Oral history interview with Charles Chapman

Little Thunder: My name is Julie Pearson-Little Thunder. Today is Wednesday May 25, 2016. I'm interviewing Charles Chapman for the Oklahoma Native Artist project, sponsored by the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program at Oklahoma State University. We are at Charles's home in Pawnee, Oklahoma. Charles, Pawnee artists have played a pretty big role on the Oklahoma Native art scene and you're no exception. You've won numerous awards at Red Earth, Trail of Tears, and other major art shows. You were honored as Featured Artist at Tulsa Indian Art Festival, and your work was a mainstay in many Indian art calendars. I understand you set aside your painting for a while for health reasons, but you're about to pick it up again. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me.

Chapman: All right.

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

Chapman: I was born in Pawnee, Oklahoma, at the Indian Hospital out there when it was still going. I grew up right here.

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

Chapman: Well, my dad was a carpenter and a farmer. This is the old home place. After the folks passed away, my brother started buying my brothers and sisters out. Well, I wound up buying him out. I kept it together except for about ten acres over here that they petitioned off for three houses.

Little Thunder: Oh yeah. It's a beautiful, beautiful place.

Chapman: I've been working on it, trying to make it pretty.

Little Thunder: How many brothers and sisters did you have?

Chapman: There were eleven of us. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: Where did you fall?

Chapman: I'm second to the last. My little sister Linda, she's the last one.

Little Thunder: How about your mom?

Chapman: Well, she was a farmer lady.

Little Thunder: Ah.

Chapman: A good one. She made good fry bread and everything. When she cooked, it was good. She canned everything. You know how it was in the old days.

Little Thunder: Right, right. What was your relationship with your grandparents on either side?

Chapman: You know what? I never knew them. They were passed on before I realized, I guess, I'd never seen them.

Little Thunder: How important was Pawnee culture and language for you growing up?

Chapman: The first nine years of my life, when we lived out here on the farm 3:00with Mom and Dad, we kind of lived the old Indian way. Dad knew all that old stuff. My dad, they took him off a camp creek. He had braids down to here. Couldn't speak a word of English. Took him and a bunch of other boys up to Carlisle Indian School. When they got up there, they ran away. They made it all the way back home. They were just kids, twelve, thirteen years old. Anyway, I was always interested in the customs and things they were doing. The dances and everything. Really I didn't think about it my whole life until I got back from Vietnam and started painting. Then, I started studying the Pawnee tribe and I 4:00started painting the history. I've been doing that now for--dang, I've been on the road for twenty-five, thirty years, I think. Way back in the '80s was when I started showing. Like I say, I was painting history of the Pawnee Tribe. If that kind of answers--. You could stop me and tell me. (Laughs

Little Thunder: I was wondering, what other creative influences did you have in your family?

Chapman: It was just me. I've always been able to draw. None of the rest of them ever done anything like that. When I was a little bitty guy, over there on the floor, or when I got big enough to walk around, I could draw and make it look 5:00like an animal. I was little bitty. Once I come up [the dog barks] (shut up)--come up through high school, I won all the shows. The little art shows. (Shut up, Flag.)

Little Thunder: So even in elementary school, were teachers noticing that you had a talent for art?

Chapman: Uh-huh. Let's see. I went to the Indian school--

Little Thunder: Okay.

Chapman: --and I was in the fourth grade. I always kind of laugh about it, but Ms. Trysdale, I was at the chalkboard, I was supposed to be doing math or something. It was around Thanksgiving and I was drawing a turkey on the chalkboard. Boy, she jumped down my throat and got me. She said--what'd she say? 6:00Something about I couldn't draw my way out of a paper bag. I always wondered, I wish she was alive to see me now.

Little Thunder: Not exactly encouraging.

Chapman: No, huh-uh. From there, I went to the--

Little Thunder: Was that Pawnee Indian School? Was that what you were talking about?

