Native American camouflage / hidden in animal skins

Above Engraving by Dutch publisher Theodor de Bry (1591), based on a drawing by French artist Jacques LeMoyne de Morgues (c. 1533-1588), made during explorations of what is now Florida in the 1560s. It documents the use of animal skins for disguise, as described below by LeMoyne.

The Indians hunt deer in a way we have never seen before. They hide themselves in the skin of a very large deer which they have killed some time before. They place the animal's head upon their own head, looking through the eye holes as through a mask. In this disguise they approach the deer without frightening them. They choose the time when the animals come to drink at the river, shooting them easily with bow and arrow.

RELATED LINKS 

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work? / Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage /  Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual art /  Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

camouflage artist's profile appears on Buffalo nickel

Buffalo Nickel

Ramon D. Forbes, NUMISMATIC NOTES in Philatelic West (Lincoln NE), Nebraska Philatelic Society, 1918—

I wonder how many of the readers of Philatelic West who carry Buffalo nickels in [their] pockets realize that they have the likeness of one of Uncle Sam's fighting men in their possession.

Corporal Robert G. Harper, who posed for the Indian head of the buffalo nickel, has arrived at Camp Sherman, and has been assigned to the 309th Engineers [as a camoufleur]. Harper, of French-Indian descent, was born in the Mohawk Valley in northern New York, answered the call of the West and spent many years on the Western plains. When James Earle Frazer of New York received the commission to execute the design for the new nickel, Harper was secured as a model.… 

•••

NICKEL "HEAD" QUITS POSING, Model for Coin Will Aid in Plastic Surgery, in Painesville Telegraph (Painesville OH) August 6, 1930, p. 3—

The "Buffalo Nickel Indian"—Robert G. Harper—has turned from a career of modeling for artists to helping plastic surgery within the reach of every man.

Harper, former local high school athlete and World War camouflage artist, has left Yale Art School, where he posed for sculpture classes, to become a "Plastic Surgeon's Plastic Expert" in the staff of the New York City Health Department, which hopes to bring such operations within the means of the average man.

Although not an Indian [sic], Harper's appearance fulfills the common impression of an American Indian. In addition to posing for the head of the Indian on the five-cent piece, Harper has posed for many noted statues. 

News photograph of Robert G. Harper

•••

'FORGOTTEN MAN' ON NICKEL PAYS VISIT TO BINGHAMTON, in Binghamton (NY) Press and Sun-Bulletin, September 12, 1938, p. 5—

The man who claims to be behind the face on the disappearing Buffalo nickel gave Binghamton a quick once-over Saturday afternoon.

He is Robert G. Harper, World War veteran, model and sculptor, who stopped off between trains at the Lackawanna station while en route to the veterans' hospital at Bath.

"It's a funny thing," he said, "here's the place I was born, and I haven't been here in years. My birthplace was an old Mohawk Indian reservation, near Union, a site which now is occupied by an Endicott Johnson factory."

His grandmother and mother, he said, were full-blooded Mohawk Indians.

"Not only were my features the most prominent on the nickel," Mr. Harper said, "but I also used for the statue of a running soldier right here in Binghamton at the end of Memorial Bridge [on a war memorial sculpture titled "The Skirmisher" by Robert Ingersoll Aiken]"…

Robert Ingersoll Aiken, The Skirmisher

NOTE: It is  sometimes claimed that the profile on the Buffalo nickel is not that of Robert G. Harper, but of another Native American, named Wolf Robe.

RELATED LINKS

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work? /  Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage /  Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual art /  Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

blending / assuming the look of an overturned stump

Above  Cartoon from Lilliput Magazine, date and artist unknown.

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Arthur Henry Howard Heming, The Drama of the Forests, Romance and Adventure.  Garden City: Doubleday, Page and Co, p. 61—

As regards trailing game, whether large or small, he [a Canadian Native American] cautioned me to watch my quarry carefully, and instantly to become rigid at the first sign that the game was about to turn round or raise its head to peer in my direction. More than that, I should not only remain motionless while the animal was gazing toward me, but I should assume at once some form that suggested the character of the surrounding trees or bushes or rocks. For example, among straight-boled, perfectly vertical trees, I should stand upright; among uprooted trees, I should assume the character of an overturned stump, by standing with inclined body, bent legs, and arms and fingers thrust out at such angles as to suggest the roots of a fallen tree. And he added that if I doubted the wisdom of such an act, I should test it at a distance of fifty or a hundred paces, and prove the difficulty of detecting a man who assumed a characteristic landscape pose among trees or rocks. That was years before the World War had brought the word camouflage into general use; for as a matter of fact, the forest Indians had been practicing camouflage for centuries and, no doubt, that was one reason why many of the Indians in the Canadian Expeditionary Force did such remarkable work as snipers.

bandits in warpaint hold up New York restaurant / 1928

Painting by George Catlin

Above George Catlin, Portrait of Blue Medicine (Toh-to-wah-kon-da-pee), Medicine Man of the Eastern Sioux Dakota tribe. 19th Century. Collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Public domain.

