Oral history interview with Elizabeth Davey Lochrie, 1964 Nov. 30-1965 Feb. 16

Transcript

Preface

The following oral history transcript is the result of a recorded interview with Elizabeth Davey Lochrie on November 30, 1964 and February 1, 1965. The interview took place in Butte, Montana, and was conducted by Betty Lochrie Hoag McGlynn for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This interview is part of the Archives of American Art's New Deal and the Arts project.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability by the Archives of American Art. The reader should bear in mind that they are reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose. The original transcript was edited. In 2022 the Archives retranscribed the original audio and attempted to create a verbatim transcript. Additional information from the original transcript has been added in brackets and given an –Ed. attribution.

Interview

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Inaudible] Betty Lochrie Hoag on November 30, 1964. Interviewing Elizabeth Lochrie in her home in Butte, Montana. Mrs. Lochrie is my mother so she will be referred to hereafter as "Mother" [laughs]. Mother is an artist working in a great many different mediums, which we'll talk about later. And she's a writer and a lecturer.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:  [Inaudible.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  She certainly is an outstanding artist of Montana at this time, has been for many, many years. She's a native Montanan, born in Deer Lodge in—

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  1890.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  1890, on July 1st. And, Mother, you were educated at Pratt Art Institute.

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  After high school, two years at Pratt Institute in the Normal Course.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And came back—

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  And came back and was married. And married in 1915, and had three children, and when they got larger, in 1931, I went up to Glacier Park and had two weeks with Winold Reiss in the—his school up there. And the next summer I had one week, which was a help. And then later, when my daughters were through college and were established in their ways of life on the Coast, [when I visited Helen, one of them, in California –Ed.] I had three days with Dorothy Puccinelli in secco painting, and one day with Archipenko in fresco painting, and that's all the lessons I've ever had.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Perfectly amazing.

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  No, but it was a help, they gave me tips that have helped me through the years. But going back, in 1932 and '[3]3 and '[3]4 the government began trying to help the artist of the United States, and they opened up many projects that artists could do, and that they won by competition. Among these was mural painting for public buildings, which included post offices, courthouses, and so on.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  From the Treasury?

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  From the Treasury Department. And I wrote into them and asked information about this Project, and they sent me the material, and then began notifying me when there were competitions for mural paintings. And the process was to send you a blueprint of the building and the measurements of the room that was to be decorated—of the walls that we'd be decorating in a particular room, and the color scheme carried out in that room. And you drew your design one quarter of an inch to a foot and submitted it to a committee in Washington, D.C. who selected the person they wanted to do the mural for that room. And I won three in that manner. I submitted to about nine.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh really?

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  Yes. And I won the one first in Burley, Idaho, for a post office mural which is the Oregon Trail.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  That was done in 1937?

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  That was done in '37. And it measured, let me see, four by 10 feet I believe, it was a small one. Then—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  That's 189 square feet of finished canvas [inaudible].

[Cross talk.]

[Recorder stops, restarts.]

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  I'm just guessing, so I don't remember. And then the next one, I submitted designs which are very elaborate, if anything you might want to keep some for yourself someday, dear, they're not saleable paintings. But I had all the designs for four walls for a mural in the San Antonio post office.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Really?

[00:05:02]

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE: Which I did not win, but because of their merit they appointed me to St. Anthony post office. And there I did The Fur Traders—Pierre's Hole and the fur traders. Then later there was a competition for a mural at Dillon, Montana, and I did the News From the States—a gathering of cowboys and ranchers receiving the mail from east. I won that one.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I remember the designs you did for Greybull, which were—Greybull, Wyoming—

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  Which I didn't win.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  They were just beautiful designs, I still don't understand why you didn't win that one.

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  Didn't win it. Well, I competed for the Deer Lodge one too, you know, and the head of the Project wrote me and said, We felt that you've had three, we better give it to someone else, try later.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [You probably were busy because –Ed.] after all, you were doing St. Anthony and Dillon—no, Dillon and Burley the same year, 1937—[inaudible]—

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  [Inaudible] very busy. And then because of the [attention –Ed.] and the public [inaudible] I began getting more orders for paintings. And I gave up teaching, which I'd been doing, and concentrated on filling orders.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yes.

