Oral history interview with Joan Hill

Little Thunder: This is Julie Pearson-Little Thunder. Today is [Wednesday], September 14, [2011], and I'm interviewing Joan Hill as part of the Oklahoma Native Artists Project, sponsored by Oklahoma Oral History Research Program at Oklahoma State University. We're at Joan's home on Red Bird Lane. This is land your maternal great-grandfather settled on in the 1850s after Indian Removal. Joan, you're Creek and Cherokee. You've won more awards, national and international, than any other American Indian artist [up to 1980], and I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me.

Hill: I'm honored that you asked me.

Little Thunder: Where were you born, and where did you grow up?

Hill: I was born at the Baptist Hospital here in Muskogee, and they brought me home, I think, one day later. Here, except we lived in a house up there. (Laughs) They built this house in 1954, my parents did. I went to the little elementary school, one-room country school. That was Harris School, then. When 1:00my mother was a little girl, this was their family ranch. Papa, that was Cheasquah Harris, he was Red Bird's son, and Louis Jobe and a brother, Bill Harris, all went together, and they established the little one-room country school in 1904. And they hired a teacher, boarded him in their home, so everybody could go to school.

They had a lot of people that worked on the ranch and there was no place for them to go to school. Papa sent his daughters to the Nazareth (Catholic) Institute, the older ones and Mother. When she came along, she refused to go just because she didn't want to leave home. (Laughter) So, then they did the one down here. Later, it was changed back to Harris-Jobe again. Consolidated. So, I've lived here my entire life except for travels. I traveled for twenty years, three or four trips a year, all over the world. I'm glad I got to do that.

Little Thunder: What did your folks do for a living?

Hill: Daddy managed his property. When he was about, I guess, seven years of age 2:00[he was born in 1897] they struck oil on his allotment. [Daddy's father, G.W. Hill (an attorney) was guardian until daddy came of age. Then he went to court and had the restrictions removed.] They were never wealthy, but the only vice my father had was smoking. (Laughter) He didn't drink, he didn't gamble or any of that. He took the money that he made and bought more land with it. At one time, he had five farms and then Mother had hers and the home place here. For all of our childhood, Daddy would go to each of his farms and visit all of them each week. And we'd all go. It was so much fun. The tenants, one of them always had roasted peanuts for us. We would stop. I remember they would buy the fixings for a picnic and we'd have a picnic someplace. And sometimes we'd fish.

One of the farms had a creek with fish in it, and Daddy taught my brother how to noodle. (Laughter) I remember those were all very happy [memories]. Mother was a housewife. She graduated from Oklahoma College for Women, two-year at Chickasha, 3:00which now is the Oklahoma [College of Arts and Sciences]. It's co-ed and everything. Anyway, after she graduated, she and Daddy got married, so she was like a housewife. Then when my brother and I started to college, she took a job with Egan Manufacturing Company. Daddy worked for the Southwestern Power Administration in later years. At first, he managed his farms. He still had his farms, but farming, like this one on the river, there'd be a drought one year and a flood the next. Nobody in farming makes money. But because of it being on the river, it was good for cattle.

Part of this [here in Muskogee] was my grandfather's [Mother's father, Cheasquah (Papa)] ranch. It was the oldest ranch in Oklahoma. It's not the longest operating, but it was the oldest then because Red Bird had started when they came here in 1858. My grandfather wanted all his children to settle around him, so they did. [Most] all took their allotments here. That's why I said this is Harris Township, Mother's maiden name, and then there's Harris Street, Harris 4:00Avenue, Harris Road, and Harris Addition. (Laughter) One of the people was always teasing me that they were going to move the Harrises off. (Laughter) "You've got too many things around here named for Harris," he said. (Laughter)

But they were all civic-minded people. My great-uncle, my grand-father's brother, was the first County Commissioner in Muskogee, and he had the water put out to Hyde Park. And because it came out this way, then the family got to attach on it, too. But for years, because we all attached onto it, if one person was taking a bath up the line and you started taking one down here, you could get scalded to death. When one person turned it on, then you would have to [wait] through it. So, we'd all have to cooperate. They used to have party lines, too. Anyway, that's like growing up in a rural community. It's in the city limits now, but it still feels like it [rural]. As I said, because [of] the ice storms and everything, all the trees fell. I feel like I have to get all of those up.

Our family cemetery is here. Red Bird is buried there and his wife. They were 5:00both second cousins to Will Rogers, and they were second cousins to each other. But remember, Prince Phillip and Queen Elizabeth are second cousins to each other, too! (Laughter) Back in those days, I think people were [so] isolated that, mostly, who they knew were relatives. Anyway, my grandparents are buried out there and my parents are buried there, so I want to be buried there, too--if I ever decide to die. (Laughter) I'm going to keep going as long as I can.

Little Thunder: You've mentioned in different interviews that your family were mainly church people and you weren't really raised around the ceremonial grounds that much.

Hill: This is what I want to tell you, though. This is what's important because when I was taking the portraiture course from Dick West at Bacone, after I taught school for four years and took art lessons [in Tulsa], I came back home and enrolled at Bacone for the portraiture course. That's when Dick West said, 6:00"[With your family background] it's a shame that you don't do Indian painting." I told him, "I wasn't brought up on a reservation like other people." He said, "Well, you can do research. I do research. You can do research." So, that's what I started doing. My father was so happy. Grandpa Hill [George Washington Hill], his father, was chief of the Creek Nation. 1923-28, I believe. He died in office. They used to go to the ceremonies, not the powwows like they have now. Daddy took Mother and I every week. We'd go to all these different places that Daddy knew about. They'd be way out in the boondocks, someplace you've never heard of.

Little Thunder: [That's when] you were doing research for your painting?

Hill: Yes, research for my painting, yes. So, we got to see the buffalo dance and all. I remember when we drove up to one of [the ceremonial grounds] my mother. Now, my mother is part Indian, but she doesn't look a lot Indian. I asked them if I can take pictures and he said, "Well, I don't know. If you promise not to exploit them by publishing them." And I said, "What I want to do is to paint them." So, he said, "Well, maybe." I said, "Just a minute, let me go 7:00tell my father." He looked over and he said, (Daddy looked like an Indian) "What's your father's name?" I said, "William McKinley Hill." All of them were named after Presidents back then. So, anyway, he said, "Mack, is that you?"

Daddy (they all called him Mack) he knew everybody out there. They knew him. They were so happy. They invited us to stay for all the ceremonies. They invited us to eat with them. It was so nice. Daddy had a good friend with the Cherokees, Squirrel Wildcat. All the Wildcats, they're so good at music. Tommy [is the grandson of Squirrel]. Anyway, they invited us to come to the stomp dances, the Red Bird Smith stomp dances. So, we got to go to all of those that, ordinarily, people who had no connections to Indians couldn't go to because they weren't sure if you would be doing it to exploit them or to make fun of them or something like that. That's how come I got to do so many things. I have all the photographs I took, too, with a little Pony II camera. (Laughter) But that took 8:00pretty pictures.

Little Thunder: That's wonderful.

Hill: That's how I got into Indian painting. After Dick West lectured me at what I should be doing. (Laughs) Anyway, he came over every Saturday. He would bring his dog, Skipper, over and he'd walk around the field [with my father]. Never shot anything, but he gave the quail nervous breakdowns, I think. (Laughter) They'd walk around all over the fields, and then he'd come in and listen to the opera. Mother always listened to the Saturday afternoon opera. Mother was a coloratura soprano. She majored in voice and piano when she was in college. So, she loved it. We always grew up listening to Saturday afternoon opera.

So, Dick West would come in. I had a wax head that I was going to cast, and he would sit there, work on one side and I'd work on the other. It was the funniest thing. (Laughter) Then, Mother, she'd always bake a cake or something when he came over. He wanted me to enter the Indian Annual. He said, "You've got to 9:00enter that." And I said, "Well, I wasn't sure if I was good enough." "No, no, go on. I want you to do a painting for it and do it good, but don't put a hundred figures in it." (Laughter) And [the painting] had thirteen! That's how I got started in Indian art. I didn't win the first time I entered, but the Spillers, G. C. Spillers in Tulsa, they bought it for $100 dollars. Now, this is 1959. That was a lot of money to me.

Then I started entering other shows because he said, "Don't get discouraged if you get rejected or anything. Just go on again." He always told the story about how he had packed up one that was rejected. He just sent it to another show and it won the grand prize. Anyway, that was the way he taught us to be, philosophical about it, and not be hurt over it. He said, "Nearly everything's been done that can be done in Indian art, but there's always room for a good one." That's why he said to concentrate on making yourself better. I've known artists who would be real angry if they didn't win anything. And I thought, 10:00"There's your wrong attitude," because I want to learn. They used to talk about Michelangelo had "divine discontent." He was never satisfied with anything he did. So, I thought, "Well, that's good. Maybe, that I'm not really satisfied." So, I kept trying to improve, you know.

Little Thunder: That was another question I had, your first exposure to Indian art as a genre. Was it over there at Bacone, or did you have any pieces in the house?

Hill: [We had lots of books of other art but only a few pieces, pottery and baskets, of Indian art.] I used to draw on the walls as a child. (Laughs) My parents, in self-defense, they bought me equipment to paint with. (Laughter) I remember Daddy, when we were growing up, when it would frost on the windows in the wintertime, he'd draw on them. And when it melted, you could see the image still there. Of course, mother would always clean it with Windex.

Anyway, I mentioned about the Institute, the Santa Fe Institute. The second year it was open, they wanted Dick West to teach. And he was always giving me the jobs that he didn't want, I guess. (Laughter) So, Lloyd New, who just founded 11:00it, came to see me, and I went out there [later] to see whether I'd want to do it.

But I had just started traveling and [was] really getting started on my career, and I thought, "If I do go out there--" I remember I walked into two galleries, showed them my photographs, my little Pony II photographs, and both of them accepted to handle my paintings. I know the one, Leona Kahl, had the gallery in Taos. She said, "They will drain you dry if you're a teacher. You'll never really get to paint." So, I thought about it and I thought about it, and I finally turned it down. The strangest thing, I was offered all these jobs. If I wanted one, I probably couldn't get one.

