Acee Blue Eagle also named Alex C. McIntosh, Chebon Ahbulah (Laughing Boy), and Lumhee Holot-Tee (Blue Eagle), was a Muscogee Creek-Pawnee-Wichita

Wichita (tribe)

The Wichita people are indigenous inhabitants of North America, who traditionally spoke the Wichita language, a Caddoan language. They have lived in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas...

 artist, educator, dancer, and flute player.

Background

He was born near Anadarko, Oklahoma

Anadarko, Oklahoma

Anadarko is a city in Caddo County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 6,645 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Caddo County.-Early History:Anadarko got its name when its post office was established in 1873...

, into the Mcintosh family, a family which has given the Creek tribe of Oklahoma many of its chiefs. He studied at Chilocco Indian Agricultural School

Chilocco Indian Agricultural School

Chilocco Indian School was an agricultural school for Native Americans located in north-central Oklahoma from 1884 to 1980. It was located approximately 20 miles north of Ponca City, Oklahoma and seven miles north of Newkirk, Oklahoma, near the Kansas border....

; Bacone College

Bacone College

Bacone College is a private four-year liberal arts college in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Founded in 1880 as the Indian University by Almon C. Bacone, Bacone College is the oldest continuously operated institution of higher education in Oklahoma...

; University of Oklahoma

University of Oklahoma

The University of Oklahoma is a coeducational public research university located in Norman, Oklahoma. Founded in 1890, it existed in Oklahoma Territory near Indian Territory for 17 years before the two became the state of Oklahoma. the university had 29,931 students enrolled, most located at its...

, Norman

Norman, Oklahoma

Norman is a city in Cleveland County, Oklahoma, United States, and is located south of downtown Oklahoma City. It is part of the Oklahoma City metropolitan area. As of the 2010 census, Norman was to have 110,925 full-time residents, making it the third-largest city in Oklahoma and the...

; Oklahoma State Technical School, Okmulgee, and Haskell Institute

Haskell Indian Nations University

Haskell Indian Nations University is a tribal university located in Lawrence, Kansas, for members of federally recognized Native American tribes in the United States...

, Lawrence, Kansas

Lawrence, Kansas

Lawrence is the sixth largest city in the U.S. State of Kansas and the county seat of Douglas County. Located in northeastern Kansas, Lawrence is the anchor city of the Lawrence, Kansas, Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Douglas County...

, where a business administration building is named Blue Eagle Hall in his honor.

Blue Eagle served in the United States Air Corps during World War II. He died on 18 June 1959, and is buried in the National Cemetery at Fort Gibson

Fort Gibson

Fort Gibson, now located in Oklahoma and designated Fort Gibson Historical Site, guarded the American frontier in Indian Territory from 1824 until 1890...

, Oklahoma

Oklahoma

Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...

.

Art career

In 1935, Blue Eagle was invited to give a series of lectures on American Indian art at Oxford University in England, and he took Europe by storm. Returning to the United States, he established the Art Department at Bacone College in 1935, and directed the program until 1938. There he helped shaped develop of the Bacone style of painting. In the 1940s he created a number of works for his friend, the collector Thomas Gilcrease

Thomas Gilcrease

William Thomas Gilcrease was an American oilman, art collector and philanthropist. During his lifetime, Gilcrease collected more than 10,000 artworks, 250,000 Native American artifacts and 100,000 rare books and documents, including the only surviving certified copy of the Declaration of...

. Blue Eagle gained worldwide fame during his lifetime, and his two-dimensional paintings hang in private and public galleries all over the world. Acee was well known for painting large interior murals, some of which are still preserved in Oklahoma. One of Acee's murals was in the dining hall of the USS Oklahoma

USS Oklahoma (BB-37)

USS Oklahoma , the only ship of the United States Navy to ever be named for the 46th state, was a World War I-era battleship and the second of two ships in her class; her sister ship was . She, along with her sister, were the first two U.S...

. Blue Eagle's large interior murals in the U.S. Post Office at Seminole, Oklahoma

Seminole, Oklahoma

Seminole is a city in Seminole County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 6,899 at the 2000 census. Seminole experienced a large population growth in the 1920s due to an oil boom...

 are still on display.

Honors

He was elected into the Indian Hall of Fame, Who's Who of Oklahoma, and the International Who's Who

International Who's Who

The International Who's Who is a Who's Who reference book to notable people worldwide. It has been published annually since 1935 by Europa Publications, from 2000 by Routledge an imprint of the UK publishing group Taylor and Francis....

. He was chosen "Outstanding Indian in the United States" in 1958. Among his many honors, Blue Eagle received a medal for eight paintings at the National Art Museum of Ethiopia, presented by the Emperor Haile Selassie I.

Tamara Liegerot Elder published a biography of the artist: Lumhee Holot-tee: The Art and Life of Acee Blue Eagle, in 2006 through Medicine Wheel Press.

Relatives

The Muscogee-Seminole

Seminole

The Seminole are a Native American people originally of Florida, who now reside primarily in that state and Oklahoma. The Seminole nation emerged in a process of ethnogenesis out of groups of Native Americans, most significantly Creeks from what is now Georgia and Alabama, who settled in Florida in...

 artist Fred Beaver

Fred Beaver

Fred Beaver was a prominent Muscogee Creek-Seminole painter and muralist from Oklahoma.-Background:Fred Beaver was born in Eufaula, Oklahoma. His Muscogee name was Ekalanee, meaning "Brown Head." He was the son of Willie Beaver and Annie Johnson, was raised in Eufaula, and attended the Eufaula...

was Acee's second cousin and friend. in 1965, Beaver was hired by the Coalgate Post Office to restore Acee Blue Eagle's mural, "Women Making Pashofa." Acee's cousin, Howard Rufus Collins painted under the name Ducee Blue Buzzard, as a parody of Acee's name. Besides being an artist and illustrator, Blue Buzzard was a Freemason known for his charity work with children.

External links

• Register to the Papers of Acee Blue Eagle, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
• Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture - Blue Eagle, Acee