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  And I enjoyed it so much more. And I've been busy ever since, doing nothing but painting and my housework.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, I'd like to ask you in particular about each one of these three, but before I do that, I'd like to go back to a time before you [inaudible] you didn't work for the government, as I understand, at a state tuberculosis hospital in Galen in 1923 [ph], as early as that.

[Cross talk.]

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  [Inaudible.]

[Recorder stops, restarts.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I've asked this question because of the experience that Mother obtained doing murals before the Federal Arts Project period. These were done at the state tuberculosis hospital for Children at Galen, Montana, which is located a short distance from Deer Lodge, where we lived at that time.

[Recorder stops, restarts.]

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  [They asked me to do the main lunge –Ed.] of the new children's hospital at Galen, and I said I would do it, which I did. I did six walls, directly on the wall—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  True frescoes?

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  And true frescoes, and those have since been [calcimined over and are lost –Ed.].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Inaudible.]

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  And then those in the main room were done on canvas flat to the wall, and still exist—part of them are still there. Some they tore down to cut a new window or cut a new door, add on a partition or something.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  You worked on those canvases at the old Presbyterian college in Deer Lodge.

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  As long as I could. Until they were ready to be installed. And then when I came to doing the bedrooms—which I did after I'd done the sitting room—I went up every day—I had a maid to take care of you children, and the little boy—I didn't trust her with him, he was so little, and I carried him in a clothes basket up with me and had him on the floor in the room where I was working. And took his milk and his diapers along, a day's supply, and then brought him home at night. And he just throve on it.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  You weren't afraid of it being a tuberculosis hospital [inaudible]—

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  Oh no, it'd never been occupied, the floor that I was working on.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Inaudible.]

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  So then, after that, Whitehill—was that the name of the architect?

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Whitehouse.

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  Whitehouse—Seattle—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Spokane—

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  —was the architect and he had me work with him for another month, [inaudible] on designing the grounds and the walks and the—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, I didn't know that.

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  —and planting trees, all that was our plan. So, I had the money from the mural, plus the money for helping on the landscaping and planning for the other buildings that would later be built, and this money I took and built the fireplace in our living room. [Betty Hoag McGlynn laughs.] And it took it all.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  The [inaudible] brick.

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  It took it all.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, I'm amazed that they ever painted any of the murals out there because everybody in the Valley must have loved them. [I remember half the children in Deer Lodge had posed for you. –Ed.]

[Cross talk.]

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE: Lots of them did, including my own children.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I was Bo Peep, I remember that [inaudible]—

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  Is that so? I don't remember now but I know I had you posing, but I didn't pin you down long enough.

[Recorder stops, restarts.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  This tape is retaped so there are some vacant spots and some overlaps which I hope you'll forgive.

[Recorder stops, restarts.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Were those the first murals that you'd ever done?

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  Yes, and I had no idea how to go about it.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  How did you find out?

[00:10:02]

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  I had a schoolmate at Pratt Institute who was in the fine arts department, a boy, and his name was, oh, Robinson, I think, William Robinson, and he went to the Metropolitan Museum in the maintenance department, and I wrote to Pratt for help and they told me to write to him, that he had done some murals. And I wrote to him and he wrote me beautiful letters, very complete instruction how to go about it, what paints to use, what canvas to buy, how to install and everything. He was very generous. Wonderful help.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And then when the Treasury Department commissions came along you were prepared—

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  I knew how. I knew how to go about it.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Very few artists were because mural painting [at that time was rather new in this country –Ed.].

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  That's right, that's right.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  The Burley, Idaho was the first one.

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  Yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Was that true fresco or did you [inaudible]—

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  No, it was oil on canvas. I never did a true fresco except the little bedrooms at Galen. And that was before I had any lessons in fresco, just what I could read in books.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And all the murals you did, I think you [worked on at the Montana School of Mines, in Butte –Ed.].

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  No, the one for Dillon I did at the School of Mines. The one for Burley and the one for St. Anthony I did in the old high school, in the abandoned third floor.

