GREAT-GREAT GRANDFATHER – the great Chief Quanah Parker – last of the Comanche Chiefs
Grandson of Comanche Code Talker – WWII
Son of Comanche Tribal Chief
Mother was Chairman of Comanche Nation
In his presence you feel the weight, the courage, the defiance, the beauty and the grace of this legacy, as if his ancestral power has indefinably, yet inarguably passed on to him.
It is there in the paintings. He is a student of his Native past, through old photographs, private archives and histories. But with all of what he is and has learned, his paintings conjure his subjects’ elations, sorrows, loves, losses, scars and beauty.
He has done many portraits of his famous grandfather Quanah Parker, the last Comanche Chief, who had the courage to save members of his tribe and later become an industrialist who leased his land, making a fortune from occupying imperial ranchers.
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As I was leaving, we discovered that both of us had been high school wrestlers; I was in the 128 lb. class; he was much more serious: a state champion in the 148 lb. class. That is the most competitive weight class –nobody wants to wrestle in that class, at least if they have any sense.
At the door I had an idea. Scott Hale (art appraiser and a best friend of Nocona) is my brother-in-law. Let’s prank Scott, I said, Pranking was my day job at Spy Magazine.
Nocona was at first stunned, then smiled and said, Let’s do it.
I said, Let’s call Scott and tell him that while doing this interview, I was a complete ass, that the interview went sour fast, and somehow we ended up tussling on the floor. Tell Scott you are calling to give him a heads-up on the disaster.
Nocona nodded mischievously: I’m in.
Two hours later, I got a text from Nocona: He ate it up! He’s pissed.
Scott didn’t return my call for days.
So besides being a visionary freewheeling artist, Nocona is capable of being as juvenile as your reporter.
What’s it like being a son of a Comanche Chief?
My dad was a Chief of the Comanches when I was in my teens in Oklahoma. He was young, 35. My dad is like a big dude. And my mom was on the tribal council and then was the first woman to be the Chief of the Comanche tribe. Which is a big deal.
How do you become a Chief?
In modern society you’re elected. We have a democratic society. When my great-great-grandfather, Quanah Parker was Chief, you weren’t appointed. His dad was a Chief, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was going to be a Chief. People decided to follow you or not. If people followed you and felt like you were going to protect them and feed them, and they were going to prosper, then they followed you. And if they didn’t feel that way anymore, well, they would leave and go to another band. So that’s as democratic as you can be.
You have to think collectively; you have to think about others; you’re a servant. The important piece is the people, and you’ve got to find what’s best for the most.
You grew up as a son of two very prominent people. Did it make you want to rebel?
No, I was never the rebellious type. It made me work. It made me understand. My parents were 18 and 19 years old when they had me. My dad always said, I never knew I was smart until I went to college. He’s got two master’s degrees and a PhD. My mom has her degrees and worked with at-risk youth in a boarding school in Oklahoma overseeing the dorm. My dad has always been in education. He’s been the Dean of Academics and he’s been our tribal Chairman. He founded our tribal college.
Did you always know you were going to be an artist?
No, but my family has always done art. My dad’s grandmother raised him. She was blind, but she did bead work and knew the colors of the beads by the different size of pill jars where she kept the beads. I have a little medallion she made that I still keep.
And my mom’s mom made quilts. My mom’s dad was an artist, a painter. So it was always there. Even my dad is an artist. People asked him how come he didn’t pursue being an artist? He’s like, Well, I have mouths to feed.
Where did you grow up?
Mostly in Oklahoma, but all over the place. Whenever the folks would get a new degree, they got a new opportunity. I lived in places like Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I’m the only Native kid in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, going to inner-city school. I lived in Montana, Phoenix, Texas, just about everywhere.
In Harrisburg, everyone thought I was Chinese. After I explained to them what I was, I think they probably had some little Thanksgiving play and I danced and performed and it was like a whole new world to those guys.
My dad taught at Fort Peck Community College in Montana. There I was the only Comanche on an Assiniboine and Sioux reservation. So I was an outsider because I wasn’t an Assiniboine and I wasn’t white.
Did you find any bigotry or did you find acceptance?
I found acceptance. Bigotry is just ignorance.
In your painting, you take existing portraits and assumptions about Natives and attack cliches. Is that fair?
Yeah. What I’m trying to say is that these are real people. The title of the painting is usually the person’s name. In the photographs I use, it will say something stereotypical like ‘Hopi Maiden.’ I dig to find information on the subject, because when you have a painting of a person in your house, I want you to know who they are. I’m trying to portray them in a realistic way, adding color to the photo, making a good painting. It’s a good painting first, and then the story of the human being second. You can feel how they were, just through the painting.
I painted Quanah Parker, my great-great-grandfather. He died in 1911. Whenever I sold a painting of him, my dad would say, Hey, your great-great-grandfather is still putting food on the table.
I have tons of books. I read everything I can get my mitts on. I look and I see a photograph and there’s just something about it. I want to paint it.
When you’re looking at these photographs you see little scars or maybe they’re a little cockeyed or their nose is a little bent. Then you start wondering, Was that cool scar on his face in an epic battle against another tribe or against the United States? Or did he fall off his horse at 5 and get busted up? The face tells a story.
Do you think you deserve the face you have when you’re about 45? That’s a theory.
Yeah. I’ve earned it. I’ve got lots of good football and fight scars. When someone’s young, their actions haven’t imprinted themselves on their face. But if you’ve been lying or cheating for the last 50 years, it shows. Not in the beginning, but over time. Because you carry it. The face shows it all.
