Chris Friday

Chief Lelooska

The Evolution of an Artist

Chief lelooska. That was how tens of thousands of school-children from Portland and Vancouver knew him. Beginning in the early 1960s, the Lelooska family daytime school programs and evening family shows drew thousands of visitors a year to Ariel, Washington, about forty miles northeast of Portland. At the center of these performances, Don Smith — Chief Lelooska — captured the imaginations of visitors. A master storyteller and gifted orator with an impressive girth, Lelooska could hold an audience in awe for hours on end. After the show, the bulk of visitors would tour the family museum, which was stocked with a variety of Native American and fur-trade items. For most, a long ride home with Don's booming voice still echoing in their heads completed the experience. Some students returned with their families, and some returned much later with their children and their grandchildren. These sporadic visits gave few visitors an opportunity to see beyond the performances to who Lelooska was as a person or an artist. For all of his virtuosity and proclivity as a performer, Don Smith was a surprisingly private person.

In 1993, doctors diagnosed Lelooska with colon cancer. They were not optimistic about his abilities to survive the necessary surgical procedure and treatment, much less the cancer. As a longtime family friend turned historian, I approached Don about doing an oral history with him. ¹ Over the next four years, through surgery, recovery, and then the recurrence of cancer, Lelooska and I recorded hours and hours of his personal history. We undertook the interviews as a project that would benefit his family, especially the generations just emerging and those to come. He wanted them to know their connections to the rich and multilayered worlds he had known. Don and I thought that someday the tapes might find their way into more formal publication — perhaps an article and maybe a book.

Don Lelooska Smith in the family shop in Kalama, Washington, in about 1961

Unless otherwise noted, all photographs are courtesy of the Lelooska family

While our plans were not definite, we made the tapes with three audiences in mind. First among those was the Sewid family in British Columbia. Chief James Sewid of the Kwakwaka'wakw (or Kwakiutl) and his family had adopted the Lelooskas in the early 1970s, bestowing critical rights and privileges on them in the process. Don was forever in the Sewids' debt. Making the tapes with the idea that they would acknowledge the Sewid family and help tell portions of their story was a small installment toward paying that debt. Second, Don and I had in mind the many people who had come to the family shows over the years. We thought they should know more about the history that supported the performances. Don also wanted to thank them, for he had come to realize just how much the show had meant to teachers and students over the years. Finally, we believed that any publications I created from the tapes would also speak to academics who had supported and sometimes contested Don's ability and right to undertake his lifelong journey into Northwest Coast Indian art.

Some of these goals we accomplished fairly early. I was able to hire Lelooska's niece, Mariah Stoll-Smith (now Reese), to transcribe the tapes, which gave at least one family member an opportunity to learn the history. I delivered a complete set of the transcribed interviews to Don early in 1996 so that he could see one part of what he and I had accomplished. Don's death in 1996 and the loss of his mother, Mary, the next year together with my own personal and family demons delayed progress toward any publications. Finally, in 2003, with the help of editors at the University of Washington Press, Lelooska: The Life of a Northwest Coast Artist appeared in print. ² In that volume, I added to the transcription a layer of explanation to provide a historical context for general readers as well as specific points for scholars in Native American studies. Recognizing that a single book can never encompass the totality of a person's life, Lelooska provides readers an opportunity to know Lelooksa in ways the performances or even occasional backroom visits never could. I learned much from Don and the research I did to prepare for the interviews. Several of his family members have confided that they, too, learned new aspects of his life. That young generation of the family now has an opportunity to hear stories from their Uncle Don, too.

Buried, implicit, and sometimes missing from the published narrative, however, is an examination of Lelooska's art and how it developed and evolved over time. Neither Don nor I wanted to create an art book, which accounts in part for the lack of attention to that feature of his life. I did not want to produce a coffee-table book of pretty pictures, most of which would undoubtedly fail to capture the three-dimensional power of Don's carvings and which would surely make lifeless the very real power of masks when danced. Don, like many artists, always wanted to move beyond his previous works and challenge himself to do more. While he had an appreciation for his carvings and paintings, he was somewhat embarrassed by his early pieces and mute about most. During the interviews, he explained to me:

You can't ever love your own work. I learned that a long time ago. If you're going to be an artist, your joy comes from the creation and doing your utmost best and in those wonderful little stretches you get.... I've never been really sorry to see a piece go because I have already had out of it all I wanted. I have looked at it. I have critiqued it. I have already become dissatisfied and it is time to move on.... You just have to keep striving and never be satisfied, never, ever. Always be self-critical.... I like to think maybe the best [carving] is yet to be. ³

Yet, the story of Lelooska's development as an artist and the evaluation of his work provide an opportunity to see beyond his personal growth and into the complex political and cultural history of twentieth-century Native North America, especially in the Pacific Northwest. It is an example of how the times made the man as well as how the man played a role in shaping the times.

This photograph of the interior of the family shop at Hubbard, Oregon, reveals a wide range of items Don Smith collected and produced. The large Crooked Beak mask represents a significant advancement in his artistic expression, particularly in comparison to the fairly simplistic pole in the background.