I was offered [one] at Berkley back in the '70s. I thought, "No, no, no. They're too wild for me." (Laughter) Then we had the University of Maryland. And Kentucky wanted me for the Native Studies program. That was while my mother was ill, and I couldn't do that. Then Haskell offered me the job when Dick West left 12:00there, at Lawrence. Bacone had offered me twice, and I turned them all down. Like I said, if I hadn't been traveling and I hadn't already gotten started, I'd probably have taken it. I feel like you grow more if you [are teaching painting].

The strange thing is, now, when I started--I want to mention this because things have changed so much--traditional painting, you could not use anything they call mechanical aids. A lot of the artists used airbrush for snow scenes and things, which they look beautiful to me. Then, when they wouldn't let them do it--they'd even reject them from Philbrook and Gallup--they started using a toothbrush to splatter it. That's not considered mechanical. I wonder now about the things that are done with the computer because several artists do things with this computer stuff, and then they do collages with photographs. I keep wondering 13:00about that because I think it's in the Indian Art Law and some of the other stuff.

I remember at Philbrook, they were very strict about that. Perfectly flat paintings--you could not do shading on anything. Now, it's almost reversed and the traditional artists are practically dying out because people are not learning it anymore. People aren't teaching it anymore, and it's a shame. I believe that an artist should be free to do anything that they want to do. I remember when they started the special category at Philbrook. Jeannie King and Dick West were the ones that pioneered for it, because we all wanted to do other things, too, besides the strictly flat, two-dimensional. But I find myself going back to it. It's satisfying, somehow. I know one thing. I sell everything I paint in traditional because people want it, since it seems to be a dying art. So, there should be something where people encourage it. Anyway, that's how I got into Indian art. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: Going back to that visit by Lloyd Kiva New real quickly, did you 14:00know he was coming?

Hill: He called me and told me he was on his way over from Bacone. (Laughter) His sister was with him. She had brought him up. Both of their parents died, I think, when they were very young, and she was older than he was, a lot older. Then, strangely--this is just kind of a little aside--on the travel workshop that I was on, his teacher at the Chicago Art Institute was there and her husband, and we got to talking. She said, "By any chance, do you know Lloyd New?" I said, "Yes, I know Lloyd New." She said, "We used to keep him all the time because he was always starving. Young men are always starving." (Laughter) She said that he would stay with them for weekends, and they're lifelong friends. She was so sweet. Gertrude Hadley was her name and her husband was Russell Hadley.

After I found out his whole record, I was very impressed because when we went to Scottsdale, he told the story--and this is interesting, I think, for Indian artists to know. He made a coat for some woman's dog, a poodle, out in Scottsdale. So, she told him, "Anything you want, if there's anything you need or I can do for you, I'd be glad to do it." The other artists had turned her down; they wouldn't do it. He designed clothing. So, he said, "Well, there is this little place out in the middle of the desert here, near Phoenix. I'd kind of like a place to put a shop and a gallery." She said, "Where is it, exactly?" He told her and she owned it! She let him put his shop--everything. That's how he got started. He told the story, too. That's where the Fifth Avenue shops came from in Scottsdale, Lloyd New getting the woman to [help him]. They owned the property, all of it. It was out in the middle of the desert back in those days, I guess. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: That's interesting. So, you went to NSU in 1952, and you got a degree in education?

Hill: Yes, I graduated from there. I went to Muskogee Junior College for the first two years and then to Northeastern. I graduated from Northeastern. I got the outstanding alumnus award in 2000! (Laughs)

Little Thunder: What made you think teaching would be a good thing?

Hill: Well, I wanted to teach art. Actually, I just wanted to paint. I used to want to teach art, solely art, and they told me, "You can't make a living as an artist. You've got to be practical." That's how they talked me into taking typing and shorthand in high school.

Little Thunder: These were teachers, not your folks?

Hill: Parents and teachers. But my parents were wonderful in that they wanted me to do what I wanted to do. Mother was a singer, and Daddy loved art himself. So, they loved the arts. I know a lot of people who don't want their children to do 17:00anything they can't make a living at. I know one time they asked my brother, who was very talented, too, in art, why he didn't paint and he said, "Well, I just can't figure out who would support my family while I'm painting." (Laughter) Anyway, that's one of the drawbacks. You don't get rich unless you're Andy Warhol with a gimmick of some kind. Mechanical aids! They said he projected and copied a lot of things he did. I'm not sure whether that's really art-- (Laughter)

Little Thunder: While you were teaching at Roosevelt, you lived in Tulsa for a while.

Hill: Four years. Purely by accident, I happened to meet a family who had all these art connections to everything. After Dr. Charles C. Mason hired me a week before school started, he said, "Do you have a place to live?" I said, "No." (Laughter) He said, "Well, we have people who want teachers to live with them." 18:00Remember, this is 1952. There are very few apartments and things--you'd have to stay in a hotel. Anyway, he gave me this list and my father was taking me around--I couldn't even drive, then. So, we went in this place and the man who answered the door had on an undershirt, a can of beer in his hand. He was listening to a ball game. (Laughs) It was a very small house, and my father said, "We'd like to meet your wife." He said, "She's in Kansas City at a meeting. She's not here." Daddy said, "How often does she go on these trips, and how long does she stay?" My father could sure talk when he had to. (Laughter) So, he said, "She goes about twice a year and she stays--" My father said, "Get your purse, we're leaving." We got up and walked out. I don't know what the man thought.

The second person, her maiden name had been Hill. Her daughter, later on, she had an art gallery out in Santa Fe, Margaret Jamison. She was married to Angus Davidson [then], who went to school with my father at Saint Joseph when they 19:00were just seven, eight years old, back in boarding school. So, they had all these art connections, and Grace was my landlady. Actually, they treated me like a member of the family. I learned a lot about life that I didn't learn growing up. All kinds of interesting things. They had a chauffeur who was called a driver, not a chauffeur. And you don't call your boat a yacht, you call it a boat, which is interesting. (Laughter)Anyway, I met all the family. They all treated me like a member of their family the whole time that I was in Tulsa.

I was taking night classes at Philbrook, and I met a lot of really nice people. There was some physician's wife who wanted to take lessons, too. And she said, "Well, I drive right by you. There's no sense in taking a bus." I wanted to go to church again, and you had to change buses to go to church, and I'd have to get up real, real early. So, my landlady said, "Well, I was a Baptist and now I'm a Catholic. Why don't you go with me to the Catholic church?" So, I asked Mother and Daddy, I said, "Do you mind?" Daddy went to a Catholic school, and 20:00Mother's sisters all did. They said, "No, no. Go where you want to. It's fine." So, I went to church with her. As I said, they treated me like a daughter, and it was very interesting because they knew all these people in Santa Fe and everywhere. All the artists. They knew a lot of people. One of the daughter's husbands helped build the Sands Hotel [Las Vegas, Nevada]. They had gallery connections there, too. Anyway, that was interesting, and it helped further my education in a lot of ways that I wouldn't have had otherwise.

Little Thunder: Now, this is prior-- you haven't yet been to Bacone, yet.

Hill: Yes, prior, that's right. I resigned in 1956. I taught four years in the Tulsa Public Schools. But I want to mention, at Northeastern, the only art we had was one semester of watercolor, one semester in oil painting. We didn't paint, we studied other artists work, which I'm very grateful that I got that. Then we had art appreciation and one semester of perspective, which is, 21:00strangely, the only really thing that you did with your hands, [and history of art. During my jet setting days I got to visit many places we had studied]. Working with it, I learned to appreciate a lot of art that I hadn't at first. I remember Marie Laurencin. She paints paintings of women with no noses. Later on, I met a lot of these people, like for instance, Fleur Cowles], she did this gorgeous magazine. She was an artist. My friend, [Thurman,] and I happened to be in Rio De Janeiro the night of her opening show. I told her that my landlady had given me the complete set of her gorgeous magazines. They were so expensive they only published them for one year. I've got the whole set. They're probably worth a fortune. She wanted to buy them from me! (Laughter) I said, "Oh, I just love them! I'll have to see." I was trying to think of her name. She [Fleur Cowles] was real famous for doing animals like tigers and lions and all kinds of things like that.

Anyway, at a lot of these things you meet other people, and I found out that 22:00people are interested in people who are artists. And writers. Strangely, I have a lot of friends who are writers, too. Writers and musicians. I was in the Pen Woman branch that they had in Tulsa. I remember that most of them were writers. They had one or two artists, and so I entered their show. The first time I entered, I won every first prize. There was a lot of objection to it. (Laughter) I never entered again. They didn't like it, [that I won all the first prizes]. That's all I can say, they didn't like it. (Laughs)

The second show that I entered was in Santa Fe. Vincent Price was the judge, and he picked [my painting] for the Professional Prize, whatever it was that was next to the Grand Award. And they bought it for the museum. Years later, I 23:00wanted him to judge our Muskogee show when I was down here. He actually talked to me on the phone, and his manager had written me a couple cards because we wanted him to judge the show. He explained why he was so busy, he couldn't. Then, years later, [he was] filming in Venice when we were there. I didn't get to see him because he rarely showed up in the daytime. Like a vampire. (Laughter) Anyway, they had filmed Clockwork Orange before that--this was in 1972. So, the whole movie company was there at our hotel where we were. That was interesting, just little things that you learn about life. I know one thing, people would write in the calendars, "Joan Hill was born in Muskogee, and she still lives there." That's it. They don't mention that I've been all over the world! (Laughs)

Little Thunder: Right! So, at Northeastern, you didn't get to do a lot of 24:00applied stuff, but the Philbrook, you did.

Hill: One thing we did [at Northeastern] was like a sculpture class. We studied [Alexander] Calder--the mobiles. And the one that is so famous with the mustache, the surrealist painter--

Little Thunder: Dali.

Hill: Yes, yes, yes. Loved him. Anyway, we got to do something with that. I remember, I made this real abstract thing. It was mounted in plaster of Paris and came up and everything. (Gestures) (Laughter) But like I said, we didn't get to really [do] artwork.