Chapman: Yeah. When it closed, I was in the fourth grade and they sent us up town, to the town school. From the fifth grade on, every time we had a little art show, they had art classes, which I never had before.

Little Thunder: Wow.

Chapman: We'd get to draw with watercolors and things. Man, I could outdraw any 7:00of them. I won all of them, even in grade school. We just had another year left there. But then, when I got in high school, they didn't have art. So it kind of went by the wayside until I came back from Vietnam. You want me tell you about who helped me get started?

Little Thunder: Absolutely.

Chapman: I got married. I was married. I was living out on the ranch out there at Skidi. My brother owned a hundred and sixty acres out there. I was kind of with him on--I was breaking horses and making money, me and my wife. Well, I started painting. I taught myself how to paint.

Little Thunder: And you really hadn't picked up paint since high school at that point?

Chapman: No. I was scared of it, really. But I was pretty good. I was taking my paintings up to Fairfax to the horse sale, and I was selling them, not for a whole lot, or I'd trade them for a colt. I gathered up (I bet you I had forty some horses that we were raising), and I'd break them, take them back. Make money. Anyway, my nephew, Richard Teeter, and his wife Leanna--Rich knew about this--he said, "Charlie, why don't you take them paintings and go to an art show?" I said, "What art show?" (I didn't even know they had art shows.) He said, "Now, if I get you lined up to go to one, will you go?" I said, "Yeah, 9:00I'll go, see what it's about." So he got me lined up somehow. The first show I went to was down at Anadarko.

Little Thunder: Oh, the Expo? The Indian Expo?

Chapman: I guess that was what it was. I'd never been down there. I'll be danged if I didn't win First Place in the oil division, first rattle out of the box.

Little Thunder: Now, when you first started doing these paintings that you were taking to the horse sales and stuff--

Chapman: Uh-huh.

Little Thunder: --were they in watercolor or were they in oil from the beginning?

Chapman: Nope, they were oil. I've always painted in oil.

Little Thunder: Okay. It's not easy to paint in oil.

Chapman: And teach yourself. It's pretty rough. But I went along there--it took 10:00about six years or so before--

Little Thunder: What did it feel like to win that First Place at Anadarko?

Chapman: We was happy. (Laughs) Oh--

Little Thunder: It had a little prize money, too, right?

Chapman: Yeah, I was working. I was bringing home, back then, only about $300 a week. We got down there and won the show and sold it. I didn't sell that painting there, but I sold another one there for more money. I think I got $1500 or $1800 out of it. The first time. Boy, I thought that was really good.

Little Thunder: Wow.

Chapman: I was, "Baby, we're going."

Little Thunder: That was good. Now--

Chapman: That's how it all started.

Little Thunder: Were you doing Indian subject matter when you were trading paintings for horses? Or were you doing horses?

Chapman: I was doing--

Little Thunder: Or were you doing both?

Chapman: I was doing both cowboy and Indian paintings. I still do some cowboys. Not many. Probably I ought to do more.

Little Thunder: Do those Indian cowboy paintings.

Chapman: I got locked in, me and Rich. Like I say, he's the one that lined me up down there. He got this whole ball rolling. Then I started studying. I started painting these old ceremonies, painting the Indians how they really looked back then. It wasn't no Hollywood stuff, and my paintings took off. I had a story with them that told about them. That was the deal. Once I started that, I had to have them stories because that's what everybody asked about. "What's this? Why 12:00are they doing this?" I explained it and that's what helped me the most.

Little Thunder: You mentioned, I think, in an article I read that you looked at a lot of Remington and Russell, too. You studied those guys for a bit.

Chapman: Yeah, I did that when I was trying to learn.

Little Thunder: When you were trying to learn technique?

Chapman: I said, "Look at this." You get overwhelmed by what they could do. But yeah, I practiced. Don't like to tell people that. I had it right up, there, looking. Boy.

Little Thunder: That's how artists learn, though. They learn by reproducing and trying to figure out how it was done.

