Lois Smoky (Bou-ge-tah)

Kiowa, 1907-1981

Birth PlaceAnadarko, Oklahoma, United States, North America

BiographyLois Smoky Kaulaity (1907–1981) was a Kiowa painter, one of the Kiowa Five, from Oklahoma. Smoky was the only woman and the youngest of the group.

Lois Smoky was born in 1907 near Anadarko, Oklahoma. Bougetah was her Kiowa name, meaning "Of the Dawn." Her father, Enoch Smoky, was the great-nephew of Kiowa Chief Appiatan.

Smoky first studied art at St. Patrick's Indian Mission School, under the guidance of Sister Mary Olivia Taylor, a Choctaw nun. Susan Peters, the Kiowa agency field matron, arranged for Mrs. Willie Baze Lane, an artist from Chickasha, Oklahoma to teach painting classes to young Kiowas in Anadarko. Recognizing the talent of some of the artists, Peters convinced Swedish-American painter Oscar Jacobson, director of the University of Oklahoma's School of Art, to accept the Kiowa students into a special program at the school. Finances were tight for the artists, so Smoky's parents helped them out by renting a house in Norman, where all they lived together. Smoky only studied at OU for the first year. Unfortunately, Smoky was not able to participate in the Kiowa Fives' major breakthrough into the international fine arts world at the 1928 First International Art Exposition in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Dr. Jacobson arranged for their work to be shown in several other countries and for Kiowa Art, a portfolio of pochoir prints and artists' paintings, to be published in France. It is only in recent decades that her place among the Kiowa Five has been restored, thanks in part to the scholarship of Dr. Mary Jo Watson (Seminole) and the Jacobson House Native Art Center in Norman, Oklahoma.

Her family wanted her to return home, so Lois Smoky cut her painting career short. Upon returning home, Smoky married and devoted herself to her husband and children Her married name was Lois Kaulaity, and she lived in Verden, Oklahoma for most of her life. She did develop a reputation for her fine traditional beadwork. Ironically, because hers is the rarest work among the Kiowa Five, Smoky's work is most collectible

Person TypeIndividual