Now, all of the artists have such a wonderful advantage. I remember when I turned down the job at Santa Fe, I said, "I'd like to go here to school!" When we were there, I met all the artists and teachers. Allan Houser said, "Where are you going after this?" Mother and Daddy were, of course, with me and I said, "We're going to go paint at E-town [Elizabeth town]. It's a ghost town between Santa Fe and Taos." He said, "If you hold on, I'll get my brushes and I'll go with you!" Lloyd New walked in about then and he said, "Oh, no. We've got a 25:00teacher's meeting in thirty minutes." He said, "Oh, shucks." I met Otellie Loloma--gorgeous thing! She was married to Charles Loloma. And her beautiful sculptures looked like her. They were just marvelous. Of course, Charles Loloma had gorgeous jewelry, just beautiful things.

Louis Ballard, who did the Four Moon's Ballet, we went over to visit him in his studio. Suzanne Heard, who's a good friend, worked for the Department of Interior here, for the Education Department. [Louis] had this grand piano inside this building, and that's practically all that was in there, just this grand piano and all the walls around it. That was interesting because he was a real famous musician. R.C. Gorman, bless his heart, every time I'd win a prize--see, he autographed that for me up there. (Gestures) Every time I'd win a prize, he'd send me a postcard congratulating me. I wish I had known when he was sick in the 26:00hospital and dying. I would have sent him flowers because he sent me flowers one time. He was always so kind.

Little Thunder: He was kind to a lot [of people], very encouraging.

Hill: Yes, he was sweet and so interesting. But his studio in Taos--they put me on several of the task forces for the Department of Interior--I loved going on those. They wanted to visit to R.C. Gorman, and we went to his gallery. One of the people with us asked, "Can we come in and visit?" They said, "No, he's working." Then this good friend of mine said, "I have Joan Hill with me." And all of a sudden, here came these pattering footsteps down the [stairs]! (Laughter) He ran out, opened the door, and invited us all in, and we got to watch him work. So, it was wonderful. Wonderful people.

Little Thunder: When Allan Houser wasn't able to go with you because he had a 27:00teacher's meeting, that kind of proves that point, that you wouldn't have time to paint if you taught. Do you feel that was the correct decision?

Hill: I will tell you, they offered me a very special deal. Because after I turned them down the first time, Lloyd New said, "We'll send you--" [There were] so many things that were wonderful. "We 'll send you to school in Paris in the summers." I remember the good friend of mine that was there, David Young, he worked for the Department of Interior. He studied with Picasso way back and Fernand Léger and different ones. Lloyd said, "If you teach and you're worried about not having time to paint, we'll let you have an extra day off. Of course, you'll take a cut in salary, but you would teach four days and then you'd have the rest of the time to paint." I considered it, but I guess I was falling in love by then with the owner of the workshop. (Laughter) And my work was selling. 28:00I remember I took a book of photographs. I had one photograph of each painting. Now, I take a whole roll of them. Got smarter because people would ask to borrow them and sometimes I wouldn't get them back.

This one place, that Dick Seeger Gallery, was gorgeous. In Scottsdale. When we were there, I went in and showed him my paintings, and he took me as one of his artists. The woman that worked with him said, "Do you know how lucky you are?" I said, "How do you mean?" She said, "We have twenty artists that come in here in a week or more, and he doesn't want their work, but he wants yours." He traded with me. He had a contract with Boeing Air that does the planes. He did the dividers for the first-class section. He traded [two hangings for two of my paintings]. I had a collage and a gouache painting with him. I never really did have much paintings to send him because people would come here to buy them.

Then that was when Leona Kahl had her gallery in Taos. That's when she talked me into letting them handle paintings. She was moving, doing [a gallery] in Dallas, so I did. I let them represent me for a while, but the [manager] wanted to sign me to a contract. And I said no because, what he wanted me to do--he only wanted me to do the oil paintings on canvas. Indian paintings. I did Indian paintings. He was part Indian himself. He said when I had my show there, the Indians came out of the woodwork in Dallas. He said, "I never saw so many Indians!"

Jack Kilpatrick, who is just a legend with the Cherokee, and his wife, Anna Kilpatrick, came to the opening. I was trying to think--her name is Raven [Hale], and she did all these beautiful theatrical things about Sam Houston and 30:00about Tiana Rogers. My mother, when we got up and walked out, she was talking to my father in the car (after a while he went back out and sat in the car). She said, "Well, I couldn't get near you to talk so I thought I'd talk to your father." (Laughter) So many people! I had met this woman on this Greek Island cruise, and her son[-in-law] was President of the [Cotton] Exchange [in Dallas, Texas], and he collected art. Indian art, too, but mainly the Ashcan School. They bought several of my paintings. And between them and this other person, they filled the gallery with flowers. It was so wonderful. They were really wonderful people. I know that the reporter for the Dallas Morning News did this wonderful article about my show.

Little Thunder: Was it a one-woman show?

Hill: Yes, a one-woman show.

Little Thunder: Do you remember the year, approximately?

Hill: It was 1966 because years later, I met a man who said, "I remember you." This is probably ten, fifteen years later. He said he kept the brochure. He said, "I remember that painting." It was a Pueblo study of lights and darks, and it was done in a circle.[That painting was sold.] "You almost made a collector of Indian art out of me." He really loved it. He went to see my show, but he didn't come to the opening.

Anyway, I want to make this point. God has been very good to me. He blessed me with parents who encouraged me. Mother played the piano for church and Sunday school when she was pregnant with my brother and I. (Laughs) So we started going 32:00to church and Sunday school back then [in Mother's womb. Everybody in our families had been baptized]. The fact that people would help me, people would like me and they would help me, was wonderful. I remember after I entered the Philbrook show, Solomon McCombs and Fred Beaver and different ones, would invite me to show with them. That was a big honor because they were all professionals and I was just starting. Anyway, that prize, like I said, I got it at the museum in New Mexico. Then at Philbrook, the next year, I got second prize in the Woodland division.

I met Acee Blue Eagle just before he died. He was real sick then. I remember that when I was teaching school, Wolf Robe Hunt had made some beautiful jewelry for [my landlady's] daughter. They came out and she said, "Oh, I have this little Indian girl that teaches school. She's an artist, I'd like you to meet her." Acee Blue Eagle and Wolf Robe Hunt stayed about two hours to meet me, and I didn't show up. After school, all of the teachers would meet at a coffee shop, 33:00and we'd discuss everything. So, I was late coming home. (Laughter) I got a mild balling out for that. But do you know that Acee Blue Eagle remembered that? "I waited to meet you," he said. [That was 1956 when they waited, and I met him at Philbrook in1959.] I felt terrible because I don't like to hurt people's feelings or anything. But that was the last time he entered. I have the catalog--I think it was the '59 show. I guess it was. No, that was the first one. The one where I won the second prize was the next year, [1960].

I remember he had a gorgeous, gorgeous painting. It was the Haida Indians, you know up in the Northwest Coast? He had won on that. I remember Dick West had all of us go on the bus from Bacone. We all went over there together to the opening of the Indian Annual. He said, "Acee is changing his style." I remember him saying that. Dick West would go around and he'd point out the things in the paintings that were good and different things. "One thing to remember," he said. 34:00"When they have a winner in one Indian Annual, you have to look out because the next year you've got clones of what won the Grand Prize." (Laughs) He said, "Be different, do something different." So, we did. I said Dick West was very good because he helped me. When I started, the only Indian woman artist I knew of was Pablita Velarde. Of course, I loved her work after I got to know about her. And then Valjean Hessing, Ruthe Jones, and I was trying to think, who was the other-- They were the only ones that I really knew that were doing Indian art.

Little Thunder: Jimmie Carole Fife?

Hill: No, not then. She's quite a bit younger than I am. There is one thing about being older-- (Laughter) I got to meet all of these wonderful artists while they were still alive! Now, I find myself, I'm the older generation. In fact, we were talking about something and I said, "I'm the only one of the original six Masters who is still alive." (Laughs)

Little Thunder: Was it hard being an Indian woman artist? There weren't a lot of women.

Hill: A lot of [men artists] helped me--I was the only woman artist they knew, I guess. There weren't many women painting then. If there were, I didn't know them. But I remember Valjean and I remember Ruthe, and they were always so sweet to me and so kind. Everybody was. In general, I would say everybody that I met in some way contributed to my career. They'd get word about a show and they'd say, "Okay, you need to enter this show." So, I would do it. Then I started winning a lot of things. I got the Grand Award. Al Momaday was the judge, I remember, when I got the Grand Award. But Charles Banks Wilson, who says he's not Indian, bless his heart, [in every show he judged I won a good prize].

Little Thunder: Where was the Momaday award given? Anadarko Indian Fair?

Hill: Yes, Anadarko. Scott Momaday, it's his father. I got to meet him, too. 36:00You'd meet this person and they'd introduce you to somebody else, and then you'd meet them. At the Indian art shows, my mother and father used to go with me to the art shows at Philbrook. Daddy would come in to hear the prizes, and then he'd go back out and sit in the car. Then there were a lot of other people, like the full-bloods, they'd all go out to the car and talk to Daddy. (Laughter) They didn't stay around for the festivities as much.

I loved Philbrook. I wish they would do that again [the way they used to do it], the Indian Annual, because it was really wonderful. The year I got the Waite Phillips Trophy, someone said, "You better get one while they're handing them [out], because I hear they're not going to have them anymore." I said, "Oh, I think that's terrible!" I remember when they gave the first one. I think Solomon [McCombs] was the [third] one and then Fred Beaver [got the first one] and then Dick West [got the second one]. And I remember thinking, "I'll have to be a hundred years old before I get one!" So, I was just really floored in 1973. (Pointing)

Little Thunder: Tell us again the significance of the Waite Phillips [award]--

Hill: It is supposed to transcend all other awards. It has a diamond in the torch. I wanted to put it in a necklace. My mother said, "No, no, it might be bad luck. Leave it in there." (Laughter) So, I kept it. This isn't a lot about my Indian art career, but all of this somehow helped contribute to my Indian art career. I was going to mention how we did research, too. At the public library, the Muskogee Public Library, they had what they call the Grant Foreman Room. You couldn't check anything out of there. There were no copy machines--I know this sounds like the dark ages, and in a way it was. (Laughs) I took my portable typewriter, which is sitting down there that Daddy bought me for my first year at school [NSU]. (Gestures) Mother would copy things longhand. I have pages and pages where we copied the ethnology reports and everything. Everything that was 38:00interesting. So many of the things, I had seen them in person when Daddy took us to the stomp dance grounds. I got to not only read about them there, but I got to see them, too. I think Daddy influenced me a lot.