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REDSKINS GET $1,000 Loot. Brooklyn Gunmen Paint Faces Then Stage Holdup. East Liverpool Review. East Liverpool OH, July 16, 1928, p. 8—

NEW YORK, July I6—Chicago gun­men may claim the distinction of hav­ing first introduced the submachine gun into the hold up “racket,” but to Brooklyn goes credit for the first use of camouflage by stick up men. Three bandits today entered a State Street restaurant with their faces dis­guised with paint used in a manner like that employed formerly only by Indians on the warpath. The paint was streaked over their faces in weird patterns. The leader wore a heavy black hue under one eye, while the rest of his face was streaked a brilliant red. The proprietor and his staff were so astonished that the bandits es­caped with $1,000 in cash and jewelry before an alarm was raised. 

Don Jules Camou | Ye Olde Checkerboard Technique

Full-page article on Don Jules Camou (1932)

Five years ago, I ran across a news article that claimed that modern camouflage was originated in the 19th century by a French general named Jacques Camou (1792-1868). At first, I thought it was a joke. The coincidence of the person’s name and the Modern-era military term (which did not come into common use until 1914) was bizarre.

But I have now found a more detailed news article from 1932 that provides an account of the life of Don Jules Camou (not Jacques Camou), described as a major landowner (“a dictator, almost”) in the Mexican state of Sonora. Written by Oren Arnold, the article is titled INVENTED CAMOUFLAGE A CENTURY AGO TO SAVE HIS RANCH FROM THE APACHES: Fooling the enemy with paint was not originated by modern war strategists after all—for wily Jules Camou used it against his Indian foes in 1832 (Arizona Daily Star, May 22, 1932).

Accompanying the article are several surprisingly clear photographs of the then surviving structures on the Camou estate, located in Sonora, 250 miles south of the Mexican-American border. When the article came out, it was claimed that “more than 100 alleged heirs” were “still squabbling over his estate, and romantic yarns about him are becoming a vital part of Sonoran folklore.” Reportedly, part of the interest was due to the possibility of ore deposits, and, less credible, the rumor that a cache of gold was hidden somewhere on the property. “The courts at Hermosillo, the capital city of Sonora,” the article notes, “are crowded with matters concerning the Jules Camou estate.”

Jules Camou’s purported use of camouflage took place in 1832. His cattle ranch was huge; according to the article, “a horseman can travel in a straight line for two days” and never leave the estate. Each year he raised as many as 16,000 head of cattle, the success of which required dependable access to water. He decided to construct a dam with which to form a 400-acre lake. But he was plagued by frequent attacks by neighboring Apaches, who regarded him as an intruder.

In order to construct the dam, Camou first devised a large ranch fortress, with a cylindrical stone tower at each end. When attacked, the workers could flee to the towers, and fire at the attackers from above through five-inch square-shaped portholes. But the portholes themselves were a target. It was Camou’s innovation to make the portholes hard to see by randomly locating them within a surface pattern of painted squares. As a result, the article claims, “where any one Indian might before have seen four or five targets, he now could see only a confusing picture of colored squares.”

Did Camou actually do this? It seems that he did, but even so, it’s unlikely that he was the first. A comparable checkerboard pattern (to conceal the location of gun ports) had long been used by ships at sea. In an earlier posting about camouflage and checkerboards, we referenced the aforementioned Jacques Camou, who appears to have had no connection to Mexico. In Paris, there is a street called rue Camou, named in his honor.

In the article on Jules (not Jacques), historian John McPhee is quoted as saying—

…Jules Camou originated what we now call “camouflage.” I don’t know whether he named it or not, but it is at least a coincidence that the names—Camou and camou-flage—should be so similar, isn’t it?

Related to this is an earlier news article with the headline GERMAN CONSUL MADE TO PAY HEAVY RANSOM: Sonora Rebels Abuse Max Muller and Extort $10,000 From Him, in the Los Angeles Call (April 4, 1913). The article tells the story of the threat to wealthy residents of Sonora, who are in danger of being kidnapped and held for ransom. One of the victims was Max Muller, who was vice president of the Bank of Sonora and the German consul at Hermosillo. After paying the ransom and being released, Muller fled to safety in Los Angeles, where other Sonorans had already fled. The article adds—

Among the refugees now here [in LA] are thirty-two wealthy members of the Camou family, headed by Fermin Camou and Albert Camou. This family owns practically all of the state of Sonora, and is rated as worth more than three million dollars.  