Chapman: Uh-huh.

Little Thunder: How about Brummett Echohawk? Had you seen any of his work?

Chapman: Yeah. I knew Brummett. I've known Brumett all my life. Him and my brother, they was raised together.

Little Thunder: I know that some Native artists, when they tried to do a more realistic, what you call western style, more realistic style, sometimes they would meet with some criticism. I don't know if that was the same response you encountered?

Chapman: You know, as far as I'm concerned, even way back when I was little drawing people, animals, I always--I could hit it. Half of this painting is drawing. You've got to be able to get everything in proportion. Then, you got to know what you're painting about. That story I was telling you. You've got to go through there and study it and research and get everything right, or you will get criticized, I guarantee you. You got to keep on top. Yes, sir. I'm going to 14:00tell you something that happened. I was showing up in Denver. I had a painting there and I bet you there was twenty people standing around there because they liked to hear me talk about them. I was talking about this one. I forget what it was about now, but I was telling the people. There was one guy in the back. He said, "That's wrong." I said, "What do you mean, that's wrong?" He said, "I study Indians." What he was talking about is something that my dad wrote down on paper, my dad knew. So I gave him a book. I said, "Here. Go read that." He went over there and read it. He came back and he put that book down and walked off. I 15:00sold about fifteen prints on account of him. That's what'll happen at a show a lot of times. If you're not, if you are not right with it.

Little Thunder: That is a great story. (Laughter) You won another award, another big award at the Trail of Tears show, I think, in 1986.

Chapman: Uh-huh, yeah.

Little Thunder: Do you remember what the subject was on that one?

Chapman: You know, it's been a long time ago.

Little Thunder: But it was Pawnee? Was it Pawnee subject matter?

Chapman: Yeah, that's all I paint.

Little Thunder: That's all you do.

Chapman: It had to do with the bear, Bear Doctor. I had a Bear Doctor, and I don't remember all of it, but I remember in the smoke, I had the smoke coming 16:00up, and went into it like a bear.

Little Thunder: Neat. You're really well known for your portraits, too.

Chapman: Uh-huh.

Little Thunder: I wonder what attracts you to painting people's faces?Chapman: It's just easy for me. Like when you read about the doctors, they'll tell you how they painted their face. A lot of times, I'll just do a portrait without doing the whole--everything they wear and putting the color on them. Like if he was, we'll say, a Beaver Doctor in the story, where this beaver came to the 17:00doctor. It took him around. No, it took him around, but the bank where the water was, was blue. In the first ceremonies that the Pawnees have in the spring, when they go in the mud lodge, they all paint blue. Every one of them. I'll paint that face.

Then, I'll paint the whole, or have him dancing in the Doctor Dance. Excuse me. I paint the doctors. That's real interesting. Studying about the doctors and how they got their medicine and how they used it. It was real. They healed. The doctors paint different than the warriors.

Little Thunder: Right.

Chapman: So you have to--both the war societies painted different. You had to know what war society you were talking about because some of them painted all black, all white, all red. They have a society called the Young Dog. They could paint anyway they wanted. Just make up their own deals.

Little Thunder: Right. You did a lot of horses, too, I think, and you kept horses for a while?

Chapman: That's right down my alley. I raised horses all my life.

Little Thunder: Since you got horses for your first paintings, too.

Chapman: Uh-huh.

Little Thunder: Is that helpful when you're painting a scene, painting warriors on horseback, and you've got horses and you can go out there and--

Chapman: You know what? I have never used, I've never painted from a picture.

Little Thunder: You just knew.

Chapman: I do it in my head, right on the canvas back there. You got to correct. You're always correcting to get that horse just right and the man just right. Because his size to the horse has got to be right. It's a lot of correction on it, sometimes. Sometimes, it takes me years to get it right. I have a painting back there a long time. I can have a painting that I've had there for six years that keeps whipping me. I'll try and I'll try and I'll try and I know it's not right, so I just put it up. Then there's times that I can be laying there in bed at night, thinking about it, and get up and put that picture on the easel and 20:00know exactly what I was doing wrong. It'll just flow together and I could finish it. Ain't that funny how--

Little Thunder: Yeah.