I've always done things that I hoped would promote the image of Native Americans. One woman told me, she said, "It hurts my feelings." She said, "I was born in America, and I'm a Native American." I said, "Of course you are!" (Laughs) I said, "I usually say, 'I'm a Native American Indian.' That way you've got it all!" (Laughter) Anyway, with the research--and of course, they're still doing a lot of good things with research--you had to be careful. The woman who 39:00was the interior designer for the Department of the Interior was Kitty Massey, and she was part Cherokee. When they had us flown to Washington [Ed Edmondson, our congressman, flew four of us to D.C. for honor exhibition], she came over and said, "They tell me you have Cherokee blood." I said, "Yes," and then she grabbed me and started hugging me. She said, "I buy paintings." She had a dream job, and they didn't replace it when she retired. She went all over the United States buying art for the public buildings. And at first, the Department of the Interior had the galleries and the show.

Little Thunder: For Indian artists?

Hill: Yes, for Indian artists. She bought other things too, for other buildings, but she bought Indian art because she was part Indian, and I think that was good. I guess if she had been not Indian, she wouldn't have had that interest, maybe. And then, she would have just bought the others. She commissioned two huge paintings that are out in the Albuquerque office. She wanted [them] to be of the Pueblos. I said, "That's alright. I'll do this." Dick West said, "You usually stick to your own tribe, especially if it's something that somebody can find fault with because if they can, they will." (Laughs)

Anyway, I've always been very careful to try to do things that are authentic, and don't make up things. When I wanted to do strictly creative stuff, then if it's Indian and it can be tied to Indians in a way, that's okay. I won the Grand Prize at the Tulsa State Fair when I was first starting out. I wanted to be Art Director for the Muskogee Art Guild because you got to pick the teachers. I got to be the Art Director, and this one teacher had us do something that was really interesting. You soak a rag in turpentine and you have these different colors, and you dip it in part of the color here, and then you stand back and you throw it at the canvas. Then, as it runs, you see all these things in it.

One of them--and this was strictly abstract/expressionist--was the one that won the Grand Prize. I think I called it Massacre, which really--it could have been anything. In fact, it could've been for Custer or some of the other people. I 41:00think Custer had it coming. (Laughter) Anyway, sometimes you can do something strictly abstract, and you can see things in it. In fact, that one over there, it's called the Night Hawks [The whole title was Meeting of the Snakes and the Nighthawks. It was an organization to fight allotment]. (Gestures) It's on the calendar. Somebody bought it. I feel like these are my children. (Laughs) I always like to know what happens to them.

My cousin's son is buying up all my old things that people have put on the Internet. He's a Major. He's stationed over in Dubai or someplace. He said, "You're big on the Internet over there." I said, "I don't have the Internet here!" (Laughter) But they'll send me stuff that people put in there. Somebody used to say, "I don't care what you say about me, as long as you spell my name right."

I do. I do care because I was brought up in a Christian home, and I want people to know that. But I love other nationalities, too. When [Thurman and I were with 42:00the art workshops and]were in Japan and different places like that, we visited all their sacred shrines. The only place I refused--I would not go in to look at Lenin. I did go see Mao Tse Tung's body.

When we were there, in Moscow, it was at the height of the Cold War. I'll just give this example. We were on our way to the Museum of Atheism and I protested a little bit. My fiancée, said, "Well, they'll call you the ugly American." So, we got [near] there--oh, I wanted to tell you, the bus broke down. There was this gorgeous church. One of the Czars had been murdered in it. It had this beautiful blue dome and it was in the next block, and I asked the guide, "Oh, 43:00can we stop and take a picture of that?" And she says, "No. We are not going there. We are going to Museum of Atheism and Communism." That was it.

Okay, we started. When they turned, we were going to go right in front of this church. The bus broke down. We never got to the museum! (Laughter) We all jumped out and started taking pictures and drawing. You can't convince me that that bus broke down by accident. I think it broke down on purpose, so we didn't have to go to that museum. But like I said, when we got to Lenin, I really did have a headache and I said, "I don't feel like standing in line to go in." When we went to China, I did go and look at Mao Tse Tung. I know there was this awful joke. One of them said, "Oh, this is a peasant under glass," a take on "a pheasant under glass." A lot of people didn't get it. I got it, but I didn't like it. I guess [Mao] was good for them.

When we were going to our church and Sunday School down here at Harris School, they used to host the missionaries at Bacone. They would come over to our 44:00church--all the different denominations. I remember they sent her [Goldie Bergsten] to China. And since I am as old as I am, I knew her. (Laughs) She was there before the Communist Revolution. When the Communist Revolution came along, they [fled] to the Philippines. Whenever she would come through here, I'd go pick her up at the bus station and take her to eat. She worked with--I think they were Pentecostal Holiness. For years, while she was alive in the Philippines, whenever I'd sell a painting, I'd send her money because her Jeep was always breaking down. She had this young Filipino boy, I think he wrecked it one time. And they had a time keeping it. (Laughs) But, anyway, then she died. She was so sweet. ["Back in the U.S. ] they loved Indians," she said. In fact, when I first met Thurman, who owned the workshop--his brother is married to a part Cherokee. He said, "We're all Indian lovers at our house," he said. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: The workshop was there in Arizona?

Hill: The workshops were all over the world. They were not for Indian art, but they were for general art. A lot of people went that just wanted to go. You studied with a teacher and then you went out and painted on your own. Then you came back and you got a critique. The ones in Rome and those things, that's where I did those.

Little Thunder: So Thurman was the promoter of the workshop?

Hill: He owned all the workshops.

Little Thunder: He didn't teach all of them?

Hill: Some. He taught sometimes. He had a group--one for architects and one for interior designers and then for artists. So, whenever we'd go to these foreign countries, he knew people everywhere, and they would invite us into their homes. We'd see all these beautiful, beautiful homes. And the artists, we'd get to meet them, and they were so nice. In Rio de Janeiro, they put us on television. And 46:00in Lima, Peru. There's only one thing that was bad about it. Like when I was in China, I was drawing the Temple of Heaven. I have it somewhere, a sketch of it. They all crowd around you, watching. You can't even move your elbows back. (Laughter)

The Indian painting--I had my Indian madonnas with me that I had done, Christmas cards. So, we were invited to go to the English Language Institute. Now, this was back when China had just been opened. Kissinger and Nixon had just opened it. We were the first group of tourists. We had to write a letter [explaining] why we wanted to go. I told them because Chinese art was akin to American Indian painting. In other words, they wanted you to be someone that was really interested in art because it was an art tour.

I was trying to think of who--oh, she had worked for the CIA, and I remember Thurman told me in confidence--and it's all over now because she's dead, too. Anyway, she said they didn't want anybody who worked for the government. They didn't want anybody that had anything to do with anything [along that line]. That's what Thurman said. And she had worked for the CIA for twenty-five years, but she was just clerical. She wasn't approved to any secrets or anything. (Laughter)

I showed the madonnas when we were at the Institute where they had all the paintings. They just fell in love with the Indian madonnas. Mr. Hu, that was his name, he invited me to have a one-woman show in China, via photographs. When I got back, unfortunately my little Pony II was the only pictures I had, but I sent them to him. He said they were circulated all over the People's Republic of China. I would have liked to have known--there's a lot of places my work goes, 48:00and I don't even know where it is. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: You mentioned that your mom helped you with some of the ethnographic reading. Did they help with shipping or framing?

Hill: Oh, Daddy made my stretchers and my frames for me. Mother would do all of the writing and correspondence. This real wealthy woman that had secretaries and everything, one of the wealthiest women in the United States--I had to share a room with [her in China.] The bed was pre-revolutionary, and I clung to the side of the bed all night to keep from rolling onto her. But she gave all this money to everything she did, and she loved Indian art. She said, "When you come up with a real far-out piece, I want to see it." She had paid three million dollars for what looked like netting with a lump of cheese here, a lump of cheese there. But she had a Robert Motherwell painting that filled the whole foyer of her apartment. (Laughter) She and her cousin, they were grandchildren of Brigham 49:00Young's. She wanted me to send her everything about my career. She said, "I know a lot of people who can help you." See, total strangers, practically, will do that.

Little Thunder: What year was this?

Hill: This was 1978 because, I remember, they didn't open China until, I think it was '76 or something like that. I remember women worked in the streets at night with jackhammers. When we were staying in a hotel, it was not in Beijing proper, it was out. Real beautiful place. Had this big courtyard, nobody locked their doors. To get to the courtyard, you went through the bedrooms. We had our show, and I had my Indian madonnas. And they wanted to know what was the significance of this. They had halos on, I thought, "Well, maybe they're really serious. " So, I told them it was Christian symbols, but I felt sort of foolish 50:00saying that because I thought, "Surely they know this!" But I thought, "Well, on the off chance that they don't, I will." That was why he wanted the show of my Indian paintings. I got to do Indian paintings in China. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: You did a mural for the Seattle Performing Arts Center, is that right?

Hill: Yes. They wanted to buy paintings, easel paintings for their offices for the Seattle Daybreak Performing Arts Center. They had that one percent for art, so they sent me what they wanted, and I sent in some slides of easel paintings. And they wrote back and told me I had won one of their mural competitions. I said, "But I've never done a mural." I remember telling Dick West that and he said, "That's okay, you can learn!" He was always pointing fingers, saying, "You can learn." (Laughter) And I did.