RELATED LINKS    

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work? /  Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage /  Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual art /  Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

Camoufleur and Hollywood star Wheeler Oakman

USS Major Wheeler

The SS Tuscania (launched in 1914) was a Cunard luxury liner until it was refitted in 1916 to serve as a wartime troopship. In late January 1918, it left New Jersey en route to Liverpool, with 2,013 US soldiers aboard. Although it had been painted in a dazzle camouflage scheme (not shown on this page), it was sunk by a German U-boat on February 5. More than 200 personnel perished. This was detailed in an earlier post.

On June 8, 1919, the Washington Post reported that the actor Wheeler Oakman, “considered one of the best looking and talented of [Hollywood’s] younger leading men” had returned from service in France, where he had been a camoufleur with San Francisco’s 144th artillery regiment. Earlier, despite the success of his acting career, the sinking of the Tuscania “fired his long-smoldering patriotism.” In response, he “appealed to Metro to release him from his contract and enlisted as a private” in the San Francisco regiment. Shipped to France, “he got as far forward as the second-line trench below Verdun on the Marne as one of the 24 members of his regiment’s camouflage corps.”

This Hollywood celebrity, the article notes, “is a fighter by heritage and actor by nature. In answering the call to arms the actor only heeded the fighting blood of his family.” His given name was Wheeler because his famous cousin was Joseph “Fighting Joe” Wheeler (1836-1906), a Confederate general in the Civil War, and a US Army general in the Spanish- and Philippine-American wars. Affiliated with Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, he fought at the Battle of San Juan Hill in 1898. During World War I, an American ship was named for him. It may have been the USS Major Wheeler, shown above in a dazzle camouflage scheme.

Joseph Wheeler (bearded), and Theodore Roosevelt (right)

Before and after the war, Wheeler Oakman was a star in countless Hollywood films, from 1913 to 1948. In his earlier acting days, he was usually a leading man, but those opportunities decreased with film's transition from silent to sound. In later years, he was usually cast as a villain.

Poster for one of Wheeler Oakman's films

Mohawk Indian princess sees through camouflage

Mohawk Princess White Deer

CAMOUFLAGE FAILS TO FOOL INDIAN PRINCESS in The Lincoln Star (Lincoln NE), January 13, 1918, p 6—

Camouflage training at the military camp here [at Camp Wadsworth, in Spartansburg SC) was quickly detected by Princess White Deer, great-grandaughter of Chief Running Deer, the last of the Mohawk tribe of chieftains.

The princess was a guest at the camp during the camouflage work and easily detected the men as they squirmed their way to a post held by an imaginary enemy. Army officers were greatly surprised at the girl’s keen sight and quick discernment.

Cover / In Search of Princess White Deer

William Penhallow Henderson | Wheelwright Museum

Hosteen Klah (left) and William Penhallow Henderson (c1936)

Franc (née Frances) Johnson Newcomb was born on March 30, 1887, in Jacksonville WI (near Tomah). Her parents were Frank L. Johnson, an architect, and Priscilla (Woodward or Woodard) Johnson, who taught in a Wisconsin school that included Menominee Indian children. Both parents died before Frances had reached her teens. Later, she adopted the professional name of Franc, in tribute to her father, and, in research publications, she is nearly always cited as Franc Johnson Newcomb.

Following high school, she remained in Wisconsin, and taught Menominee Indian children for several years at Keshena. In 1912, partly for health reasons, she moved to New Mexico territory, and taught Navajo children at a government boarding school at Fort Defiance. In one of her books, she recalls the initial resistance of the Indian children when she tried to teach them English. The breakthrough came when she asked them to teach her to speak Navajo, in the process of which they also learned to speak English.

While at Fort Defiance, she met a young trader, originally from Manchester IA, named Arthur J. (known as A.J.) Newcomb. They married in 1914, and went on to operate trading posts on the Navajo Reservation, in remote, isolated regions of northwestern New Mexico. Their primary post was located about halfway between Gallup and Farmington, at a place now known as Newcomb. Their marriage continued for 32 years (they divorced in 1946), during which they raised two daughters, Lynette and Priscilla.

A.J. bought part of the Newcomb Trading Post in 1913 and moved there to learn the business. One of the first Navajos to befriend him was Hosteen Klah, an influential chanter, medicine man, and weaver. When Franc arrived as A.J.’s wife in 1914, she too became a close and long-term friend of Klah. Fifty years later, she wrote a book about his life. While respectful of the rituals and traditions of Native Americans, she also helped them to adapt. When medicinal plants and other remedies were ineffective against diseases brought by Whites, she provided modern medicines, often traveling to remote hogans. She became known as Atsay-Ashon or Medicine Woman. 

Newcomb Trading Post

As Franc Newcomb earned the trust of Hosteen Klah and other leaders, she was gradually permitted to observe rituals that non-Indians had strictly been excluded from. These included sandpainting ceremonies in which symbolic patterns were painstakingly made of colored sand, then promptly destroyed when the ceremony ended. At first, as a silent observer, she memorized features of the sandpaintings, then made drawings afterwards. “Since pencil, paper, or camera were not allowed in the lodge, I had only my memory to depend on,” she later wrote, “…[but] In later years I trained myself to concentrate, and if allowed to remain in a ceremonial hogan for a half-hour, I could reproduce the painting without an error.”