Chapman: --How a painting will do that to you? Whoop you. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Right. Sometimes the business side of art is sort of the hardest to figure out. How did you know how to approach that?

Chapman: Just selling and everything. I think it was about the second or third year, I was showing over at Tulsa. Ole Woody Crumbo was there, and he came over and he seen my paintings. He said, "Young man, let me tell you something. You're 21:00the first one, so far, that's painting with oil that's painting your history and doing it the right way." I got to talking with him--he got to talking--and he said, "Charlie, tell you what you got to do. You got to sell yourself. He said, "When them people come in your booth, don't just sit there. You get up and you talk to them. Talk to them about anything. It don't have to be about that artwork. Let them know you." He said, "You'll sell your paintings. The paintings will sell theirselves. With what you got with the history and the stories with them." He said, "You'll go a long way." By George, he was right. I listened to 22:00him. Because when somebody comes in my booth, I'm up talking. It works. The more these little Indians need to learn that. When you go out there and you just sit behind that desk, you won't sell. You got to get up and present yourself. That is how I make it.

Little Thunder: Great advice. Great to get it from Woody Crumbo, too.

Chapman: Yeah.

Little Thunder: That compliment.

Chapman: He used to have a studio out in Cimarron, New Mexico. Every time I'd go that way, I'd stop and stay with him. I had Carmen with me, my daughter. She was little. I took her to all the shows with me and the ladies took care of her. But we'd always stop at Woody's and stay overnight. Cut out again.

Little Thunder: How neat.

Chapman: He was a good old man. I really liked him. What was I going to do? I went out to Cimarron--let's see. How'd that happen? I think I did a show there and then I went on to California. As I was coming back, I was going to trade originals with him and by dang, if he didn't pass away before I got back there. I didn't know it, but he had a whole bunch of originals oils at Gilcrease [Museum]. [Gilcrease] bought half of them, anyway, when [Crumbo] was the artist in residence over there.

Little Thunder: Right, right. Wow.

Chapman: Oh yeah, he was a good one. He'd keep my head to the grindstone.

Little Thunder: What is a funny travel story you might be able to share?

Chapman: Funny what?

Little Thunder: A funny travel story?

Chapman: Travel? Gee, I don't know. You should have asked me a long time ago. Let me think about it. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Well, if it comes to you, we will put it in. What's one of the best compliments that you have received on your work? Might have been what Woody said. One of the best compliments you gotten--

Chapman: What Woody said about it. You know, just keep up doing what I was doing.

Little Thunder: What's the hardest painting you ever did? The hardest one to do?

Chapman: Let's see. I don't know one that's really hard, but that eagle back there, putting them feathers on that eagle and getting them just right, I think that was hard. I ain't never going to paint another eagle.

Little Thunder: Really time intensive?

Chapman: Yeah, it really was. It took me a long time to paint it. I finally, finally got it done. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: What about commissions? Did you ever take commissions?

Chapman: I did a few times. I don't like to do that. They always want to hurry you. An artist, you can't hurry them. They have to be in the mood, or I do. I got to be in the mood. When it's there, I can do real good work. But if I'm 26:00forcing myself to hurry up and finish for somebody that I took a commission [from]? No, I quit that. I paint them for me now. If they want them, they can buy them.

Little Thunder: You used to have quite a bit of work at the Pawnee Arts Center in Nebraska?

Chapman: Yeah, there's a little place up there. I forget the name of it now.

Little Thunder: Is it Thunderbird [Gallery]?

Chapman: No, It's a little bitty town called Brigadoon, or Briga-something. Anyway, they took some of my prints up there. I don't have prints out like all the other guys.

Little Thunder: Okay.

