Carl Sweezy (1881–1953) was a Southern

Arapaho The Arapaho (; french: Arapahos, ) are a Native American people historically living on the plains of Colorado and Wyoming. They were close allies of the Cheyenne tribe and loosely aligned with the Lakota and Dakota. By the 1850s, Arapaho band ...

painter from

Oklahoma Oklahoma (; Choctaw language, Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the nor ...

.Gettys, Marshall
Sweezy, Carl (1881-1953)
. ''Oklahoma Historical Society's Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture.'' (15 Nov 2009) He painted individual portraits, but was best known for his portrayals of ceremonies and dances.Wyckoff, 243-244

Background

Carl Sweezy was born in 1881 near the Darlington Agency on the

Cheyenne and Arapaho Indian Reservation Cheyenne and Arapaho Indian Reservation were the lands granted the Southern Cheyenne and the Southern Arapaho by the United States under the Medicine Lodge Treaty signed in 1867. The tribes never lived on the land described in the treaty and did n ...

Indian Territory The Indian Territory and the Indian Territories are terms that generally described an evolving land area set aside by the Federal government of the United States, United States Government for the relocation of Native Americans in the United St ...

. His Arapaho name was Wattan, meaning "Black." Sweezy's father was Hinan Ba Seth, meaning "Big Man." His tribe still hunted buffalo when he was a child.Wyckoff, 23 Sweezy's mother died early, so he lived full-time at the

Mennonite Mennonites are groups of Anabaptist Christian church communities of denominations. The name is derived from the founder of the movement, Menno Simons (1496–1561) of Friesland. Through his writings about Reformed Christianity during the Radic ...

Mission School at Darlington Agency. He later attended the Mennonite Boarding School of

Halstead, Kansas Halstead is a city in Harvey County, Kansas, United States. Halstead was named in honor of Murat Halstead, a respected Civil War correspondent and newspaper editor. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 2,179. History For ...

Carlisle Indian Boarding School The United States Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, generally known as Carlisle Indian Industrial School, was the flagship Indian boarding school in the United States from 1879 through 1918. It took over the historic Carlisle B ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

, Daniel C. Swan, 72 and

Chilocco Indian Agricultural School Chilocco Indian School was an agricultural school for Native Americans on reserved land in north-central Oklahoma from 1884 to 1980. It was approximately 20 miles north of Ponca City, Oklahoma and seven miles north of Newkirk, Oklahoma, near th ...

, north of

Ponca City, Oklahoma Ponca City ( iow, Chína Uhánⁿdhe) is a city in Kay County in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The city was named after the Ponca tribe. Ponca City had a population of 25,387 at the time of the 2010 census- and a population of 24,424 in the 2020 ...

. For a season Sweezy was a professional baseball player, and later he worked as a tribal policeman. Although he never received formal art training, he loved drawing and painting from an early age. An agency employee encouraged him with a gift of watercolor paints.

Artwork

Around 1895, when Sweezy was 14 years old, ethnographer

James Mooney James Mooney (February 10, 1861 – December 22, 1921) was an American ethnographer who lived for several years among the Cherokee. Known as "The Indian Man", he conducted major studies of Southeastern Indians, as well as of tribes on the Gr ...

commissioned Sweezy to paint images of traditional Arapaho life. Later, Sweezy also worked with anthropologist George Dorsey.Morand et al, 107 Sweezy continued to be a prolific painter, expanding his media and materials into the mid-20th century.Wyckoff, 243 By the 1920s Sweezy was a full-time painter. Sweezy worked in watercolors on paper and oil on canvas, as well as house paint on board. He was one of Cheyenne artist

Dick West Walter Richard West Sr. (1912–1996, Southern Cheyenne), was a painter, sculptor, and educator. He led the Art Department at Bacone College from 1947 to 1970. He later taught at Haskell Institute for several years. Jones, Ruthe BlalockWest, Walte ...

's first artistic mentors. Although he painted individual portraits, he is known for his portrayals of ceremonies and dances, sometimes with over a dozen individual figures, with implied action and narrative. Sweezy developed a technique, employed by later Southern Plains artists, of painting an active

Native American Church The Native American Church (NAC), also known as Peyotism and Peyote Religion, is a Native American religion that teaches a combination of traditional Native American beliefs and Christianity, with sacramental use of the entheogen peyote. The re ...

meeting by rolling up the

tipi A tipi , often called a lodge in English, is a conical tent, historically made of animal hides or pelts, and in more recent generations of canvas, stretched on a framework of wooden poles. The word is Siouan languages, Siouan, and in use in Dakot ...

flaps to reveal the participants inside.Swan, 74

Public collections

Sweezy's work can be found in the following public art collections: *

Cleveland Museum of Natural History The Cleveland Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum located approximately five miles (8 km) east of downtown Cleveland, Ohio in University Circle, a 550-acre (220 ha) concentration of educational, cultural and medical institu ...

Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art is an art museum on the University of Oklahoma campus in Norman, Oklahoma. Overview The University of Oklahoma’s Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art holds over 20,000 objects in its permanent collection. The museum c ...

The George Gustav Heye Center The National Museum of the American Indian–New York, the George Gustav Heye Center, is a branch of the National Museum of the American Indian at the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in Manhattan, New York City. The museum is part of the Smi ...

Gilcrease Museum Gilcrease Museum, also known as the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art, is a museum northwest of downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma housing the world's largest, most comprehensive collection of art of the American West, as well as a gro ...

Heard Museum The Heard Museum is a private, not-for-profit museum in Phoenix, Arizona, United States, dedicated to the advancement of American Indian art. It presents the stories of American Indian people from a first-person perspective, as well as exhibitio ...

*Indian Arts and Crafts Board,

US Department of the Interior The United States Department of the Interior (DOI) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government headquartered at the Main Interior Building, located at 1849 C Street NW in Washington, D.C. It is responsible for the mana ...

* Oklahoma History Center *

National Museum of the American Indian The National Museum of the American Indian is a museum in the United States devoted to the culture of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. It is part of the Smithsonian Institution group of museums and research centers. The museum has three ...

, Washington DC *

Oklahoma Museum of Natural History Oklahoma (; Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a state in the South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the north, Missouri on the northeast, Arkansas on the east, New ...

Philbrook Museum of Art Philbrook Museum of Art is an art museum with expansive formal gardens located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The museum, which opened in 1939, is located in a former 1920s villa, "Villa Philbrook", the home of Oklahoma oil pioneer Waite Phillips and his ...

Southwest Museum The Southwest Museum of the American Indian is a museum, library, and archive located in the Mt. Washington neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, above the north-western bank of the Arroyo Seco (Los Angeles County) canyon and stream. The muse ...

, Los Angeles *

University of Oklahoma The University of Oklahoma (OU) is a Public university, public research university in Norman, Oklahoma. Founded in 1890, it had existed in Oklahoma Territory near Indian Territory for 17 years before the two Territories became the state of Oklahom ...

, LibraryLester, 537

Death

Carl Sweezy died on May 28, 1953 in

Lawton, Oklahoma Lawton is a city in and the county seat of Comanche County, in the U.S. state of Oklahoma Oklahoma (; Choctaw language, Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Ce ...

Quotes

''The corn road, we found, was different from the buffalo road in more ways than anyone, white or Indian, had realized, and the old people could not learn it in a hurry.'' —Carl Sweezy ''With war horses running, feathers and banners flying on the wind from spears and lances, shields and quivers shining at men's sides and shoulders, and women singing war songs for their men, I think a war party setting out, or coming in victorious, must have been one of the splendid things in life to see. If I had to miss that, I have had the next best thing: I have seen old warriors wearing their fine trappings, and I have heard them tell their stories...'' –Carl Sweezy, 1950

Notes

References

*Lester, Patrick D. ''The Biographical Directory of Native American Painters''. Norman and London: The Oklahoma University Press, 1995. . *Morand, Ann, Kevin Smith, Daniel C. Swan, and Sarah Erwin. ''Treasures of Gilcrease: Selections from the Permanent Collection.'' Tulsa, OK: Gilcrease Museum, 2003. . *Swan, Daniel C.''Peyote Religious Art: Symbols of Faith and Belief.'' Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1999. *Wyckoff, Lydia L., ed. ''Visions and voices : Native American painting from the Philbrook Museum of Art''. Tulsa, OK: Philbrook Museum of Art, 1996. .

External links

Carl Sweezy artwork in the Smithsonian Institution's collection
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sweezy, Carl Arapaho people Native American painters Native American Church Painters from Oklahoma People from Canadian County, Oklahoma 1881 births 1953 deaths 20th-century American painters American male painters Carlisle Indian Industrial School alumni Native American male artists 20th-century American male artists