Chapter 9 | Section 3
Kiowa Six
The Kiowa Six were a group of six Kiowa visual artists from Oklahoma. Their names were Spencer Asah, James Auchiah, Jack Hokeah, Stephen Mopope, Lois Smoky, and Monroe Tsatoke. These six artists created a new style of painting that depicted ceremonial and social scenes of Kiowa life. Through their work we can study the development of Native American painting from Plains hide painting and ledger art to flat-style Southern Plains painting.
Kiowa Six, by Mike Larsen. The six Kiowa artists, Spencer Asah, James Auchiah, Jack Hokeah, Stephen Mopope, Lois Smoky, and Monroe Tsatoke, studied with Oscar Jacobson at the University of Oklahoma in 1927.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Judicial Center, Oklahoma Supreme Court.
Stephen Mopope, the oldest of the Kiowa Six, was born in 1898 on the Kiowa Reservation in Oklahoma Territory. His relatives, including his great-uncles Silver Horn and Fort Marion ledger artist Ohettoint, taught him traditional Kiowa painting techniques. Mopope received acclaim as an artist for his mural work. One of his most striking works, which he painted for the Anadarko Post Office in 1936, is a large mural depicting Native life on the southern plains. In addition, he was commissioned to paint large murals for the new Department of the Interior building in Washington, DC.
In the 1930s Kiowa artists Monroe Tsatoke and Spencer Asah painted scenes such as this one depicting Native life on the third-floor walls of the Oklahoma Historical Society building. Today that building is the Oklahoma Judicial Center, which houses the Oklahoma Supreme Court. Professional conservationists spent time using special tools and cotton swabs to preserve these murals by the Kiowa artists so that visitors can experience the art for themselves.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Judicial Center, Oklahoma Supreme Court.
The youngest of the Kiowa Six was Lois Smoky, who was born near Anadarko in 1907. Her Kiowa name was Bou-ge-Tah, or “Coming of the Dawn.” Smoky’s family gave her permission to attend the University of Oklahoma (OU) with the other Kiowa artists but required that her mother come with her. The university would not allow her mother to live in the dorms, so the Kiowa Six and Smoky’s mother lived off campus. Smoky attended OU for only one semester and then returned to Anadarko. She then got married and raised seven children. She became known for her beadwork, an art form she learned from her mother and grandmother.
Five of the six artists attended St. Patrick’s Mission School in Anadarko during their youth. There they received art instruction from a Choctaw nun named Sister Mary Olivia Taylor. As the students approached college age, Kiowa agency field matron Susie Peters contacted University of Oklahoma art professor Oscar B. Jacobson about these artists. After learning about their talents, Jacobson created a special program for the Kiowa artists in 1926. The Kiowa Six moved to Norman to work with Jacobson at the university. The six artists exhibited their paintings at the Denver Art Museum and the First International Art Exposition in Prague, Czech Republic, in 1928. Their Southern Plains flat-style paintings highlighted dancers, ceremonies, and daily life.
Another place where Oklahoma’s Indigenous artists received formal artistic training was Bacone Indian University in Muskogee. At Bacone, Chickasaw artist and educator Ataloa McLendon established a Native American art and music center. Acee Blue Eagle (Muscogee Creek and Pawnee), who had studied under Oscar Jacobson, was the first director of Bacone’s art school, and many eastern Oklahoma Indians followed as its directors. Dick West (Southern Cheyenne) was chairman of the art department there from 1947 to 1970. His son W. Richard West Jr. (Southern Cheyenne) would serve as the founding director of the National Museum of the American Indian, which opened in the fall of 2004 in Washington, DC. Then, from 2012 to 2021, he served as president and CEO of the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles.
Allan Houser’s sculpture As Long as the Waters Flow (1989) stands in the South Plaza of the Oklahoma State Capitol. Known for his distinctive work as a sculptor, Houser, a member of the Chiricahua Apache Nation, connected traditional and modern styles in his abstract-figural artworks.
Courtesy of the Capitol Art Collection, Oklahoma Arts Council.
Governing Oklahoma during the Great Depression
As we learned in chapter 6, William “Alfalfa Bill” Murray played a major role in the 1906 Oklahoma Constitutional Convention, where he served as president of the delegation and wrote major portions of the state’s constitution. After statehood, Murray served as Speaker of the First Legislature and later as a member of the US Congress. Then Murray’s career took a sudden turn, when he tried to establish a cotton colony in Bolivia during the 1920s. When that venture did not pan out, he returned to Tishomingo, where he had lived as a young man, and started campaigning for governor. In 1930 Murray became governor with a record majority of the vote. Once in office, he pardoned many convicts and sent over two thousand Oklahoma prisoners to prisons in other states. He frequently declared martial law. He shut down oil wells when prices dropped due to overproduction. A critic of FDR’s New Deal, Murray limited the role of federal relief programs in Oklahoma, causing Oklahomans to lose out on federal funds. His son Johnston Murray served as governor in 1950.
After William Murray served one term as governor, oil industrialist and philanthropist E. W. Marland successfully ran for the position in 1934 on the promise of bringing the New Deal to Oklahoma. A lawyer and businessperson from Pennsylvania, he had formed several oil companies in the 1910s and consolidated them as Marland Oil Company in Ponca City in the early 1920s. To this day the Marland Mansion stands as a symbol of the remarkable oil wealth of the time. By the late 1920s, however, Marland lost control of his company, and it was renamed Conoco when financier J. P. Morgan and other bankers forced him out. With the loss of his oil empire, Marland changed political parties from Republican to Democrat and entered politics, first serving as a member of Congress in the early 1930s.
As governor of Oklahoma from 1935 to 1939, Marland’s “Little New Deal” emphasized the need for the state’s government to work with the federal government in creating jobs for Oklahomans. His administration worked with the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) on a series of projects that employed more than 90,000 Oklahomans. Some of the projects in Ponca City included Lake Ponca Park, Blaine Stadium, and the city’s public library.
Before his service as Oklahoma’s next governor, Leon Phillips, a Democrat, called “Red” by members of his football team, attended Southwestern Normal School in Weatherford and taught school in Custer County. Then he studied law at the University of Oklahoma. During the First World War, Phillips served as a private in the artillery division of the US Army. Following the war, he returned to Okemah to practice law. In 1932, he was elected a member of the House of Representatives and served three two-year terms. While in the legislature, Phillips served as Speaker of the House in 1935 and minority leader in 1937. In 1938 Phillips ran successfully for the office of governor.
As governor from 1939 to 1943, Phillips proposed a balanced budget amendment to the constitution, which the state legislature passed. The amendment limits the state’s annual appropriations budget to the amount of expected revenues. The State Board of Equalization makes annual and quarterly estimates of revenues and, accordingly, adjusts the state budget and makes cuts when necessary. If revenues are more than expected, the excess is deposited in a “rainy day fund.” In theory, at least, the state of Oklahoma would no longer spend more than it collected.