Chapman: That's probably the only place right now--

Little Thunder: Okay.

Chapman: --that I have any artwork out. Usually when I quit painting, they come here.

Little Thunder: That's great.

Chapman: That's one good place I found that does pay you and give you commission. There's been other places where I left artwork and they were lost. They closed up shop and took the artwork with them somewhere.

Little Thunder: That's terrible. You have made a few prints, right? Did you work with the gallery to print?

Chapman: No.

Little Thunder: Did you print on your own?

Chapman: I printed all mine on my own. I got thirty some prints.

Little Thunder: Wow.

Chapman: Like thirty-three. Then I have, right here lately, these giclées they call them. Prints on canvas. I like that. I've got about probably eight of them. 28:00I like it because I can order like ten and not have to order the whole shooting match and have to have a place to store it and everything. It's real handy.

Little Thunder: The color reproduction is nicer in the canvas.

Chapman: Yeah, it looks like a real oil when you get them stretched. They're nice.

Little Thunder: Have you ever tried your hand at sculpture or three-dimensional?

Chapman: Never have, never have. All I've ever done is just painted. That takes enough of my time. (Laughs) Takes all of it, really.

Little Thunder: They have the Pawnee Arts Association here for a while. Were you 29:00involved with it a little bit?

Chapman: Yeah, I was with them a while. They was trying to get it going real good. I don't even know what they're doing, anymore, if it's even there. I don't know.

Little Thunder: Yeah, I don't think they are super active right now.

Chapman: Mr. Berry when he used to have that show up there, we all went up there and showed--I think it was the Fourth of July. But when he passed away, I quit going. He was a good friend of mine.

Little Thunder: Some of the younger Pawnee artists like Rusty Diamond, they've mentioned that they take your advice on doing research. What kinds of research are important to do?

Chapman: Well, you got to go back to, you got to find--there's books on the Pawnees. You just have to get in there and read what the old ones said, like my 30:00dad. He used to translate for the old doctors. The old fellows, anyway, they couldn't speak English. What he writes down, you can use it as the truth. There's a lot of times, fellows come from like New York or somewhere and didn't go to them old fellows in the right way. Them old guys, they would lie to them and they would write it down. So got to know what author and stuff to believe. What that does, that takes reading a whole bunch of books. Reading what it says, 31:00and eventually you'll find out the truth.

Little Thunder: Figure out the reliable ones.

Chapman: Yeah.

Little Thunder: With all the Pawnee bands, and there's a lot of complexity--besides the fact that Native people get stereotyped, tribes get stereotyped by Hollywood. How have you tried to counter that with your painting?

Chapman: I paint truth. That's all you can do. I know they have movies and things and that depends on who they get to tell them about the Pawnees and how they did it and everything. I see different families around here think different ways. You know how Indians are.

Little Thunder: Yeah.

Chapman: So--.

Little Thunder: What changes have you noticed from the 1980s, when you started really going great guns, to today in terms of Native art? What changes have you observed?

Chapman: You know, when I started painting these Indians the way it said in the book, I was over there with Bill Rabbit and them in Tulsa. I was selling them paintings, originals. (I forgot--I lost my train of thought because I was trying to think about over there. )What did you ask me?

Little Thunder: What changes you noticed--

Chapman: What I noticed was after I started painting the real thing, other guys 33:00started studying their tribe and learning more about their tribe and painting them the way that tribe did it.

Little Thunder: Going from pan-Indian to their tribally specific--

Chapman: Yeah. I made them study. Had to learn about their tribe. Because a lot of times, they'll go to a show, there'd be a painting there, all different colors. You'd walk up and you ask them what it means. Didn't mean a thing. It's just a pretty painting. Then, later on, the same fellow started coming with historical stuff. That's good. That's a good thing because they learned about their own tribe.

Little Thunder: Right. In 1990, you probably remember the newer version of the Indians Arts and Crafts Act was passed, requiring proof of enrollment or your tribe had to certify that you could paint that particular tribe. How did you feel about that and what was its impact, in your view?

