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Carl Sweezy
Carl Sweezy was an Arapaho artist during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. His paintings are well known in representing his Arapaho heritage and portraying life events that were significant to his people.

Personal Life
Born in 1891, Carl Sweezy was from the Arapaho Nation who grew up learning about buffalo-hunting from the stories he heard as a young child. He was born in close proximity to the Darlington School on the Cheyenne-Arapaho reservation located in Indian Territory. He was the son of Hinan Ba Seth, or Big Man. Carl Sweezy is not his real name. His Indian name, Black, had meaning and therefore the Arapaho people had no generic system of prearranged names combined with a family name. When Carl Sweezy's brother attended school at Halstead, he selected the name Fieldie Sweezy. When Carl entered school, he was provided with the name Carl Sweezy, and then his siblings after him took the same family name, Sweezy. This was to further assimilate the Arapaho tribe with the white people in the area. Carl Sweezy's life reflected his people's transition from the olden ways to the modern ways, and their diversion from the "buffalo run" they had once traveled for many years to the "corn road". He learned new art techniques in art workshops at the government boarding school he attended, but in addition, he looked back on the traditions of the artists of pre-reservation days. He died on May 28th, 1953.

Art
Carl Sweezy became an artist who portrayed both aspects of his life. His paintings frequently portrayed descriptive scenes from the way of life his people once lived. Sweezy grasped the appeal of drawing ever since he was a little boy, and the passion for painting only grew when he was fourteen years old and a teacher at the Agency had shown him how to properly use watercolors. When James Mooney, an ethnographer, who meant a great deal to Sweezy, said he was in need of an illustrator to draw designs and to restore paint on old shields, Carl Sweezy felt like he was up for the job. Sweezy worked for James Mooney during the duration of Mooney's visit at the Agency, and after Mooney left, Sweezy continued to draw and paint whenever possible. When James Mooney departed from Darlington (Mennonite Mission School), he gave Carl Sweezy some advice: "Keep on painting, and don't paint rocks and trees and things that aren't there. Just paint Indian". Carl Sweezy's most constructive art phase is generally considered to have been during and after his connection with James Mooney because he made such an impact in Sweezy's life. To preserve as an artist what was good, unique, and beautiful in a disappearing culture became his purpose, and he accomplished it without any of the embellishments or blending that might have made his art be perceived as a hybrid form. His paintings can be found in several institutions and homes all across the United States, where his paintings speak for his people.

Traditional vs Modern
Carl Sweezy embraced the continuous changes his tribe was experiencing with the white people. Although many Indians were reluctant to have their children attend boarding schools, Sweezy on the other hand, was appreciative for what he had learned from his tribe as well as the things he learned from the white people. Once self-governing hunters, the Arapaho Indians were now living on government rations and adjusting to a new life as farmers by the time Carl Sweezy was born. The transition from his traditional background to the white man culture was not an easy modification, especially tribe members from the older generation. Carl Sweezy saw the benefits of both paths and embraced certain ideas from both. The old Arapaho virtues, gallantry, warmth, loyalty, and deep religious feeling, he found to be important merits among the best of the white people too. It was the techniques by which they were practiced that clashed. He took deep pride in his heritage and always spoke of himself as full Arapaho. But his associations with certain admirable white people gave him an assured point of view that both intensified his admiration for his native people and their ways and made him see their culture as something good that was being destroyed.