Indigenous art

“ So long as the necessity for the latter is ignored, the former tend rather to the isolation of the artist and the restriction of art influences to the connoisseur, instead of bringing them to bear upon society at large. In the words of the resolution, which prefaces the Indian Art Journal, "there can be no reasonable doubt that the upper classes of the native community would gladly follow the example of the Government, and cherish all that is best in indigenous art;" but in architecture, at all events, which is the mother of all the arts, the example unfortunately has as yet been never given. ”

“ The peculiar fact that the one true indigenous class of American folk-song is the product of an African race is, as we have seen, due to circumstances alone. It is no reflection upon the capabilities of the other races for artistic expression. ”

“ But being the one element which has not been fused with the many elements of which the American nation is now composed, he is to-day in the anomalous position of an indigenous foreigner. For the American of to-day is predominantly European—of overseas origin—and the European conquerors have, in this case, not adopted the 'culture' of the vanquished, because that culture was inferior to their own.
The North American Indian has shown unquestioned evidences of art instincts—in his folk-lore, his handicrafts, and perhaps also in his music. ”

“ Since we have drawn the distinction between adapted and indigenous folk-song, the question naturally arises whether there exists in America a truly indigenous folk-song at all. It has been agreed that America, having been colonized by Europeans, possesses no native culture whatever, except such as the Indians may have had. The Indian, indeed, has the best claim to the name American, being indigenous, or at least so early a colonizer as to have constituted virtually a native race. ”

“ He urges, and urges as it seems to me with truth, that the great difficulty of teaching many savages the arts of civilised life, is no proof whatever that the various degrees of advance towards the knowledge of those arts which are actually found among semi-barbarous nations may not have been of strictly indigenous growth. Thus it appears that one tribe of red Indians called Mandans practised the art of fortifying their towns. Surrounding tribes, although they saw the advantage derived from this art, yet never practised it, and never learned it. ”

“ If, therefore, the whole decorative art of some tribes shows no trace of realism, it may well be doubted whether their ordinary decorative designs were originally realistic.
The history of decorative design can best be investigated by analyzing the styles of form and interpretation prevailing over a limited area. If the style of art were entirely indigenous in a given tribe, and developed either from conventionalization of realistic designs or from the elaboration of technical motives, we should expect to find a different style and different motives in each tribe. ”

“ But the manifest traces of indigenous American origin are present in all its works, and the writers who have beheld in these likenesses to the art of Asiatic or African peoples have been grievously misled by superficial resemblances which could not have betrayed any one who had studied Maya affinities deeply. ”

“ Art becomes more and more indigenous to her world and age. Aristocratic Watteau is succeeded by Hogarth, Greuze, Chardin, and Chodowiecki, who treat the Third Estate no longer in the Dutch chiaroscuro, but in all its heavy reality as a valid object of art. ”

“ In America there is yet found a great body of primitive, indigenous, and independent art, almost uncontaminated by the complex phenomena, processes, and conditions which elsewhere obscure its origin and development. ”

“ Amongst early nations—our own for instance, which I put upon the same level as the aboriginals of Australia or the natives of New Guinea—we find the same instinct for art and observation of nature: there is no nation so low or primitive that it does not indulge in ornament.
It is also a curious point in natives, that, the more primitive they are, the more refined they are in their taste, the nearer they are to nature and each other; it is the half-civilised only who depart from the imitation of what they see about them, and indulge in eccentricities and extravagances. ”

“ It is however true that we have a western heritage, but we have to analyze that, on the one hand we have a "Mother Culture", the indigenous or anahuaca; it gave us a way of feeling and interacting with human beings, nature, the universe and the divine and sacred. ”

“ It is thus apparent that the imitative faculty, which manifests itself in very different degrees among diverse races, was widely diffused throughout the native tribes of the American continent. But, while a certain aptitude for art is seen to be prevalent among some of the rudest tribes, there were, no doubt, among all of them exceptional examples of artistic ability. ”

“ Aboriginal painting is crude, consisting mainly of colour without tone or shading, even where the drawing is correct. But paints and dyes, both of mineral and vegetable origin, are largely in use by many Indian tribes. The Eskimo execute tasteful patterns on their skin robes in diverse colours; and the northern tribes both to the east and west of the Rocky Mountains dye porcupine quills and grasses, and with them work ornamental patterns on their dresses and in basket-work. The pottery of the Pueblo Indians is elaborately decorated in colours ”

“ Change of environment has a decided tendency to modify, and contact with other peoples, especially if of a high grade of culture, is liable to revolutionize the whole character of the art. The manufactures of our modern tribes show abundant evidence of the demoralizing effect upon native art of contact with the whites. ”

“ Civilised nations habitually borrow the arts and imitate the social habits of neighbouring races, or accept some common standard of intellectual and moral pre-eminence. Nevertheless, while the capacity for imitative art is neither peculiar to the New World, nor characteristic of all its diverse nationalities, it appears to be more generally diffused among the races of America than elsewhere. It is prevalent among tribes in nearly every condition, from the rude Indian nomad, or the Eskimo, to the semi-civilised Zuñi, and the skilled metallurgists and architects of Central America and Peru. ”

“ The core values of life, death, nature, the cosmos, the divine and the sacred are harmoniously and intimately shared by all the so-called "indigenous" peoples of the American continent. What bonds and identifies peoples with indigenous roots is the philosophical-cultural matrix that gives us structure us and not the alleged "Latinity" (“Latin ethnicity”) which was invented by Napoleon III to seize the non-Anglo Saxon America in the 19th century or the "Hispanic ethnicity” with which English speakers catalogue us in the 20th century. ”