With Klah’s and others’ approval, she gained increasing access and was eventually permitted to replicate about 500 sandpaintings, which she recreated in paint on board. Some Navajos opposed this, condemning it as sacrilege, but Klah consented cautiously. Forty-four of these were reproduced in her first book, Sandpaintings of the Navajo Shooting Chant (1937), while other surviving paintings by her have been preserved and exhibited at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe.

Although she made hundreds of paintings that replicated Navajo sandpaintings, it is unlikely that Franc Newcomb ever considered herself an “artist” in the usual sense. She was a writer and amateur ethno-anthropologist for whom her paintings were a tangible means of preserving sandpainting tradition. She did this in other ways as well. For example, Hosteen Klah had been a weaver of Navajo rugs since the late 1880s. One day, she asked if he might consider weaving monumental rugs (as large as 12-foot square) that would replicate ceremonial sandpaintings. While reluctant at first, he eventually agreed, providing that they would be wall tapestries, not floor rugs to be walked on. 

His first such tapestry was purchased by the wife of King Gillette, who had made a fortune from his invention of a razor with disposable blades, the iconic Gillette razor. Klah’s second rug was purchased by a wealthy heiress named Mary Cabot Wheelwright of Boston, who would establish the Wheelwright Museum in 1937. By the time of his death in that same year, Klah had woven twenty-five large tapestries, based on ceremonial sandpaintings.

A few years after Klah’s death, Franc Johnson Newcomb published a book on Navajo Omens and Taboos (1940), and later co-authored A Study of Navajo Symbolism (1956). In 1964, when she wrote a book about the life of Hosteen Klah, she dedicated it to the memory of her deceased former husband, Arthur John Newcomb, who had died in 1948. He was by then her “ex-husband” because the couple had divorced two years earlier.

Newcomb Trading Poster (October 21, 1921)

A decade before their formal divorce, on May 9, 1936, A.J. was living at their home and trading post. Franc was in Albuquerque, where their daughters were attending school. A news article in the Albuquerque Journal described the devastating fire that destroyed their trading compound and most of their finest possessions that day:

Fanned by a stiff south wind, the whole compound consisting of the Newcomb home, the trading post, the manager’s house, the camp cottages, and the garage were soon ablaze.…One of the loveliest collections of prehistoric pottery in the Southwest, collected by Mrs. Newcomb over a long period of years, was completely destroyed as was her collection of more than 400 pressed specimens of herbs and medicinal plants used by the Navajo medicine men. Also lost was a collection of old ceremonial baskets and hundreds of films of Navajo people and scenes.

A small amount of insurance enabled the post to be partly rebuilt. But the psychological damage was irreparable. According to Franc Johnson Newcomb’s biography in American Women Writers (2000), “When fire destroyed their trading post in 1936, her husband’s alcoholism became actute, straining Newcomb to the breaking point.” She and her daughters moved permanently to Albuquerque, where she established a day-care center for children and a visiting nursing service.

At the same time, she was an active participant in the establishment of the Wheelwright Museum in Santa Fe (where much of Newcomb’s work is housed). Funded by Mary Cabot Wheelwright, with Klah’s consent, the museum building was designed by the celebrated Southwest painter, designer and architect William Penhallow Henderson (who had designed murals for Frank Lloyd Wright for the Midway Gardens in Chicago). Rejected by some as a styllistic oddity when compared with other museums in Santa Fe, it was wonderfully appropriate for Navajo tradition. It is a Modern-style two-story hogan, in which the past and the future are fused. Given its emphasis on geometric abstraction, it may be of additional value to learn that Henderson had served during World War I as a civilian ship camouflage designer in San Francisco.

Helen M. Bannan has said that “Newcomb’s best work is her nonfiction prose blending history, autobiography, and folklore.” Among the finest examples of that is her final book, titled Navajo Neighbors, which was published in 1966, when she was nearly 80 years old. It is dedicated to her daughters.

Franc Johnson Newcomb died in Albuquerque NM on July 25, 1970.

According to Bannan (2000): Although some historians and anthropologists resented Newcomb as an amateur, N. Scott Momaday applauded her realistic portrayals of Navajo life. To Newcomb, Navajos were people, not objects for study. This basic assumption permeates Newcomb’s works, enhancing their value as a record of the personal dimension of intercultural communication.

***

Sources

Bannan, Helen M. “Franc Johnson Newcomb” in American Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide. Gale Group, 2000.

Franc J. Newcomb, Authoress, Dies Here. Albuquerque Journal. July 26, 1970.

Johnson, Burges. As Much As I Dare: A Personal Recollection. New York: Ives Washburn, 1944.

