Ho Na Nist To (Howling Wolf)

Before his capture and incarceration at Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Flordia, Ho Na Nist To (Howling Wolf), 1849-1927, was a member of the Cheyenne Bowstring Society, a fraternal warrior society that had become a strong proponent of war by the 1870’s, Ho Na Nist To became a warrior as a teenager, counting his first coup in 1867. He soon gained recognition as a young brave and became a leader in the Bowstring Society. Following the Red River War of 1874-75 Ho Na Nist To was arrested in 1875 and sent to Fort Marion where he would remain for three years.

Ho Na Nist To was one of the most talented and innovative artists at Fort Marion. Abandoning most of the old warrior art style conventions, he composed drawings with a strong sense of design, balance, symmetry and rhythm seldom seen in traditional Plains pictographic arts. He carefully outlined his figures in ink, filling them in with crayons, coloured pencils and watercolours, using flat opaque tones. Each figure is rendered in detailed Cheyenne attire to communicate individuality and identify personal, tribal, and societal affiliations. The intimate scale of many of Ho Na Nist To’s portraits further contribute to the jewel-like delicacy of his art. One of the artist’s self-portraits, dating to a later part of his imprisonment at Fort Marion, reveals a signature, replacing his traditional name glyph of a howling wolf.