I remember that was almost like kind of a nightmare. We had to take everything out of here, even the curtains, because [the mural] was eight by twelve, and the ceiling [here] is not quite eight feet. So, I painted with it slanted outward 51:00and when I wanted to look at my painting, I'd go outside and look through the windows. Couldn't have any speakers, nothing else could get in here. And it had to be stretched. Usually, you stretch your canvas upside down. This had to be stretched from the top. It was put together with screws. Fredrix--they made that one for me, not Daddy.

But my Daddy invented something. It was so big that when I wanted to do detail stuff, it was lying flat on the floor and I would crawl out as far as I could and paint. Daddy said, "If you had something to lean on--" He got some big two by fours. He basically made me a bridge that was wide enough so you could lean on it, and then it straddled the painting. And I would crawl out on that. That's how I did the details. I won a five thousand dollar prize and I remember at the time, I spent fully half of it on art supplies. I thought, "Gee, I'm glad that was just before the prices suddenly [went up]. When the so-called oil shortage 52:00came along, everything, like a little tiny tube of paint at Looboyle's, I used to get at Looboyle's Art Supplies. What used to be like seventy-eight cents suddenly shot up to two dollars. There's one beautiful color: rose madder genuine. When I finally could find it, it's like fifteen dollars a tube. Back then, it was only like a dollar. But when the oil prices went down, they didn't lower their prices.

Little Thunder: No. (Laughter) I understand your mom helped you as well.

Hill: Yes, she did, lots of times. Back then, I could paint twenty hours. I remember I was working on a deadline, and I'd painted so long that the brush just rolled out of my hands and rolled across the painting. I couldn't hold the brush anymore. But she always helped me. I'd stand and eat and paint. (Laughter) They just did everything to help me. Mother did my secretarial work. What I 53:00mentioned about that woman that was so wealthy--she had a secretary all the time. I said, "I don't envy anybody [for] money or anything else, but I envy [them] their secretary." (Laughter)

I don't think that I would have done as well as I did without the parents that I had because they helped me so much. My brother, being a business man, he became a manufacturer's rep and was very successful at it. He was always giving me business advice and everything. He helped me. I would do my own income tax, but then I'd take it over to Tulsa, and we'd run it through his Turbo Tax thing. (Laughter) Anyway, they were wonderful.

Little Thunder: That's a huge help. In 1990, the Indian Arts and Crafts Act was passed, and I wondered if you remembered the impact of that on galleries and individual artists in Oklahoma.

Hill: I know it hurt a lot of people, I know that. But since I came up in the time as an artist when anybody said they were Indian, you just believed them. 54:00You didn't question it. So, I still don't question it. I know that it hurt a lot of people, but it's good for the people who were just plain neglected. Kitty Massey, the one I mentioned that worked for the Department of the Interior, she went around buying paintings and jewelry. [She gave good prices.] I know that sometimes unscrupulous dealers would go out to reservations. They'd buy pottery for just pennies. Then they'd bring it back and they'd make a big profit out of it. The Indian Art Law helped those people. So, that was really wonderful.

For the ones that were hurt, in a way, I guess I can see both sides of it. I am Creek and Cherokee, all documented. All my family, except my great-grandfather, signed up on the Creek Dawes Roll. Okay. He went on the Cherokee Dawes Roll, and he died six weeks before it was finalized so that he[was struck from the Cherokee roll because they didn't have enough land to go around for those living]--actually, they were all Cherokee tribal members to begin with. They came here, and they were taken back into the tribe. Then the Dawes thing came 55:00along where you had to choose, he chose the Cherokee Nation. He was only Cherokee, he wasn't Creek. His wife was Creek and Cherokee. Anyway, the way that was done I could not enter the all-Cherokee shows anymore because I'm a Creek tribal member. But everybody knows I'm Cherokee. Just like the woman with the housing thing when we were talking about the Federal Trade Commission. She said, "Just as long as you have Cherokee ancestors." I said, "Yes, I do. I can prove it."

My great-uncle was chief [1891-1895] of the Cherokee Nation. Daddy's father was chief and some uncles on the Creek side. He was part Cherokee, too. Daddy's [grand]father was, too. The other was my great uncle, C.J. Harris. He was brother to Red Bird Harris. Red Bird is my great-grandfather. Red Bird practiced in hanging Judge Parker's court. He was an old frontier attorney, and my grandfather said they used to have to cut wood all night for his father to study. He passed the bar at Fort Smith, and he practiced there and in Muskogee. 56:00I have some of his letterheads. His stories were so interesting because my grandfather said they would wake up in the night, and said the outlaws would come through and they would consult his father. (Laughter) I think I got off track again.

Little Thunder: (Laughs) That's fine. Now, you built a studio to work in. When did you build that?

Hill: That was in 1972. The prehistoric Indian mound is just outside my door out there, and our family cemetery [is] on the other side of that. The day that I think is the most overwhelming, I had fourteen people come to my studio. [A] man and his wife who were from Washington--they lived in Short Hills, New Jersey, but he worked in New York and he was on the Phillips Board. Clemm McSpadden, the one who's a real famous rodeo announcer, he and his wife came with them on one of their trips. Then we had people, several, from the ammunition depot down in McAlester, they came. It got to the point where they had to commission them 57:00because I ran out of paintings.

The man from London who came, he worked for Roger Wheeler. He ran their corporate office for Telex in London. He came and brought a man from New Zealand with him. The one from London bought three paintings. I remember after I did them, I asked him how he got them back. They let him put them in the cockpit. That's how long ago it was--1976--on the flight back to London! It's amazing, because they could take anything! The paintings--I guess they didn't want to put them in the hold, the cargo hold. I know from flying enough myself, they didn't have what they call "the bus." Because then they were like 737s for shorter flights. They put them in the cockpit to take back. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: So, you just had to paint constantly because people would call 58:00and drop by--

Hill: I hesitate to do that now because the crime is so terrible and everything. But back then, if anybody called, I just said, "Come on." I had this call from a man who was representing the University of Denver, and he had two people, one from Madras--that's how she pronounced it--from India. They called me. They said they were calling from Philbrook. I didn't have caller-ID or any of that right after my parents died, so I said, "Yes, come on." My brother happened to call after that and I was telling him about it, and he said, "You don't know whether they were from Philbrook or where they were calling from!" I said, "Well, I'll just take a chance and see what happens!" (Laughter) They were just wonderful. They were so sweet. They brought me flowers, beautiful flowers, a bouquet of flowers. But they were who they said they were. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: You paint mostly in acrylic on canvas?

Hill: I love oil on canvas, but I got allergic to my oil paints. Whenever I 59:00paint with oil paints, I have to put that exhaust fan on.

Little Thunder: It seems like your color changes with your style.

Hill: When I first started doing Indian painting, Dick West told me, "Since you're afraid of color--everything I used, I grayed it or toned it down--I want you to do a painting where you don't mix anything up. Just use the colors that appeal to you and use the pure pigment." That's when I got started doing them. Then, when I did the black and white and red, like this one over there (Gestures), I won a prize on everything I entered. They just struck a note with people.

Then I started doing polymer sand collages. A friend of mine, her husband was a geologist and they used oil well fracture sand in collages--she did--when I was at the Muskogee Art Guild. So, I said, "I wonder if they'd let me have like a quart of it over at Bristow." I went by there and they gave me a whole 100-pound sack of it. (Laughter) The sand is so pure, it's been washed so much that they use it when they fracture oil wells. You can use it with polymer. I remember Woody Cochran at TU, he wanted to trade with me. He did that, too. He would use real leaves and do a collage with polymer. You have layer after layer, and it looks stained glass. That was his technique. Every [sand] one that I entered in Scottsdale won, too. After I got over being afraid of color, then I started to use brighter colors. But I still tone them down from different things I like.

Little Thunder: You mix them--

Hill: Yes, but I went through my blue period. This is funny. Pat Lester, who 61:00published this [Native artists] dictionary thing, he brought that painting [colors] up. That's right, he did. I asked him if he would be interested in it because he told me, he said, "When you get something you think I'd like, tell me." So, I called him. I remember I was taking it to K.C. Lab to have it photographed. He met me there after and he was showing me [photos of] his collection. He has a wonderful collection, wonderful people, he and his [wife], Pat and Patty. Anyway, he said, "Patty wanted me to ask you, is this your blue period, your purple period, or your yellow period?" (Laughter) I said, "I don't know."

I did go through a period where I did all yellows and oranges. I had a collector from Oklahoma City, just loved her. She and her husband would come over. She said, "I want a yellow painting. I've got one of every other of your kind of paintings. I want a yellow painting." (Laughter) So I did one that had a lot of yellows and oranges in it. Mother loved yellow because it's a happy color, she said. It is. I like pink. Pink's a happy color, too.

Little Thunder: You have that unusual use of negative space for a certain type of image.

Hill: When I said there was a teacher that did portrait painting, that was here in Muskogee. I joined the Art Guild, which started out kind of like a social club. There was a group of us, about five of us, who were all young. I was still in my twenties then. I think I was twenty-five, twenty-four or twenty-five. Anyway, we started doing that, and I remember the teacher. Her name is Laurie [Wallace]. She lives in Tulsa and did beautiful portraits. I remember she said, "The negative space is just as important as the positive space. Don't forget that." That's the first time I was really conscious of negative space. So, then I was careful, and I thought more about composition. Because all my life I thought I was strong in all areas except composition. So, I set out to make 63:00composition my thing that I could do.

It's just like--I remember when it was the Art Guild member's turn to pose the model, they'd always hide the hands so they didn't have to do hands. I wanted to do hands because I thought, "I'm weak in that area." I [filled] sketchbook after sketchbook. I did nothing [but] hands, feet, toes, fingers, fingernails, ears--everything that didn't come real, real naturally. Now, I can do them in my sleep if I have to. (Laughter)

When you can't do something, it's a challenge. I like challenges. You go to work and you overcome it or you at least get good enough to live with it. That's why I think people, whenever they run up against an obstacle, don't give up. Fight. Fight back. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: How important is story for you in a painting?

