CHEM AWA XAMERIC AN
Printed at Chernawa, Oregon, and Devoted to the Interests of Indian Education
VOL. XXXV
WEDNESDAY, NOV. 22, 1933
ARTISTS WITH NEVER A THOUGHT
OF FAME
Honorable mention, half a dozen medals, a paragraph
in “Who’s Who,” an occasional one man show, and
recognition, ultimately, by the Metropolitan Museum
of Art—what cares a good Indian for such rewards as
these? If an Indian artist did care, his tribe would
look down on him.
Art as they conceive it, is a community affair, not by
rights a means of winning celebrity for the individual.
Sharing that view, himself, the Indian will leave his
work unsigned. He will begin a picture, and with
out protest, let another hand complete it. Fame? It
never concerns him.
Just this is what makes the Indian artist so inter
esting to Miss Olive Rush, whose work with the
young Indians at the Santa E'e School of Artists was
described in The Literary Digest for April 8, and who
now writes of the Red Man’s esthetic genius in Theater
Arts Monthly. “Never has the Indian worked for ap
plause,” she tells us. Instead, Indians have “worked
in a communal spirit for centuries, and they are
disturbed to find a man attempting to stand out from
among his fellows. The group may achieve, that the
entire body must grow.”
Consequently, “he must move softly among them
that would help them adjust their art to our modern
world,” and, especially because the Indian's attitude
and method are conditioned by his past, they “de
serve our non-interference. In the Kiva, the sacred
spot removed from the world, he keeps alight the sa
cred fires, art, religion, life, that unite for him in one
flame. The old masks, mysterious to him, are hand
ed down along with the legends from generation to
generation. Each dance demands the costume pecu
liar to it, and varies little through the years. Old plays
are revived.” Yet all old art is refreshed “from our
own thought,” as the Indians say, though, despite
this freedom in adaption, they never lose their rever
ence for its tribal origin and development.
They
owe everything to the tribe.
“When the Indian baby learns to walk, he learns
to dance,” says Miss Rush. “As he plays in the
sand he watches his grandmother paint a jar. He
hears old stories told. If you ask him in later years
who taught him these things, he may give you the
answer an Indian artist gave me to-day; ‘No one
taught me; I learned them for myself.’ This growing
NO. 4
up with art makes art a part of life—the chant is a
prayer or praise, the love-song is for wooing, the sum
mer dances are prayers for rain, the winter dances for
success in the hunt, painted designs are composed of
symbols that touch his deepest interests”—deepest
because inspired by intense tribal lovaJ^jgj^
Hands off! Let the Indian artjét nave his own way.
Itncourage him to keep it. “ O^r ¿^nmerce,’\xsays
Miss Rush, “has endeavored
rufn^the Na^ho
blanket but the eagerness with which th^we^jers
gathered at Santa Fe last winter in council foŸÎhejm-
provement of their designs, shows how ready f^ey are
to rescue that art. What is needed most is encourage
ment all through the Indian country, to keep their
purer elements of design.
“Oqwa Pi stoutly declares, ‘No one shall teach my
boy design but myself.’ And he believes, as do many
of his pale-faced friends, that it is a mistake to teach
them those arts in which they excell. We look for
ward to the day when the Indian will be the teacher
of arts in an Indian school.”
“Well-directed encouragement given by artists, writ
ers, archeologists, has reestablished self-confidence and
brought back an atmosphere of hope, to which pueblos
like San Ildefonso have responded with a fulness and
richness that has been beyond belief.”
Remains the question, how sound is this Indian art?
Judged by our own standards, how meritorious? Re
markably sound, thinks Miss Rush, and, judged by
our own standards, excellent, with a distinction now
and then astonishing. “Awa Tsireh’s goat herders
and Oqwa Pi’s hunting compositions are as lovely as
Persian miniatures, and Tse-ye-mu’s pottery makers
have strength and simplicity with nobility of line and
mass peculiarly fitted to wall painting. More than to
paint the body of nature, the Indian loves to glorify
her power, and to express in symbols her evanescent
quality, her bright gleam.
Perhaps no people have
drawn life forms more peculiar with vitality than the
Indians.— Literary Digest.
On the evening of Nov. 15, the boys’ student coun
cil met with Mr. Shilling, Mrs. Cornick and Mr. Rick
ard for exchanging thoughts and ideas concerning the
betterment of student activities. Many problems were
brought up, discussed and decided upon. The coun
cil is now prepared for good work in the future. Louis
Orr was elected president and Adam Williams acting
secretary.