Meet Cathy A. Smith | Artist/costume designer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Cathy A. Smith and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Cathy A., how has your background shaped the person you are today?
I grew up in the Black Hills of South Dakota and on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation – on a ranch far from any metropolitan area. I had to invent a career for myself and create my own business, I had no other choice. But being an artist of beadwork and porcupine quillwork, I developed my skill by learning from my elders, then took it to an art center that specialized in native art- namely Santa Fe, NM. It was a huge move and a big risk, with no support or financial backing, but in Santa Fe, I was discovered by Kevin Costner to make the costumes for the film Dances with Wolves. that put me in the film business for the past 34 years- 47 Westerns!
Ten years ago my daughter, Jennifer Jesse Smith, who is a silver and gold smith, revived an 80 year old historic Indian Trading Post on the High road to Taos, just north of Santa Fe. We have a costume museum as well as a gallery full of our collection of vintage Navajo blankets, Pueblo pottery, Indigenous beadwork and paintings, as well as the soulful jewelry of Jennifer Jesse Smith.
I am an historian of the American West as well a being an artist and we share that history in our Nambe Trading Post.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.

Cathy Smith’s First Film: HOLLYWOOD MEETS THE SIOUX NATION

The summer of 1989, a group of Hollywood filmmakers came to town. They were doing research for a film about the Sioux and visited some of the Indian art galleries that I did restoration work for. I got a call one afternoon from one of the galleries asking if I was interested in meeting these people for dinner.

I was. The production designer and costume designer, both from Hollywood were under a severe time crunch and obviously in over their heads. They grilled me about what I knew and then handed me a small paper back book, saying, “Read it tonight. We will be at your studio tomorrow at ten.” The title of the book was Dances with Wolves.

I read the book that night, finding dozens of historical errors and mistakes. I thought, how will this ever make a decent movie? And who is Kevin Costner? I called My Lakota Mom in South Dakota to ask her advice, should I work on something like this? Would the people like it? She laughed, the casting director had already been to Eagle Butte and hired her, the kids, and most of our relatives! “Yes,” she said, “You have to make us look good.”

The next day, Hollywood invaded my studio, spending ten days with me, making use of my extensive library of museum catalogs and ethnological books, and my slide library of museum artifacts. We designed the look of the costumes and props in those ten days, I was hired as consultant and costume maker, and they went back to Los Angeles.

I was given ten weeks to make over sixty pieces, the outfits of the principal native actors, all in duplicate. My daughter Jennifer Jesse, who was 15 years old, my friend Michael Lekberg, a good beader from South Dakota, came to work for me and I hired two other people just to cut fringe. The first dilemma was where to find six hundred deer hides that looked like brain tanned hides and by tomorrow. Then how to do quillwork on the warshirts, leggings and dresses, quickly. I invented a faux technique that looked great on film.

I prayed, we held regular sweats and enlisted the aid of the Grandfathers and hides came. We worked fifteen to eighteen hour days, seven days a week doing beadwork and by the end of the ten weeks, everything was ready – from feathers to moccasins.

The pay was $500 a week, but that was more money than I had ever made in my life; I had no idea what the wage scale was in Hollywood. I had been told that I would not be coming to the set, just get the costumes made and so I was worn out by the time the wardrobe trailer came to pick up the costumes and take them to South Dakota. Twenty four hours later I received a phone call from the designer in South Dakota, “How soon can you get here?”

“I’m not coming,” I replied, “I haven’t had a life in ten weeks, and I have to get things in order, see my boyfriend, pay bills, and besides that, I had not planned on it, since you made it clear I would not be coming.”

“We have screen tests in two days,” she said, “And we don’t know how the breechcloths and leggings are worn, how to tie on a feather, we need you to do the fittings.”

