NOTES ON THE INDIAN WATER-COLOURS
BY WALTER PACH
SUFFICIENT interest has been shown in the article on the art of the Indians published in The Dial for January, to warrant our returning to the subject. But the best justification for so doing is the beauty of the paintings which we reproduce. Their exquisite colour disappears, of course, through their translation into black and white, but their amazing pattern persists, and, above all, the pure and intense expression through which they take their place among the great Primitives.
They are Primitives in the true sense of the word, their form and content deriving from an immediate response to the scenes they depict, the simple means of execution being suddenly raised to their intensity of effect by the conviction and enthusiasm of the artists. The conception of these pictures does not come, as it does with the so-called Primitives of Europe, from traditions evolved through many centuries, nor is the execution the result of the accumulated wisdom of a long series of schools. These paintings were done by untaught young Indians working with a medium unknown to their ancestors—the water-colours obtained from white artists at work in their villages. What we have before us is therefore that precious thing—the instinctive rendering of things seen. The effect of instinct is at once apparent if we consult the older arts of the Indians: the great paintings on skins, the pottery with its decoration, the katchinas or dance effigies, the textiles, and so on. Always one has a sense of the Indian frankness, of his saying the thing he means, literally and exactly—his lyric, epic, or humorous quality entering only unconsciously to give a certain tone to the scene and to make the justness of his vision the more convincing, for no art so spontaneous could fail to bear with it the impress of the artist's mood.
In the picturing of the Mah-pe-wi ceremony the mood is clearly one of exhilaration. The legend is that at a time when food seemed no longer obtainable, a beautiful maiden went into the forest and by her singing brought the deer back to places where the hunters of
