The Chief returns home...

Chief Yowlachie is going home. Since 1978 he's been residing inside the Tom Kemp Sr. house or later at the Kemp Mammoth house. When it came time to decide where he should go after returning from Mammoth, I suggested that perhaps the Chief belonged not only to dad, but to the 3 other brothers as well. Turns out I was one third right and two thirds wrong. It belonged to one brother - my uncle Dick. He said that he knew the artist, Loren Barton, and was given the painting when he was 12 years old. The artist gave it to him because of his love of Indians.

We all loved the Chief. When we were growing up, the Chief hung in the back room (dubbed "Siberia") of our grandparents' house, next to the most amazing, authentic Indian headdress you'd ever want to see. I'm not sure why, but grandpa and grandma didn't seem to mind as we'd put the headdress on and run around the house. When mom and I went through their belongings after they'd passed away, we never found the headdress. Or the typewriter. Mom always thought that they were stolen. (Mom loved a good mystery.)

The Chief also had a connection with Laguna that amused dad to no end. Astonishingly, he started his career as an opera singer and had a brief stint with the Laguna Players. A poster of the event hung in the "White House" restaurant that dad went to every Saturday morning for his strawberry waffles-with-no-whipped-cream and crisp-but-not-burned bacon.

Chief Yowlachie was from the Yakima Tribe in Washington state, and though he started as a singer, he switched to the movies in the 20's. His imdb profile lists 96 film and tv appearances, which is a pretty amazing accomplishment. Here is a poster from one of his movies.

The date on the painting is 1926, a year before the "Sitting Bull" film. The artist was the great-niece of Clara Barton, founder of the Red Cross. She was born in 1873 in Clara's house, but then moved with her family to Los Angeles. She was known for her etchings, illustrations, and watercolors. In 1933 the White House (the real one, not the restaurant) commissioned her to paint the First Ladies' gowns. Her work is also at the NY Public Library, the National Gallery of Art, the Met, and the National Library of France, and soon, at the Dick Kemp home.

And so the Chief will end his odyssey, after hanging for 6 years in my brother Tom's bedroom, 15 years in dad's attic, and 9 years at Mammoth.

I have my own Chief. I had the original scanned by my friends, the Sahyouns, who own a fine art scanning company. I had them make me a full size copy, complete with brush strokes. He hangs high in our second bedroom, watching over our guests and the pups as they sleep. He is good company.

If my dad were reading this, he'd give a shout-out of "Powder River let 'er buck, a mile wide and an inch deep, eeeeeyippee!" Wrong tribe, but he wouldn't have cared. When the shout appeared, you could tell it was erupting from some primal place deep inside him that originated in the hills of Montana and South Dakota. He felt a part of that land, even though he was born and raised in Los Angeles. Connected not by direct experience, but by story. I don't think he had the slightest idea that the Chief belonged to Dick. But it would make him very happy that the Chief is going home where he belongs.