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Teepee Smoke
Part 1: Proud Heritage
Reprinted courtesy Western Art Collector
October 2007
14 years after his masterpiece Beat of the Drum Whoop of the Dance
went out of print, Forrest Fenn has updated the book and has published
a revised edition containing 200 new images. He has kindly given us
permission to extract from his grand Teepee Smoke: A New Look into
the Life and Works of Joseph Henry Sharp. Containing newly discovered
paintings and photographs from old private collections and museum
basements, the new book with its glorious images and drawings
represents a treasure-trove for the Sharpe collector.
J. H. Sharp, Broken Bow, Oil, 45" x 60" Courtesy Buffalo Bill Historical Center
Joseph Henry Sharp was sixteen years
old when General George Armstrong
Custer, accompanied by the Seventh
United States Cavalry, rode confidently
into the valley of the Little Big Horn
River. Like the rest of the nation, Sharp
was shocked when he read the horrifying
accounts of the Custer “massacre.”
Though Henry Sharp could not know
it at the time, this event was to have
a profound effect on his life. Almost
a quarter of a century later he would
befriend and paint portraits of many of
the Indians who fought against Custer that
day, and these very portraits would be
largely responsible for his fame as one of
America’s most important artists.
Indians and their culture were a
dominant concern in Sharp’s life. The
stories of their battles bravely fought
and their heroic deeds amidst great
hardships absolutely consumed Sharp
as a young boy growing up in Ohio.
These stories controlled his thoughts, his
movements, and his art for the eighty
years he spent avidly painting Indian
subjects. Indeed, Sharp was unrivaled in
his effort to document the proud heritage
and civilization of the people whose
culture he knew was destined ultimately
to vanish in the face of the overwhelming
western movement of the white man and
his machines.
The third son of William Henry Sharp,
Joseph was born just across the river from
Wheeling, Virginia (later, West Virginia),
in the raw little farming community of
Bridgeport, Ohio.
J. H. Sharp sold this painting, Spotted Elk, to the Smithsonian Institution in 1901 for $73
Raised on sights and sounds not unlike
those of a Mark Twain novel, Henry
was an enthusiastic and adventuresome
lad, although thin and somewhat frail.
Holding his father’s hand he would cross
the “beautiful” (the translation of the
Iroquois word “Ohio”) river and walk
along the cobblestone streets of Wheeling,
delighting in the lively street scenes and
activities of the bustling port.
Back home across the river, Henry
and the other boys fashioned crude rafts
that Henry’s imagination transformed into
great ships capable of navigating wild and
dangerous waters. They explored caves
that seemed endless, each one filled with
Indian ghosts performing mysterious and
frightening rituals. And sometimes Henry
climbed to the uppermost branches of
the giant oak trees and gazed dreamily
westward, imagining adventures in which
he and his friends explored the vast Western frontier and parleyed with the
great Indian warriors of legend.
J. H. Sharp, Cheyenne Camp, oil, 25" x 30" Courtesy Forrest Fenn
A first encounter with Indians
In later years, Sharp recalled two
childhood experiences which had a
lasting impression upon him. Encouraged
by (his mother) Elizabeth, he read The
Leatherstocking Tales by James Fenimore
Cooper. These highly romanticized novels
kindled his imagination, as he learned
about the strange and exotic culture of
Cooper’s “noble red man.”. The second
experience, which burned an image in his
mind forever, was his first encounter with
real Indians.
At the Baltimore and Ohio Railway
station in Wheeling, Henry and his father
came upon a group of Indians who had
been delayed on their way to Washington
D.C. As a group of bystanders watched,
the Indians demonstrated their skills
with bow and arrow. Dressed in full
tribal regalia, they shot arrows at “shin
plasters” wedged into the tops of sticks set
into the ground. Henry was spellbound.
Everything about the Indians was remote
and strange—their strong wild smell and
weathered skin, their piercing eyes set in
faces that looked as though they had been
chiseled out of stone, and their animal-skin
clothing, intricately beaded and adorned
with shells and feathers. The language they
spoke, a mystical combination of sounds,
hand signs and gestures, was sometimes
harsh and halting, sometimes melodic.
Truly these were men from another world,
some distant sun-stormed place alive with
animals and ritual, meanness and magic,
hard times and wild unrestrained frolic.
Never without humor, the Indians teased
and jostled each other like children, but
became deadly serious when they took
aim with bow and arrow. Astounded
by these strange, forceful figures, Henry
stood there speechless, holding fast to his
father’s hand and absorbing every detail
of the scene. The memory of that day
stayed with him for the rest of his life.