Born in 1933 as Donald Smith to Fearon and Mary Smith in Sonoma, California, Don was of mixed Cherokee and indeterminate background. His mother's family hailed from the Oklahoma Cherokee. Don's maternal grandfather, Enoch Fountain Hinkle, had toured with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show for a time. In that complex and fascinating setting, he had played both cowboy and Indian roles. ⁴ More importantly, he came to know and earn the respect of many other Indians — Pawnee, Blackfeet, Lakota, and more. Enoch Hinkle took great pains to bring his grandson Don Smith into contact with the worlds of those individuals. It was, for Don, an education beyond any other he could attain, for his grandfather introduced him to people from a variety of tribal traditions and modeled the connection between craftwork and the transmission of culture. As Don explained to me:

Grandpa would sit and whittle. Grandpa loved to whittle.... With him, a lot of it was kind of traditional teaching. He would make a little raccoon or something and while he was doing them, he was telling you all about the raccoon, mythology, some of the funny little stories about raccoon and bears and all these things. So it becomes, if not a Sunday school class in a traditional belief, at least something pretty close to it. ⁵

Don also learned much from his mother, who like many Native American women of her generation engaged in the curio trade — the production of Indian arts and crafts as well as Western Americana — as a principal contribution to the family economy. She made "tens of thousands" of miniature saddles, Indian dolls, and paintings, which she sold to large wholesale trading posts in Oklahoma. ⁶ By the time Don was a young teenager, his father's automobile garage and service station near Salem, Oregon, had failed, forcing Don and his mother to take up the curio trade in earnest by opening a small shop at Hubbard, Oregon. Don explained that he and his mother "figured one way or another [they] could scratch out a living." ⁷ Don dropped out of public school to work in the family shop and made "a lot of little horses, a lot of Indian dolls. Boy," he commented, "they really sold well [to] tourists, collectors and people like that.... Well, I made a lot of Indians dolls in my time. I'm not proud of it, but I did. I made hundreds of them." ⁸ Don liked the routine because it allowed him the flexibility to go "different places" with his grandfather to visit many elders. ⁹

Don as a young teenager, carving curio items for sale in the family shop

The family shop evolved into a curio store and a road-side museum that also offered regular performances of Plains/Plateau dances and stories. Don's mother and his siblings — Dick, Patty, and Smitty — performed the dances, while Don sang songs and told stories. The shop was on a main road from eastern Oregon to Salem, and Don and his family came into contact with many Native Americans whose mid-twentieth-century state and federal political struggles often drew them to Salem and Portland. Some came as customers, seeking bead-, feather-, and quillwork. Some had known Don's father in the Pendleton area, and others stopped simply for visits with friends. Encouraged by the sales, Don and his mother started regularly renting a booth at the Oregon State Fair to sell their goods. By that time, the fair had become an important site for the expression and marketing of Northwest Indian cultures. In the meantime, their contacts with Indians who continued to visit their shop earned the family regular invitations to stay in the Indian Encampment at the Pendleton Round-Up each fall. ¹⁰

At Pendleton, Don made what he would later identify as one of several tremendous leaps forward in his artistic development. The Round-Up Association commissioned Don, who was then only thirteen or so, to create a special doll representing Chief Joseph "for the governor or something like that." The doll made quite an impact. It was srikingly carved, offering a powerful and proud vision of Chief Joseph, the political implications of which seem not to have been lost on tribal elders. As he recalled, "Sometimes you overreach yourself ... and you do something that is great, and for a long time you're never able to catch up to that one little moment. That doll was really good." ¹¹

It would take some time for Don to surpass the mark he set with the Chief Joseph doll, but people in and around Pendleton were amazed that someone so young could exhibit such talent. In recognition of his achievement and their appreciation, a group of Nez Perce elders conferred upon him the name Lelooska, a variant of Lelooskin, which came to the Nez Perce from an earlier alliance with the Flathead and translated roughly to "whittling," "shaving off a stick of wood with a knife," or "cutting off with a knife." ¹² Don, certain that his "Indian manners" also helped, was deeply honored by the bestowal of the name, for he kept Lelooska as his principal public moniker.

Throughout the 1950s, Don continued to produce items for the curio trade: miniature stagecoaches, carved horses with saddles, Indian dolls. He also continued to make and trade bead- and featherwork, adding to a growing collection in his personal "museum." At the same time, he began to get more and more curious about Northwest Coast art. He read all he could on the subject and attempted to create copies of the items he found depicted in various museums and catalogs as well as in the few books then available. He was also increasingly fascinated by the mythologies and elaborate ceremonies of the many tribes of the Northwest Coast. "Just little by little," he noted, "it began to swallow me up." ¹³

At least two events prompted Don to move more and more to Northwest Coast art. First, the well-known museum curator, author, and Indian hobbyist Norman Feder found out about Don's passion and in the mid-1950s commissioned him to make a series of replica masks, frontlets, and rattles. Don also had an opportunity to see the unpacking of the Rasmussen Collection of Northwest Coast Art at the Portland Art Museum. Don recalled: "When they opened the crates and those things came out, I mean, these weren't pictures, these weren't descriptions, my God, here they were! ... Boy, to finally see and touch those things.... They seemed friendly, warm things that had something to tell and teach." Thus began his journey into Northwest Coast Indian art. "The more I did," he explained, "the farther down the slope I slid ... !" ¹⁴

Don Smith (right) with Flora and Chief Tommy Thompson and an example of Don's Western Americana work in the form of a covered wagon, probably a gift for Flora and Tommy

In the 1950s, Don seemed to have more success with the relatively delicate and intricate carvings in rattles and frontlets. He had less success tackling larger masks and a few small poles. The early large pieces that Don carved were clunky, rough imitations of originals that he had seen in pictures and sometimes in person. His sculptural techniques were uneven, and his sense of the designs on a larger scale — especially the creation of the various abstract components so critical in the layout of Northwest Coast formlines and ovoids — seemed beyond his grasp, at least on a consistent basis. One of the problems he confronted was a multitude of style variations among the different tribes and bands that could be overcome only with much study and good guidance. That problem was compounded by the lack of any teacher or formal guide to how the art was created. All had to be self-taught. While that was not new to Don, comprehending the complexities of Northwest Coast art takes time. Learning to transfer that knowledge into carved pieces takes even longer.