What are some of your other subjects?
I just did a show in Scottsdale called the American Indian Cowboy. It’s paintings of guys in this transitional period from about 1890 to about 1950. These guys’ dads and grandfathers were warriors and hunters, they were free men. But after the reservation period, what do you do? Well, you work for the ranches, you work for Wild West shows, you work as a police officer on the reservation. You’re still doing horse jobs, but it’s different than what you traditionally did.
During this period, all of a sudden you start seeing cowboy hats with feathers and beaded vests and gloves. So they’re cool looking cowboys. Why are these images so cool? Because they have Indian braids and earrings but they also have boots, chaps and bandanas. My grandpa was a cowboy, and when I painted him, people thought I was painting the cowboy stuff on him. And I’m like, No, this is the actual 1911 photograph of this guy working on a ranch.
You’re trying to get to the transition of what he was and what he became.
Exactly. It all started with a guy named Jackson Sundown who was the saddle bronc champ of 1912. He was the first full-blood Indian to win it. It started with that image. I liked it, painted it, and started to do more research on these Indian cowboys. I wanted to find unique, non-stereotypical images and paint them in a different way.
What were the Comanches known for? What are the characteristics?
The Comanches and the Utes were the first to get the horses. We were the only tribe that fought on horseback. When the Spanish started seeing us on horses, they were like, Oh shit, someone else is mounted other than us! They asked the Utes, Who are those people? And the Ute said, Komantcia. That means those who fight us all the time. Komantcia, spoken in Spanish, becomes Comanche.
We brought disease and slaughter and we took things and broke our word and were complete fuckers. That informs the cliches of what we now think of as native. Is that true?
There’s truth to that, but we weren’t all just victims. We stopped Texas from being its own republic because we were a war tribe. We had horses. We had guns. We did bad things to people in today’s world. We took captives from the Spanish, from other tribes. We stopped the Spanish from connecting with the French in New Orleans.
Texans wants to talk about how big Texas is, but they went to war with us and it was the end of them as a country and the end of us as an independent tribe. We took it to ‘em. And we stopped the French expansion into the plains and we held off American expansion. We stopped the Spanish in Mexico. We gave Mexico hell for a long time.
So the military confrontation was largely successful. The enemy was disease.
Yes. And people don’t understand that it was the disease.
Whites were intentionally doing smallpox trades. They’d come and say, Hey, we signed a peace treaty. Here’s a whole wagon full of good stuff to take back to the tribe – knowing it was infested with smallpox. It was germ warfare. It whittled us down from about 60,000 to less than 1,200 when Quanah Parker finally surrendered.
There’s a book called Comanche Empire that talks about this. Comanches had an empire in every way, shape, and form. The only reason you don’t know about it is that it’s Native American history and because they didn’t build buildings that were left behind. But they were wealthy, they had a military and had allies within their country. And even the King of Spain called it “Comanchería,” which meant that was our country.
So we did all the things that Europeans did to everybody else. So it’s not just, Oh, poor us. We had our time, disease wiped us out and we had to adjust and say, Okay, what do we do now? My great-great-grandfather Quanah had to say, What do we do? Do we keep fighting until we’re gone? There are tribes that no longer exist, like the Waco. And we were headed in that direction, so Quanah decided to negotiate with the bad guys. He had to do that.
Do you find it hard to forgive those who did everything to you? I find it hard to forgive us.
I don’t dwell on it, it’s history. Look, we’re still fighting for water rights. For child welfare. For grazing rights. To have our sacred sites left alone. Hell, we couldn’t even practice our religion legally until 1978. And I still get mad when I see stupid shit on social media, but I don’t linger on being the poor Indian. We’re survivors, we’re still here.
Who are your artistic influences?
I can pop off who my influences are, and you could look at them and go, Oh yeah, okay. Negative. Eventually the art evolves into your own. It’s no different than musicians. Like Steve Ray Vaughan from Jimi Hendrix from Albert King. Art is the same way.
I’m just so drawn in by your portrait of Quanah.
He was Comanche. His mom was a white captive. They took her when she was a little girl, about nine years old. She was from Texas, her name was Cynthia Ann Parker. She was raised Comanche. She married Chief Nocona, who’s Quanah’s father, who I’m named after. The whites recaptured her when Quanah was twelve years old, so he was without his mother from then on. They captured her with her daughter, his younger sister named Prairie Flower. The whites didn’t let his mother go back to the Comanches.
Quanah grew up to be a prominent warrior, a prominent chief, even a statesman. He was good friends with Teddy Roosevelt, and made peace with General McKenzie, the general he surrendered to. And he had eight wives and 26 children. He had an amazing life.
In the portrait, what is he thinking?
The portrait is after he surrendered. It’s the reservation period. Maybe he’s saying, If it wasn’t for smallpox, we’d still be kicking your ass today.
Do you feel like when your ancestors die, they go away? Or do they talk to you? Do they have a presence?
It sounds corny, but I feel like when I’m painting and I’ve been looking at a picture for 40 hours, there’s something there. Yeah, there’s something.
I don’t think we just disappear forever. I think that there’s some sense of being, and they are still out there, maybe not as a ghost, but there’s still something for them to say. I feel it when I’m researching images. There’ll be a face that just goes, Whoa, wait. Tell my story. So, yeah, there’s something there.
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