[Recorder stops, restarts.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  The Burley, Idaho mural shows the trading activities at Fort Henry, Idaho in the early day history of the region. Posters used by Captain Bonneville, Jacob Astor, and later the Hudson Bay Company.

[Recorder stops, restarts.]

Fort Henry occupied a site on the west side of the Grand Tetons, about 30 miles southwest of West Yellowstone, adjacent to the Idaho-Montana boundary and not far from the Montana line. In the center of the picture lie the goods which the whites traded with the Indians for furs. The articles comprised blankets, utensils, trinkets, and various other items.

[Recorder stops, restarts.]

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  —for St. Anthony I did it at the old high school, in the abandoned third floor.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  It was supposed to fall down.

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  It did fall down shortly after [laughs]. Burned down. But it was unheated. And—but good light and nobody in, I was left alone and had it all to myself. The bottom floor was used for some classes. Second floor not at all, but they used the bathrooms on that floor. So, I went up to the third floor. And chose the room I wanted to use, and they charged me no rent, they let me use it, and I had all the time I wanted, as far as they were concerned.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [The subject of that one was –Ed.] a wagon train on the Oregon Trail.

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  That's the Burley one.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yes, that was the first one you did.

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  Yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And who chose the subject?

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  I did.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, you did.

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  And submitted it for approval.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I wondered if the people [inaudible] what they wanted—

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  No. I went down and talked to them, and found out what was dearest to their hearts, and their location was the dearest thing. Why they happened to locate there.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  They had been on the old Oregon Trail.

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  They were, right on the Oregon Trail. Yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  You had—as I understand it, do a little fudging on your geography on that one in Burley because you wanted to get Mt. Harrison.

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  That's right. It wasn't located in that particular spot.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Inaudible.] Was there any objections from the people that—

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  No, nobody ever said anything about it. The only question I ever had was from an old, old man there, who said there were two [more spokes in the front wheel than I had pictured –Ed.]. [They laugh.] And I went—Dad took me, we went down to Salt Lake City to the wonderful big museum of Salt Lake. And I sketched the original covered wagons and got the harness and the number of spokes and all that, from those wagons.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Is the museum in the library? –Ed.]

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  The width of the wheel and the width of the tires. No, it's in their state house, in the basement of the Utah state house. Wonderful collection. Costumes, clothing, harness—

[Cross talk.] [Inaudible.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Can you describe the mural [inaudible]?

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  Which mural?

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  The Burley one.

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  The Burley one shows a string of covered wagons coming up from the Snake River supposedly, a draw [ph] onto a bluff, and an old man who was walking along at the head of the ox team, turns and says, "This is the place where we'll make a town." With Mt. Harrison close and water available and all of this grass for the cattle. And there were no trees in those days, they planted the trees. It was prairie. It's now full of trees.

[00:15:23]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Did you have any assistants working with you either on the painting or [inaudible]?

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  I had nothing—no one helped me at all except in mounting them, installing them. The union of the state insisted that I use union labor or it would be called paper hanging and I'd be sued.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Laughs.] [Inaudible.]

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  I had to have union men put them up. And I told them how to do it. That was Dillon. But in Idaho I needed help, I couldn't handle that great big canvas alone. And I hired men—painters—paperhangers—to help me. I had to teach them how to do it. [It's an interesting –Ed.]  way that you put it in, you measure your wall, whatever space the mural is to occupy. The room has been sitting, painted, and everything done. And I had to use paint remover [to remove all the paint on the wall where the painting was to go –Ed.] and then sand it so I was down to the raw plaster. Then you draw a horizontal stripe, exactly in the middle, then a vertical stripe, exactly in the middle. You turn your mural inside-out and do the same on it, then you roll it on a pole, and you start at one end, cementing. I used linoleum flint, cementing the wall, and rolling the canvas onto it, following the stripes. And if you get to the middle and the middle stripe on the canvas doesn't match middle stripe on the wall, you had to peel back and start again.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, no.

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:   I expect I had to peel back half a dozen times before I got that one up right.

MR. LOCHRIE:  Let me interrupt there. I think—

[Recorder stops, restarts.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Rather interesting interruption is made by my father, Mr. Lochrie, who was sitting in the living room listening to our recording that evening.

[Recorder stops, restarts.]