Lange, Patricia Fogelman. The Spiritual World of Franc Johnson Newcomb. New Mexico Historical Review. Vol 73 No 3, July 1998. Full text is online at <https://www.francnewcomb.org/>. Accessed on September 8, 2019.

Newcomb, Franc Johnson and Gladys A. Reichard, Sandpaintings of the Navajo Shooting Chant. New York: 1937.

Newcomb, Franc Johnson. Hosteen Klah: Navaho Medicine Man and Sand Painter. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964.

Newcomb, Franc Johnson. Navaho Neighbors. Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, 1966.

Was Founder of MNCA: Mrs. Newcomb dies at 83. Santa Fe New Mexican. August 9, 1970.

•••

Note A slightly different version of the above biography of Franc Johnson Newcomb has been shared with AskART.

SEE ALSO

Nature, Art, and Camouflage (35 min. video talk)

Art, Women’s Rights, and Camouflage (29 min. video talk)

Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage (26 min. video talk)

Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage (28 min. video talk)

 

Camouflage Artist | Frank Overton Colbert

Frank Overton Colbert (1923)

Frank Overton Colbert was born at Riverside, in Oklahoma Indian Territory, on August 6, 1895. He is more commonly known as F. Overton Colbert, or, less often, as Frank Overton Redfeather Colbert. “Redfeather” is in reference to his Native American ancestry. His parents, Holmes Colbert (a Harvard graduate) and Ella Overton Colbert (educated in Europe), and earlier relatives were wealthy, prominent members of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma. His maternal grandfather, Frank Overton, was a well-known politician, and one of his cousins was Captain Benjamin Colbert, whom Theodore Roosevelt had singled out, during the Spanish-American War, as one of the finest of the celebrated Rough Riders.

The Chickasaw and Choctaw peoples are historically closely related, which may account for Colbert being known as “Choc” while serving in the US Navy during World War I. According to the Benezit Dictionary of Artists, he was also known as “François” in France, where “He was one of the most curious figures of Paris’s Left Bank and was known as ‘the Redskin of Montparnasse.’” In another account of that Bohemian phase of his life, he is described as “a Redskin with all his feathers named Colbert.”

From an early age, Colbert hoped to become an artist, a choice that his father discouraged. As a compromise, he enrolled in the Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College, where he became a skilled mechanic. But at the end of that technical training, he was no less interested in art. His father withdrew his financial support, and Colbert left Oklahoma to explore the country on his own. He wandered westward, earning money by working intermittently at temporary jobs. Typically, he worked as a farm laborer, repaired machinery, and painted signs and posters. He also gave trick shooting exhibitions to paying audiences. Later, in newspaper stories, he claimed to be friends with Buffalo Bill, and it may have been during these wanderlust years that he became acquainted with that scout and Wild West showman.

Having reached Los Angeles after three months, Colbert set off for Alaska. It took him eight months (with extended pauses to earn money) to reach Seattle, from where he then sailed on to Nome by ship. From Alaska, he traveled by dog sled into Canada, near the Arctic Circle (where he painted the Northern Lights), then embarked on an arduous lengthy return, moving slowly south along the Pacific Coast again as far as South America, then across Panama into Mexico, and back to the US.

By 1917, while still in his early twenties, he ended up in Washington DC, where he became acquainted with a widely known Beaux-Arts painter and sculptor named Paul Wayland Bartlett. Earlier that year, Bartlett had co-founded a group of Washington artists called the American Camouflage Division. Bartlett was its chairman, while among the other members were Felix Mahoney, Michel Jacobs, Glen Brown, Richard Brooks, A.G. Smith, Alexis B. Many, and J. Crozier. The US had not yet entered the war, but it seemed inevitable, and it was this group’s plan to offer their artistic expertise in the development of wartime camouflage. At the same time, comparable groups had also been formed in New York City (called the New York Camouflage Society or American Camouflage) and San Francisco (American Camouflage Western Division).

At the time, as an art student at the city’s School of Fine Arts, Colbert was surely aware of this camouflage group, which had been featured prominently in The Washington Star and other newspapers. Soon after the US entered the war, Colbert enlisted in the navy, where, according to a news story—

His precise knowledge of color was of value to the camouflage department, and many of his designs were used in the disguising of transports.

This is confirmed by another news article at the end of the war, in the Durant Weekly News (Durant OK) on September 12, 1919. After two years of service, the article notes, he was being discharged with the rank of CCM (Chief Carpenter’s Mate). He had been assigned, it continues, to

 the work of camouflaging ships of the service so that they might be more difficult of recognition by the enemy submarines. He has been many times back and forth over the sea and first and last has seen service on every type of vessel afloat.

Following WWI, Colbert returned not to Washington DC, but moved instead to Greenwich Village in New York, where he lived in an apartment on Cornelia Street while studying art at the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts (now Parsons School of Design). That apartment was infested with bedbugs, and (true or not) Colbert later recalled an incident in which he killed a large bedbug that crawled across his drawing board, by stabbing it with a pin. Elaborating on his colored drawing of the dead insect, he designed a textile pattern, which he sold “to one of the city’s largest silk houses” where it became “one of the season’s best sellers.” He later moved to Sheridan Square.

