<h2 id="CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV<br/> <span class="medium">THE INDIAN AND ART WORK</span></h2>
<p class="drop"><span class="upper">Even</span> our artists and designers may learn much of
great importance from the Indian. While to most
of my readers it may come as a surprise that I claim
great artistic powers for the Indian, yet no one can carefully
study the basketry and pottery of the Amerind
and not know the perfect justice of the claim. In my
larger work on this subject<SPAN name="FNanchor_5_5" href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">5</SPAN> I have fairly discussed the
ability of the Indians in this regard; and to those
who are not aware of the vast debt the white race owes
to the aboriginal woman in artistic as well as other
lines, I earnestly commend a perusal of that masterly
work by a conscientious and thorough student, Otis
T. Mason, of the Smithsonian Institution, entitled
“Woman’s Share in Primitive Culture.”</p>
<div class="footnote">
<p><SPAN name="Footnote_5_5" href="#FNanchor_5_5" class="label">5</SPAN>
Indian Basketry and How to Make Indian and Other Baskets.</p>
</div>
<p>In reference to their basketry, however, more than
a mere passing mention is required. The Indian
weaver shows marvelous ability in the creation of form,
color, stitch, and design. Turning to Nature for her
original inspirations she is not a mere copyist of what
others have done. All her forms are based upon utility,
and therefore meet the first and highest requirement
of all art when applied to articles that are to serve
a useful purpose, viz., adaptation to use. There is no
reversal of principles in manufacture, as is so often the
case with white workers who value appearance, so-called
ornament, finish, etc., rather than adaptation to
purpose or utility. Wherever anything is allowed to
usurp the place of this primary element, the work is
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">241</span>
doomed even before it is made. On the other hand,
frankness, honesty, simplicity, directness, characterize
the manufactures of the Indian. They are to serve
such and such a purpose; that purpose is openly
denoted. The result is that, to the unperverted eye,
the artistic work of the unspoiled Indian is as perfect in
form as it can be. There is no wild straining after
unique effect; no fantastic distortions to secure novelty;
everything is natural and rational, and therefore
artistically effective.</p>
<div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i_241" src="images/i_241.jpg" alt="" /> <p class="caption">ONE OF THE FINEST YOKUT BASKETS IN EXISTENCE.</p> </div>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">242</span></p>
<p>In color, too, the original work of the Indian weavers,
before the vile aniline dyes were forced upon them
by the “civilized” and “Christian” traders and missionaries,
was above criticism. The old baskets and
blankets are eagerly sought after, at fabulous prices, by
the most refined and critical of artists and connoisseurs
because of the perfection of their color harmonies.
In every good collection are to be seen such specimens
that are both the admiration and despair of modern
artists.</p>
<p>As for weave, it is asserted upon the highest authority
that there is not a weave or stitch known to modern
art that was not given to our civilization by the aborigines.
And they have many stitches of great effectiveness
that we have not availed ourselves of. Take the
Pomas alone—a tribe of basket-makers who live in
northern California. They have not less than fourteen
different stitches or weaves, some of them of marvelous
beauty and strength. In one of the accompanying
pictures is a specimen of their carrying baskets. This
basket will hold a large load of seeds or fruit, and
when so laden requires a construction of great durability
to sustain the burden. It is woven with this express
purpose in view, yet it is artistically decorated with
a beautifully worked out design. Here is an important
lesson the white race might learn, viz., that the
utensils of daily life should be surrounded with as much
beauty as is practical. The kitchen should be as full
of enjoyment to the eye, in reason, as the parlor. The
cook and maid need æsthetic surroundings as well as—indeed,
more than,—the mistress and her children.
