La Junta Indian Artist

Caption under photo: Woody Crumbo's paintings are as varied in content as the man is versatile in talents. He turns out striking protraits, whimsical animals of the prairies and a wide range of paintings depicting the rituals and ceremonies of the Indians he understands best. His work is handled by galleries throughout the country including the Deer Dancer in Denver's Larimer Square.

If you've been at all interested in Indian paintings or prings and you browse the shops and galleries that specialize in them you know the name of Woody Crumbo. What you probably don't realize however, Crumbo makes his home in Colorado.

The quiet spoken painter lives with his wife in La Junta.

A modest individual it is difficult to get Crumbo to talk about himself but when he does he weaves facinating stories.

"I didn't start out early in life wanting to paint," he commented, "not like most of the artists you read about. I got started in college."

He was in a pre-med couse at the time at the University of Wichita.

"A group of us traveled around the Indian reservations for a year doing the Indian dances," he recalled, "sponsored by the government. That was back in 1933 and it was part of a little known program, the ICC (Indian Conservation Corps). It was similar to the CCC."

Indian schools
Crumbo is a Pottawatomie Indian who was born at Lexington, Okla.

"My mother died when I was seven," he reported, "and I was raised by full blooded Inidans (the Sioux). I went to Indian schools, to all of the pow-wows. I got to know all the ceremonials and the dances. You just naturally learn them."

He also studied the religious ceremonies of the Kiowas under the great medicine man Apiaton (Wooden Lance).

Many of the troupe of dancers were Kiowas and the majority of them were artists. They spent much of the time during the year they toured for the government sketching each other and the dances.

"They would sell them," he stated "and they encouraged me to draw also. When I found I liked it and I had returned to college I enrolled in art school."

He finished his art training at the University of Oklahoma.

Crumbo for a time taught art at the only Indian college in the country, Bacone College in Muskogee, Okla. and spent three years helping to collect Western art to fill out the Gilcrease Foundation permanent collection.

Little time
But the teaching, the collecting and a stint as a museum curator there was little time for painting and so Crumbo resigned to devote full time to his art.

Pretty much he has kept up that pattern - breaking up periods of painting with museum work and vice versa.

"I guess I've probably had 1000 to 1200 one man shows," he said looking back at his career.

Crumbo's smaller works invariably are executed in water color - his largest canvases usually are oils. He finds little or no need for researching either costuming or ceremonial so deeply ingrained are both in his mind.

"I know what it's supposed to look like," he commented.

Today, along with his painting, he is hard at work ironing out details for the filming of an original story of an Indian who died in 1944 in Luxembourg. Pfc. Clarence Spotted Wolf was a Sioux Indian and his last request was for a ceremonial burial.

The request prompted Crumbo to paint "Spotted Wolf's Last Request" and later to write a story about it.

"What interested me most," he said, "was the realization that Indians have contributed to every war that the United States has fought on foreign soil."

Wants to film
Crumbo went on: "Statistics show that our race has had a higher percentage of volunteers than any other yet I have never seen a painting dedicated to Indian participation in American conflicts."

The artist, who plans to use Kiowas in the dramatization of the story, wants the film to be historically and ritualistically correct as is possible hoping that the film will provide a greater understanding of the Indians among all peoples.

How does Crumbo look upon the current wave of demands for rights by various manorities?

"Indians always have been too polite," he stated, "and dignified to protest. They will not beg for recognition nor threaten. The old ones will not lower selves to march and protest."

Owes them
Crumbo does believe that the younger ones will make demands but "very dignified" ones and those demands will be along the lines of asking the U.S. to live up to its treaties.

"All most Indians want," he said, "is to have what the government owes them, what is their simple right. Indians are loyal to the U.S. It is the only country they know."

Crumbo has many other interests. One of his chief reasons for moving to La Junta from Taos was to be on hand to help his old friend Buck Burshears with the training of the Koshare Indian Dancers.

He has dabbled successfully in many other fields. He has been a prospector, he is an inventor with several patents in his name, he designs stained glass windows and he is a maker and player of ree flutes. The latter he learned also from the Kiowas.

But mainly Crumbo is good company-down to earth, humorous and warm.