mexican Gray Wolf http://www.mexicanwolves.org/
A beautiful website about a truly beautiful animal.

(Click for full-size)

This photo from Wikimedia Commons is in my opinion one of the best wolf pictures ever. The composition is perfect and I think it does a wonderful job of capturing the animal’s persona. Wolves are a favorite icon and images of them are a dime a dozen – but every now and then you run across a genuinely stunning shot like this one. Thanks to April King for this great photo.

Red

Orange

Yellow

Green

Blue

Purple

Copy the URL of any image viewed in your web browser to generate a color scheme (complete with hex codes, so no guesswork). Simple but effective – I can think of multiple ways this tool could come in very handy! Just off the top of my head:

1) Graphic design, web design/blogging – creating templates, identifying color codes, etc.

2) Art – use it to analyze colors in a reference picture, then select your paint colors. Or make choosing a mat color easy. Or use it with a color wheel to narrow down your color scheme.

Click the screenshot to see an example:

TRY IT OUT:
http://www.degraeve.com/color-palette/

This is an extensive and thorough news story by a writer for the Associated Press, detailing the history behind the recent passport scuffle for the Iroquois Nationals lacrosse team, and the sovereignty issues facing the Haudenosaunee. Highly recommended reading.

It seems everyone knows that the Mayan calendar is supposed to end in 2012. But the day it begins doesn’t get quite so much publicity.

Actually, both terms are something of a misnomer – the Mayan calendar doesn’t end, and doesn’t begin. The Western idea of time is quite linear compared with many of the world’s other systems of time keeping, which like the Mayan calendar move in a circle.

The Mayan calendar, or more properly the Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar, was used in various forms throughout Central America, including by the Aztec. Its unique counting system is based on 20 and 18, rather than 10 or 60, making it a challenge for many scholars to decipher.

WebExhibits: Calendars Through the Ages THE MAYAN CALENDAR

But even the term “calendar” itself is a little misleading, because what lay persons are actually referring to is a specific unit in this system known as the Long Count – a recurring period of approximately 5,125 years. It’s the current “great cycle” that ends in 2012 – not the calendar.

Each great cycle in the Long Count contains 13 baktuns, just as a year in our calendar contains 12 months. The winter solstice of 2012 will mark the end of this Long Count’s 13th baktun, and the beginning of the 14th. According to the Mayan calendar, that means we’ll be entering a new great cycle.

Why 5,125 years?

The Maya standardized the units of time for their calendar sometime in the 2nd century, when the early classical Mayan empire was at its height, in order to reflect the “revised history” of the empire, its creation, and its ruling dynasties. In other words, it was history in retrospect, because in the Mayan worldview, the cosmos revolved around their empire. They incorporated their vast knowledge of astronomy to bolster this worldview.

Many people have noticed that several ancient calendars begin close the same period – the Chinese, Hindu, and the biblical Hebrew calendar, among others. The end of the 3rd millennium BC also witnessed the start of construction on timekeeping monuments such as Stonehenge. This time in history marked a period immediately following dramatic environmental changes that turned the page on civilizations across the world. Apparently these changes were so significant that in some cases they marked that starting point of these early civilizations’ record of time.

The difference with the Mayan calendar, as with the Hindu, is that it does not begin with its current cycle; it actually records time much, much further back. And when one cycle ends it simply starts a new one, just as we would turn a century or a millennium. This misunderstanding is the partly the basis of the popular “Mayan doomsday hypothesis,” despite the fact that it doesn’t “end” in 2012 at all – it simply starts a new cycle of baktuns.

Apocalypse Soon? What the Maya calendar really tells us about 2012 and the end of time
by Anthony Aveni Archaeology.com

National Geographic: 2012 Countdown to Armageddon

Tulane University: The Sky is Not Falling

Wikipedia: 2012 Phenomenon

Even so, the 2012 Mayan doomsday prophecy is a popular topic these days, from old-fashioned diner gossip to New Age gurus to street prophets in the Bronx ranting about the end of the world.

Many people expect a planetary alignment within our solar system to work like some kind of cosmic combination lock, unleashing a wave of “higher energy” that will usher in a new era of existence (although, as historical and astronomical records can easily attest, planets line up all the time with no discernable effect on the earth — that is, outside of the hype generated by astrologers and wannabe mystics).

Yet others foresee in the Mayan calendar a dire prediction of a massive solar burst that will occur that fateful Christmas week, crippling our global infrastructure and invoking worldwide chaos.

But thinking that the start of a new cycle in the ancient Mayan calendar on December 21, 2012 means the end of our world is about as logical as a modern person dreading the Ides of March because the Roman Empire fell.

NatGeo Special Feature: Maya Rise and Fall
Saga of a civilization in three parts: The rise, the monumental splendor, and the collapse.

Photo from National Geographic.