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BEST
OF THE WEST
Cathy Smith, Costume Maker
This Emmy-winning designer learned her
art on the reservation,
and hopes to take it back there for future generations
to enjoy.
— BY CHASE REYNOLDS EWALD
Cathy
Smith’s life has been a bit like the remarkably fine
and historically authentic beadwork she creates: she
may
have been following her muse of the moment, but over
time a distinct pattern has emerged.
“I grew up in South Dakota on a cattle ranch on the Cheyenne
River near the Sioux Reservation,” Smith explains.
“My
grandfather
homesteaded there, and back in the teens and twenties
he raised cavalry remounts for Fort Mead. I had cowboys
and
Indians on both sides of the family [Smith’s great-grandmother
was a Sioux medicine woman], and it made its mark on
me.”
Smith’s
first beadwork was incorporated into costumes for
the dance competitions held at the powwows where, as
a child,
she competed with her Indian friends and neighbors.
“I danced
for years, but I always wanted to do the real old-time
stuff,”
she recalls. “I had to seek out the old ladies, the
elders who
knew the techniques. They taught me how to brain tan
and do
quill work.”
She learned as much as she could from that previous
generation, one of whom, the father in her adoptive
Sioux family,
was one of the last traditional Lakota medicine men.
He taught
her the Lakota myths, from which the tribe’s art and
designs
evolved, and allowed her to observe sacred ceremonies.
Since
then, Smith has been pursuing her knowledge of traditional
Plains Indian arts from two angles. She’s traveled
to
museums
on two continents, where she’s dug deep into archive
bins to
examine Native American artifacts. And she visits
Indian
reservations
throughout the West seeking artifacts and memories
of the people themselves.
Her self-propelled odyssey had made her a well-known
name
in certain circles: Plains Indian historians, re-enactment
enthusiasts,
competitors in the costume category of the Appaloosa
horse shows... and Hollywood.
Her
work is seen in countless
television commercials and movies, including Geronimo,
Buffalo
Girls, Dances with Wolves, and Son of the Morning
Star, for which
she won an Emmy as costume designer and technical
advisor. Three years ago, Cathy Smith embarked upon
the project,
of her dreams: the re-creation, from moccasins
to headpieces, of the costumes of 12 legendary Plains
Indians warriors
and
chiefs. Two years in the making, the project started
when her
client took the standard tour of J.W. Eaves Movie
Ranch,
the
stage set outside Santa Fe where Smith’s Medicine
Mountain Studio is based. The man had hardly gotten
inside
the door
and taken in the contents of the room—beaded moccasins,
fringed doeskin dresses, war shirts, chief’s bonnets,
intricate
quill work, the strong smell of smoke from the tanned
leather—
when he asked if he could buy the contents.
Told
those particular
garments were not for sale (Smith rents them
for use
in movies), the conversation evolved into a remarkable
commission.
“I call the project ‘Hanskaska,’ which means
‘The Shirt- Wearers,’ ” Smith explains. “The shirt
wearers were the
guys
who wore the war shirts that had the human hair
locks on
them, or the ermine tube fringe. They were the
leaders, the ones who were responsible for the people.
Your clothes
were
your biography. People could see what coups you’d
counted, how much you’d given away—in other words,
how brave you
were and how generous you were. My client decided
he had
to have a collection of ‘documented’ war shirts,
then it became
the whole outfit.”
Smith
began by traveling to the Smithsonian Institute, where
she spent two weeks studying “hundreds of thousands”
of photographs
and every Indian painting by Karl Bodmer she
could
find. They narrowed the list to 12 legendary men,
including Red Cloud, Little Wolf, Medicine Crow, and
Chief
Joseph.
In addition to their shirts, Smith says, “I
did leggings, moccasins,
bonnets, and whatever accoutrements they had
in the picture, whether it was a shield and a lance,
or
a bow
and quiver
case, or medicine necklaces.”
All
told, Smith completed 60
pieces.
The design of Smith’s life continues to unfold.
The project of a lifetime gave rise to the idea
for the next, and
even
greater,
project of a lifetime: the creation of another
collection of authentically
reproduced costumes on realistically sculpted
mannequins of Indian men and women.
“There are no great museums on the northern
plains except [the Buffalo Bill Historical Center]
in Cody.
There’s
no
place
close to the reservations where kids can see
this stuff,” she
says. “My idea is to re-create all Karl Bodmer’s
paintings of
Indians and put them on mannequins and use
them to teach. That’s my ultimate goal, to build this
living history
and
educational
museum, to give back what I’ve learned.”
At
this point, her dream is just that. But Smith
has taken on another task. To inspire the kids
on reservations to care more about
their heritage. She’s written a screenplay,
an epic set in the West in the
1800s, told from the Indians’ point
of view. A movie without a lead role
for a Hollywood star is a hard sell,
she admits, but for Smith, who has
never done anything exactly by the book, it shouldn’t be
an impossibility. “The hero in this movie,” she
says firmly, “is an 18-year-old
Indian.”
And you can bet no promise of
Hollywood riches will change that.
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