Haungoah Hide Painting and the Recording of Culture: Beyond Art History
Hidden within the "archives" of the Haffenreffer Museum lies a historical account of the Kiowa people painted on deer hide leather, which include hunts, war, and ceremonies upon its surface. An untitled work by the artist Haungooah, whose name is often anglicized to its direct translation, Silver Horn, was commissioned by George Rowell and collected by his brother in the territories of the Kiowa Tribe at a trading post in what is now known as Oklahoma in 1905 (Hail 1980, 216). This is just a bare-bones description of the piece’s history; what one would get from the museum's catalog it resides within. This object seems to straddle many different forms of both Native and academic discourses, with Art History, Anthropology, Semiotics, and History (Native and Western) all seeming to take away the agency of both the artist and the culture for which it traveled from to Rhode Island.
Haungooah was prolific, creating over 1,000 different works on leather hides, many of which are hailed by art historians as significant achievements of indigenous works regarding aesthetic beauty (Roger 1998, 517). This is fetishizing approach to beauty in a Western sense is problematic in many ways, however, it was my Western appreciation of the aesthetic that drew me to the illustrations themselves in the first place.
Beyond Artistry
I had come across Haungooah’s work a number of times before, seeing him exhibited in anthropological, art, and historical museums. I greatly appreciate his composition upon the hides, the utilization of vibrant colors, and the enticing subjects of his illustrations. When given the opportunity to study a piece of his work, I originally was excited to work with the aesthetic of the object, but through a more nuanced understanding of the work’s history, far more needs appreciation than just its beauty.
First to start with the artist himself, Haungooah. Born in 1860, Haungooah lived during a tumultuous time for the Kiowa, where in his youth, he roamed the Plains as a warrior to being forced into confined reservation life in the 1880 and had to adjust to the difficulties navigating the new settler complex which surrounded him (Greene 2001, 9). Born into a family of calendar keepers, Haungooah’s father, Agiati, taught his son the traditional methods of draftsmanship, a skill Haungooah would elaborate on throughout his life and pass on to his decedents (Ibid 2001, 33). While his works do have an exceptional quality to them, his agency as a historian and religious leader is disregarded by academics and museums in favor of his artistic ability. Without a complete view of his work as both a creative and chronicle process, somewhat ironically we risk losing the cultural context for which his work. Unfortunately typecast as just an artist, Haungooah work needs to be seen beyond the Western gaze of art historical understanding and be appreciated as symbols of resistance and history for he produced works that exist beyond their artistic values, with his illustrations depicting cultural, religious, hunting, and war recounts utilized by his people during a time of upheaval.
One way to understand the colonial problems associated with the Art Historical paradigm often utilized to appreciate Hauunguah’s work is examining the layers of significance within one of the Deer Hides works at the Haffenreffer. The lack of description of the process of preparing the hide is the first example of how agency and due appreciation is denied for those that have worked on the skin. The hides that Haungooah painted upon were traditionally produced with many contributors. Collected from hunts, hides were acquired by men, then were tanned by Kiowa women in preparation for hide painting to begin by either a single or group of men (Caldararo 1991, 28). These works are not the product of a single genius, typical in Western art's characterizes the artistic process, but instead a collective process involving many community members in the creation of a painting. Without acknowledging the process in its entirety, art historical descriptions of the work erase the significance of the Kiowa practice and people behind the works in favor of a single individual, removed from his people. Although Hauunguah’s work is remarkable, it is reckless to forget the ways in which he was part of a group of people rather than a singular entity and what this means for the issues of ownership for an artwork.
(Un)Silencing the past
The collection of independent illustrations upon the hide represent a multitude of different facets of Kiowa culture, all of which cannot be removed from the traditions that were connected to them. A major limitation of the art historical narrative that coincides with the displays of Haungooah’s work, along with many of the objects confined within museums, is its separation from context. Unlike the Western canon of art that typically displays work with the understanding that displayed art needs little to no contextualization for the viewer to comprehend its meaning. The Plains art tradition never was an independent entity and is deeply linked to oral traditions that coincided with the illustrations (Greene 2001, 230). Although displayed works, they did not exist to be only visually appreciated (Thierry Gentis Personal Communication, Haffenreffer Museum, 2018).). In fact, they were more historic in nature than aesthetic in many ways. For Haungooah’s work, each picture had narratives attached to it, and according to his son, he did not include designs without a foundation in historical fact. Although they do not have the written word attached to them, the painted hides were used as both records of past events and cultural practices that were used to explain the history and traditions of the Kiowa. Thus, with these painted objects contained within Haffenreffer’s storage are without a way to explain their context and they need explanation if to be displayed.
As historical objects of the Kiowa, Haungooah’s work needs to be made accessible and consumed by the Tribe’s artists today. With many of these hide painting exported from the Kiowa during the late 19th and 20th centuries, historians and artists have difficulty recovering the narratives transcribed onto the works, severely limiting their access to their ancestors and cultural history (Greene 2001, 201). As both a historical and religious leader, his attention to accuracy along with his authority to heritage and religion within his work make it paramount that these surfaces are made accessible to the Kiowa. Without access and advertisement, these stories will continue to be silenced within the drawer they lie within.
Work Cited
Greene, Candace S. 2001. Silver Horn: Master Illustrator of the Kiowas. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
———. 2009. One Hundred Summers: A Kiowa Calendar Record. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press.
Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, and Barbara A Hail. 1993. Hau, Kóla!: The Plains Indian Collection of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology. Providence, R.I.: The Museum, Brown University.
Matuz, Roger. 1998. St. James Guide to Native North American Artists. Detroit [u.a.: St. James Press.
