One Daughter of the Earth
In 1985 what Ahone Harjo considers her most important work, One Daughter of the Earth, was commissioned by the Oklahoma Historical Society, to be one
of the pair of monumental paintings--seven feet high—that framed the entrance of
the gallery of the Oklahoma Indian collection, in the Oklahoma State Museum. While it is a
painting, it is made up of symbols important to the Kiowa tribe or the
important Ahtone family.
In
this painting Ahtone Harjo appropriates the style of modern Euro-American art—associated with
dislocation, fragmentation, discontinuity, and pessimism—to represent the core
of continuity, pride, and tribal unity that has continued and will persist,
despite the dislocation and fragmentation the Kiowa people have endured as a
result of Euro-American colonization and attempted genocide. In this tribal and family autoethnography,
she used pictographic symbols, recognizable to many tribal members,
particularly those living in the Anadarko area, and organized her painting, not
by following a linear chronology (associated in Euro-American thought with
“progress”), but through a pattern of images, as in a winter count, that
represent important historical events, movements, places, and symbols in the
historic memory of the Kiowa people and the last three generations of the
important Ahtone family as they look forward to a hopeful future. On the one hand, the painting looks like an uncentered,
multi-layered montage of images, which leads the eye in many directions at
once. On the other hand, her plan shows
that it was carefully organized. What
follows is based on information provided by the artist. One Daughter of
the Earth is centered on and organized by
the Kiowa migration route.
The Kiowa
migration route, beginning in the Yellowstone River Valley, is represented in
Ahtone Harjo’s One Daughter of the Earth with an encircled cross. The
migration tracks are symbolized by triangular shapes leading across Colorado
and Kansas into Texas, and then back to Oklahoma territory.
Attached to the migration route on the left
is a montage of overlapping Kiowa, Oklahoma, and American flags. Though the Kiowa flag is foremost, they all
are important to Kiowa culture. Indeed,
the American flag also symbolizes Ahtone Harjo’s selection as Miss Indian
America in 1966. For Ahtone Harjo—who
feels fortunate to be among the few remaining tribal people who are “full
degree Kiowa”—the migration route is of historical importance for both her
tribe and her family. The montage of
flags and the migration route, which is figured upon a green form, seems to
complete the shape of the United States.
And this central
image, with its
range of multivalent symbols, conveys the
complicated transcultural identities of the Kiowa tribe and the Ahtone family.
While the migration route, figured upon its complex
ground, provides a structural center to One Daughter of the Earth, the
artist’s eponymous daughter, Tahnee, provides a midpoint in its narrative. This narrative, associated with well-known
tribal symbols, consists of references to the generations of Ahtone family,
their place in Kiowa history and their perpetuation into the future.
The Kiowa shield, in the left-hand corner of One
Daughter of the Earth, is painted in a representative style, with
traditionally divided color space, red and blue. The four horses symbolize both the Kiowa
identity as a powerful horse culture and Tahnee’s fractions of Indian blood,
which add up to 4/4ths. Tahnee is 1/2
Kiowa, 3/16 Seminole, and 5/16 Creek (Muskogee). Balancing the shield on the right is a bead
design of a blunt two-pointed arrow, which represents the Kiowa name of Ahtone
Harjo’s maternal great-grandmother, “Killed with a Blunt Arrow,” which was
given to Ahtone Harjo in a naming ceremony in 1964. Both her maternal and paternal
great-grandmothers were beaders, as was her mother, Evelyn Tahome Ahtone, who
also worked with skins.
Between the
shield and the blunted two-point arrow are two oak leaves, regional symbols
frequently used in Kiowa beadwork, which represent Kiowa men and women. Below that are two groups of count markers,
the first eight, the second five, denoting 1985, which was the year of the
painting.
The map form,
with its flags and migration route, are framed on each side by traditional bead
designs and two Christian crosses. Below
that are handprints of the artist and her “one daughter,” Tahnee Ahtone Harjo,
“a native and descendant of the Kiowas and a future representative citizen of
Oklahoma.” Tahnee has become a beader and clothing designer, and won Best in
Show for Cultural and Traditional Clothing at the Sante Fe Market in 2006.
The horses below the hands represent Ahtone
Harjo’s ledger style. In the background,
between their legs are what look like bricks on the left and, on the right,
according to the artist, is a sunset.
And, finally, to its right, are seven stars on a dark blue
background. They represent the Bear
Lodge Legend, “which symbolically
explains how the spirit force cared for the Kiowas during the migration. In the traditional Kiowa Star
Ceremony—performed before the Sun Dance by young women selected by the
tribe—the outstanding woman is chosen to lead their procession, and she holds
this position for life. Ahtone Harjo’s
aunt had been chosen for that position and given the Kiowa name that translates
as “the one chosen to lead in.” And
Tahnee was given her name, after the family received tribal permission. In return they held a giveaway and feast for
500 tribal members. The Ahtones have
clearly been an important Kiowa family; Ahtone Harjo’s work honors the past,
present, and future of a proud people.
Focusing on
Ahtone women and youth, the implicit narrative,
or autoethnography, of One Daughter of the Earth, ends looking forward
while holding on to the tribal past. It
is like the ten murals in the Kiowa Tribal Museum of Kiowa history, painted in
1984—two years before One Daughter of the Earth—by Mirac Creepingbear,
Parker Boyiddle, and Sherman Caddleson.