“ From a certain point of view there is a peril in the aesthetic interest: most investigators consciously or unconsciously possess it, and most recorders of native myths consciously or unconsciously dress their materials with the suaver forms of expression which the cultivated languages of Europe have developed. There is, in other words, some untruth to aboriginal thought in the desire to find or inject art where the original motive was realistic, or, if aesthetic, governed by a taste foreign to our own. ”

“ On the other hand, we have the recent utterance of so able an ethnologist as Major J. W. Powell to the effect that, “With regard to the mounds so widely scattered between the two oceans, it may be said that mound-building tribes were known in the early history of discovery of this continent, and that the vestiges of art discovered do not excel in any respect the arts of the Indian tribes known to history. There is, therefore, no reason for us to search for an extralimital origin through lost tribes for the arts discovered in the mounds of North America.” ”

“ The system of conventionalism derived from the numerous pictographs and carvings is the basis of all characters and messages one finds on sticks, stones, and persons; it is the only key to an understanding of sacred tjuringa symbols. We have for too long looked upon aboriginal designs as meaningless, and upon aboriginal art production as being idle concoctions out of nothing which were invented just to make a thing “look pretty.” This is anything but the true position. An aboriginal artist knows no such thing as a design without motive or origin ”

“ The Red Indians have always, as far as European knowledge goes, been in the habit of using this picture-writing for the purpose of retaining their legends, poems, and incantations. It is unnecessary to say that the picture-writing of Mexico and the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt are derived from the same savage processes. I must observe that the hasty indications of the figure used in picture-writing are by no means to be regarded as measures of the Red Men’s skill in art. They can draw much better than the artist who recorded the Manabozhian legend, when they please. ”

“ The foreign elements intermingled with the native culture in sections of the Eastern hemisphere produced an abnormal condition of society, where the arts of civilized life were remolded to the aptitudes and wants of savages and barbarians.476 Tribes strictly nomadic have also social peculiarities, growing out of their exceptional mode of life, which are not well understood. Through influences, derived from the higher races, the indigenous culture of many tribes has been arrested, and so far adulterated as to change the natural flow of their progress. ”

“ Relying mainly on these resemblances of speech, certain writers have in fact endeavoured, rightly or wrongly, to establish a common origin for all the indigenous races of North Africa and Western Asia. ”

“ The tribes should not move so rapidly that the panther-like elasticity is lost in the riding, running, and scalping. On the other hand, the aborigines should be far from the temperateness of marble.
Mr. Edward S. Curtis, the super-photographer, has made an Ethnological collection of photographs of our American Indians. This work of a life-time, a supreme art achievement, shows the native as a figure in bronze. Mr. Curtis' photoplay, The Land of the Head Hunters (World Film Corporation) , a romance of the Indians of the North-West, abounds in noble bronzes. ”

“ A review of the terms of art in the diverse aboriginal vocabularies would furnish an interesting supplement to the general question of the manifestation of an artistic faculty, and the evidences of appreciation of art among savage races. I note a few illustrations, which the languages of some Northern Indian tribes supply, of the ideas associated in the native mind with terms of art. The Algonkin languages generally have no distinctive words clearly discriminating between painting, drawing, and writing in the sense of ideography ”

“ How far an aboriginal designer may go largely turns upon what variety of resources Nature offers him. No few score families on a lonely islet of the Pacific can possibly rival the cloths and carvings displayed by tribes ranging a Pennsylvania, or a California, abounding with diverse minerals, plants and animals. When skill and invention occupy so rich a land they flower into the highest creations of aboriginal art. And yet it may be that the very fewness of a designer’s resources but spurs him to all the more ingenuity. It depends upon who the man is. ”

“ Now, among the lowest, the most untutored, the worst equipped savages of contemporary races, art is rather decorative on the whole than imitative. The patterns on Australian shields and clubs, the scars which they raise on their own flesh by way of tattooing, are very rarely imitations of any objects in nature. The Australians, like the Red Indians, like many African and some aboriginal Indian races, Peruvians, and others, distinguish their families by the names of various plants and animals, from which each family boasts its descent. ”

“ In like manner in other countries in our time it is brought to light; for as the stone remarkable for its virtues is now famous throughout the whole world, so also everywhere every land produces it, and it is, so to speak, indigenous in all lands. ”

“ For a long time we had been tantalized with fragments of painting, giving us the strong impression that in this more perishable art these aboriginal builders had made higher attainments than in that of sculpture, and we now had proofs that our impression did them justice. The plate opposite represents detached portions of these paintings. The colours are green, yellow, red, blue, and a reddish brown, the last being invariably the colour given to human flesh. ”

“ The great dearth of proverbs, of popular snatches, and of riddles, among American aborigines, in contrast to their strong development in Africa and other parts of the Old World, requires attentive study. The general lack of epic poetry, the germs of which are found in a very few regions only, is another feature that promises to clear up certain problems of the early development of literary art. We are able to observe lyric poetry in its simplest forms among all tribes. ”

“ But it is curious to note in this nineteenth century the lingering traces of the old sentiment; and to see men of science still finding it difficult to emancipate themselves from the idea that this continent is so essentially another world, that it is inconceivable to them that the races by which it is peopled should bear any affinity to themselves or to others of the Old World. American ethnologists long clung to the idea of an essentially distinct indigenous race ”

“ The ancient, as well as the modern, colonists carried the arts of a superior civilisation in their train; but the indigenous races of the New World were destined to gradual decay and extinction, leaving some ancient monuments as the records of their existence, just as the primitive children of the soil in the West of Europe, whose relics we endeavour to decipher, [394] disappeared and were lost ”