By 1959, Don's reputation as an Indian artist led to a request to produce a totem pole for the Oregon Centennial. He carved it day after day during the state fair, and hundreds of fairgoers watched as a thunderbird, killer whale, eagle, bear, and beaver emerged from the raw cedar log to form a pole. While Don did not create a masterful pole, he managed to plan it out and carve it much more effectively than his earlier large pieces. Oregonians celebrating the state's centennial were hungry for a sense of place and belonging, for the "authentic" and the "historical." ¹⁵ The grandeur of a totem pole struck many in just this way. In much the same way, Seattle boosters at the turn of the century had appropriated totem poles from the Tlingits in southeastern Alaska and then used them as an emblem for the city. ¹⁶ The logic behind the Oregon Centennial pole was the same, and it mattered little to the public that the pole represented artistic styles borrowed from British Columbia and southeastern Alaska or that it was carved by a man of largely Cherokee descent. For most non-Indians in the Pacific Northwest, the monumental art styles of British Columbian and southeastern Alaska tribes were more exciting and dramatic than those of Oregon's and Washington's coastal tribes. It was enough that the pole symbolized an ideal. After the centennial, the state commissioned a replica of the pole, which it gave to the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, in commemoration of the support given to the U.S. military in a mid-1950s Cold War–era expedition to the Antarctic. One current description of that pole characterizes it as "an authentic work of primitive North American Indian art." ¹⁷

The thirst to capture the so-called primitive as an antidote to the costs of modernity predated Lelooska. Since the turn of the twentieth century, for example, Boy Scouts and Campfire Girls had taken on Indian names and clothing, in essence to prepare them for urban, industrial life. ¹⁸ Beginning in the 1920s, the craze for southwestern Indian art — Navajo rugs, Pueblo pottery, and various styles of silver and stone jewelry — represented similar uses of primitive art to smooth the sharp edges of modernity and offered its non-Indian owners an imagined connection to "simpler" and "more natural" times. ¹⁹ Indian hobbyists who were more often than not working- and middle-class amateur ethnographers visited Indians on and off reservations in their own quest for authenticity and accuracy. ²⁰ By midcentury, these attempts to seek positive values in Indian cultures gave Native Americans increased cultural capital, even if it meant that aspects of their cultures were appropriated and commodified. The quest to uncover and sometimes "salvage" the past motivated hobbyists and tourists to purchase Indian items such as those Don Smith and his mother made over the years. It also provided some of the motivation for his own pursuit of knowledge from elders in various tribes. While Don was much like the hobbyists, his own "Indian-ness" set him apart. That Indian-ness had sometimes evoked racist responses at school and on the streets; at other times, it had opened doors. His Indian identity, Cherokee or otherwise, cut two ways.

The crude welcoming figures in this photograph of the exterior of the family shop at Hubbard, Oregon, represent Don Smith's early attempts at Northwest Coast Art.

The public acclaim and press exposure Lelooska gained from carving the Oregon Centennial pole significantly enhanced his reputation as a regional Indian artist and brought him a slew of new commissions. One Portland nightclub owner commissioned him to carve totem poles for the Mayan Jungle and Zombie Zulu clubs, evidence that the celebration of exotic primitivism trumped ethnographic accuracy for at least some consumers of Northwest Coast Indian art. More large poles followed, some taking Don as long as two months to carve. Commissions rolled in from customers such as International Paper, which sought examples of monumental art to connect its business to the region, its history, and its aboriginal people, though for the company the latter were more imaginary and idealized than realistic, much as had been the case for Seattle and its totem poles. After the Lelooska family moved to Kalama, Washington, in about 1960, Don was commissioned to carve several large poles, one of them the world's tallest single-piece pole at the time. These were grand achievements and provided Don with ongoing practice in the art form, which in turn contributed to his growing expertise. While he later explained that those poles were "not the quality I came to admire," they did represent a significant personal transformation in his artistic journey. "At that time," Don recalled, "they were fine for what they were — tourist poles." ²¹

In spite of these successes with Northwest Coast art, Lelooska was still carving sculptural and other curio items representing Plains/Plateau figures as well as various Western Americana items. Between 1959 and 1963, his resume of large carvings other than totem poles included a cigar store Indian for the Warm Springs Lumber Company in 1959; a six-foot-tall Chief Joseph statue for the Zoomsi (Portland Zoo/Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) auction in 1961; a six-foot statue of Celilo Chief Tommy Thompson for the Zoomsi auction in 1962; a seven-foot four-inch statue of a lumberjack for Mark Morris High School in Longview, Washington, in 1962; and a life-size cougar for John McLaughlin High School in Pasco, Washington, in 1963. These efforts reveal the period as a continued time of transition for Lelooska. ²² Carving in Northwest Coast style had not yet fully taken him over.

Don Smith in the early stages of making a thirty-foot pole for International Paper in 1962

In 1962, the Lelooska family moved from Kalama to Ariel, Washington. As with the opening of the family shop at Hubbard, this move marked a new stage in Lelooska's life and art. Don explained that "it ... was the time to make the break from the commercial, souvenir kind of things, tourist-trap stuff, to something serious. By that time, I knew the difference between the two and I wanted to ... sink or swim doing the better things." ²³ At Ariel, the family built a Kwakiutl-style ceremonial house in which they staged formal educational shows for schoolchildren from the greater Portland-Vancouver area. The shows were an outgrowth of patterns established in Hubbard, enhanced by a connection to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry that developed during the family's time in Kalama. The family also began to host evening shows. These ventures were simultaneously educational and entrepreneurial. They were also an outlet for Lelooska's growing talent as a theatrical storyteller.

