School of Business

About Acee Blue Eagle

Acee Blue Eagle was a renowned authority on Native history, myth, legend, law, religion, and music. As a noted author and lecturer of Native lore, he was intensely proud of his heritage. Blue Eagle is also a renowned Native American painter with many of his works in museums and private collections. Acee Blue Eagle, a Creek-Pawnee Indian, was born on August 17, 1907, on the Wichita Reservation, north of Anadarko, Oklahoma. He was named Alex McIntosh, his given name was “Laughing Boy” but “Ah-Say” was his nickname. In 1927, he legally took his mother’s family name of Blue Eagle.

Blue Eagle attended Haskell Institute briefly and later went to Bacone College. In 1932 he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Oklahoma University. In 1935, he toured England, Scotland, Switzerland, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Sweden conducting a series of lectures on the “Life and Character of the American Indian” after being

invited by Oxford University to give lectures on Native American Art. Returning from abroad, he taught art at Bacone from 1935 to 1938, establishing the art department at their university. *

In 1941 during WW II, he entered the Air Force where he served at eighteen posts, leaving Indian murals at each. Blue Eagle was also a photographer on heavy bombers. His most famous mural was painted for the Battleship U.S.S. Oklahoma, which was sunk at Pearl Harbor. After WW II, he joined the art staff at the Oklahoma State University Technological School at Okmulgee until his untimely death on June 18, 1959. *