MR. LOCHRIE:  The difficulty that we have had there in setting it [was, you recall, the third time we put it up –Ed.]—

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  [Because of the radiator. –Ed.]

MR. LOCHRIE:  —with the help of the painters. The next morning, we went in to see [that it was all blistered –Ed.], and we tried it again the next day—

[Cross talk.]

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  [Or had bubbles. –Ed.] [Inaudible.]

MR. LOCHRIE:  The same thing resulted. And I'd been roaming around there, watching, and a radiator was right underneath it. And I saw that the heat was going right up the wall, and I told you so, and they all—they wouldn't pay attention to what I said. [Inaudible] they decided [inaudible] they decided they would listen to us, and we put it up the third time, and when they turned off the radiator and it stuck. [Inaudible.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Inaudible] trapped under there—

[Recorder stops, restarts.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I was not able to complete talking to Mother about these murals, she has many funny and interesting stories to tell about every one of them, about the research done on the subject matter, about the Indians who are shown in many of the murals, and about things that happened when the murals were put up. I hope that I'll be able to continue an interview with her at a later time.

She has long been an authority on the Indians of the area, and it would be most interesting to have, in the Archives, her story of putting Bird Rattler, also called Double Scalper, into the Dillon mural as a tribute to that great warrior, for instance. Since I was unable to do any more work with her on the trip that I had to Montana for Thanksgiving this year, I decided to include, for the Archives, one of the typical Indian stories which she tells when she lectures, as she does usually once a month, to all kinds of groups all over the state.

[Recorder stops, restarts.]

[00:20:02]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I wanted to ask you to tell the story of your PEO [Philanthropic Educational Organization] pin.

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  Yes, well, are you going to make your introduction again?

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  No, I can cut out the part where we giggled.

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  Oh, then you want me to tell you about that pin?

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I would love to hear about it.

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  Well, I belong to a PEO sisterhood, which is nationwide, international in fact—

[Recorder stops, restarts.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  My father, a friend of my mother's and father's, and I, are all sitting in the living room this evening, and occasionally interrupt the story.

[Recorder stops, restarts.]

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  —exclusive, and it's a secret organization called the PEO. A sisterhood. And each member is given a pin, which is a little star-shaped gold pin, with the letters PEO in black on the front, and your name and the date of your initiation inscribed on the back, etched in the gold. And this pin we wear to all meetings and otherwise, if we wish.

Well, I was going down to do some work on the Crow Reservation, and secured with a half-breed family in Crow Reservation. Crow Agency. And I was doing my work, trotting around in overalls and blouses, and had no way to take care of my laundry so I hired an Indian woman named Mrs. Henry [Old Coyote –Ed.] to do my laundry. And I had to get my laundry to her. And it was quite a distance from where I was living, and she would wash it one week and return it the next and get the next batch.

And suddenly I discovered that my pin was missing from my possessions, and I decided that I'd left it on one of the blouses and it must have gone to Mrs. Old Coyote's, and I would ask her for it. So when her daughter came to pick up the laundry the next week I asked her about the pin and she said they had never seen it, didn't know anything about it. And then Mrs. Old Coyote came, very much distressed, what was this about a pin? She didn't see any pin. She didn't find any pin. And I described it to her and told her the club I belonged to, and that this was very precious to them and I didn't want to lose it. She hadn't seen it, didn't know anything about it.

Well, one day I was walking down the main street in Crow agency, and I saw an old friend of mine named Mr. Owl Whoops. Now, that isn't—the white people call him Owl Hips [ph], but that isn't his name. You know what the owl calls? It says "whoop, whoop." Well, his name was Owl Whoops. [They laugh.] That was his name. And he weighed about 350 pounds. They had a special door that they had made on the side of these cars so they could get him in the car. And once they got him in, they couldn't get him out, so he sat there while all the family did the shopping, then came back and took him on home.