Chief Lelooska in about 1994 in front of the large painted screen and with many of the masks and rattles at the ceremonial house in Ariel, Washington

Courtesy Ralph Norris and the Lelooska family

Don's fascination with Northwest Coast art and culture combined with his skills as a performer. There was something about the masks and ceremonies, especially those of the Kwakiutl, that appealed to him. He explained: "There is a wonderful theatricality there. I think I'm a ham at heart and that appealed to me, the concept of making the unseen world of the supernatural real and tangible for the uninitiated, to use the mask as a portal to the spiritual world." ²⁴

In the ceremonial house at Ariel, Lelooska used an adze to surface all the beams, demonstrating his careful attention to detail and his dedication to the rigors of the art form. He also carved the houseposts and an entrance pole and painted the large two-dimensional image on its front. For the performances, he crafted all the masks and rattles, designed the button blankets, and learned the songs and stories of many Northwest Coast tribes. Because his family members had to wear and use the items he made, he had to consider factors that Northwest Coast carvers who made masks solely for display purposes did not. It was a trial-and-error process, but this challenge helped Lelooska design pieces, whether for sale or for use in the programs, that were far more sophisticated than his earlier designs. For the remainder of his carving career, Lelooska took great pride in the fact that the masks he carved could be danced whether they hung on a wall in a customer's home or went into the hands of Native Americans for ceremonial purposes. At the same time, his commissions for monumental pieces such as totem poles or, later, huge flat panels continued to challenge his design and carving abilities.

The shows and Lelooska's growing reputation as a skilled Northwest Coast–style carver attracted the attention of local anthropologist Edward Malin. Malin had trained with Frederica de Laguna, a prominent anthropologist of the Northwest Coast, in the late 1940s and published a volume on Northwest Coast art in 1962. ²⁵ In 1963, Malin made arrangements with the federal Indian Arts and Crafts Board to set up a series of art demonstrations at various Northwest Indian reservations. ²⁶ At those demonstrations, Don carved pieces and talked with reservation-based arts and crafts producers about how they might make a living from this type of activity. In particular, a series of trips to the Makah Nation at Neah Bay, Washington, gave Don a connection to the ongoing vitality of art and culture in a Northwest Coast tribe. The pieces he produced there suggest how quickly and appropriately he could respond in almost any new cultural context in which he found himself. His Articulating Killer Whale Mask struck a deep vein among the Makah, as did Lelooska's creation of a sculpture of a thick, massive man clubbing a seal. A number of Makah dubbed the latter piece Cha'chik, a legendary cultural hero for the Makah.

Articulating Killer Whale Mask produced in Neah Bay at the Indian Arts and Crafts Board demonstration in about 1965

Courtesy Edward Malin

During the mid- and late 1960s, Don's own curiosity and encouragement from Malin and the Indian Arts and Crafts Board led him to experiment with horn, shell, stone, and copper. These media presented new challenges and also led to more commissions, such as that by Paul Thiry, the architect for the new chapel at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Thiry asked Lelooska to create a Northwest Coast–style rendition of the Four Evangelists from the book of Revelations — the Angel, the Eagle, the Bull, and the Lion. Don carved the figures in wood, from which Thiry made molds and cast them in concrete. Don recalled of that experience, "That was still the beginning time; I had turned the corner from the commercial to the better stuff. So I tried to design them and carve them." While he later viewed the pieces as "not great," he believed them to be among the few pieces in which he had "overstepped" himself. These were part of the "first step into the next little trip up the mountain." ²⁷

The next significant transformation for Lelooska and his family came when Malin arranged a trip to British Columbia to meet Chief James Sewid of the Kwakiutl. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Sewid and the Kwakiutl had begun a campaign to repatriate masks and other ceremonial regalia seized by Canadian officials in the early 1920s. ²⁸ As a part of this political challenge, Sewid had built a large ceremonial house in the mid-1960s and commissioned masks and ceremonial regalia. He and other Kwakiutl staged large public ceremonies, effectively announcing their presence and power to non-Indians in the province and the nation. Simultaneously, Kwakiutl families used these and other performances to educate younger generations and as part of ongoing representations of family privileges and rank, a trend that continues today. ²⁹

Don and Jimmy Sewid became fast friends. Sewid saw in Don a carver and educator who could support his family's cultural and political agenda. Don found Jimmy to be a source of great knowledge as well as a connection to many older men and women among the Kwaiutl. Sewid commissioned Don to carve a series of masks for the performances in British Columbia and ultimately adopted Don and his family into the extended Sewid clan, thereby bestowing rights and privileges to regalia and ceremonies. While the adoption was not without controversy among the Kwakiutl, the benefit to Sewid and Lelooska far outweighed the costs. Personally, Don gained immensely. For the first time since he had begun his journey into Northwest Coast Indian art, Don could find security in "belonging" to a tribe.

