Buddy Feather (b.1920) Yankton Sioux

Buddy Feather, a Yankton Sioux artist, moved to Tucson, Arizona, when he retired because his son was stationed at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. He became interested in painting portraits of figures in Indian history, such as Many Dogs, Ghost Bear, Yellow Hair, and High Bear.  Portrait painting, particularly painting subjects related to Indian culture, is something that had been on Feather's mind for a long time, but only in retirement did he start painting on a full- time basis, using his home as a studio. He was forced back to art when he was laid off from his job with Hughes Aircraft, where he had been a welder for many years.

Born on the Greenwood Reservation in South Dakota—not too far from Pine Ridge and Wounded Knee—he was sent when 5 years old to an Indian school at Pipestone, Minnesota, where he spent the next nine years.  The government then sent him to Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas, for something approaching a high school education. "The government was trying to make farmers out of everybody, they wanted us to have a trade," he said.  "I told them I wanted to take art, but they said, ‘No, man, you'll be sitting in an attic eating crackers and water.' So instead they taught me welding." Welding apparently paid off when it was needed.

Feather, who had some respect for the nomadic traditions of his ancestors, moved around, and once wound up in Geddes, S.D., where no one needed a welder. They did, however, need a chief of police. Setting paint brush and welding torch aside, Feather became The Law in Geddes, a town where people sometimes over imbibed. "There was a dance hall in the town and we used to pick up some drunks there sometime and put them in jail. But I never locked the cell. I just let them go to sleep. "They used to have a lot of fights at that place, until I came. When I came in there, I took my six-ounce boxing gloves along, hung 'em up by the ticket window, and told them if you want to fight, you have to put on these gloves and get up there and do it in front of everybody. There were hardly any fights after that."

Feather carried boxing gloves for a long time. For some time, he said, he was a middleweight champion in amateur contests. He fought professionally in San Francisco in 1953, but apparently did not do well. He had been working days as a welder in a shipyard, and was training and fighting nights and weekends. Eventually he set aside his welding torch, sheriff's badge and boxing gloves, and went back to his paints and pastels. He signed his name with a feather in the middle. "My original name was Vernon Arconge Feather, but my grandmother had it changed. We kids were sitting outside one day when a drummer came down the road with his pots and pans on the wagon, and he got down and came over and he rubbed my head and said, 'Hi there, buddy.' Well, my grandmother thought that was an omen. She had my name changed, even had them kill the calf and made a feast."   Excerpt from a newspaper article in the Tucson Daily Citizen, June 6, 1973.

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