He was sitting in the car, and he waved to me, and wanted me to come over and shake hands. And I ran across the street, shook hands with Mr. Owl Whoops, and here on his great big bosom I saw my PEO pin. Shining. And I said, "Oh, Owl Whoops, where did you get that pin?" Of course, he didn't speak good English, it was very broken. And he said, "Oh, good luck pin. Oh, it's star in the sky. Bring me good luck." He said, "Last year, rangers they give me more lumber for my house. I got another baby. Everything's good since I got that star." [Inaudible] Well I was astonished when I saw this pin. I said, "Well did you look on the back of it? My name on the back, because it's my pin." He said, "I saw that white man's writing. Good luck to me." [Betty Hoag McGlynn laughs.] And I said, "Well, I want my pin back, I'll pay you for it. I'll give you five dollars for that pin." "No, no sell, good luck." And I said, "Well, I have to have it. My friends in Butte will be mad at me if I don't bring my pin back. I'll give you $20 for it." "No, no sell."

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Did he say where he'd gotten it?

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  And I said, "Where did you get it?" And he said, "I found it on the ground," and pointed to the ground. And whether I dropped it off or it just dropped when the girls were taking the laundry, I don't know how it got—where he got it. So, I was just sick about it, and I had to leave it on his bosom, and go on about my business. The next year when I want back down there painting, I went down to his house to see him, and he was wearing the pin.

[00:25:00]

Oh, he said, "That pin awful good. Got another baby, got a new woodshed, and all the kids just fine. Everything just going fine." And I said, "Well, I still have to have that pin. My friend's awful mad. Can't I buy it from you?" And he looked at me quite a while and then he said, "Well, I tell you." He said, "I need buffalo head. You bring me buffalo head, I give you pin." I said, "All right, I'll do it." And I thought well, I'll get a buffalo skull, I knew they wanted it for a sun dance, because they use it on the center pole for a sun dance. So later I went up to Browning, and I went by the Flathead Reservation where they had a herd of buffalo. And went to the agent there to see if I could buy a buffalo skull, and he said no, that he had none, that as fast as the buffalos were killed the Indians took the skulls for the sacred dance. And he didn't have one. And I was just sick about it. He said he'd save one for me next year, when they depleted the herd again, he'd save one skull for me.

So, I went on out to the lake, and went to Glacier Park, and one day when I was painting on St. Mary's Lake, I stumbled over something in the ground and looked to see it, and here it was the horns of a buffalo head, and it was buried in the silt and mud on the shore of the lake. And I got sticks—I had nothing with which to dig—and I got some sticks and rocks and dug and pulled out a whole buffalo head. The sheath was gone off the horns. It was the head that I sent to Robert. And—but it was completely there, the jaw and everything. And I took it down to the lake, washed it off, and put it in my car. And when I got home to Butte, I put it in the backyard, and took the hose to it and got it real clean, and again, loaded it into the trunk of my car and went galloping off to Crow Agency, to try to reclaim my PEO pin. And I found old Owl Whoops and I told him that I had gotten a buffalo head for him and was ready to get my pin back, and he looked very crestfallen, very sad, he didn't want to part with the pin, which he was still wearing. [Betty Hoag McGlynn laughs.] But he finally says "Well, I'll look see." So with much heaving and pushing he got himself out of the chair and we went out to my car. I couldn't get the car very close to his house because of the mud and debris around. But I lifted the trunk of the car and the hood of the trunk, and there reposed the clean buffalo head. And he looked at it, and looked at it, then he looked at me and he said, "So sorry Netchitaki, too dead." [They laugh.] And in other words, he wanted a green head, he didn't want a long-dead head. And he wouldn't give me the pin.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  For heaven's sake.

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  So I took the buffalo head home, and later my little grandson in California was interested in the game down in Montana, and I shipped it to him along with elk horns, as I remember, and maybe some hides. I don't remember what I sent him.

But anyway, the next year when I went down to Crow they told me that he was dead. That the old man had died of a heart attack, he got too big, and his poor old heart gave out. And I was just sick about. I thought if he's buried, if they could hoist that old half a tonner up into a tree, I'm going to climb up there and get my pin. [They laugh.] But if he's underground, it's gone.