The contacts with the Sewids and the work with the Indian Arts and Crafts Board had immediate results. In September 1967, he was invited to participate in the Arts of the Raven exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery in British Columbia, Canada. The show was one of the key regional events marking the recognition of Northwest Coast art as something more than a primitive craft. In it, Don was among giants, artists who would become legendary in their own time, including Douglas E. Cranmer, Robert Davidson, Bill Holm, Henry Hunt, and Bill Reid. Even though Lelooska had a much smaller presence at the show than those luminaries, his inclusion in their ranks gave him enough recognition to never again have to fill commissions for places like the Zulu Zombie. With the publication of the exhibit catalog that same year, Don was assured exposure to an international art market. ³⁰

In northwest coast indian art, the late 1950s and 1960s were a time of substantial transformation. The impetus for salvage ethnography that had so affected Indian hobbyists reached a fever pitch that influenced scholars and stimulated a renewed market for Northwest Coast art. In the late 1950s, the University of British Columbia commissioned Bill Reid to carve poles and supervise other Indian carvers in an attempt to resuscitate what many believed to be a dying tradition. ³¹ Reid was particularly well suited to the historical moment. His mother was Haida, giving him a lineage on which to draw, and his previous job as a broadcaster and training in jewelry-making gave him a skill base to which he regularly turned. While Reid proved to be a fine artist and an even better publicist for the art form as well as the Haida, the art-is-dying-off trope proved too powerful and seductive for him and many others to avoid. It was, in fact, what helped excite the non-Indian market for Northwest Coast Indian art, and Reid seemed particularly adept at playing that line. Yet, the cultures of the Northwest Coast were not facing extinction in spite of significant adaptations that were underway by the mid–twentieth century. A great many older Indian men and women continued to train younger artists, Indian and non-Indian, but non-Indian consumers of Indian art and culture seemed more interested in the idea of a renaissance of authentic art than in innovation within the longer continuum of "tradition." ³²

Lelooska clearly benefited from the heightened public awareness of Northwest Coast Indian art, yet he was cautious about portraying it as nearly extinct. When he toured Northwest reservations with the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, he realized that it would be a "supreme arrogance" for a "hardly fledged" artist to presume to instruct Indians who had long been engaged, even if in private, in the production of cultural items such as masks, rattles, blankets, and baskets. Don did speak of "acute destruction," of art being "carried off" by museums and collectors "hidden" away. ³³ Yet, he resisted the pull of claiming that he alone had resuscitated the art forms and cultures of Northwest Indians. When he told stories in performances or described a carving, Lelooska often attributed his knowledge to "the old people," and sometimes he fretted that younger generations paid too little attention to the elders. Ultimately, his position as a man of Cherokee lineage producing Northwest Coast Indian art motivated him to validate his work through connections to the sources of his knowledge beyond books and beyond carving replicas of museum pieces. Those connections amply illustrated, in and of themselves, the cultural and political vitality of Indian tribes and individual artists.

Don Smith carving a characteristic large frog bowl at the Heard Museum of Native Culture and Art in Phoenix, probably in the 1970s

Courtesy Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona

Indians from various Northwest Coast tribes understandably have been perturbed by claims that non-Indians had to teach them their own "lost" cultures in order to save them from extinction. ³⁴ A broader public willingness to see only salvage or renaissance possibilities, however, has made it difficult for Indian and non-Indian producers of Northwest Coast art to see another story line: continuity within innovation. One of the key contributions Bill Reid and many of his contemporaries made was not the rescue of the art form but the translation of its flat, two-dimensional codes into three-dimensional sculptural renditions that consumers of Northwest Coast Indian art could more easily fathom. As scholar Joel Martineau explains, Northwest Coast artists' "traditional narratives" as expressed in their cultural productions prior to the 1960s tended to "code and express social situations that interpreters of earlier eras would have appreciated but that 'we' simply don't get." He argues that most contemporary non-Indians "merely lack the abilities to 'read' the traditional narratives" embedded in the art. For Martineau, Reid's ability to bridge that chasm allowed the art to be read by non-Indian consumers and gave it a new political force because it confirmed the presence of Indians in the political present. ³⁵ Whatever controversy surrounds Bill Reid and others, Martineau contends, should be weighed in this light. ³⁶ Lelooska could never be as openly "political" as was Bill Reid, but he took great pains to consistently highlight his debt not only to the Sewids but also to the ongoing vitality of the cultures and politics among the region's tribes.

Like Reid, Lelooska demonstrated his ability to bridge the conceptual gap between contemporary and traditional narratives by translating traditional narratives into sculptural forms. By the 1970s, following his adoption by the Sewids and his participation in the Arts of the Raven show, Lelooska's success made it possible for him to rely less on commissioned pieces and increasingly to create works inspired by his own study and imagination, which he sold in galleries and museums across the country and even internationally. During this period, Don mentored his brothers and sisters as well as his niece and nephew as they worked to become proficient Northwest Coast–style artists themselves. The Lelooska family set a work schedule around major shows in such places as Chicago, Denver, New York, San Juan Capistrano, and Santa Fe. The seasonal daytime school programs and evening family shows were a factor as well. They also made regular trips to British Columbia to participate with the Sewid family in various ceremonies.

This was a heady time for Lelooska as well as a time of great experimentation. Don's enthusiasm and growing confidence are evident in his artistic production at the time. His pieces tended to be large, even grandiose. He created large feast bowls, mid-sized poles, and, most exemplary of the time, substantial boxes with massive sculptured birds atop. He also experimented with straightforward sculptural forms, items that had connections to traditional styles but that were clearly modern expressions. Such pieces were a fabulous blend of traditional lines and Don's earlier experience with wooden sculpture. In them, the two strains of influence in his life — Plains/Plateau and Northwest Coast — found a common outlet. Don had never completely given up the Plains/Plateau culture of his youth or the curio trade. His mother, Mary, continued to make Indian dolls, by then mostly in Northwest Coast style, and Don carved most of the small masks for her. At the family-sponsored New Year's gala and other festive events at Ariel, he often told Plains/Plateau legends along with those of the Northwest Coast. Lelooska had not simply shed one part of his being to become something new; there was room for both.

