Description:
Tempera on paper. Signed l.r.: Carl Sweezy, Inscribed l.l.: Indian Religion, Arapahoes.
Excerpt from American Indian Painters, Vol. 1, p. 18: About once a year, a nice, old; slightly worn Indian knocks at my door. He always carries a large flat package tied with twine under his left arm. My venerable guest is the Arapaho artist, Carl Sweezy, peddling his latest creations. He has been at it a long time. For a score of years, he painted watercolors but, of late, he has been trying oil painting on paper or unprepared canvas. He always portrays the old-time warriors. His pictures are valuable as historical documents. Although contemporary with Silver Horn, Sweezy hardly belongs to the old order, and he certainly does not belong to the new, but somewhere between. He is one of the handful of Indians who carried the small torch of artistic fire from the dying embers to light it anew into a flame that eventually was to blaze up in a glorious rebirth. Carl Sweezy was born in 1886 on the Cheyenne-Arapaho reservation in Oklahoma and spent his childhood there. He attended the famous Carlisle Indian school in Pennsylvania for a year or two. He has received no instruction in art. His is a natural talent. He began drawing when quite young and kept at it all through his schooling. In 1900 Dr. James A. Mooney was stationed at the old Darlington Agency doing research work for the Smithsonian Institute, Washington. At the same time, George A. Dorsey was doing the same kind of work for the Field Museum in Chicago. Under the supervision of these two scholars, Sweezy painted pictures of tribal ceremonies and tribal wars. These early paintings are preserved in the Smithsonian and the Field Museums. He has also some work in the Oklahoma Historical Museum. Much later he exhibited at the Inter-tribal Ceremonial at Gallup.
The painting "Indian Religion, Arapaho" illustrates a scene from the services of the Native American Church, a religious cult that has spread rapidly among the Plains tribes and embraces many of the tenets of the Christian faith. The ritual which, centers around the Peyote beans, is a prayer and quiet contemplation. It is often performed as an invocation for the recovery of a sick person. It is held in a tipi especially constructed for the purpose ; the service begins in the evening, continuing until after sunrise. Usually only men participate in it. A fire enclosed in a crescent mound is kept burning in the center of the tipi. Following an opening prayer by the Chief Priest, four peyote "buttons" are distributed to .each communicant who chews and swallows them, after which sacred songs are rendered to the accompaniment of drums and rattle. Each man sings four songs in turn. This is kept up all night, varied by intervals of prayer and distribution of more beans, until the participants see visions of "the sacred peyote bird". The peyote gives a sort of spiritual exaltation entirely different from that produced by any other known drug. The effect is heightened by the weird lullaby of songs and the sound of drum. Sweezy depicts this ceremony as it was practised fifty years ago, when Indians wore buckskins.