in the vice presidency, he will continue to advocate
Assimilationist policies.
1930Oliver La Farge’s Laughing Boy wins the
Pulitzer Prize.
Awarded the 1930 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Laugh-
ing Boy, a novel by non-Indian author Oliver La
Farge, tells a sentimental story of the ill-fated ro-
mance between a young Navajo (Dineh) man and
woman. A longtime advocate for Indian rights, La
Farge will later become the president of the East-
ern Association on Indian Affairs (see entry for
OCTOBER 1922) and the subject of a biography by
Chippewa author D’Arcy McNickle (see entry for
1936). (See also entry for 1931.)
The U.S. government establishes a college
loan fund for Indians.
To help Indian students pursue postsecondary
education, Congress authorizes an annual fund of
$15,000 for educational loans for Indians admitted
to college. One of the first students to receive a loan
is Benjamin Reifel, who will later serve as a con-
gressman from South Dakota.
1931Lynn Riggs’s Green Grow the Lilacs
premieres.
At the Theater Guild in New York City, Green
Grow the Lilacs, a play by poet and dramatist Lynn
Riggs, begins an acclaimed run. Riggs’s most suc-
cessful work, the play is a nostalgic comedy about
non-Indian farmers and ranchers in the early
20th century on the eve of Oklahoma statehood.
Although the formation of Oklahoma led to the
dissolution of the Cherokee Nation, where Riggs
was born and raised, Lilacs—on which Rodgers
and Hammerstein’s musical Oklahoma! (1943) will
later be based—is largely sympathetic to the whites
who settled in the Cherokee’s western homeland.
Riggs will later depict the history of the Cherokee
in Indian Territory in the drama Cherokee Nights
(1936).The Exposition of Indian Tribal Arts opens
in New York City.
Organized by Oliver La Farge (see entry for 1930),
John Sloan, and Amelia White, the Exposition of
Indian Tribal Arts is held at the galleries in New
York City’s Grand Central Station. The exhibit
features works of 50 Indian artists from private
and museum collections. Later traveling widely
throughout the United States, the show will intro-
duce many American museum-goers to the works
of southwestern Indian painters, including Awa
Tsireh, Fred Kabotie (see entry for 1932), and the
Kiowa Six (see entry for 1928).1932John Joseph Mathews’s Wah’Kon-Tah
is published.
After spending many years studying and touring
in Europe and Africa, Osage scholar John Joseph
Mathews returns to his tribe’s Oklahoma reser-
vation to write Wah’Kon-Tah: The Osage and the
White Man’s Road. This tribal history is based on
the journals of Major Laban J. Miles, who served
as the Osage’s agent for more than 30 years. With
Wah’Kon-Tah’s publication, Mathews begins a
long literary career, during which he will docu-
ment Osage history and culture in both fiction and
nonfiction.Fred Kabotie paints the Watchtower murals.
Hired by architect Mary Colter, Hopi painter Fred
Kabotie begins work on a series of frescos on the
walls of the Watchtower, a reconstruction of an
Anasazi tower at the east entrance of the Grand
Canyon. Kabotie’s paintings, which depict Hopi
legends, are based on murals found in kivas, the
tribe’s religious structures. The job is the first of
several important commissions Kabotie will re-
ceive in the 1930s, including a mural series for