CARTER REVARD

(Oklahoma & Merton 1952) (25 March 1931 - 3 January 2022)

Carter Revard was born in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, in 1931. Revard was raised, along with six siblings and cousins, aunts and uncles, in the Buck Creek Valley on the Osage reservation — a great, extended “mixed-blood family of Indian and Irish and Scotch-Irish folks,” as he described it in his 2001 autobiography, “Winning the Dustbowl.”

After eighth grade, Revard graduated from Bartlesville College High School. His twin, Maxine, encouraged him to enter a radio quiz contest, and his third place finish won him a scholarship to the University of Tulsa, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1952. That same year, Revard was awarded the Rhodes Scholarship to study at Merton College at the University of Oxford, and he received his Osage name, Nom-peh-wah-theh (“fear inspiring”), from his grandmother, Josephine Jump.

Known for his groundbreaking scholarship on the Harley manuscript, a 14th-century collection of secular and religious lyrics now housed in the British Library, Revard also was an accomplished poet whose work frequently explored Native American themes, beginning with the chapbook “My Right Hand Don’t Leave Me No More” (1970).