So I went down to his house to call on his widow, and condoled with her over the loss of her husband. She could understand my English but she couldn't answer in English. Just in broken Crow and pointing and so on. So I asked her, I said, "Where did they bury Owl Whoops?" And she pointed to the ground. He was buried underground. So I went to the Baptist minister and he said yes, he'd been at the burial ceremony, it was in the cemetery of the Crow Indians there at Crow Agency. So I never got my pin back. That's the end of my—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Your PEO—

ELIZABETH LOCHRIE:  My PEO pin, they got buried with the Crow Indians. [Laughs.]  That's all there—

[Recorder stops, restarts.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mother has many stories to tell about all of the Indians and I thought for my tape, or again for the Archives, it would be interesting to have her tell some of them about Indians who do appear on the murals that she did for the Federal Art Project. During her tape, Owl Whoops addresses her as "Netchitaki," and I want to explain that all of the Indians in the Northwest know her by her Indian name.

[00:29:58]

Netchitaki, spelled N-E-T-C-H-I-T-A-K-I, is the Indian name for "Woman Alone in Her Way," and it was the name given to her by the Blackfeet Indian who she inducted in the tribe in 1931, I believe it was. This was an official adoption, taken after very religious rites with the Indians, and they definitely consider her to be a member of the tribe as she does feel she is part of them.

Mrs. Lochrie has appeared in all of the Who's Who of American artists [Who's Who in American Artists] for many, many years. And this last year her biography was in the International Directory of Arts, which is published in Berlin. The editor, Dr. Helmut Rauschenbusch—and it's an interesting biography with a photograph of one of her paintings, Johnny Ground.  She also was Mother of the Year for the state of Montana in 1960, and of course we're very proud of her for that, and feel that she has indeed earned it by the wonderful contributions she's made to keeping records of the history of the Indians of Montana and by the portraits which she's done of practically all the important and unimportant Indians in the state of Montana, at a time when no one else was recording the stories about them or doing their pictures.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:  I had a—

[END OF TRACK_lochri64_8789_m.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I picked up microfilm material from Mr. Tolegian [ph] and it was obvious that there was much more material that had to do with Project artists in New York which he did not tell me the other day, so we are going to have another tape with him.

Tape number 24, which was made with my mother last November in Butte, it's a rather garbled tape and because I do like to present some background for the artist before I ask them about the Federal Arts Project, I thought that I would add some things at this time in case I don't get back to Butte to talk to Mother again.

In the first place I didn't give her whole name, which is Elizabeth Tangy, that's T-A-N-G-Y, Davey, D-A-V-E-Y, Lochrie, L-O-C-H-R-I-E, and she paints under the name of Elizabeth Lochrie. The dates of her time at Pratt Art Institute are 1912—'11 or '12 to '13.

Her mediums are very diverse, oil being the principal one, and of course watercolor. She also is a sculptor of note, working in wax, bronze, bas reliefs. And in fact, even before the Project in 1934, she won a national competition for a soap company, which I believe was Ivory Soap, in Cincinnati, Ohio, in their eighth annual exhibit. And also, that same year, she did a sculpture of the Honorable Tom Comerford of Boston, who I believe was Franklin Roosevelt's campaign manager during one of the elections, and a sculpture of Senator Erickson, who later became the Governor of Montana.

She is represented in major collections throughout the country. She has done many official portraits for the state capitol building in Montana. She's in the Ford Motor Company painting collection at Dearborn, Michigan, and the New York Life Insurance Company at the Marquette National Bank in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the First National Bank of Seattle, Washington, the International Business Machines Corporation—which in 1939 sent some of her paintings to the World's Fair in New York—and in the International Rotary, which has given her paintings as gifts to the national government officials in Peru and Mexico and Canada.

Also, just as a matter of interest, Mrs. Wilkie owns one of her portraits, which was given to her when Wilkie visited Butte during his campaign, and this came about because Mother had done a portrait of Mr. Wilkie at the banquet which was held for him there, and of course presented to him, and Mrs. Wilkie was so thrilled with it that the city bought her one of the Indian heads and she later gave Mother a bouquet of red roses as she left the town.

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There were several odds and ends which I found in my files that seem pertinent to the Federal Arts Project which I thought were interesting. One was that, during the time that she did the Burly and St. Anthony murals, she was also doing portraits. The newspapers of the time say that she did over 300 paintings in one year, in 1937, which gives an idea of how prolific she was.

