Angel De Cora

Angel De Cora Dietz (1871–1919) was a Ho-Chunk painter, illustrator, Native American rights advocate, and teacher at Carlisle Indian School. A member of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, she was a well-known Native American artist before World War I.

Background Angel De Cora, also written Angel DeCora, or Hinook-Mahiwi-Kalinaka (Fleecy Cloud Floating in Place), was born at the Winnebago Agency in Dakota County (now Thurston), Nebraska, on May 3, 1871. She was the daughter of David Tall Decora, a Ho-Chunk man with French ancestry and a son of the Little Decorah, a hereditary chief. Angel was born into the Thunderbird clan. Her English and Ho-Chunk names were chosen by a relative who was asked to name her, opened the Bible, and the word "angel" caught her eye. Her mother was a member of the influential LaMere family.

Angel was kidnapped at a young age from the agency and sent to school at the Hampton Agricultural and Industrial School in Hampton, Virginia. She would go on to describe how it happened as follows: "A strange white man appeared on the reservation and asked her, through an interpreter, if she would like to ride on a steam car; with six other children, she decided to try it, and when the ride was ended she found herself in Hampton. '[It was] three years later when I returned to my mother' says Angel De Cora. 'She told me that for months she wept and mourned for me. My father, the old chief and his wife had died, and with them, the old Indian life was gone.'" (35). Although De Cora's mother was French in origin, De Cora would be expected to follow in her grandmothers' footsteps in passing along Ho-Chunk cultural practices. "During the summers we lived on the Reservation, my mother cultivating her garden and my father playing the chief's son. During the winter we used to follow the chase away off the Reservation, along rivers and forests. My father provided not only for his family then, but his father's also. We were always moving camp. As a child, my life was ideal. In all my childhood I never received a crossword from anyone, but nevertheless, my training was incessant. About as early as I can remember, I was lulled to sleep night after night by my father's or grandparent's recital of laws and customs that had regulated the daily life of my grandsires for generations and generations, and in the morning I was awakened by the same counseling. Under the influence of such precepts and customs, I acquired the general bearing of a well-counseled Indian child, rather reserved, respectful, and mild in manner."

Education, mentors, and early work Taken from her family and placed into the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, Angel de Cora was to accomplish the U.S. federal government's vision of "educating Indian girls in the hope that women trained as good housewives would help their mates assimilate" into U.S. mainstream culture. De Cora studied at a local preparatory school in Hampton, Virginia, working for a local family. She studied specifically illustration at Drexel Institute (now Drexel University).

De Cora was one of the very few students who were accepted into Howard Pyle's competitive summer art program, where Pyle lauded De Cora as "not only talent but genius." Despite knowing that as a woman and as a Native American, De Cora faced more challenges in enjoying success than her peers, Pyle's belief in her was so strong that he still provided her with contacts at magazines and encouraged her to illustrate and compose her own semi-autobiographical stories, "The Sick Child" and "Gray Wolf's Daughter," which were later published in the February and November 1899 issues of Harper's Monthly. Dietz also taught at the Carlisle Indian School. He and De Cora met at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. Her figures focused heavily on gesture, which is something that is used a lot in Native American pictographs. In her tonalist art work, De Cora painted firelight to illuminate warm memories of her childhood life on the Nebraska plains after she settled far from home in the east". Her oil Painting, "for an Indian school exhibit, for the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York" demonstrates the technical prowess and emotional depth of her art. As she began to work with illustrator Howard Pyle, her style incorporated more illustration, and he encouraged her to visit the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota in order to reconnect her to Native and Indigenous customs.

Originally holding a studio in the New York City, towards the end of her career, De Cora and her husband taught art at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. However, "in her day, the public crowned Angel 'the first real Indian artist.'" She was buried in their family plot without a marker, as at the time, only blood relatives could have a headstone.

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