Sanford Plummer (''Ga-yo-gwa-doke''; 1905–1974) ( Seneca) was a Native American narrative watercolor painter from New York state. He painted works portraying traditional life and culture of the Seneca and people of other

Iroquois The Iroquois ( ), also known as the Five Nations, and later as the Six Nations from 1722 onwards; alternatively referred to by the Endonym and exonym, endonym Haudenosaunee ( ; ) are an Iroquoian languages, Iroquoian-speaking Confederation#Ind ...

nations. His works are held by the Iroquois Indian Museum, as well as Buffalo Museum of Science, Rochester Museum and Science Center, and the Newark Museum.

Background

Sanford Plummer was born on 1 November 1905 on the Allegany Reservation, located mostly in Cattaraugus, New York, in the

Seneca Nation The Seneca ( ; ) are a group of Indigenous Iroquoian-speaking people who historically lived south of Lake Ontario, one of the five Great Lakes in North America. Their nation was the farthest to the west within the Six Nations or Iroquois Leag ...

. His parents were Clarence Plummer and Nellie Kennedy.The Haudenosaunee Project
, RootsWeb. (accessed 10 April 2008) He was born into the Seneca Wolf Clan through his mother's line, as the Iroquois have a

matrilineal Matrilineality, at times called matriliny, is the tracing of kinship through the female line. It may also correlate with a social system in which people identify with their matriline, their mother's lineage, and which can involve the inheritan ...

kinship In anthropology, kinship is the web of social relationships that form an important part of the lives of all humans in all societies, although its exact meanings even within this discipline are often debated. Anthropologist Robin Fox says that ...

system. Children are considered born into their mother's clan. Plummer's Seneca name was Ga-yo-gwa-doke.''Arts of the Americas''
, Newark Museum. (retrieved 2 May 2015) He went to New York City for a formal art education at the Beaux-Arts of New York and the New York Academy of Art.Porter and Fenton, 203Hanks, Christina and John P. Ferguson. ''Iroquois Arts''
, (retrieved 18 June 2009) After his studies, Plummer returned to upstate, where he lived in Gowanda.

Art career

Highly skilled at narrative art, Plummer painted traditional Iroquois lifeways, ceremonies, and representation of

oral history Oral history is the collection and study of historical information from people, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews. These interviews are conducted with people who pa ...

, such as his piece ''Law, the Reading of the

Wampum Wampum is a traditional shell bead of the Eastern Woodlands tribes of Native Americans. It includes white shell beads hand-fashioned from the North Atlantic channeled whelk shell and white and purple beads made from the quahog or Western ...

''. Most of Plummer's paintings have spare backgrounds, keeping the focus on the figures. The elements in his work were all symbolic and significant to the interpretation. Some few works of his feature full and lush backgrounds, particularly a detailed portrait of Seneca chief Red Jacket. His work follows in the tradition of the 19th-century Iroquois Realist School. During the 1930s, Plummer briefly participated in the

New Deal The New Deal was a series of wide-reaching economic, social, and political reforms enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1938, in response to the Great Depression in the United States, Great Depressi ...

program for arts under the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA), headed in New York by Seneca

anthropologist An anthropologist is a scientist engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropologists study aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms, values ...

Arthur C. Parker. The program paid artists on New York Indian reservations to create traditional arts. By 1934, the TERA program arranged for Native art to be distributed to museum collections. Another participating artist was Seneca woodcarver Jesse Cornplanter. The program created a temporary tribal museum at the Thomas Indian School and Orphan Asylum. After budgetary shortfalls, this was the first project to be eliminated. Parker is thought to have exerted a positive influence on Plummer's art career. When Pennsylvania Governor Arthur H. James was adopted into the Seneca Nation in a ceremony on 24 August 1940, he was presented with a hand-lettered and painted scroll made by Plummer. The artist had painted a Seneca man greeting and sharing a pipe with a European-American man, followed by calligraphy in the Seneca language.Hoover, 71-72

Legacy

Sanford Plummer died in Gowanda, New York in June 1974. The Newark Museum has a substantial collection of Plummer's works on paper. These include watercolor paintings, pencil illustrations, and a design for a book cover. The collection was donated to that museum by

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

from its holdings in 1962. The Rochester Museum and Science Center and Buffalo Museum of Science also hold his paintings in their collections.

Notes

References

* Porter, Joy and William Nelson Fenton
''To Be Indian''
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001. .

Background

Art career

Legacy

Notes

References

Further reading