There was a major breakthrough in Colbert’s career as an artist in February 1921, when an exhibition of his work was held at the Montross Gallery on Fifth Avenue in New York, a prominent gallery “where only the work of artists who have ‘arrived’ is permitted for exhibition.” Favorable if brief reviews were published in The Nation, The Arts, The New York Tribune and other publications. In addition, his work caught the attention of a New York journalist and art publicist named Holger Cahill. Newly hired to promote the Society of Independent Artists, Cahill believed that Colbert’s artwork exemplified an American brand of indigenous primitivism which he called Inje-Inje. As a consequence, Colbert began to produce what New York critics called Indian folklore pictures that represented aspects of Native American gods. Non-Indians need not be concerned about not understanding the images, advised one critic, because “the explanation appears beside the picture…”

The Trail to Happy Hunting Ground (1923), Frank Overton Colbert•

An additional factor that prompted Colbert to produce non-European Indian-influenced art may have been (as he recalled) a conversation with William F. Cody (Buffalo Bill) that had taken place years earlier. “Red Feather,” Cody said to him, “you dip your brush in the rainbow and paint the Indian from the soul of all the generations of Indians, with the philosophy and precision of European thought.” He also advised: “In your art you belong to the poet with the painter’s eye for color and arrangement. You must be an Indian first and last, however well you become educated.”

As sales of Colbert’s work increased, he painted and exhibited in Paris and Florence as well as New York. According to a news article in the Durant Weekly News on December 15, 1922, he had been visiting Oklahoma for two weeks, but had to return to New York to open a new exhibition at the Montross Gallery. By mid-January, he “will sail to Paris, to continue his artwork in his studio there, as well as another studio in Florence.” Having spent time in earlier years in those two cities, it claims, he “is already a splendid conversationalist in both the French and Italian languages.”

It was apparently during his European episodes that he became a familiar oddity in the cafes and nightclubs of Montparnasse, where he could be seen drawing on site in pastels on thick, yellow sheets of butcher paper. He was especially noticed because he would be wearing a full Native American wardrobe, with an elaborate headdress.

He sometimes also dressed this way when he was in New York. We know this because of a story about his association with American author Mary Hunter Austin. On January 8, 1922, the National Arts Club in New York gathered for a banquet in honor of Austin’s achievements as a writer. As honored guest, Austin could choose to dress as she pleased. And she did: in honor of the American Southwest, she arrived in an outlandish Spanish-like dress that made her appear, as one critic said, to be wrapped in the flag of New Mexico. As a further indiscretion, her escort for the evening was none other than Frank Overton Colbert, who was dressed in buckskin Indian garb, with a headdress of flamingo feathers. His outfit included a necklace strung with nasty-looking teeth. When a socialite at the gathering asked what kind of animal’s teeth they were, Colbert answered “Alligator.” “Oh, how awful,” the woman exclaimed, and then politely added, “But I suppose you see it as the same as a pearl necklace.” To which Colbert responded, “No, not at all—any fool can take a pearl away from an oyster.”

We know that Colbert married, but all but nothing is known of his wife, who went with him to Paris in 1923. Her name was Kate Landon Colbert, and she was born in 1899, but we do not know how or when she died. Nor do we know where she is buried. They had one child, a son named Robert Holmes Colbert, who was born in 1926 in France and died at the age of 50 in 1976.

We also know that Colbert did not do entirely well in Europe. True, his work was chosen for the Salon d’Automne in 1923, and for the Salon des Indépendants in 1926. But it appears he succumbed to depression, and it became necessary to move back to the US (presumably with his wife and son). It is unclear where he settled after returning to the US, but he may have been living in Colorado, because at least one source reports that he was hospitalized in that state in 1941 because of mental illness.

Whatever the tragic circumstances, he died on March 20, 1953, and is buried in a military cemetery at Fort Lyons CO.

•••

• Painting reproduced above is courtesy of Steven S. Powers. 