If social custom insists upon making servants of one
part of its members, the other part should be willing
to make their “servitude” as comfortable and beautiful
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">243</span>
as is possible and practicable. Think of these poor,
ignorant(!) Indian women making baskets for porridge,
carrying baskets, plaques for holding food,
mush bowls, and a score of other purposes, all beautifully
decorated and ornamented with designs that
express some emotion of their own souls, some ambition,
some aspiration, or some happy memory.</p>
<div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i_243" src="images/i_243.jpg" alt="" /> <p class="caption">EXQUISITE DESIGN ON A FINE YOKUT INDIAN BASKET.</p> </div>
<p>In the matter of these designs the white race has
much it may learn from the Indian. Sometimes I
have looked upon the patterns and colors of our wallpapers,
our rugs, our carpets, our chintzs, our calicoes,
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">244</span>
and especially upon the wool work or embroidery
of some women, and have been compelled to ask
myself if hideousness could be carried to any further
extent. Some of the designs were the absolute delirium
tremens of craziness,—conventionality reconventionalized
again and again, until it was made unlike to
anything in “the heavens above, the earth beneath, or
the waters under the earth.”</p>
<div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i_244" src="images/i_244.jpg" alt="" /> <p class="caption">A MISSION INDIAN BASKET OF GOOD DESIGN.</p> </div>
<p>I was once lecturing to a “civilized” and “cultivated”
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">245</span>
audience upon this subject of Indian designs
that have a personal meaning, and when I got through
I heard one highly civilized and cultivated man
exclaim in disgust: “Why, he’ll soon try to make us
believe that our own wall-paper patterns ought to
mean something!”</p>
<div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i_245" src="images/i_245.jpg" alt="" /> <p class="caption">A CHEMEHUEVI BASKET OF BEAUTIFUL FORM AND DESIGN.</p> </div>
<p>Most certainly I will! The idea that we, the
superior, the wise race, use designs in our goods that
are supposed to be beautiful to us, and yet that have
no meaning! What absurdity and foolishness for our
girls and women to spend hours on “fancy-work” (!),
the designs of which are a crazy, intricate something
to be dreaded rather than admired. The Indians
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">246</span>
have more sense than to waste their time over such
foolishness. They have studied Nature in all her
varying forms, and their minds are stored up with a
thousand and one designs which they can transfer at
pleasure to their basketry, pottery, or blanketry. I
have had the pleasure of teaching this basic principle
of art work to many white women, and I learned it
from the Indian. One woman wanted to get a design
for her sofa pillows. I asked her if she had no flowering
vine over her porch. She said “Yes.” “Then
copy its leaf and flower,” was my reply, and when
she did so, and saw the beauty of the design she
had <i>created</i> from Nature, her soul was filled with a
new joy, and she wrote me that few things had given
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">247</span>
her more pleasure than the discovery of that basic
principle.</p>
<div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i_246" src="images/i_246.jpg" alt="" /> <p class="caption">BASKET BOWL MADE BY PALATINGWA WEAVER.</p> </div>
<p>Think of the white race making baskets. Where
do they go to for their forms and designs? In thousands
of cases they take my own books and copy from
them! But where did I get them? I am no creative
artist, no inventor of design! I got them, “body, soul,
and breeches,” from the Indian,—every one of them;
and yet the “superior race” must go to them to copy,
instead of so disciplining the powers of observation
from Nature that designs for embroidery, for basketry,
for fancy-work of every description, are contained within
their own memories. The Indian’s life has trained
these wonderful faculties of observation and memory.
He was compelled to watch the animals in order that
he might avoid those that were dangerous and catch
those that were good for food; to follow the flying
birds that he might know when and where to trap
them and secure their eggs; the fishes as they spawned
and hatched; the insects as they bored and burrowed;
the plants and trees as they grew and budded, blossomed
and seeded. He became familiar, not only with
such simple things as the movements of the polar
constellations and the retrograde and forward motions
of the planets, but also with the less known spiral
movements of the whirl-winds as they took up the sands
of the desert; and the zigzags of the lightning were
burned into his consciousness and memory in the
fierce storms that, again and again, in darkest night,
swept over the exposed area in which he roamed;
with the flying of the birds, the graceful movements,
the colors, and markings of the snakes, the peculiar
wigglings of insects, and their tracks, and those of
reptiles, birds, and animals, whether upon the sand,
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">248</span>
the snow, the mud, or more solid earth, he soon became
familiar. The rise and fall of the mountains and
valleys, the soaring spires and wide-spreading branches
of the trees, the shadows they cast, and the changes they
underwent as the seasons progressed, the scudding
or anchored clouds in their infinitude of form and
color, the graceful arch of the rainbow, the peculiar
formation and dissipation of the fogs, the triumphant
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">249</span>
lancings of the night by the gorgeous fire-weapons of
the morning sun, the stately retreat of the king of day
as evening approached,—all these and a thousand and
one other things of beauty in Nature the Indian soon
learned to know, and from all these mental images
he can readily draw when a design is needed.</p>
<div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG id="i_248" src="images/i_248.jpg" alt="" /> <p class="caption">AN EXQUISITELY WOVEN YOKUT BASKET SHOWING ORIGIN OF ST. ANDREW’S CROSS, FROM THE DIAMOND OF THE RATTLESNAKE.</p> </div>
<p>Is it not well that the white race should learn
to observe the things of Nature? We have a few
nature writers: Thoreau, John Burroughs, Olive
Thorne Miller, Elizabeth Grinnell, John Muir, Ernest
Seton Thompson, Wm. J. Long, and Theodore Roosevelt,
but why should we need nature books? We have
the whole field of Nature for our own; every page is
open to us, and the need of these books is proof that we
have not, and do not, take the trouble to read Nature
for ourselves. The Indian does better than this. He
is a personal student. He finds joy and mental development
in the results of his own observation, and
until the white race learns his lesson, it will be behind
him in its joy in Nature, its wisdom gained from Nature,
in the physical health, vigor, and strength that
Nature always gives to her devotees, and in the true art
development that alone can come from familiarity with
Nature in all her varying moods.
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">250</span></p>
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