In the end, Jennifer and I went to South Dakota. She spent the summer doing quillwork and working on set and had the experience of her life. My Indian family were overjoyed to have us there and we became the bridge between Hollywood and the Lakota .people. Hollywood has been known to run over an ethnic people and sometimes be very unkind to the extras.

Of the 235 people on the movie crew, I was the only one with real Lakota experience and knowledge. I was called to show the set decorators how to pitch the tipis, the props department used my knowledge, hair and makeup picked my brain. And Kevin Costner called me into his wardrobe trailer at four am, many a morning, to ask my advice about a scene. He would usually say, “When you make your movie, you can do it anyway you want, but this is my movie.” But in the end he usually took my advice. That is how I got credit as technical advisor as well as costumer.

I was responsible for building and maintaining all the native costumes, fitting the actors, and keeping continuity on set. Whenever an Indian was in a scene, I was there, making sure everything looked right, that no underwear were peeking out, a bra strap showing, a forgotten wrist watch worn. I took photos of each actor in each scene and made a book, a ‘bible’ of continuity, so that when we shot the next scene, days or weeks later, everything matched. A film is never shot in sequence. At night we had to scrape gumbo off hundreds of moccasin soles, wash breechcloths somewhere out on the prairie, and maintain hundreds of costumes, labeled and tagged with each actors name. Our location was fifty miles from town in the middle of a 65,000 acre buffalo range..

I remember it all in the glow of golden hour -the one the camera was always waiting to capture: the cottonwoods along the Belle Fourche River richly glimmering yellow and orange, women scraping buffalo hides staked among the lodges, horses nickering, the smell of buckskin and woodsmoke, my Lakota brother throwing his head back and laughing as the children played in the river, my Mom framed in the tipi door, in the buckskin dress I made for her. It was a moment in time that widened a crack in the universe, that let us to slip back into a memory of better days and reside there for a while, feeding our souls and basking in the love of our ancestors.

After five months on location in South Dakota, the movie was wrapped. So many moments had been like seeing a vision: A buffalo hunt with thousands of animals galloping across the plains; the buffalo dance at ten degrees below zero – warriors clad only in buffalo bonnets, breechcloths and warpaint; The Porcupine Singers singing old time Lakota songs. It had been magical.

That was my first film experience and the best of all. Since then I’ve worked on dozens of Westerns and made hundreds of Native costumes, all of which had to attempt to reach the bar set by Dances with Wolves.

My second film, 5 months following Dances with Wolves, was the 6 hour mini-series, Son of the Morning Star. I won an Emmy for Costume Design, the First and Only time that Native American costumes have won an Academy award.

I continue to design for good movies and I have the only rental stock of authentic Plains Indian costumes. At this stage of my career, I am very judicious about what jobs I accept.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I would take them on a drive up The High Road to Taos, which goes right by our trading post, visiting the Santuario of Chimayo with its sacred healing earth and then stopping by the little 200 year old Spanish villages and artists along the way.

In Taos, we’d visit the Millicent Rogers Museum, the Nicolai Fechin House and have a margarita at the Taos Inn.
Then on west to Chaco Canyon to see the many thousand years old pueblo.

Back to Santa Fe for some great New Mexican food at La Choza or The Shed.
Then a visit to the International Museum of Folk Art on Museum Hill and a walk up Canyon Road- the famous street of art galleries. Don’t miss Nedra Mettuci Gallery, Morning Star, and Sherwood Spirit of America.

Then back to the Nambe Trading Post for a guided tour of the Museum of Western Film & Costume, some prosecco and fabulous turquoise!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
My Lakota family on Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation who taught me to be an artist with found materials: deerskin, porcupine quills, ermine skins, etc. To my daugter and partner, Jennifer Jesse, who has shared every step of the way.

Website: www.nambetradingpost.com

Instagram: @thenambetradingpost

Facebook: Nambe Trading Post

Yelp: Nambe Trading Post

Image Credits
Cathy A. Smith with Award, credit Santa Fe New Mexican Newspaper