•••

SOURCES
Colbert, François Overton Redfeather. Benezit Dictionary of Artists (2006).
FAMOUS ARTIST HERE PRIOR TO TRIP TO EUROPE. Durant Weekly News (Durant OK),  December 15, 1922, p. 7.
Franck, D. Bohemian Paris: Picasso, Modigilani, Matisse, and the Birth of Modern Art. New York: Grove Press, 2003.
INDIAN ARTIST IS EARNING HIS WAY FROM CITY TO CITY. Los Angeles Herald. September 30, 1915.
INDIAN ARTIST IS VISITOR IN BISBEE. Overton Colbert of Famous Oklahoma Family Is Making Tour of Country. Bisbee Daily Review (Bisbee AZ). September 19, 1915, p. 6.
INDIAN ARTIST ON WARPATH. Remarkable Story of Oklahoma Born Genius on Road to Fame. WAS AIDED BY CODY. Civilization and Savagery in Struggle for Mastery of Colbert’s Nature. Tulsa Daily World (Tulsa OK) March 13, 1921, Sec A Page 9—
INDIAN ARTIST'S WORK HERE. F. Overton Arrives With His Paintings. Tulsa Daily World. October 28, 1922, p. 5.
Loving, P. "Art: An American Painter" in The Nation. January 26, 1921, p. 125.
Moore, A.W. Holger Cahill's Inje-Inje: The Story of a Modern Primitivism. Online. 
Saw Much Water Service. Durant Weekly News (Durant OK),  September 12, 1919, p. 4. 
Some Current Art Shows in the Local Galleries. New York Tribune. December 4, 1921, p. 1B. 

Note: There is a newspaper photograph (poorly printed) of Colbert, dressed in a feathered headdress and other Native American attire, in the World’s News (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia), February 16, 1924, p. 4. The headline reads IMMORTALIZING THE ARTS OF HIS FATHERS, with a caption beneath the photo that claims that he is “François Overton Colbert, the last chief [sic] of the Chickasaw Indians, of Oklahoma, known to his people as Red Feather, now in Paris, where he is at work upon a series of canvases painted in the Indian manner.” 

A slightly different version of this biographical entry has also been contributed to askART.com.

Signed copies still available

Native Americans | War Paint as Camouflage

Edward Curtis, Photograph of Medicine Crow

Above Edward Curtis, Portrait photograph of Medicine Crow (c1905). Public domain. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs.

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J. Keeley, WAR PAINT AT THE FRONT. How Many Lives and Much Material Are Saved. Snipers Like Indians of Old. The Dominion Post (Wellington, New Zealand). July 28,1917 p. 7 (reprinted from The San Francisco Chronicle)—

…France owes its indebtedness in this protective color science [called camouflage] to the American Indian, who painted his face and nude body to blend with nature so that in his ambuscades he might creep upon his enemy unseen. It is customary to think of the painted Indian as he was when going on his raids, decorated wildly with bright colors which added to the fierceness of his facial expression and which struck terror into the hearts of those who opposed him for the first time. Picturesque as was this phase of the Indian coloring, it was not infrequently nearly as considerable as his more artful concealment by tricks of colors. He could with plant and earth dyes make himself become to all intents and purposes part of the ground to which he hugged or part of the tree trunk to which he clung.

He, in his turn, owed his indebtedness to the birds and beasts of the forest. The quail in the weeds is as brown as the herbage about it; its back and breast are flecked with white in such a manner that it must move before it is detected. The squirrel on the bough is of the same brown hue as the bark; the rabbit crouching in the stubble blends perfectly with the plant life. The polar bear is white because of the advantage it gives him in stealing upon seals across the snow. The bears of more southern districts are brown and black to harmonize with the forests and weather-beaten rocks in which they live. Tropical animals are in the main spotted or mottled, because the sun of the equator is mainly unobscured, shining brightly down upon matted jungles and thus making spotted and flecked shade. Tigers, snakes, leopards, gazelles, giraffe all are marked so. The lion is of a duller dun hue, but one which is beautifully adapted to the rocks and veldts where he stalks.

That man should have in the heyday of his civilization, when the painted Indian had been relegated almost to mythland, had recourse to these savage methods of protection is marvelous and yet it is too common for remark in the ranks of the European soldiers.

Camouflage | A Checkered Past

USS Panaman (c1918)

Above US government photograph of the port side of the USS Panaman (c1918) in dazzle camouflage. Courtesy US National Archives.

Anon, CAMOUFLAGE FIRST USED IN OUR INDIAN WARS, in The Milwaukee Journal (Milwaukee WI), January 22, 1942, p. 16 (reprinted from the Bulletin of the National Paint Association)—

The origin of the word camouflage has, it seems, been left in the shuffle. One of the stories told in connection with it is that during the Indian troubles in the southwest, one Jacques Camou• built a circular mud fort. This fort has large square openings at regular intervals around the walls in a single line. Through these the garrison of the fort used to fire. As the Indians’ shots often found their mark through these openings, Camou painted the entire fort like a checkerboard with large, black squares on a white field. This confused the Indians so that they were unable to determine which dark square to aim [at].

• There was in fact a 19th-century French general named Jacques Camou (1792-1868), but we haven’t found any connection with the American Indian Wars, nor with camouflage.

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Anon, CAMOUFLAGE OF MODERN WAR KNOWN ANCIENTLY in The Deseret News (Salt Lake City UT), February 1, 1941, p. 4—

In the war between the states in America, trenches and breastworks were concealed by branches of trees, and merchant ships often painted their hulls black with gun ports simulated in white, thus taking on the appearance of men-of-war. Similarly fort walls were checkered in black and white during the World War to confuse gun locations.