Lelooska's artistic development depended on more than his enthusiasm, intelligence, and skills. He was also disciplined. While not an early riser, he religiously worked on pieces nearly every day of the week. Because he typically had several pieces in various stages of completion, his work routine could vary significantly, which helped him stay fresh. He paced himself, working several hours each morning and then in the afternoons. Preparations for gallery or museum shows always meant late-night stints, but the daily regimen brought the most significant results. Lelooska also took great pains to relax. He loved movies and was a voracious reader. He was always on the trail of some slightly off-beat adventure, which ranged from the desire to own a buffalo to the search for a rare fur-trade-era item. In practice, for him there was little difference between work and play. Life for Lelooska was almost always a pursuit.

Over the next two decades, Don's daily routine was punctuated by seasonal, crisis-inspired flurries of production for shows. Through it all, Lelooska continued to experiment with various traditional and sculptural forms. He characterized this period as one in which he was always learning, especially from his contacts in British Columbia:

You go through life a learner. There are no experts. You learn. You walk a ways, but you know there are always these hills. You go over the hill. You climb one hill and you think, "Oh boy, look, I made it." Then you look and here is a bigger hill over here and you just have to keep climbing and climbing. You never are going to have all of the answers. You must never pretend to. Humility; in some tribes, you have this tradition of humility. ³⁷

For any successful artist, retaining a sense of humility is difficult, and Lelooska was little different from many of his peers. A growing public awareness of what constituted "good" Northwest Coast art meant that every carver could expect to have to meet an ever-rising standard. Some of that pressure came from the growing body of scholarly and technical publications on the art form, represented best by Bill Holm's masterful Analysis of Form. ³⁸ The number of established Northwest Coast Indian carvers among Don's contemporaries continued to grow, and new carvers emerged on the scene as well, with the result that the public and collectors were simply more aware of the art. Lelooska had to work to keep abreast of these developments, and he often looked to his immediate family in Ariel and the Sewids in British Columbia to keep him on track. "My best critics," he chuckled, "surely the most merciless, have been within the family — ... Mom, definitely.... Mom has kind of the rock-in-the-sock approach." Don continued to rely on the tremendous knowledge base represented by elders, including their way of "shrinking you up and getting you into shape," usually in the guise of a seemingly innocent comment or question. ³⁹

At age sixty, Don's enthusiasm for Northwest Coast art had not diminished in the least. He was, by any measure, at the peak of his artistic form. The diagnosis of colon cancer and the burdens of surgery, treatment, and recovery caught Don, his family, and his friends by surprise. In the midst of the turmoil, Lelooska found himself without the strength and stamina to carve, an unfathomable blow to his very being. In the midst of the recovery, however, family and friends cajoled him into recording a series of children's stories and painting a matching set of scenes. This was "lighter" work than carving, but Lelooska rose to the challenge, approaching the task with a familiar discipline and creativity. He kept a recorder by his bedside and doggedly went through the stories, making certain to get just the right inflection at the right moment.

Lapsing into a performance mode was relatively easy, but painting flatwork posed an artistic challenge. Most Northwest Coast flat design is abstract, and Don hoped to represent three-dimensional figures in a two-dimensional space, to mix abstract design elements with a sense of realism. He had dabbled in some flat painting in the 1960s, but the illustrations for the children's stories were much different. Ultimately, his efforts yielded a tremendous blending of his abilities as an artist and performer. ⁴⁰ It was also the spirit-lifting experience he needed at the time. He explained shortly after he finished the project:

It was a lot of fun and I taped the stories. It worked its way up to about twelve stories. By that time, it is like eating peanut M&M's. Nobody can eat one peanut M&M. I ended up with eighteen or twenty paintings. It was fun to take it from the oral tradition ... and put it into print. It is a whole new thing. I would like to continue to experiment with it on kind of an ongoing basis. ⁴¹

Once Don's strength returned after the initial surgery and treatment, he undertook the creation of a "big sea otter bowl, the mother sea otter, a huge one." He wanted to prove to himself that he "could do it." In spite of his success with that large cedar piece and the confidence it gave him, Don's bout with cancer changed his perspective on what he wanted to carve. He came to believe that "the fun ... [had] gone out if it.... Doing the big pieces finally impressed me as being more of a carpentry job than what I like to do, the theatrical sorts of carvings and things." ⁴²

Eagle Shaman's Box, 1984

Don Smith wrote Stephen Dow Beckham, a professor of history at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, the following letter on May 1, 1984, describing how he conceived Eagle Shaman's Box.

The eagle is to almost all Native Americans an important symbol, the reconciling link between the heavens and the earth—strength, honor, warrior power; his feathers are used in sacred rituals of all western tribes.

Courtesy Ralph Norris

On the N.W. Coast the eagle is all of this and more. [It is an] ancestor figure to certain clans. Eagle remov[es] his mask to become a human—an ancestor. His down is used in ceremonies [and is] wafted about by the dancers' blankets. It creates a snow storm within the ceremonial house falling on all it touches as a blessing. It clings to blankets and your hair. It descends as peace and sacredness.

In the early fall they come, the Eagle People, to the Chilkat River and remain in great numbers until the first quickening of spring. They hold council on the trees and feast on the spawned salmon. Everywhere in the trees [are] black shapes crowned with white heads. To the Indians, they are more than birds they could in the Mythtimes remove their eagle garments and appear as humans. From time to time they shared their power, which was very great, with mortals. Four of the most powerful Shaman among the Chilkat had the "Eagle Powers."