Each artist painted three periods of this history, and all three painted
the final one, representing the contemporary period, under which is typed: “Kiowa culture is healthily growing in the
present while tenaciously preserving the glory of the past.”
Kiowa Sun Dance
Ahtone Harjo considers Kiowa Sun
Dance her major work because of the extensive research that went into
making it one of the few historical records of this important annual ceremony
in which the entire tribe participated.
It has not been performed since 1887.
She studied calendars and ledger drawings and interviewed her grandfather,
other relatives, and tribal elders, who had either witnessed the Sun Dance or
heard stories about it. And she tried to
stay as close to the sources as possible.
The painting took Harjo several years before she felt that everything
was right.
She fills her
drawing of the elaborate Kiowa Sun Dance ceremony in the medicine lodge with
ceremonial details: a buffalo hide hanging from the top of the central altar
pole and the sacred Tai-may, the small doll-like figure to the left, is disproportionate
to its importance. For, according to Kiowa
Voices, it is among “the highest
in rank of all Kiowa spiritual medicines.” “During the Sun Dance, the dancers
in their spiritual quest viewed in reverential awe this sacred image of the
sun's power.” Eight shields hang on the cedar screen. But the other details, according to Ahtone
Harjo, are restricted to tribal members.
Last Will is a three-dimensional mixed media ledger
drawing that references the penultimate stop in Texas of the Kiowa migration
route and reveals a rich autoethnology* of Ahtone Harjo’s family history. It consists of two Confederate ten dollar
bills, front and back, pasted on a generic Last Will and Testament. The front
of the bill displays an
image of four Confederate cavalrymen pulling a canon and the inscription “Issued February 17th,
1864, Richmond, Virginia.” Treating the
vertical bills as facing pages of a ledger book, Ahtone Harjo turned them
horizontally, as many warrior artists did, to gain the maximum width—and drew a
transparent Kiowa warrior galloping over the artillery, while holding a
captured army bugle. (In 1869 such a
bugle was captured by Kiowa Chief Santana and became one of the Gourd Dance
trophies.) Under the bills she wrote “That’s all there is. . . . . . [sic]
Young County, Texas. October, 1864,” a
memorable date for families in Young County, Texas and Ahtone Harjo’s
family. And on the back of the will she
continued: “To whom it May Concern: History is an important part of our
lives. As descendants of Texas Citizens,
my family has come to be Kiowa by way of some tragic events. Our family history has been documented and is
a source of inspiration. 1864 seems so
far [past], but, as in the rest of the U. S., it is a year to be remembered.”
* Autoethnography is a form of self-reflection and writing that explores the researcher's personal experience and connects this autobiographical story to wider cultural, political, and social meanings and understandings.
The “tragic events” refer to the Elm Creek Raid in Young
County, Texas, where 18-month-old Millie Durgan was captured by a Kiowa
warrior. “It was tragic for some
people,” says
Ahtone Harjo, meaning Millie’s family.
It was particularly tragic for Millie’s mother, Susannah, who was killed
while bravely defending the Carter ranch, her son Jimmie, who was killed during
the raid, and her older daughter, Charlotte, who was tattooed by the warriors
before being released for ransom. It was
also tragic for Millie’s grandmother, Elizabeth Carter Clifton Fitzpatrick, a
powerful frontier woman who was rescued and made numerous attempts to get
Millie back. But it was not tragic for
Millie, who was lovingly raised “as the daughter of wealthy, respected Kiowas”—and
who became Ahtone Harjo’s great-grandmother.
In 1964, exactly a century later, Ahtone Harjo was given her
great-grandmother’s Kiowa name, Sain-Toh-Oodie (Killed with a Blunt Arrow) in a
formal ceremony.
Millie Durgan had a long and complicated lineage—which
extends back to colonial times and forward to Ahtone Harjo, who proudly bears
her Kiowa name. Millie was a descendant of John Carter, a
founder of the Watauga Settlement in 1772, one of the first non-British
settlements, which is now part of Carter County, Tennessee. Carter County was named after John’s son,
Landon, and the county seat, Elizabethton, was named after Landon’s wife. Landon had a slave (very likely his son)
named Edmund who took the Carter name and moved with his family to Young County,
Texas. It was here, in 1864, that his
great-granddaughter Millie Durgan was captured in The Elm Creek Raid. Millie became an accomplished beader and retained her traditional Kiowa beliefs
and practices. Indeed, “when the Baptist
missionaries came to Rainy Mountain she steadfastly refused to take up the new
religion.” Nonetheless, according to the Kiowa historian, George Hunt, the Indians used to
say that she “showed her Texas ancestry.”
When she was a young
girl . . . . a deer came charging through the camp, chased by some men or
boys. It was tired, but still able to
defend itself by striking with its sharp front hoofs. Millie dived at the deer, caught hold of it,
and threw it just like a Texan cowboy bull-dogging a steer. After the deer had been killed she claimed
and received the hindquarter, which she was the first one to touch. The hide
was also tanned for her to be made into a buckskin garment.
Millie seemed to have inherited
her strength and steadfastness from her grandmother, Elizabeth Carter, who ran
the family ranch before and after her first husband, Alexander Carter, was
murdered. Indeed, she took over the
Carter Trading House, expanded it, and—despite her second husband’s leaving her
and her third husband’s murder—she became one of the most successful women on
the frontier before she was captured.
Millie, in turn, was an inspiration and a source of Ahtone Harjo’s
strength in her role as a traditional Kiowa woman dedicated to maintaining and
passing on the practices and traditions of her tribe.
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