Native American in Snowy Setting

I’m a Comanche Indian from Lawton, Oklahoma. My grandmother and grandfather were full-blooded Comanche. I grew up speaking Comanche before I learned English. The son of a white father and a Comanche mother, I learned Comanche traditions from my maternal grandparents. My grandfather taught me the peyote religion and told me stories about great Comanche warriors of the past. When my grandfather passed away he handed me down the medicine. I sleep in a room full of it and I pray a lot. Every morning and every evening, in the medicine ways. A lot of times I get visions when I’m sleeping. When I work around medicine I’ll get a vision or a title and I’ll see the scene and paint it.

When I was little, I saw the Fort Sill army trucks so I tried to draw them in the dirt and my grandmother said, “Draw this,” and she drew a triangle. She said, “That’s a teepee. That’s Indian. Draw about us and who we are.” So then I started drawing Indian things, like teepees and horses.

We had Appaloosas in the Comanche tribe; the Comanche went up to Oregon and stole them from the Nez Perce. They’re the ones who originated the Appaloosa horses. Sometimes the dots on an Appie are blue, sometimes they’re gray, and so I started doing that, without marking them first. I just knew where the spots were going to be. I’m a horse person. I am Comanche.

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