J. H. Sharp, The Harvest Dance, oil, 28" x 48" Courtesy Cincinnati Art Museum
Momentous events
Then tragically one summer day when
Henry was about twelve, he had an
accident which left him with a permanent
loss, a handicap which indirectly
accelerated the development of his artistic
talents.
While “skinning the cat” on an iron
bar under a high bridge spanning a
river, Henry lost his grip and fell into
the fast-moving current. A man working
near the bridge saw the accident and
ran quickly to the boy’s rescue, but by
the time Henry was pulled from the
water, he was close to death. At home,
Elizabeth frantically rolled him back and
forth over a barrel to force water from
his lungs and allow air to enter, the
only known treatment at that time for
such an emergency. Her action saved her
son’s life, but his ears became infected,
and within a short time his hearing was
gone forever. From then on he lived and
worked in a soundless world of solitude to
which he would adpat and which would
provide a degree of tranquility. Yet Henry
would also hear this monstrous disruption
of his youth in dark, unspoken turmoil. Henry’s fascination with Indians became a
preoccupation, and in school he doodled
incessantly on his slate and books.
Teepees and fearsome Indian chiefs in
feathered bonnets marched along the
margins, revealing his already impressive
sketching ability.
Joseph Sharp at 26 years old. Courtesy Buffalo Bill Historical Center
One afternoon in 1876, Sharp read
the screaming headlines: CUSTER’S
SEVENTH CAVALRY MASSACRED BY
SAVAGES. The lurid prose of the article
that followed described how Custer, a
flamboyant Union officer during the Civil
War who afterwards had gone west to
fight the Indians, had led his column
of 212 cavalrymen into battle against
overwhelmingly superior Indian forces led
by the great chiefs: Crazy Horse, Gall, and
Two Moons. The battle had taken place on
June 25 among the rolling hills of Montana
near the confluence of the Big Horn and
Little Big Horn Rivers. According to the
newspapers, Custer and his men had
fought off a charge after charge by the “savages,” but had finally perished to
the last man. Custer, for the moment,
was a hero to most. Later, controversy,
criticism, investigation, and congressional
hearings would raise questions about the
judgment and conduct of Custer and his
fellow officers.
For Sharp, the incident was a source of
personal conflict because the Ohio-born
general had been one of his childhood
heroes. He believed that Custer and his
men had behaved gallantly; however, his
long fascination for Indians made him
sympathetic to their cause, and he could
not help but admire their stalwart defense
of their lands.
Twenty-five years later, these same
warriors sat as friends before his canvas
only a few miles from where they had
fought against the famed general whom
they called “Long Hair.”
J. H. Sharp, Evening Chant, oil, 29" x 36", Courtesy Phoebe Apperson Hearts Museum of Anthropology at the University of California
Building his art career
The year 1876 was important to Sharp
for other reasons. After three years of
study, he now had a solid grip on the
fundamentals of drawing, and the models
he sketched became increasingly lifelike
on his pad. Though still a neophyte, he
had become very much a part of the
Cincinnati art community and was at last
beginning to gain some local recognition.
Most importantly, his portraits and
sketches were beginning to sell, enabling
him to continue his studies.
During the next three years, Sharp’s
work continued to improve, and in 1897
his painting, An Artist’s Attic, was selected
for exhibition in the annual Cincinnati Industrial Exposition. Listed as number
254 in the catalogue, it commanded a
price of $150, quite an achievement for
a relatively uneducated deaf boy, only
recently up from the raw Ohio frontier.
Because of this success and because
of other accomplishments, Sharp began
to think seriously about the future.
His first priority was to continue his
education. Because instruction in
American art schools was limited, study
in Europe was essential for artists who
wanted to refine their styles, learn the
latest techniques, and be taken seriously
by the public. And so, encouraged by
friends and possessing more dreams
than money, Henry Sharp sailed for
Europe in the fall of 1881.
About Forrest Fenn:
Forrest Fenn grew up in the wilds
of Montana where he began finding
arrowheads and other small Indian
artifacts. His hobby developed into
a career of collecting, buying, selling
and trading not only artifacts but also
weapons, weavings and pots. The
collection grew, the reputation grew,
and the hobby grew into a business.
Forrest finally opened a trading post
that expanded to include sculpture
and paintings. The collector became a
dealer and he built a large, beautiful
gallery which included works by
Joseph Henry Sharp.
The images reproduced here are from the book
Teepee Smoke A New Look Into the Life and
Work of Joseph Henry Sharp originally published
in 1983 by One Horse Land & Cattle Co. with kind
permission Forrest Fenn. Copies of this book can be
purchased online at www.oldsantafetradingco.com
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