When I decided to carve the Eagle Shaman's box all these things came to mind. On the lid [is] a feasting eagle. The old people say, "On the coast everybody eats salmon," so the eagle feasts on the N.W. Coast staff of life—salmon. By his stance, he [Eagle] challenges anyone to take his food or power from him. He guards the box and the contents within.

The box is one solid cedar piece, not bentwood. The front and back sides are the River Spirits. Eagle is painted on the ends. The front and back of the box are done in the traditional "form line design" style as are the eagle's wings where they represent stylized feathers. The talons are traditional black, red and copper green, [or], as the old people say, "that is blue green." Our binder is acrylic rather than salmon egg oil.

As you can tell I would much rather carve than write. I hope you enjoy the Eagle Shaman's box. I will always be proud that you wanted to own it and may it bring a blessing to all of you.

Hahakesla,
Lelooska

Letter courtesy of Professor Stephen Dow Beckham, Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon, copy in possession of the author. Minor punctuation changes have been made for clarity.

A new perspective on himself and a chance to experiment again led Lelooska back to working in alder. One piece he particularly enjoyed was Puffin Rock. It was one of the children's stories he had taped and illustrated. As "a kind of fun experiment," he moved from the flat design, "taking the painting and turning it into a sculpture." ⁴³ While he took that piece to a show in Seattle, he just could not part with it.

Lelooska continued to carve, sometimes the larger cedar works but also any number of smaller, more detailed alder pieces. In 1996, nearly three years after his initial diagnosis, it became clear that his cancer was back. Don tried to work, but growing pain and an increasing loss of speech made it difficult. He never stopped thinking. "I always have this list of things I would just love to make and experiment with or bring back," he told me. ⁴⁴ He wanted to finish a pole that had lain in the carport for nearly two decades, the Kulus (baby Eagle) and Tsonoquah (Wild Woman of the Woods) pole that represented two of his principal crests bestowed by the Sewids. He dreamed of an elaborate, complex articulating mask of Kwénkwenxweligi, the Great Thunderbird, in memory of Chief James Sewid, who had passed away several years earlier. Don died shortly after his sixty-third birthday. His younger brother Fearon Tsugani Smith completed the Kulus and Tsonoquah pole for Lelooska's memorial potlatch in 2001. The mask for Jimmy Sewid exists only partially captured on audiotape and in print, a fleeting legacy of Lelooska's talent and his debt to the Sewids. ⁴⁵

Don lelooska smith's career as an artist was exceptional. A man of keen intellect, expansive imagination, and extreme dedication, he took in all that he could from the world around him. He was, by his own admission, an ethnographer, but he was able to play that role by standing inside Indian worlds. He first moved into Indian arts and crafts because his family depended on that work for a livelihood. They made a modest living at it because non-Indians wanted things Indian. The rising popularity of Northwest Coast art, of which Don was a part, combined neatly with a dramatic transformation in the art world as collectors increasingly viewed new Northwest Coast Indian pieces as art rather than as replicas of primitive craft. That art also served political purposes, especially for First Nations tribes in British Columbia. Don benefited from the conjunction of culture and politics, and he also supported it by contributing his own works to the cause.

Don Smith was much enamored with Puffin Rock (1994), this small alder sculpture inspired by the children's story and painting he had created. He did not want to sell it, but the family ultimately sold it to a friend to help defray medical bills when his cancer returned.

Courtesy Ralph Norris

Lelooska's art evolved with each of these changes, for what he produced was a result of who he was at the time and the context in which he found himself. His flexibility and intellectual curiosity allowed him to engage the changes around him. The man, the times, and the art were all tied to each other. Disputes about his "authenticity" — was he Indian enough, was he the right kind of Indian — will no doubt continue. Recognizing that these questions are at the center of many of the twentieth- and twenty-first-century debates for Native Americans places Lelooska's life and art squarely inside — not outside — Native American history. We are fortunate to have had his art, his performances, and his story during these times.

Notes

^1.� Anthropologist Edward Malin started a project on the family in the 1960s but was not able to see it to completion, though he was involved in writing several pieces regarding Lelooska in the 1960s. For example, see "Lelooska," Smoke Signals 49 (Summer 1966): 3–17. See also Chris Smart, Darwin Goody, and Wesley Van Tassel, Lelooska: Myths, Masks, Magic [video recording] (Ellensburg: Central Washington University, 1996); Douglas Congdon-Martin, Lelooska: The Traditional Art of the Mask — Carving a Transformation Mask (Atglen, Penn.: Schiffer, 1996); Randolf Falk, Lelooska (Millbrae, Calif.: Celestial Arts, 1976); Wendy Gordon and Brenda Buratti, "Lelooska," Four Winds 1:4 (Fall 1980): 33–40.

^2.� Chris Friday, Lelooska: The Life of a Northwest Coast Artist (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003).

^3.� Ibid., 178–9, 181.

^4.� See L.G. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883–1933 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996).

^5.� Friday, Lelooska, 96.

^6.� Ibid., 93.

^7.� Ibid., 94–5.

^8.� Ibid., 93, 104.

^9.� Ibid., 96.

^10.� Ibid., 93, 96.

^11.� Ibid., 104.

^12.� Ibid., 104–5.

^13.� Ibid., 124.

^14.� Ibid., 124, 126.

^15.� See Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998).

^16.� The Tlingit pole in Seattle's Pioneer Square was stolen by city boosters in the late 1890s. When the pole burned in the 1930s, the city commissioned a Tlingit carver for another.

