Woman of Two Worlds
Woman of Two Worlds ~Phil Clarke
Born in Fairfax, Oklahoma on January 24, 1925 and known by her family as Bettie Marie, Elizabeth Maria Tallchief was to become both America's Prima Ballerina and an international star. This is the story of a child of the reservation
whose talent and dedication prompted President Eisenhower to declare her "Woman of the Year" 1953.
Named after her two grandmothers, Eliza Tall Chief and Grandma Porter, Bettie, as she was then known, lived with her parents in their ten-room, terracotta-stone house overlooking the Osage Reservation.
She idolized her father Alexander Joseph Tall Chief, a member of the Osage Nation who, according to her, "resembled the Indian on the buffalo-head nickel." Back in 1886, her grandmother Eliza Tall Chief, great grandfather Chief Peter Bigheart and another relative Chief James Bigheart, travelled to Washington as part of a council who deliberated over the provisions of the Osage Allotment Act, which was approved by Congress in 1906 and divided the reservation into tracts. Each of the 2,229 members of the tribe received approximately 658 acres.
Her mother Ruth Porter, was from Oxford, Kansas and of Scots-Irish descent. She worked as a cook and housekeeper for Eliza Tall Chief when she met Alexander. A strict disciplinarian, Ruth had entertained a dream of Maria becoming a concert pianist. "Mother started me in lessons at age three, and made me practice the piano religiously. But I also practiced dancing.”
A younger sister, Marjorie Tallchief, born in Denver twenty-one months her junior, would also become a prominent dancer with whom she would work throughout her career.
Bettie's early years were spent in very comfortable surroundings as a result of oil having been found on Osage land. When her father was a boy the tribe became rich almost overnight and royalties were paid out quarterly, thousands of dollars at a time, which afforded them quite a luxurious standard of living. But such wealth had come at a terrible cost.
Bettie's cousin Pearl had been orphaned during what was known as the Reign of Terror in the 1920's. White men would marry into Osage families solely to inherit their headright, a legal entitlement to a share of all mineral income, namely gas and oil, from the land owned collectively by the tribe. This entitlement could not be sold along with the surface rights but only inherited in the case of death. Scores of Osage women were discovered either shot or poisoned leaving their white husbands to cash in on the rich pickings. Pearl lost her entire family when their home was dynamited killing everyone inside. The murder plot failed to reap the expected rewards as Pearl had been staying with her Grandma Tall Chief and as a consequence became the sole beneficiary of her relative's headrights. The murderers, a wealthy landowner named William K. Hale, and his cousin Ernest Burkhart, who had previously murdered one of Pearl's aunts with poison shortly after their wedding, were indicted after an FBI investigation and later convicted of murder in 1926. The killings finally stopped however it is estimated that more than sixty Osage women had been targeted and murdered for their headright.
Elizabeth Maria Tallchief was a pupil at Sacred Heart Catholic School where she developed a love of music, art and ballet. An exceptional pupil by all accounts, Maria nevertheless found her schooling unable to satisfy her advanced intellect. "In California, public school teachers seemed to understand that an eight-year-old had no business being in the fifth grade, and they placed me back in the third grade in what they called an Opportunity Class, an advanced program. Opportunity Class or not, I was still way ahead. With nothing to do, I often wandered around the school yard by myself.”
Vacationing every July and August with her family in Colorado Springs, the young hopeful attended her first ballet lesson in the basement of the Broadmoor Hotel at only three years old. Maria recalls, "What I remember most is that the ballet teacher told me to stand straight and turn each of my feet out to the side, the first position. I couldn't believe it. But I did what I was told."
By 1930 the Osage oil was all but depleted and the royalty checks soon dried up. Maria's future could have easily taken a different direction owing to her mother's insistence on buying shoes a size too big to avoid having to change them so often and stuffing them with paper so they would fit. She also found herself under the tutelage of Mrs. Sabin, an itinerant ballet teacher from Tulsa, whose method Maria forever found impossible to forgive. "She was a wretched instructor who never taught the basics, and it's a miracle I wasn't permanently harmed."
Bowing under the weight of financial strain and her father's flourishing drinking problem, the family moved to Beverly Hills, California in 1933, where she studied ballet with Bronislava Nijinska for five years, culminating in a nerve-racking performance at the Hollywood Bowl. Madame Nijinska's philosophy of discipline resonated with Tallchief. "When you sleep, sleep like a ballerina. Even on the street waiting for the bus, stand like ballerina."