Chapman: I just went along with it. They said you had to have your degree of blood. Each tribe is different, getting in a show, as long as you had that--what do they call it?

Little Thunder: CDIB. [Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood]

Chapman: Yeah. You present that, then you could show. It didn't bother me much. 35:00I never thought about it much.

Little Thunder: What would you tell a young Native artist starting out? What would be your advice?

Chapman: You know what? I'd have to look at it and see how much talent he had. First thing you've got to be able to do is draw. If everything is out of proportion, I would have him get a picture and have him try to transfer it on paper. Have him practice drawing. You've got it half licked if you can draw that. You're drawing a person and you have everything in proportion--the eyes, nose, ears. Then you start, after you can draw, then you start putting things on 36:00it. That's a whole another story because it'll scare you. It did me. If I'd had a teacher, maybe not. But I taught myself, and I was a little skittish to really get it. Then I learned that if you make a mistake in oil, you just let it dry and go over it. (Laughs) And that? When I learned that, I took off. Because I thought it had to be perfect the first time but it don't. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: How had your subject matter changed over the years?

Chapman: Really hasn't. I still paint the same stuff. I read the stories, then I 37:00visualize it in my head and what I think it would look like. Then I go in on the canvas and start drawing. Start drawing till I get everything just right. But it all comes out of here. That's the way I do it.

Little Thunder: How about your use of color? Has that changed over the years?

Chapman: I still use bright colors; I like bright colors. That's one thing Woody Crumbo would tell me. He said, "Charlie, the colors you use, once you get down the road a ways and people get to know you, they're going to know you by the paintings, the colors you use in them and everything." Sometimes I try to kind 38:00of mellow it out, and it works on some of them. Most of them, I don't--I just go ahead.

Little Thunder: Let those bright colors loose.

Chapman: Uh-huh.

Little Thunder: You explained when you paint, you always sketch directly on the canvas first.

Chapman: Yeah. Yeah, I went through all that where you put it on paper and do that transfer. That was just too much. What I do, I just get me some paint out, a little thinner, and a little bitty brush. Then, I start drawing till I get it balanced and everything. Then I start painting on them.

Little Thunder: What is your creative process, once you get an idea? Do you write it down in a notebook or do you just go straight to--

Chapman: It's all right here. I can see it. I guess you can call it seeing it, but I can visualize what it's going to look like. Then, when I'm painting them, I'll have them all on. Everybody else, they'll be half done. Everybody else'll come and say, "Boy, that's real pretty." I'll say, "I ain't even done with this yet. You wait until I get done." Boy, I'll paint and paint. I don't know why. It'll just jump out at you. Put the brush down or you'll ruin it. You'll overpaint. You got to quit. Just knowing that helped. Knowing when to quit. I done that a lot of times. I kept painting. I messed the whole thing up. I'd have 40:00to put it aside and wait like I told you, wake up one night and get it out where I can finish. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: Do you work on--because you do sometimes have to put things down, do you work on several paintings simultaneously?

Chapman: Back when I was showing real hard, I had probably twenty paintings, at least, going at one time. Because I'd start painting until it got wet, what I call wet. I'd put it back and get the other one. I was in a hurry. It's when they was pushing me to get enough paintings to go again, like within two weeks. I'd get the next one down, then the next one. I'd stay up. Oh, I'd get maybe 41:00two, three hours of sleep, at most. And get back after it. I mean, day-after-day-after-day. All of a sudden, they'd all come together. There I was. I'd have twenty new pieces to take.

Little Thunder: Oh my gosh.

Chapman: That's the way it does with me. Just keep after it. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: What's maybe the most fun place you ever traveled to? The most fun show you ever did?

Chapman: I had fun at that first show, that my wife was with me, down at Anadarko. Because all the artists got out there after the show was over. Jeanie 42:00Bales and her husband, and the banker, and them, and they had kidneys.