Also, that in 1940, she did a poster for the British War Relief Society, which was shown all over the state of Montana and later sent to the National Headquarters. This was part of a charity drive to help raise money to help our allies in Great Britain. Also, that in 1944, in a Northwest Art Association exhibit held in Spokane, Washington, I noticed that one of the paintings exhibited was the CCC Boys Gathering Wood.

[00:05:08]

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The list of her exhibits is very large and covers the United States, from one end to the other. She was shown for many years in the Arthur Newton Gallery in New York. She had the opening show at the Francis Lynch Gallery and the Statler Hotel in Los Angeles. She was shown in Walter Goldstone's [ph] River Oaks Garden Forum Galleries in Houston, Texas.

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She is a member of many associations such as that of the American Artist, the American Federation of Artists—of which she's been the state president for many years, I believe—the Montana Institute of Arts, Artists of New Mexico, Beta Sigma Fi sorority, Homer Club of Butte, and PEO, which she mentions on the tape.

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For almost as long as I can remember, Mother has gone out every summer and painted the Indians from Canada into Mexico, but mainly, of course, in Montana and Wyoming, where she knows all of the Indians and where she is loved by them because she has done so much to help them. She travels an average of 1,500 miles a year and whenever she goes off on her trips she takes a great carload of clothes and all kinds of things that can be useful to them, which the people in Butte bring to her all winter and which she stores in her cellar, waiting for her trips in the summertime.

She's interceded with them with the government when the government has been unfair in its treatment of them and the things that have been given to them, she's done all kinds of things to help them. For instance, she goes to the Forest Service and different gamemen to get hides for them to use in tanning the articles of clothing and the tents that they make themselves.

She is able to communicate with many different tribes, including the Crees, Piegans, Gros Ventre, Shoshone, Assiniboine, Flatheads, and Bannocks. As she tells on the tape, she's been taken into the tribe and feels that she is a Flathead Indian herself, and there certainly is a very strong feeling between her and her Indians.

She has been one of the jurors on the All-American Indian Girl Beauty Contest, which is held in Sheridan, Wyoming, every year since the inception of this contest. I believe it's been 10 years now.

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The thing that always amazes me when I go home is the variety of her work. She not only does very large and very beautiful paintings, which are in collections all over the country, including the capitol building in Montana. These are very important as, in many cases, they're the only record made of some of the pure blood Indians, most of whom have disappeared from the scene and state.

But she also does hundreds of small paintings of Indians and landscape, which she calls "potboilers." These are very, very popular. Many civic groups buy them as gifts for visiting dignitaries or for teachers retiring or for school rooms. And many families in Montana have collections of her small paintings, and it's rather interesting that often they have their children start a collection of Elizabeth Lochrie Indian heads, and many of the children, every year, are very happy to receive a small painting for a Christmas present.

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It is also interesting that anthropologists sometime are certainly going to be able to use the record that she has kept of these Indians because she has never done a portrait of an Indian that she hasn't kept a record of his name, the family and tribe he came from, his parents, if she could find it, any interesting thing about him. And these records she's very, very carefully preserved, and as far as I know no one else has ever done that in her part of the country.

[00:10:13]

I thought it might be interesting to read a part of an old letter which I found from her the other day. It was written in 1954, and she tells, "The Crows again sent me a lovely old bracelet, eight elk teeth beads and a coin dated 1873. With it there was a card signed by 18 Indians. Maybe you'd enjoy some of the names." And she quotes them, quotes the whole letter [reading from text], "To our beloved Indian painter, from Mary One Goose, Hazel Medicine Horse, Maude Prairie Bird, Pearl Backbone, Birdie Three Four Top, Laura Plain Left Hand, Delphine Backbone, Violet Medicine Horse, granddaughter of Violet Medicine Horse, Martha Walks, Gretchen Nommy [ph], Evelyn Comes Up, Steve Faraway, Belva Medicine Horse, Joe Packs-a-hat, Sam Big Nose. Please write an answer to Mary One Goose."

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She has also, of course, recorded many of the log cabins in the mountains of Montana, many of the mines and mining country, which is around Butte, which is her home. And also many of the old-time prospectors and farmers of the area.