Although not much appears to be documented concerning any prejudice she may have come across in her life she, does describe a noticeable change in attitude after enrolling at the academically superior Beverly Vista School, Beverly Hills. "Some of the students made fun of my last name, pretending they didn't understand if it was Tall or Chief. A few made war whoops whenever they saw me, and asked why I didn't wear feathers, or if my father took scalps. After a while, they became accustomed to me, but the experience was painful."
On the move once again, leaving Los Angeles at the age of 17 and auditioning in New York City, she joined the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and quickly found herself promoted to featured soloist. At the suggestion of Agnes de Mille, who would later choreograph famous Hollywood musicals such as Oklahoma and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, she adopted the name Maria Tallchief.
While in New York she met Georgian-born choreographer George Balanchine who would later write several of his most famous works for her. They married on August 16, 1946 but the marriage did not last and in 1952 they divorced.
She was the first prima ballerina of the New York City Ballet from 1947 to 1960, where her husband was the principal choreographer. Her most notable performance of Balanchine's The Firebird in 1949 launched Maria Tallchief onto the world stage. She also originated the role of the Sugarplum Fairy in Balanchine's version of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker.
Success followed success and she was applauded all over the world for her insight and mastery of her art.
Maria made her Hollywood debut as Pavlova in the 1952 movie Million Dollar Mermaid, starring Esther Williams, Victor Mature and several one-piece bathing costumes, as well as in the feature documentary Ballets Russes.
She later married Henry "Buzz" Paschen, a Chicago builder, on June 3, 1956. They remained together until his death in 2003 and had one daughter, Elise, born 1959, who became an award-winning poet.
Maria Tallchief continued to dance with the New York City Ballet and with other groups until her retirement in 1965. With her sister Marjorie, she founded the Chicago City Ballet in 1974 and although the company originally served the Lyric Opera, in January 1980 it became an independent organization. There she served as its artistic director until 1987 when the company was forced to disband due to problems arising from internal power struggles which saw their financial backers pull out as the result of Maria's resignation. Maria Tallchief's younger sister, Marjorie, a successful ballerina in her own right becoming a premier dancer of the Paris Opera Ballet, worked alongside her sister many times over the years before retiring in 1966.
Among her many accolades Maria Tallchief has received international recognition for her outstanding contribution to the arts and has won the admiration and respect of both the arts industry and the public.
She received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1996 together with Johnny Cash and Jack Lemmon; was awarded the American National Medal of Arts in 1999 by the National Endowment of the Arts in Washington, D.C., and in 2006 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York presented a special tribute to Maria Tallchief titled "A Tribute to Ballet Great - Maria Tallchief."
A bronze statue entitled "The Five Moons" in the garden of the Tulsa Historical Society, Tulsa, Oklahoma, acknowledges the contribution to the art world of Maria and four other Native American ballerinas namely: Yvonne Chouteau, Rosella Hightower, Moscelyn Larkin and Marjorie Tallchief.
When the stage fell silent, the lights dimmed and the crowds had all gone home she was still Elizabeth Maria Tallchief of the Osage. Through all the fame and glamour she never abandoned her culture. "I was a typical Indian girl: shy, docile, introverted. I loved being outdoors and spent most of my time wandering around my big front yard, where there was an old swing and a garden. I'd also ramble around the grounds of our summer cottage hunting for arrowheads in the grass. Finding one made me shiver with excitement. Mostly, I longed to be in the pasture, running around where the horses were..."
She always admired the Osage ceremonial dances and the ways of her ancestors and spent her later years researching the history and origins of her own tribe. "When I was growing up, my Indian Grandma Tall Chief was a majestic figure to me. A typical Indian woman, she wore her hair in a single braid down her back and always had a tribal blanket draped over her shoulders. She and my father were my link to the Osage people. At the time, the tribe lived royally. I was an adult before I heard some of their history."
Maria Tallchief remains one of the most prominent and influential ballerinas of the last century and continues to be an inspiration to students and native youth.
In the same year Eisenhower bestowed on her the title of Woman of the Year, her home State of Oklahoma paid her a greater honor: calling her Wa-Xthe-Thomba, "Woman of Two Worlds" to celebrate her achievements both as a Prima Ballerina and a Native American.
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