Little Thunder: Oh.

Chapman: Over there.

Little Thunder: Raw kidney?

Chapman: Out there, drinking beer and eating kidney. I liked that. But we had fun down there.

Little Thunder: Yes. Fun. What would you say has been one of the highpoints of your career so far?

Chapman: You mean, showing?

Little Thunder: Uh-huh. Or maybe just meeting somebody. Whatever was a high point of your career.

Chapman: Dang, I don't know. Never thought of it.

Little Thunder: Or maybe an award that you are especially proud of?

Chapman: I don't know. Probably the show at Tulsa.

Little Thunder: Being the featured artist?

Chapman: When I was the featured artist over there with all of them. That was pretty good. Meeting ole what's his name, that movie star? Forget his name now. But he was over there.

Little Thunder: What movie was--Chapman: He was in that, I think, they were policeman or firemen or something. I wish I could remember his name.

Little Thunder: Not Adam Beach?

Chapman: No. I can't think of the name. Anyhow, I was fooling around with him. 44:00We had fun.

Little Thunder: Fun. (Laughs) What's been one of the low points in your career?

Chapman: When I lost my wife. Because I quit there for a while. I lost her to lupus. I had the little baby. Carmen was just two. I had to start raising her. But once I got back painting, it was me and her till she graduated from high school.

Little Thunder: She was a show baby?

Chapman: We'd finish up there at Crow Fair. That was in August. I was wanting to 45:00go to Sturgis [Oklahoma], but I had to get her back to start school. Yeah. We had a good time together.

Little Thunder: How many shows did you do? You must have done--

Chapman: Everyone I could get to.

Little Thunder: --almost ten a year? Maybe more than that?

Chapman: Yep.

Little Thunder: That's a lot of production.

Chapman: It's a lot of "Hurry it up, boy, and get it done." Yeah.

Little Thunder: What's the biggest painting that you have ever done?

Chapman: I bought a canvas for a big one, but I never did get to stretch it. I still got it down there. Right now, I don't have--I got to paint back there 46:00where my machine is for my dialysis. I got everything set up right there, but I can't paint a very big one. There's a pretty good-sized one in that middle room that I'll show you.

Little Thunder: We'll take a picture of it.

Chapman: It's good size.

Little Thunder: Is that the eagle painting?

Chapman: No, it's in the middle room.

Little Thunder: Okay.

Chapman: But I'd like to paint more great big ones, really. Just haven't done it. I'll get around to it, though.

Little Thunder: Is there anything else you would like to add before we take a look at your paintings?

Chapman: I don't know. (Laughs) You're the boss.

Little Thunder: If you think of it, we'll talk about it. We'll pause for a minute and get ready to look at some of your work.

Chapman: Okay.

Little Thunder: You ready to tell us about this piece behind you?

Chapman: I don't remember the stories on some of them, it's been so long.

Little Thunder: Okay. Do you remember the title on this one?

Chapman: I don't know what the title on it is. Now, this belongs to a little girl down in Alabama.

Little Thunder: Oh.

Chapman: She moved and I guess she must have hit it because the paint cracked. They sent it back to me to fix it.

Little Thunder: To fix it.

Chapman: What this is about, in the old days, them Pawnees, the women, they would go out and they would dig a place--I forget--they call it a cache, I think, where they would dig down and dig it out, like this, to put their beans and pumpkin and corn bread in there. Then they would cover it with logs and dirt. They would be the only ones that knew where that was at. When they came 48:00back from being off somewhere, they would have something they could go to. Get corn, beans, and everything to eat. That's what they're doing here. This is a parfleche right here. Meat. Then they got corn and stuff. Whatever they'd put in there. They'd put it in layers and it would last a long time, let me tell you. See my sign? Called the Vault of the Heavens? Line down the middle is the Breath of Heaven.

Little Thunder: Oh.