Hill: I love historical stories and a lot of them, Daddy told these. I want to 64:00tell this about The Little People. I had done a painting of Little People and Daddy told me that when he was a little boy, he laid out in the woods all day, hoping to see the little people. And he never did. When he was dying, he had cancer. I had done a painting of the Little People and I said, "Now, Daddy, you can see the Little People." So, he saw them in my paintings. But the stories that he told, too, his grandmother--this was his Cherokee grandmother. He had a Cherokee grandmother and a Creek grandfather, but she enrolled on the Creek Dawes Commission [as a Creek] because she was married to a Creek. Her full sister is enrolled, as I said, on the Cherokee roll as a full-blood Cherokee.

Anyway, this is what his grandmother told him. When you see the trails--see, this is the crawdads--when you see the trails along and the little holes under there, this is where the little people live. The ones that are in the bottom of the lake. One of those that I did, the OIA [Office of Indian Affairs] gave to 65:00Ada Deer, and she had it hanging in her office in Washington at the Department of Interior. When you see the bubbles coming up, that's the Little People down there. And whenever you lose your fish off the hook, that's the Little People. They let it loose, they untie your line. (Laughter)

But the history things are so interesting. I want to especially mention, The Crazy Snake Uprising. Crazy Snake was a full-blood Creek, who wanted the old ways that the treaties guaranteed them, that their tribal land would be tribal land as long as waters flow and the sun rises--that was one of them. As long as the sun rises and the waters flow. They protested the Dawes Roll. When Henry Dawes did that, I read his quote where he said that the Indians would never prosper or go forward because as long as they had their land, they never got off that land. They would just stay there and do that. And Indians were prospering again, by that time. He basically said, unless you kick them off the 66:00reservation--that's what it was--they would never amount to anything. That's why he wanted to break up the tribe. A lot of people say, "Oh, he did it for good." I don't think he did it for kind reasons at all. The thing I can't get over is that a part Indian, a Kaw, one that was with the Department of the Interior, he was all for breaking up the tribal land, too.

Now, in my family, our family kept all their allotments, so they prospered by them. But Crazy Snake was one of the ones who was a member of the Four Mothers Society. I've done two paintings about it. The four--all except the Seminole tribe, I don't know why they weren't involved, too--but all of them wanted to keep the old ways, the old treaties. Red Bird Smith was one of them. So, Crazy Snake, at the time--I want to read this. "This is an eyewitness description by my father as a child. My grandfather had told him to come look at a long line of horsemen riding by. He said, 'Son, you are looking at history.' The horsemen 67:00were Chitto Harjo, Crazy Snake, and his men who were fleeing from persecution. They stopped to water their horses at G.W. Hill's home near Hitchiti."

Now, Grandpa Hill was a Deputy U.S. Marshall who was deputized. He wasn't chief then, but he was deputized as part of the ones [Lighthorse] that were supposed to catch Crazy Snake. [G.W. Hill was captain of the Lighthorse.] And he let Crazy Snake water his horses. (Laughter) Anyway, (Reading from paper) "He [Crazy Snake] was an intelligent, industrious Creek full blood. Eloquent and intense. He was a blacksmith, and he was a silver craftsman. He was an artist, too. And they used passive resistance to protest the forceful allotment of the land." One of them, I think Red Bird Smith, they brought him in in chains to make him enroll. It said, "According to the Four Mothers Society and to Crazy Snake, allotment was a violation of the treaties, which is solemnly guaranteed that the Indian Nation's title would be perpetual."

What happened in 1909, there had been a theft of some goods. No Snake had any 68:00connection with the affair. I got this, word for word from Angie Debo's book. "But the authorities of McIntosh County attempted for no particular reason to arrest Chitto Harjo." He didn't have anything to do with the theft or anything. "Five deputies proceeded to his home where seven Indians were assembled. A fight ensued and two deputies were killed. Chitto Harjo and one of his followers were wounded. The Indians escaped and were never captured. But four counties were thrown into turmoil by this Snake uprising." It said, "The state militia was rushed to the affected locality and quiet"--these are Angie Debo's words--"quiet, which had never been endangered except by the deputies, was restored. So this ended the affair so far as the Indians were concerned, but Chitto Harjo's fame reached international proportions and headlines that increased in virulence with distance." In other words, they got elaborated on. 69:00Then he was this great enemy. I feel so sorry for him. Like my sister-in-law said, "He looked so sad." I said, "He was sad because everything he did was [made to look] wrong."

Grandpa Hill believed in education, though. At one time, he was the President of the Creek Board of Education. In one of those Real West magazines--my father loved those stories--he bought, there was Grandpa Hill. It shows him. We don't even have a picture of that. But it was a picture in there and it showed him because he always believed in education. He was an attorney, too. He was Prosecuting Attorney for Creek Nation and had a real estate agency. He was a Renaissance man, is what I called him because he was a Knight. They vilified the Knights of Templar so much. Grandpa Hill was a Knight of Templar. I was talking to the Chief Justice of the Creek Nation, he said, "I am a Knight of Templar, too." He said, "I'm proud of it." Actually, in the beginning, they were named for the ones [the Knights of Templar] that originally went to the Holy Land to 70:00protect the [Christian] pilgrims.

I have a picture of Grandpa Hill in his Knights of Templar uniform. I should have brought the picture in here, but there is a picture of him here. He has his sword, and he has all his things. And his watch has the fob with the Knights of Templar, and it's gold. It's a beautiful thing, which is passed down to the men in the family.

The Knights of Templar were hated by Henry V, they said, because so many people gave them gifts of jewelry and money and he was jealous of their things. So, 71:00they fled. That's how they got to Scotland. So, Grandpa Hill, his mason certificate has the ancient Scottish rite. It was signed in Guthrie.

When Dr. Blackburn [of the Oklahoma Historical Society] came over--(I'm going to leave my place, which was Fort Davis during the Civil War and has the prehistoric Indian mound and our family cemetery here [to the Society]). Anyway, Dr. Blackburn came over, and Dub West, our local historian, and Richard Ryan, who was with Fort Gibson. They came over to talk about it, and I showed Dr. Blackburn this certificate of Grandpa Hill's. It has all the autographs of the people at the same time he was taken in, and on there is some of the Nobles [family]. He said, "This is the founder of OU." I said, "I didn't know that!" (Laughter)

I was so glad. A lot of real prominent people back during Grandpa Hill's time. Just like Papa, my grandfather [Mother's father Cheasquah]. During one summer, 72:00Red Bird let him go with an older brother on a cattle drive. He loved it! He wrote back and told them that he was going to be a cowboy, that's what his life was. Red Bird got on the train and went down and got him and brought him home and made him go back to school. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: What is your creative process, starting with how you get your ideas?

Hill: A lot of times it's--well, for instance, we were painting out in Seattle when we were out there on the San Juan Islands, where they have the whales and all the Indian culture. It was wonderful. We saw Eskimo carvings and stuff. Anyway, I was sitting on a clump of rocks and all this moss. And what puzzles me is why a cold place like that has all these beautiful wildflowers, poppies and everything. I was sitting there, I was looking at it and I thought, "This must be like where the Little People live." And all this beautiful lichen, and little 73:00flowers and things like that. And I did one of my paintings on the Little People, and it won a prize. I think it was the Spirit of Oklahoma prize. That was inspired by looking at a clump of rocks and moss and things.

Others, I'll read something that makes me want to do it. My Treaty Series--all my paintings are sweetness and light until you get to the Treaty Series. Okay. That's one of the treaty series right there. (Gestures) The reason is a land developer bulldozed a fence on my great-grandmother's allotment that had been in place for over a hundred-something years. I thought, "I can't shoot him. I can't take my father's .44 Ruger down and shoot him. (Laughter) I've got to do something." I couldn't handle my anger in the two weeks between [that] he was supposed to meet with my brother and us. So, I thought, "I'll paint a painting. I'll paint a painting about it." They were talking about all this [about the land run monuments]. They got into a quarrel over the title that the Land Run people wanted to put a cowboy, jumping off his horse saying, "This land is mine."

We had to fight Senator Gorton. Senator Gorton hates Indians. I can say that because while I was on the Arts and Crafts board as [U.S.] Commissioner, we had all kinds of trouble about him. He wanted to do away with our budget and everything. I went before the Cherokee Council and the whole Intertribal Council of the Five Tribes [twice]. I remember when I first got up there [Cherokee Council]--I took speech in college--but it had been so long and I avoid speeches. When I was talking, I could hear my voice shaking, I was so nervous. But I had gone to school with John Ketcher [deputy chief of Cherokee Nation] and, of course, Wilma [Mankiller] was so sweet. And they all signed resolutions, and I went before the Intertribal Council. Wilma wrote a letter to President Clinton. I got this wonderful woman, [secretary to the Intertribal Council]. She wasn't one of the Five Tribes, she was [Comanche]. I just loved her. She was so sweet. She worded the resolution for me and we got all the chiefs to sign it.

I remember, they [U.S. Congress] had already taken our budget away twice. So, I faxed that to Washington. Meredith Stanton, who was the director [or the IACB], 75:00when she got to the fax machine, she was running down the hall of the Department of Interior to the secretary's office, "Look! Look what I have! Look what I have!" (Laughter) Because the Intertribal Council represented around 600,000 Indians, altogether. And when they had all of that, do you know they gave our budget back to us? Even Dr. Coburn, I had called him about it. He had just got in office, and he called me back and talked to me fifteen minutes. He voted for it, and he's not for wasting money on anything. As a commissioner, it was something that I thought I could do to help other Indian artists. [Lots of other people helped. My help was a small part.]

No, I didn't go in until 2000 and the [first Indian art law] came out in 1990. I remember when it did come out, I wanted them to be sure and put it in there since I was not a tribal member of the Cherokee Nation, but I have all this 76:00ancestry. I wanted them to say they could not prosecute anybody if they could prove they were Indian, and they did. They put that in there. They said they won't touch anybody if they are. We are supposed to say, for instance, in my case, I have Cherokee ancestry and like I said, it's in all the history books. Our family must have made a lot of noise because they're in all these history books, Grandpa Hill and all of them. (Laughter)

Anyway, I didn't have anything to do with that part of it. But they have passed about four Indian art laws. I have copies of all of them, and I've read every one of them, too. One of them is about that thick (Gestures) because I wanted to know what they were doing. The first time, they asked me to be a Commissioner. I said, "I don't want to do anything where I have to persecute anybody or prosecute anybody." "No, no, no, that's not your job."