In getting back to my tape about her murals, I found a little description, which I thought I would read about the St. Anthony, Idaho mural. It says that [reading from text], "It shows the trading activities of Fort Henry, Idaho, in the early day history of the region. The post was used by Captain Bonneville, Jacob Astor, and, later, the Hudson Bay Company. Fort Henry occupied a site on the west side of the Grand Tetons, about 30 miles northwest of West Yellowstone, adjacent to the Idaho-Montana boundary, and not far from the Montana line. In the center of the picture lie the goods which the whites are trading with the Indians for furs. The articles comprised blankets, utensils, trinkets, and various other items. An Indian chief and a brave, along with two white men, are the dominating figures in the center. The fort is shown to the left of the mural, while to the right a squaw with a papoose on her back and with a small Indian child huddled close to her is shown. In the right background is shown teepees and Indians in a dance. Several white guards are standing in front of the fort, and in the center background guarding the fort. Mrs. Lochrie explained the guards were placed because the Indians at the right background are doing a war dance, and the whites are standing prepared as there was no way of knowing to what lengths the Indians would go after working up to a frenzy. In the distance the Tetons tower above foothills. Great care has been exercised in details of the painting. Mrs. Lochrie pointed out that the teepees depicted are of skin, which dates the scene before 1860. After the 1860s, the skin teepees were no longer seen as the buffalo herds disappeared making such teepees virtually impossible. One versed in Indian customs could tell the Indians are executing a war dance by the positions they're shown in, she said. The Indians are typed as Plains Indians, among other things by the type of leggings which the squaw is wearing."

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It should also be pointed out that Mother has written many articles and several children's books which have not been published but she has illustrated. The cost in color reproductions has been too much to make them possible so far, but they're very fascinating books. She lectures all the time, usually giving around 30 lectures a year and she wears her Indian—one of her costumes. At this time she owns several beautiful old ones which she's gotten from the Indians, and at that time, and also on many other occasions, she wears some of her Indian jewelry. One of the most interesting of which is a Zuni necklace, which was fashioned from human knucklebones.

[00:15:15]

This was given to her by a Blackfoot chief who had gotten it when he was a young boy in a fight with some of the Southwest Indians. He promised Mother that someday he would get her a Zuni scalp to go with it so she could wear that on her buckskin dress, but unfortunately, he died before he was able to make good the rest of his gift to her [laughs].

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She loves these people. In fact, when she was a little girl, she several times ran away from home to live with them, and she's often mistaken for an Indian herself, being quite dark with big brown eyes and hair that used to be black. Her desk is always piled high with correspondence which she keeps up with hundreds of Indians, asking all kinds of intercession for them and requests for various things. Not only clothing, but when I was home in November, she had shown me a letter from a young Indian boy who wanted to learn to paint and Mother had sent him a complete outfit for doing oil paintings with instructions how to do it and had received from him some very charming things which he was doing. Some of her letters are interesting, like one from Maggie Many Hides, which says, "Dear Netchitaki. Please write to George Washington and tell him that they take sand off my land and don't pay me." Such requests are always answered by her, and she always helps the Indians.

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From the standpoint of art history, this artist is very interesting. We have seen the development of regionalism in so many of the artists through the Federal Arts Project. Here is an artist who has stayed in one area, who has been isolated from contact with almost all the rest of the work that's been done in this country, and it makes you wonder what would have happened to her if she'd stayed in New York. In one of her interviews, she tells about the time that she was at Pratt Art Institute. [Reading from text] "The stimulus given me during the two years in New York when I was studying at Normal School and saving my lunch money all week in order to go over to the Art Students League every Saturday to watch Robert Henri, with whom I grieved to study, has never let me rest from trying to attain the place in American art about which I dreamed."

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Her Indian name, Netchitaki, translated means "Woman Alone in Her Ways." And while the original meaning had different connotations, I think, in a certain sense, Mother has become that in the art of the area. She certainly, by working along by herself for the past 35 or 40 years, has filled a position which is a great gap between the artists, Charlie Russell and Remington, and Paxson, and the modern art that will be coming out of the area after a time.

[END OF TRACK AAA_lochri64_8790_m.]

[END OF INTERVIEW.]