File:The American Museum journal (c1900-(1918)) (18133660816).jpg

Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo13amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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THE ARTIST'S SOUTHWEST By Howard McCormick Illustrations of kachina and snake dance ceremonies from the Author's photographs HUNDREDS of peaceful Indians in Hopiland trudge down the steep mesa sides to till their meager fields and carry their products to homes on the wind-swept tablelands, living a life of contentment and simplicity. Consider a civilization with no artificial social demands, no extended business contact such as fret and worry the white man; a place where no time is known except as marked by the daily position of the sun, where one day is like another in that each rising and setting of the sun is the occasion for a prayer asking for rain, good crops and happiness. The artist's most adequate pen or capable brush becomes commonplace in registering impressions of Hopiland. The limitless sky with its gor- geous but subtle gradation of color is the one big impression of the mesa country. At the zenith a positive blue fuses into a cool blue green, then into yellow green, and finally into delicate lavendar as it nears the horizon, only to be violently arrested by a long strip of distant mesa of almost pure cobalt. The sun beats down and illuminates the grayish-yellow sand with a brilliancy seemingly beyond the power of paint to suggest. On the yellow sand lie bones whitening in the sun, startlingly brilliant.
Text Appearing After Image:
Paraders in the Anyah kachina ceremony, which is common to Zuiii and Hopi pueblos. There are a great variety of kachina beings or gods believed in and represented by the Southwestern Pueblo peoples. New conceptions of such beings wholly different from the oldtime Indian ideas are constantly being introduced. Navajo Indians and white cowboys even are represented for the amusement of the spectators 119

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