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Description
Getting in one more OC in before the holidays, this is Matowt-kiwshekwi (pronounced like “matt-out kiw-sheck-wee”. Say that “kiw” like saying “kill” with a lisp). He's the sachem of my fictional Algonquin tribe, the Suwarrow, in the modern day portion of my OC universe, and a character that'll feature in my novel. I got his name by combining two Proto-Algonquin words which I'm fairly confident translate to something like “sky-ignitor” or “sky-striker”. It's a nod to the legendary Shawnee hero Tecumseh, whose name means “comet”, and who served as a heavy inspiration for this character. I've mentioned before how I have an Anishanaabe friend who helps me fact check the often sparse, incomplete, or white-washed information on Indigenous American cultures out there on the internet from an insider's perspective. Once we were discussing old westerns and how they spawned a lot of unfavorable tropes which still persist in media today. One big one was how the chief of the tribe always just sort of amounts to a crippled old superstitious druid whose roll in movies is usually just to grovel for mercy before the white man. While there are certainly historical tragedies that panned out like this, when the setting is purely fictional, it tends to come across more as a metaphor for the indigenous community as a whole, portraying them as just a bunch of dying peasants waiting to be put out of their misery. My friend expressed a desire to see the reverse of this trope more often, and I agree with that sentiment.

Matowt-kiwshekwi therefore is not a shambling old raisin. He's a well-composed, handsome man in his late 30s, early 40s, with all the fire in his heart of a young buck and muscle to back it up. He's intelligent, multilingual, and cares deeply about preserving his people's dignity. The nephew of the previous sachem, he was born a little too late to really take part in the Red Power Movement. He took this not as missing out, though, instead choosing to believe that he was its next incarnation. His mother, a powerful tribal leader in her own right, raised him on the art of philosophy, politics, and war, making sure he was given full access to the wise words of powerful native leaders before him like Geronimo and Tecumseh. The comet’s unyielding nature and refusal to speak with the white man as anything other than as equals proved to be a particularly strong influence on Matowt-kiwshekwi. He leads the Suwarrow Reservation with just as much conviction, and he goes to meet any diplomats from Eagle Crest personally to ensure they know that they are very much standing in a sovereign nation, not just another neighborhood for them to bulldoze over. He's a hero to his people who not only keeps the white man out, but makes sure that all corners of his administration function just as well, if not better than their counterparts in Eagle Crest. He is a no-nonsense brick wall whom trouble knows better than to mess with. People come to grovel to him for his help, especially with the growing threat of the Gévaudan Club and Eagle Crest's general corruption, but those are Eagle Crest's problems, not Suwarrow's, and he would very much like it to remain that way.

How well will he be able to manage that? Well that's up in the air for now, isn't it?

Design notes, with all that shameless self-promotion out of the way, it's pretty obvious that my base for this design was Tecumseh and that famous Lossing portrait. My thought process was: take Tecumseh, modernize him, and make him absolutely jacked. I mean okay, I'm fairly confident the historical Tecumseh was jacked too, but I digress. I may have strayed a little too far into British red coat vibes, but eventually I decided to just lean into that. It cuts a dashing figure for a man who's supposed to be leader of a sovereign nation. I didn't want him to be a thug, I wanted him to be a soldier. Honestly that tomahawk is the thing that gave me the most trouble in the end. I've never been great with drawing guns, but thankfully I've found a way to cheat by incorporating them into a melee weapon. I pretty much drew a shotgun and morphed it into the silhouette of one of those German flintlock axe guns. Does it make sense? Idk I'm not a gunsmith, but it does look fuckin’ cool and sometimes that's all I can ask for at the end of the day.

Description
Getting in one more OC in before the holidays, this is Matowt-kiwshekwi (pronounced like “matt-out kiw-sheck-wee”. Say that “kiw” like saying “kill” with a lisp). He's the sachem of my fictional Algonquin tribe, the Suwarrow, in the modern day portion of my OC universe, and a character that'll feature in my novel. I got his name by combining two Proto-Algonquin words which I'm fairly confident translate to something like “sky-ignitor” or “sky-striker”. It's a nod to the legendary Shawnee hero Tecumseh, whose name means “comet”, and who served as a heavy inspiration for this character. I've mentioned before how I have an Anishanaabe friend who helps me fact check the often sparse, incomplete, or white-washed information on Indigenous American cultures out there on the internet from an insider's perspective. Once we were discussing old westerns and how they spawned a lot of unfavorable tropes which still persist in media today. One big one was how the chief of the tribe always just sort of amounts to a crippled old superstitious druid whose roll in movies is usually just to grovel for mercy before the white man. While there are certainly historical tragedies that panned out like this, when the setting is purely fictional, it tends to come across more as a metaphor for the indigenous community as a whole, portraying them as just a bunch of dying peasants waiting to be put out of their misery. My friend expressed a desire to see the reverse of this trope more often, and I agree with that sentiment.

Matowt-kiwshekwi therefore is not a shambling old raisin. He's a well-composed, handsome man in his late 30s, early 40s, with all the fire in his heart of a young buck and muscle to back it up. He's intelligent, multilingual, and cares deeply about preserving his people's dignity. The nephew of the previous sachem, he was born a little too late to really take part in the Red Power Movement. He took this not as missing out, though, instead choosing to believe that he was its next incarnation. His mother, a powerful tribal leader in her own right, raised him on the art of philosophy, politics, and war, making sure he was given full access to the wise words of powerful native leaders before him like Geronimo and Tecumseh. The comet’s unyielding nature and refusal to speak with the white man as anything other than as equals proved to be a particularly strong influence on Matowt-kiwshekwi. He leads the Suwarrow Reservation with just as much conviction, and he goes to meet any diplomats from Eagle Crest personally to ensure they know that they are very much standing in a sovereign nation, not just another neighborhood for them to bulldoze over. He's a hero to his people who not only keeps the white man out, but makes sure that all corners of his administration function just as well, if not better than their counterparts in Eagle Crest. He is a no-nonsense brick wall whom trouble knows better than to mess with. People come to grovel to him for his help, especially with the growing threat of the Gévaudan Club and Eagle Crest's general corruption, but those are Eagle Crest's problems, not Suwarrow's, and he would very much like it to remain that way.

How well will he be able to manage that? Well that's up in the air for now, isn't it?

Design notes, with all that shameless self-promotion out of the way, it's pretty obvious that my base for this design was Tecumseh and that famous Lossing portrait. My thought process was: take Tecumseh, modernize him, and make him absolutely jacked. I mean okay, I'm fairly confident the historical Tecumseh was jacked too, but I digress. I may have strayed a little too far into British red coat vibes, but eventually I decided to just lean into that. It cuts a dashing figure for a man who's supposed to be leader of a sovereign nation. I didn't want him to be a thug, I wanted him to be a soldier. Honestly that tomahawk is the thing that gave me the most trouble in the end. I've never been great with drawing guns, but thankfully I've found a way to cheat by incorporating them into a melee weapon. I pretty much drew a shotgun and morphed it into the silhouette of one of those German flintlock axe guns. Does it make sense? Idk I'm not a gunsmith, but it does look fuckin’ cool and sometimes that's all I can ask for at the end of the day.