^17.� Christchurch City Libraries, "Statues, fountains, memorials, plaques of North-west Christchurch," library.christchurch.org.nz/Heritage/LocalHistory/Fendalton/statues.asp (accessed December 2, 2003). The pole currently stands "on a grassy area at Christchurch International Airport."

^18.� Deloria, Playing Indian, 95–127.

^19.� Nancy Peake, "'If it came from Wright's, You bought it right': Charles A. Wright, Proprietor, Wright's Trading Post," New Mexico Historical Review 66:3 (July 1991), 261–86; David W. Penney and Lisa Roberts, "America's Pueblo Artists: Encounters on the Borderlands," in Native American Art in the Twentieth Century, ed. W. Jackson Rushing III (London: Routledge, 1999), 21–38.

^20.� Deloria, Playing Indian, 128–53; William K. Powers, "The Indian Hobbyist Movement in North America," in Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 4, History of Indian-White Relations, ed. Wilcomb Washburn (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988), 557–61.

^21.� Friday, Lelooska, 127.

^22.� Don Smith, Craftsman's Biographical Questionnaire, Indian Arts and Crafts Board, March 30, 1965. (Courtesy of Edward Malin, from his personal papers and with the full knowledge and consent of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board. I am indebted to Ed for his gracious sharing of this information. Copies of these papers are in possession of the author.)

^23.� Friday, Lelooska, 128.

^24.� Ibid., 126.

^25.� Edward Malin, with collection notes by Norman Feder, Indian Art of the Northwest Coast: The Cultural Background of the Art (Denver, Colo.: Denver Art Museum, 1962)

^26.� George W. Fedoroff to Robert G. Hart and Edward Malin, May 16, 1963; Joyce Brunette to Malin, March 21, 1963, Malin personal papers.

^27.� Friday, Lelooska, 195, 196.

^28.� James P. Spradley, ed., Guests Never Leave Hungry: The Autobiography of James Sewid, a Kwakiutl Indian (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1969); Daisy (My-yah-nelth) Sewid-Smith, Prosecution or Persecution (Cape Mudge, B.C.: Nu-Yum-Baleess Society, 1979).

^29.� In 1973, the Kwakiutl won the repatriation battle, ultimately setting up two significant museums in the late 1970s at which families store and display the masks. See James Clifford, "Four Northwest Coast Museums: Travel Reflections," in Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, ed. Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute, 1991), 212–54; Ira Jacknis, "Repatriation as Social Drama: The Kwakiutl Indians of Southern British Columbia, 1922–1980," American Indian Quarterly 20:2 (Spring 1996): 274–86.

^30.� Wilson Duff [catalogue text], Arts of the Raven: Master Works by the Northwest Coast Indian, with contributory articles by Bill Holm and Bill Reid (Vancouver, B.C.: Vancouver Art Gallery, 1967). See also Erna Gunther, Northwest Coast Indian Art: An Exhibit at the Seattle World's Fair Fine Arts Pavilion, April 21–October 21, 1962 (Seattle, Wash.: Century 21 Exposition, 1962); Gunther, Art in the Life of the Northwest Coast Indians with a Catalog of the Rasmussen Collection of Northwest Indian Art at the Portland Art Museum (Portland, Ore.: Portland Art Museum, 1966); Malin, Indian Art; Audrey Hawthorn, Art of the Kwakiutl Indians and Other Northwest Coast Tribes (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967); Bruce Bernstein, "Contexts for the Growth and Development of the Indian Art World in the 1960s and 1970s," in Rushing, ed., Native American Art, 57–74.

^31.� Maria Tippett, Bill Reid: The Making of an Indian (Toronto: Random House, 2003); Jane O'Hara, "Trade Secrets: Haida Artist Bill Reid was a National Icon ...," Maclean's, October 18, 1999, 42–62; letters to the editor, Maclean's, November 29, 1999, 6; and Doris Shadboldt, Bill Reid (Vancouver, B.C.: Douglas & McIntyre; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998).

^32.� Tippett, Bill Reid; Joel Martineau, "Auto-ethnography and Material Culture: The Case of Bill Reid," Biography 24:1 (Winter 2001): 242–58; "Meant to Impress," Los Angeles Times, March 1, 1987.

^33.� Friday, Lelooska, 131.

^34.� Deloris Trzan Ament, "Sharing the Form — Teacher-Artist Has Been the Guiding Light behind an Art Form's Comeback," Seattle Times, April 4, 1989; and David Hunt and Bill Wilson, "Northwest Coast Arts — Articles Are an Insult to Great Kwakiutl Chiefs and Artists," letters to the editor, Seattle Times, May 15, 1989.

^35.� Martineau, "Autoethnography and Material Culture." Also see Charlotte Townsend-Gault, "Northwest Coast Art: The Culture of Land Claims," American Indian Quarterly 18:4 (Winter 1994): 445–67.

^36.� For some of the controversy, see O'Hara, "Trade Secrets"; and the response in letters to the editor, Maclean's, November 29, 1999, 6.

^37.� Friday, Lelooska, 211.

^38.� Bill Holm, Northwest Coast Indian Art: An Analysis of Form (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1965).

^39.� Friday, Lelooska, 211–12.

^40.� Two volumes of these stories appeared: Christine Normandin, ed., Echoes of the Elders: The Stories and Paintings of Chief Lelooska (New York: Callaway Editions, 1997); and Christine Normandin, ed., Spirit of the Cedar People: More Stories and Paintings of Chief Lelooska (New York: DK Ink, Callaway Editions, 1998).

^41.� Friday, Lelooska, 223.

^42.� Ibid., 224.

^43.� Ibid.

^44.� Ibid., 126.

^45.� Ibid., 216–20.

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