Most people don't know the process. If somebody wants to complain about somebody--they think they're not Indian--they have to gather all this 77:00documentation. They have to have proof that they advertise it and something that shows that they are actually selling work as an Indian artist. When they get the complaint, they send it to the Arts and Crafts board, but the Commissioners don't come into it. It's turned over to the Department of the Interior's attorneys. The attorney looks it over--Commissioners--none of us see any of that. Then it's turned over if they think they really [are] doing what they are not supposed to do, violating the law. It's turned over to the Department of Justice and they do it. (Laughs)

Most of the people have been prosecuted, I understand, for jewelry. One of them was a gallery out in Gallup [New Mexico] where they were from Iran. They were selling Indian art and they were peddling drugs. All they did to them was just deport them. It makes me so angry. They should have done something to them 78:00besides deport them. But that's what [I was told].

Jewelry is such a lucrative thing. One of the artists that was [on the board] when I was Commissioner was Jesse Monongye. He does this gorgeous, gorgeous stuff, and each one is original. It's just gorgeous. The Trustees invited us when we had a board meeting out there and the two founders of Scottsdale--she sat on one side of me and he sat on the other side of me. Meredith said, "They buy paintings, too!"

Anyway, she was so sweet, the woman was. She was showing her bracelet. On the outside and the inside of it, Jesse has told the whole story of her family, how they got to Scottsdale, and everything they did. They love everything Indian. They support Indian arts, support Indian jewelry, pottery and all those things. A lot of people do. But like I said, I didn't want to get involved in the Indian art law--I don't want to condemn people. Some people, I believe, really are 79:00Indian, but they can't prove it. Just as an example, now, we have a family member--they've got all these pictures, you can tell they were Indian. They were on the Cherokee Trail of Tears. When they got to Kansas, somewhere up there, they just stepped off the Trail and quit being Indians. Yet, like I said, the great-grandmother, you can tell she was an Indian. She looks like a full blood.

A lot of people did not sign up because they were afraid of what would happen to them again. They were afraid. As I told someone one time, I said, "People who were afraid, I feel sorry for them. But the people who are ashamed of it, I can't see that at all." I remember we had this person, he was doing a book, and he said that his grandfather hid his grandmother when she got old because she started to look like an Indian. My father got up, he walked out of the room, and 80:00whenever they came [to our house], he never came back in the room again. I was telling somebody about that, and they said, "That's a terrible thing to say to Indian people." I said, "Yes, I think it is, too."

I think he [the writer] was just trying to be honest, but I didn't like it either way. We were taught to be proud of being Indian. In fact, I have to say this, when I was going to high school, in our history class, Oklahoma History, they asked everybody who was part Indian to raise their hand. Everybody except one person raised their hand. You would never have known it to look at them or anything. I remember I came home and I was telling Mother, I said I felt sorry for the one because I thought people who weren't Indian were underprivileged in some way because we had been taught to be proud of it. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: I know you've had some medical things this year, but what is your typical creative routine? Do you work in the morning? Do you prefer to work 81:00at night?

Hill: I'd say I don't work by mood, but if I've got a deadline or something, if I force myself to work, it doesn't flow. Okay, that's the only word I can think of. But other times, I want to paint so bad I can't stand it. This hip thing is driving me crazy because I want to paint so bad. (Laughter) Anyway, I'll get an idea for something, and I'll just start working with it. Sometimes I don't know quite what to do with it, and I'll set it aside. I know I did that with one thing. I looked at it every day when I walked past it, and then one day, (Snaps) just like that, I knew what to do with it. And it won a prize. So, I keep several things going at once and work on them like that.

I do a lot of research. All those books, I buy stuff--like the Dawes Commission--and then, I will base paintings on those. Just like I have to finish my [painting] Manifest Destiny. It has always hurt that Tulsa has a school, an elementary school, named Andrew Jackson Elementary School. Why make a monument 82:00to a mass murderer? That's what he was, he was a mass murderer. One of the paintings I'm going to do--people are probably not going to like it--I remember Tom Giago in an article, he was the first one who mentioned it, that Abraham Lincoln had a mass hanging of over a hundred Indians. In this American Heritage Book of Indians, John F. Kennedy wrote the foreword to it, and I used theirs. "There are thirty-eight Indians," he says, "He pardoned some of them, the [thirty-eight] others he hung." A mass hanging! This is the great emancipator? He set their souls free? What else?

The whole thing was because they were hungry. The government broke the treaties just like they always did. Someone said once that the government never kept a treaty unless it was something they wanted. Anyway, they were supposed to provide food in return for the Indians going on the reservation and giving up their land for settlement. They were starving because the food the government 83:00furnished them was full of maggots, worms. It was rotten. So, they raided a farm, homestead, one person was killed there. I don't know how many Indians--they didn't say that--and they killed a cow because they were hungry. Abraham Lincoln was involved in the Civil War--this book says he didn't really want to be bothered with it all--so he pardoned about half of them and hung the rest of them.

I was talking to a friend. He said it's on the Internet. He said on the Internet, it's not as kind to Abraham Lincoln. They said that he thought it would look bad to the Allies in the Civil War if he didn't come down on them real hard. I guess if you could murder thirty-eight people, to me, that's heartbreaking. He's a mass murderer, too.

Of course, [in] the Civil War, as I mentioned, Mother's family fought for the Confederacy and Daddy's fought for the Union. (Laughter) We have one Yankee 84:00buried in our family cemetery. He came here after the war, and he got sick. Red Bird and Ellen took him into their own home, they took care of him, and when he died he was the first person in our family cemetery. His name was Louis Thurman, and they have a gravestone for him. So, he's out there. People were kind to each other after the war, but it was terrible, so devastating. A friend of mine, I just love her, she was the Curator at the Oklahoma Historical Society, Mary Jane [Warde]. She was the curator for the Indian part of it, and she's doing a book on the Civil War. She'd asked me for information about Fort Davis. Everything you read says that everything that people went through, it was so terrible. I know that Mother said Ellen Rogers and all of them, they went down to the Red River, they fled there. Daddy's--the ones that were with Opothle Yahola, they 85:00went north.

Little Thunder: As you look back on your art career, what do you think one of the high points was?

Hill: I'd have to say the Waite Phillips Trophy was. (Laughter) That just floored me. That's supposed to be the supreme award, according to Philbrook, in the Indian art world. At that time, Philbrook was the Indian art show. I'd say that I won it and that I got it as young as I was. The [other artists], most of them were of Mother's and Daddy's generation. I was the first one of my generation to get the Waite Phillips Trophy. Of course, if they'd continued it, they'd have had a lot more. Then they made me a Master of the Five Tribes Museum.

Little Thunder: Yes, and the first Indian woman. Weren't you, first woman Master?

Hill: Yes, I was the first woman and I'm the only one still living of the original ones. (Laughter) Don't know whether that's a big deal or not. It's 86:00little things. Oh, I want to tell this. After I made the quavering speech before the Intertribal Council when I was wanting them to give the budget back to us, several of the women who were the craftspeople came over to me and said, "We want to thank you for standing up for our people." It was so sweet and so wonderful. That's one of the supreme things. And the other one--I took care of Mother and Daddy, both of them, in their final illnesses. They were two, twenty-four-hour invalid patients. I don't know how I was able to be at the hospital or home at the same time, but I'd have maybe fifteen minutes of sleep. But after Mother and Daddy died, I remember our family doctor stood there for a long time and then finally, he said, "Most people don't get that kind of care."

I would take Mother to the doctor. I'd roll up her hair for her and we'd wash it. I'd stand behind her in the tub, wash her hair, I'd roll her hair up, and 87:00I'd put a ribbon on her and put lipstick on her and dress her up just like a doll, I guess. (Laughs) Like I said, they took care of us when we were children. We owe it to them. I grew up in two families that always took care of their elderly. I feel like that was the supreme moment in my life when he said that most people don't get that kind of care.

And then, of course, the other awards, I've gotten a lot of awards out of Scottsdale. I'd just had a gallbladder operation, and I got the letter that I had won the grand prize at Scottsdale and five other awards. So Mother told my doctor about it and he said, "Well, you've got to go." I went at the end of it, but not the first. "But you can't drive," he said. So, Daddy drove out there. Every bump the car hit, I could feel it. (Laughter) But that was really nice. That was one of the high points, too.

And being made a commissioner, a U.S. Commissioner. I wonder what my ancestors would think about that because here I was equal to Henry Dawes. He was a U.S. Commissioner, wasn't he? (Laughter) He was a Senator, too, though. So, I don't 88:00know. Red Bird was against allotting the land. [Back] then, his property went clear down to Three Forks and Ellen's was on the Creek side. He was on the Cherokee side, she was on the Creek side. I have a map that shows all of this that they had done at Fort Smith on some kind of fabric. It shows Red Bird Harris's holdings.

Our family is so deep into Indian everything, lore and history. Like I said, coming up, we didn't hear about it. But when I got interested in Indian art, then I found all this treasure trove of stuff. I wish I'd had a recorder back then because in the evenings, we'd walk up and sit on the front porch with Papa, Mother's father, and that's when he'd tell us all these stories about Indian Territory. I've painted those stories, too. This one. (Gestures) Like the outlaws consulting with them, and the different things they did. Grandpa Hill 89:00actually helped build, as a mason, the Five Tribes [Museum], physically helped. I know I'm forgetting something, but there have been far more high points than low points, let's put it that way.

Milly Francis, I would like to mention Milly Francis. They have two monuments to her in Muskogee today because when they were removed from the Southeast, I found out afterwards, her allotment--it wasn't allotted in those days because you 90:00lived in tribal land and you could have as much as you could farm--was right down at the spring, which was in my great-grandmother's allotment, much, much later in 1908 or something like that. That was the Milly Francis settlement. We didn't know that.