Chapman: That has to do with the buffalo. A fellow up in Nebraska was building a barn when he dozed off and he uncovered one of these pits. My dad and a couple 49:00other older Indians went up there. Dad got down in there. He was moving things out. The meat was in a parfleche and had that insignia on it. Then, Dad and them, they ate everything but the meat. It was over a hundred years old. The meat was the only thing that wasn't any good. But then, my dad translated for a book called The Lost Universe. It was a hardback at the time. They used that insignia on the front of the book. I took it for me, since my dad handed out that parfleche with it on it. Yeah. That's what that's about right there.

Little Thunder: I see.

Chapman: Kind of an older style.

Little Thunder: For your artist remarque, for your artist signature? Let's talk 50:00about your signature little bit. How did you come up with it?

Chapman: Just like--

Little Thunder: Just like you told me --

Chapman: That was on the parfleche.

Little Thunder: Okay, from that. That's what I thought you were saying.

Chapman: That my dad handed out and I took it as that.

Little Thunder: Sometimes it's hard to figure out where to put your signature, or how to work it into the painting without it being too much. That's really neat.

Chapman: Yeah, you've got to leave a place for it, for that signature.

Little Thunder: Okay, we're looking at one of your giclées here. It was reproduced in a calendar, I guess. Did you remember the title on this?

Chapman: Let's see. I don't know if this one was or not.

Little Thunder: Okay.

Chapman: It might not have been. Or it might have been in the calendar. It's been so long.

Little Thunder: What can you tell us about it?

Chapman: This is one of the pieces I was--I studied and read through the book. It tells me how they wore different things and why they wore it. This has to do with the feather. In this painting, this fellow, he's called Three Coup. The tribe, when the fellow went out and he touched the enemy, that was better than killing them because you got up close. If you did that once, you got one feather, slant-wise. Twice, you'd have feathers slant-wise, either direction. Then, the third time, the third coup is a crow feather. Straight up. Then after this, the four, fives on like that is when they started their calumet, you know. 52:00That's what this one's about. He's called Three Coup.

Little Thunder: Three Coup. Neat. How about titles? Are they very important to you? Do they come easy? Or are they hard to--

Chapman: They come along with the reading of what I'm doing. The title of most of the paintings, they're in there when you read and you decide to paint something. The title will go along with it.

Little Thunder: Okay, here's another giclée. What can you tell us about this one?

Chapman: If I remember right, I think this is called Bringing in the Buffalo Ponies.

Little Thunder: Nice looking horses.

Chapman: Before they went out to hunt buffalo, they had their own ponies. They 53:00had buffalo ponies, then they had war ponies. I am pretty sure I titled this, The Buffalo Ponies. You can see by the horses that I draw, I'm pretty good at horses. And people. That's what this is. It's bringing in the buffalo ponies. Then I painted this horse here. In our tribe, if you have a horse, if he was solid red or beige and he had a solid white face like this horse right here, these kind of horses are known as give away horses. In our tribe, that would be like a man--you show your stature when you do something like that. You giving a horse away, it's like giving somebody a million dollars, back in the old days. 54:00That's what these kind of horses were that had these solid [white faces].

Little Thunder: They were special.

Chapman: Yeah.

Little Thunder: For give away.

Chapman: You don't get one probably but every fifty years or so, one'll come out like that. A colt.

Little Thunder: What did they want in their buffalo horses? What kind of qualities did they want?

Chapman: They wanted a good running horse, a stout horse. What they would do a lot of times, they had these--I call them mung beans. They'd smash them up, and just before they'd go out, or even at war, when they was going into battle, they would give that horse some of it. And them horses would start dancing. Make them high. Like a person.

Little Thunder: Make them fearless.

Chapman: Make them ready, yeah.

Little Thunder: Wow.

Chapman: That horse will run right up there and get the job done.

Little Thunder: Neat. Well, Charles thank you very much for your time today. It's been great visiting with you.

Chapman: All right.

------- End of interview -------