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Chapter 9: We Worked and Made Beautiful Things: Kiowa Women, Material Culture, and Peoplehood, 1900–1939
- State University of New York Press
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9 We Worked and Made Beautiful Things Kiowa Women, Material Culture, and Peoplehood, 1900–1939 Jenny Tone-Pah-Hote I imagine that Allan and my father were placed in Indian cradles after birth. And I imagine that the cradles were beautiful and unique works of art, made with great care and infinite love. I have come to think of the Indian cradle as a relic of recovery, a symbol of simple survival, an ancient faith in the continuity of generations.1 N. Scott Momaday, Native Modernism: The Art of George Morrison and Allan Houser N. Scott Momaday, a Kiowa writer, elaborated upon the importance of cradleboards, fully beaded baby carriers, to the continuity of American Indian lifeways and expressive traditions. For Momaday, the cradles constructed and beaded at the turn of the century were imbued with hope for a better future. They cultivated and carried artists such as his father, Al Momaday, and Allan Houser, a well-known Apache sculptor. For Momaday, the cradle represented Kiowa family connections that stitched Kiowa people together across time. Making, giving, and wearing regalia could illuminate and cement family and community ties that bound the Kiowa together as a people and nation. To approach 253 254 Jenny Tone-Pah-Hote the intersection of gender and material culture and to illustrate their significance in social and cultural life during the early twentieth century, I argue that Kiowa women made items that continued and reflected the idea of the Kiowa as a people in intertribal Oklahoma. During the 1930s, young women represented the Kiowa through the American Indian Exposition. Additionally, Laura Pedrick, a Kiowa woman, who participated in the Mau-Tame Club, an intertribal organization started by field matron Susie Peters, asserted the significance of Kiowa art as icons of the tribal nation and discussed expressive culture to argue for resources from the Office of Indian Affairs. Kiowa women engaged in expressive culture in ways that demonstrated the distinct “peoplehood” of the Kiowa during the early twentieth century. Peoplehood provides a way of viewing Kiowa material culture within the social, cultural, and political context of southwestern Oklahoma. Tom Holm, J. Dianne Pierson, and Ben Chavis have theorized this idea and explained: A people, united by a common language and having a particular ceremonial cycle, a unique sacred history, and knowledge of a territory, necessarily possesses inherent sovereignty. Nations may come and go, but peoples maintain identity even when undergoing profound cultural change.2 Additionally, the authors posit, “Native art forms might be examined for their ‘peoplehood’ content.”3 They continued, “peoplehood serves to explain and define codes of civility, behavior within a given environment, and relationships between people.”4 The authors connect sovereignty and identity, and their work opens up possibilities for discussions of Kiowa expressive culture grounded in sociopolitical life. I will demonstrate how Kiowas used material culture to create, sustain, and illustrate the importance of family and community ties. Material culture symbolized and bound the Kiowa together as a people among others in early twentieth century Oklahoma. Kiowas had long used material culture to represent their achievements and family relations though expressive culture. For example, John Ewers, an anthropologist, explained that during the nineteenth century, certain individuals who were “tribal leaders” maintained painted tipis.5 The tipis themselves were also passed down though families. Importantly, these tipis were also a product of both men’s and women’s labor. As Jacki Rand illustrated, women often worked in groups lead by specialists to process and sew the hides to construct the form of the tipi. She continued explaining that skilled women maintained records of the number of tipis [44.222.116.199] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 03:36 GMT) 255 We Worked and Made Beautiful Things they completed.6 In the case of painted tipis, men painted them with their own designs. These tipis became powerful representations of the deeds and visionary experiences associated with men and their lineages, and the tipis were highly visible and carried layers of meaning pertaining to an individual, members of their family, and their status as leaders among the Kiowa. As Ewers discussed, these tipis were prominently displayed on occasions like the Sun Dance when all would attend.7 In the twentieth century, Kiowas continued to employ the arts as a way of expressing a unique identity within intertribal settings. In his work on powwow emcees, Daniel Gelo has pointed out that when Indian people enter into intertribal arenas, of any sort, they bring with them their own...