Since initially posting this, we've run across numerous references to an exotic British sea fort, built in 1859, near Portsmouth, England. Known as Spitbank Fort, it is circular (see below) like General Camou's fortress, and at least part of its surface was covered at various times with an alternating pattern of light and dark checkered squares, some of which may have been gun ports. 

Spitbank Fort Postcard

 
Spitbank Fort was given up by the government in 1982. Since then it has been privately owned, and now functions as a luxury spa hotel and retreat. 

Spitbank Fort

Apache Camouflage

Design © Roy R. Behrens, from Edward Curtis photograph

From John G. Bourke, On the Border with Crook. Lincoln NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1971 (originally published in 1891), p. 37—

They [Apache warriors] knew how to disguise themselves so thoroughly that one might almost step upon a warrior thus occupied before he could detect his presence. Stripped naked, with head and shoulders wrapped up in a bundle of yucca shoots or sacaton grass [sporobolus or dropseed grass], and with body rubbed over with clay or sand along which it wriggled as sinuously and as venomously as the rattler itself, the Apache could and did approach to within earshot of the whites, and even entered the enclosures of the military camps, as at [Forts] Grant and Crittenden, where we on several occasions discovered his footprints alongside the ollas, or water jars.

Did Native Americans Anticipate Camouflage?

Comparative camouflage photo by Abbott H. Thayer

Above American artist Abbott Handerson Thayer believed that modern military camouflage had been anticipated by the battle dress (both "war paint" and clothing) of Native American warriors, as well as other "savages." In this demonstration photograph, Thayer has positioned a model (it may be his son and co-author Gerald Handerson Thayer), dressed like a Native American in a forest setting. To the right of the model is a cut-out silhouette of a WWI-era foot soldier, in a single continuous color. It was Thayer's contention that the multi-colored disrupted attire of the Native Americans provided better camouflage than continuous khaki. This photograph was published in an article by Thayer, titled "Camouflage" in Scientific Monthly, Vol VII (1918), pp. 481-494.

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Anon INDIAN SPORTS CAMOUFLAGE: Princess Astonishes Army Officers by Keen Sight and Quick Discernment, in Celina Democrat (Celina OH), February 22, 1918, p. 2—

Camp Wadsworth, Spartanburg SC—Camouflage training at the military camp here was quickly detected by Princess White Deer [Esther Louise Georgette Deere], great-granddaughter of Chief Running Deer, the last of the Mohawk tribe of chieftains.

The princess was a guest at the camp during camouflage work and easily detected the men as they squirmed their way to a post held by an imaginary enemy. Army officers were greatly surprised by the girl's keen sight and quick discernment.

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Associated Press INDIANS FIRST TO PRACTICE CAMOUFLAGE in Ada Weekly News (Ada OK), February 20, 1919, p. 1—

Chicago—"Camouflage is as old as the storm God of Indian folklore," said Chief Strongheart, who recently returned from France where he is credited with having done more for the fighting traditions of his race than any other American Indian.

"The Indians were the true inventors of camouflage," said the chief, who will go to his Yakima reservation in Washington State after a brief eastern visit. "They discovered its advantages in their earliest conflicts. When a battle was to take place in a forest in the summer months, the warriors would paint their bodies green, with a dash of other colors to produce the exact blend with surroundings. They even sketched birds and small animals on their bodies to make the effect more realistic. If the battle was to take place when autumn had withered the leaves and touched them into gold, splashes of brown and yellow made the warriors blend with the setting.

"The trick, when artfully turned, resulted in great victories. Many early settlers were taken into captivity by use of camouflage.

"The French were quick to visualize its enormous advantages in the war just closed and promptly carried the art to its peak."

Chief Strongheart was rejected by the army because as a leader of Indian scouts in the service of the United States in Mexico in 1910, he received a shot in the leg in a skirmish with the Mexicans. Before being wounded he killed two Mexicans and took seven prisoners.

Realizing his unfitness for military duty, the chief toured America for army recruits. After an address in the front of the New York Public Library one day 233 men enlisted. Two hundred more volunteered in New Jersey and Massachusetts. Heading due west from New York, he spoke in large cities for the Liberty Loan and War stamp drives. During his campaigns he wore his native dress, including the headfeathers.

Chief Strongheart said that 18,000 American Indians went to France with the American Expeditionary Force, most of them serving as scouts. He cited an incident where five Indians enabled the Americans to capture 13,000 prisoners.

Running Elk, Strongheart's father, was scout for General O.O. Howard in the Nez Perces war and aid to Colonel [Theodore] Roosevelt in the Spanish-American War; and Strongheart, when a baby, was carried about on the former president's back. His grandfather was Chief Standing Rock, who took part in "Custer's Last Fight," and who died at the age of 109 years.