Lone Wolf’s early life experiences took place within the Native community that had few material resources, and little economic or political control, due to a militaristic federal government imposed program that attempted to indoctrinate American Indians. Beginning in the 1870s, the federal government implemented institutionalized education as a strategy of assimilation. The intent of boarding schools was to force American Indian youths to become United States citizens by removing them from their Native culture. During Lone Wolf’s childhood, the program was implemented across the country, and many public schools barred or discouraged American Indian children from attending. In Montana, Lone Wolf experienced firsthand the boarding school’s military-style
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The Reader consisted of lessons written as short stories relating to life incidents, and each story was accompanied by an illustration. According to the artist, “when I went to school I got a hold of those books, and right there and then I decided that’s what I wanted to do.” Lone Wolf’s first painting, Portrait of an American Indian, 1894 (Figure 1), was done when he was eleven years old and enrolled at Willow Creek. In this watercolor portrait, Lone Wolf renders an expressive image of an American Indian man, focusing on the sitter’s unique facial features, detailed clothing, and accouterments, including a single feather hair ornament. While the subject matter and aesthetic forms of this painting are rooted in earlier nineteenth-century American Indian portraits created by non-Native artists such as George Catlin, Edgar Samuel Paxson (1852-1919), and Elbridge Ayer Burbank (1858-1959), Lone Wolf undoubtedly intended this portrait to provide a glimpse of his own knowledge of indigenous life and peoples during this …show more content…
He is credited for casting American Indians in positive roles. Lone Wolf wrote about his involvement in the early movie industry: “James Young Deer was the manager, director and scenario writer. He wrote his story out on location and the picture there and then.” Most likely Young Deer and Lone Wolf shared a common experience in the Indian and White worlds. Their similar paths and experiences would have exposed them in varying degrees to important ideas and images, which they used in defining themselves as indigenous and working through their relationships in the Euro-American society. Lone Wolf’s performances in Young Deer’s films presage the future roles of the Ecological Indian and cowboy the artist would play in real life for the American
The Reader consisted of lessons written as short stories relating to life incidents, and each story was accompanied by an illustration. According to the artist, “when I went to school I got a hold of those books, and right there and then I decided that’s what I wanted to do.” Lone Wolf’s first painting, Portrait of an American Indian, 1894 (Figure 1), was done when he was eleven years old and enrolled at Willow Creek. In this watercolor portrait, Lone Wolf renders an expressive image of an American Indian man, focusing on the sitter’s unique facial features, detailed clothing, and accouterments, including a single feather hair ornament. While the subject matter and aesthetic forms of this painting are rooted in earlier nineteenth-century American Indian portraits created by non-Native artists such as George Catlin, Edgar Samuel Paxson (1852-1919), and Elbridge Ayer Burbank (1858-1959), Lone Wolf undoubtedly intended this portrait to provide a glimpse of his own knowledge of indigenous life and peoples during this …show more content…
He is credited for casting American Indians in positive roles. Lone Wolf wrote about his involvement in the early movie industry: “James Young Deer was the manager, director and scenario writer. He wrote his story out on location and the picture there and then.” Most likely Young Deer and Lone Wolf shared a common experience in the Indian and White worlds. Their similar paths and experiences would have exposed them in varying degrees to important ideas and images, which they used in defining themselves as indigenous and working through their relationships in the Euro-American society. Lone Wolf’s performances in Young Deer’s films presage the future roles of the Ecological Indian and cowboy the artist would play in real life for the American