Harvest Dance

Kiowa dancers, drummers, and women preparing food frame the traditional harvest feast and Kiowa homes in the center of the lunette. This expression of narrative includes scenes of both ceremonial and social facets of Kiowa life.

James Auchiah, also known as Tse Koy Ate (Big Bow), was born in Meers, Oklahoma, in 1906 and attended St. Patrick’s Mission School in Anadarko, Oklahoma, before studying art at the University of Oklahoma. Auchiah was one of the Kiowa Five, a group of in-fact six Kiowa artists, along with Spencer Asah, Jack Hokeah, Stephen Mopope, Monroe Tsatoke and Lois Smoky, who created a new painting style influenced by Plains hide painting and Ledger art, and inspired by social and ceremonial scenes of Kiowa life and its oral histories. The minimal background, flat perspective, and use of solid color fields apparent in Harvest Dance are characteristic of the Kiowa Five painting style.