I remember Daddy said at the time we were going to try to find her grave. Lola Shropshire, she's a good friend, she's a writer, one of my writer friends. We went everywhere trying to find where they said the grave was. Then I remembered that the Jobe sisters, who were the children of my grandfather's ranching partner, they have an old family cemetery like we have, close to the river. They said their father said that's where Milly Francis's grave was. So, Lola and I went down there, and we spent two days cleaning all the saplings and the locusts and everything off of it and revealed all the rocks around the side.

A good friend of mine, Yvonne Litchfield, with the Tulsa World, she got interested in me when I did the Milly Francis [painting], the one for the 91:00Bicentennial. Every once in a while, she'd do a story on me, which was real sweet of her. Anyway, they came over and they took the pictures. But we never told [others] where we located it because there have been a lot of graves that have been robbed like that. She's the only woman who has ever been awarded--I'll tell what she did here. Major General Ethan Allen Hitchcock told the story about Milly. It's in one of Grant Foreman's [books]. She had saved a young Georgia militia man's life--

Little Thunder: I was wondering if we should look at the painting a little bit while you tell this story.

Hill: Dick West told me one time when I was doing pastel portraits, "You need somebody to take your painting away before you overwork it." (Laughter) So, maybe it's a good thing that I put it in [the competition] before. And that won a prize--they bought it for the museum. But, anyway, Milly, when she was about sixteen years old, according to all of this, she was a very beautiful girl and 92:00everybody petted her. She was their pet. Her father, Francis the Prophet--they were Creek, they weren't Seminole--but this was during the Seminole War, so they had captured a young Georgia militia man, and they were going to put him to death.

On the Florida thing, I worked with the DAR [Daughters of the American Revolution]. They got all the information [but] in this, they said they were preparing to burn him at the stake, which wasn't true. [Milly] told Colonel Hitchcock all this [in Oklahoma]. He had always heard this story, so when he came here to investigate frauds on the Indians, to see they weren't getting meat that was rotten, I guess. He looked her up. She was about forty-five then. He said she was still a beautiful woman, but she was dying of consumption and destitute. When he went back to Congress, he told her story, and Congress was so moved by it that they voted her a pension and a medal. It is a Congressional 93:00Medal, but it's not the Congressional Medal [of Honor].

Here it is. (Reading) "She is one of the few woman in history that had bestowed on them a medal and a pension, authorized by a special act of the United States Congress." That was in June, 1844. They granted to her an annual pension. But she died before she got anything from that. Her children went back to Florida after she died. I think she had two surviving children out of eight. But the young man that she saved, they sold him to the Spaniards for a barrel of whiskey, they said. (Laughs) They freed him, and so when the war was over, he came back and he offered to marry her. She told him that she didn't save him to marry him. She married a Creek of her own race and everything.

I don't know, it was her compassion because she argued that he was young 94:00and--first of all, he wasn't guilty. That was the main thing. (Laughs) They had caught him fishing in the Apalachicola River. They took all his clothes off of him. And I painted [that]. He's bending forward, so it's modest--people can't complain. And he's bound. It has two warriors, one on each side of him. It shows [Milly] standing by her father. Her father was a chief during that war. So, when she wanted him to spare his life, he said, "Go to the warriors who captured him and ask for his life." [The warriors had had two sisters killed during that war.] She did and they spared his life. They bought that for the Sequoyah [Institute], the one they have down at Little Rock. They bought that painting that was in the last show out here.

I've done four paintings about her. The first was commissioned by--well, it was commissioned by the United States government! That's a high point I forgot to say! It went all over to all the military bases overseas. It traveled, and now it's at that fort in Washington, D.C., which is just across the Potomac. Solomon 95:00[McCombs] got one of the commissions and Fred [Beaver] got one of them. I can't remember some of the others, but they only chose thirteen for the first thirteen states. As far as I know, I'm the only woman, but anyway, there were thirteen of us for the original thirteen colonies.

Francis the Prophet, I'd painted that earlier because he was taken--I want to be sure and tell about that mass murderer, Andrew Jackson, [who] took him under a flag of truce and hung him. I painted him as he was described. This is described in one of those books.

They described his clothes and the gifts and tomahawk and the other things that were given to him by the Prince Regent of England. They took him with them, and they did all these honors. He came to a ball aboard a Russian frigate in London and this is the way he went. The most splendid suit and everything. What is sad about that is, Andrew Jackson, to add to all his other crimes, took him under a flag of truce, a big no-no in all ethics, and hung him. So, after that, they 96:00were destitute. Before the war, [some Creeks] were wealthy, had plantations and everything. They could afford everything wealthy people had back then, a beautiful plantation home. That's why [Milly] happened to come with the McIntosh party to Indian Territory [when they lost everything].

Little Thunder: (Focusing on another painting). This one is water-media? Mixed media on board?

Hill: This is gouache. That's white added to tempera. But this is a watercolor. I used Windsor Newton, a real good paint, on paper. D'Arches 300-pound water color paper. (Gestures to Francis the Prophet) That's an oil on canvas over 97:00there. I did them in way different periods because Francis the Prophet was one of the original paintings that they started the Five Tribes Museum [with]. I gave it to them. They exhibited it a lot, so then I gave it to them. I always just loved them because they're into history. But I didn't know as much about Milly until, when they [U.S. government/Captain McNaughten] did the commission, they gave me a list of things that you could paint. Most of them were heroic acts, like one of the Indians wiping out a whole machine gun nest, and I thought, "I don't want to paint that. I want something pretty to paint."

I was talking to Rennard Strickland, and he said, "Why don't you do the Milly Francis story?" And I said, "That's a good idea! I can do something pretty." And it's a good story, too. It's a nice story because it showed the Indians were more humanitarian than Andrew Jackson. But you know one of the things they said they like Andrew Jackson for? Because he was one of the people. He and his cronies would sit around the pot bellied stove in the White House and spit 98:00tobacco juice on it. That's their hero! That's the one they named the elementary school after, the mass murderer.

Little Thunder: On this [painting] of Chitto Harjo and his men, you talked about the sadness on his face. Talk a little bit about the composition of this because I think you made some great choices.

Hill: Like I said, the negative space is just as important as the positive space. A lot of it is suggested by the way the color forms on it. I remember someone said the best watercolors that were ever painted were purely accidental. You get all these great washes and everything. I see a lot of things there, I guess, that other people don't see. I'll paint something like the oil painting I did [one] time where you splash it with the paint and everything. Now, Francis 99:00the Prophet, I set out and did exactly what I wanted to do. That was not done with flight of fancy. I tried to make it as authentic as I could because they explained it [as him wearing] his most splendid suit of red and gold. Of course, they all wear the feathers. I did the feathers, too.

It was such a different time. At the time, he was so honored. And then afterwards when everybody decided they wanted their land-- I remember that I was talking to someone and I said, "There's so much sympathy for the slaves, as there should be, but there's no sympathy for Indians at all when they got into all this mess." I wrote a letter to the editor [of the Muskogee Phoenix], first one I ever wrote, because the so called perks are the results of the treaties that the Indians negotiated with the [government]. I said, "A treaty is a legal contract between nations of equal importance, supposedly." They made these treaties and then when they got tired of them, or it wasn't convenient, they 100:00simply abrogated these treaties, and then they took them away.

When I was talking to this reporter about that, I said, "They're so unsympathetic. Why is it people are not more sympathetic to Indians?" He said, "Because they perceive the American Indian as getting something somebody else doesn't. He gets all these perks." I stopped him for a minute and I said, "Well, let's put it this way. The slaves were important because they needed their labor. They kept them alive, they fed them, they clothed them, housed them. Of course, that wasn't always good. But the Native American was no good to anybody until he was dead, because the sooner they killed him, the sooner they got his land." He said, "Well, that's a point." (Laughs)

Little Thunder: I'm glad to hear you use your voice to speak out. I really appreciate this interview.

Hill: When I get this hip back in, I'll be better off. (Getting paper to read) This was part of a thing that I did where they asked me to make a statement when I judged the show out there. They asked me to make a statement when I judged the competitive show or the student show, because I've judged both. Anyway, I said, (Reading), "The spirit of a culture is revealed through the artistic expression of its people." Then I went on to say, "It is by passing on traditions and values." They were forcefully removed, of course, to Indian Territory from their ancestral homelands. There was another thing I said, too. "[Art widens the scope of the inner and outer senses and enriches life by giving us a greater awareness of the world], and it makes you notice things. You see things that you ordinarily wouldn't notice before."

Right now, I'm conquering horses' feet and legs. (Laughter) I've noticed a lot 102:00of the artists when they do horses, they hide them [feet] in the grass or the dirt or the water, and I decided I'm not going to do that. (Laughter) I'm going to do it like you're supposed to.

There are so many things in a lifetime. Someone asked me one time, "Where do you get your ideas from? Are you afraid you'll run out of ideas?" I couldn't run out of ideas if I lived to be two hundred because there's so much to do. (Laughter) Like the place here, when I get it back into shape again. The mound is so interesting, too, because nobody knows what was there. The story was that Red Bird was going to put a cellar in there, way, way back then, and he went out and started digging. That night, he had a dream and Stand Waite says, "Bird, let my bones rest in peace."

Now, Stand Waite's not buried there, but in his dream--see, Stand Waite was a commander [in the Civil War in Indian Territory]. That's why [Red Bird] went out and covered it up the next day. There's never been any excavation. People want to dig it up. In fact, they want to dig up my great-grandfather. (Laughs) I've 103:00had people call me. One of them said, "Wasn't your grandfather a confederate soldier?" I said, "No, my grandfather was not a confederate soldier."

My great-grandfather was, but I didn't tell him that. I was telling the truth. Later on, someone was asking, "Do you think he'd have been buried with a belt buckle?" They get $10,000 dollars for a Confederate belt buckle on the Internet! I told them, "He was seventy-two when he died, and I doubt, seriously, that he would have hung on to a belt buckle and been buried with it."

He was a forward, progressive person as an attorney. All of them were, all my family. I was lucky that I got some of their genes that believe in being progressive. You have to live in the world that you're born in. I can live in the past through my paintings, but in real life, I face whatever has to be faced.

Little Thunder: Well, thank you so much, Joan, this has been wonderful.

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