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THE SOURCES OF AMERICAN INDIAN ART
(Part One)
Dr. Edward H. Spicer
Professor of Anthropology
University of Arizona
What I shall offer as the foundation of my talk is an
effort to describe the nature of Indian life today. It is
only through a realistic conception of modern Indian life
that we may realize its possibilities in the lives of all of
us. It is out of the present day life of Indians that
worthwhile art springs. Widespread misconceptions about
Indian art are that it can be "uncontaminated" by Western
civilization and that true Indian art should somehow be
fixed forever in a limbo of prehistoric, or untrammelled
primitive, horizons. My own conviction is that those Indian
arts, crafts, and viewpoints which are important and which
should be nourished with all means at our disposal are just
those which have been influenced by and continue to develop
in the milieu of modern life.
That milieu, so far as Indians are concerned, is both on
and off the reservations. Indian life today is complex and
fraught with conflict; it is not primitive or simple. It is
a mistake to assume that Indians anywhere have been able to
maintain the harmony of the small communities which many of
them had attained before the coming of white men. The most
traditional of the Hopis, who are trying to maintain in
thought and practice the rich ceremonialism of the Hopi way,
do so in the consciousness of the conflicting way of life
which surrounds them. The older Hopi way is seen by its
devotees themselves as one among the many approaches to life
which impinge on them through schools, the Indian agencies,
the missionaries who work among them, and all the other
impacts. The consciousness of threat is ever present, and,
in some measure, the Hopi way is itself maintained as a
protest, not simply as the ancient, clear path to the good
life. Hopi religion thus assumes a place as one among
several religions believed in by persons on and off the
reservations who call themselves Hopis. In the consciousness
even of those whose belief in it is deep and abiding, as
well as in the eyes of outside observers, it is a part of
that heterogeneous body of custom and belief that we call
Western civilization. In the same manner among Indians
everywhere there has been this kind of assimilation to our
civilization. Twenty-seven different denominations of
religious belief are at work and have been for some time on
the Navaho reservation. In the midst of this miscellany some
keep traditional Navaho religious ways, but nowhere is the
kind of isolation and consequent unity of feeling which once
obtained; and so the traditional Navaho religion is a
source, like other religious ways in the United States, not
only of a unified view of life among its devotees, but also
of challenge and conflict.
The conflict is more intense on the reservations than it
is elsewhere, because of the peculiar pressures generated by
the zeal of missionaries, religious and otherwise, and
because of the identification of non-Indian ways with
progress and advancement by most of the persons with whom
Indians come into contact. Indians are under a constant
pressure to change, the intensity of which is hard for us
who do not live on reservations to grasp. At the heart of
these pressures are strains in the relations between parents
and children. Within families now for several generations
there has been an increasing intensity of strain, as more
Indians have gone to school and as the efforts of the Bureau
of Indian Affairs, fairly consistently directed toward
cultural assimilation, have become more pervasive. On
various reservations there is no question that, as families
under these pressures have lost their way, their communities
have disintegrated. Young people growing up in those
communities have sought with increasing frequency to find
guidance outside. Many have found it and have made a
satisfactory adjustment. Many have not. Many families have
found a basis for new integration and many have not. It is
rare today to find any community on an Indian reservation
which has a real common basis for settling factional
disagreements such as generally obtains in non-reservation
communities in the United States.
Perhaps I paint too dark a picture. I do not mean to
imply that there are among Indians only individuals who are
mixed up, unhappy, and at cross-purposes with themselves and
most of their associates. There are indeed individuals and
families who have resolved the pressures. The point I am
making is that wherever we find Indians who have discovered
ways to resolve the conflicts, they have done this in a
difficult milieu characterized by exceptional strain. This
is the situation in which modern Indians find themselves.
The situation grows out of conditions which are
characteristic not only of Indians. Indians are a minority
group-as are Jews, Orientals born in this country, Negroes,
and many others. That means that they are in certain ways
set off from the mass of the population by special laws or
traditional attitudes of the majority. They are
discriminated against, or favored, in ways that mark a
special status. Indians as a minority have traditions of
being invaded and conquered, of treaties made and broken, of
being massacred by settlers, of perhaps a Long Walk, or a
military alliance forgotten, of land allotment and the train
of destructive consequences, of federal indifference to
crying needs in education, of over-solicitude by federal
government in other matters, and so on and on. These—in
addition to the traditions of which white men most often
think, such as colorful blankets, dances, beautiful
pottery forms, feather head-dresses, moving
ceremonies—constitute the traditions of Indians. Usually for the
leadership among them today these are of deeper significance
than the traditions stemming out of the old tribal culture.
They are significant for reasons of survival and because it
is so clear that these traditions of contact, as we might
call them, are tied up with the attitudes of the people with
whom they live in the same states.
Indians, it must be recognized, are a minority group and
subject to those strains which members of minority groups in
the United States and an over the world undergo. This
intensifies the conflict on the reservations which grows out
of being the special target of many groups to change family
ways and religious ways and work habits and house
furnishings, etc. Moreover the status of minority group is
built a little more solidly into Indian lives because it is
institutionalized through a government agency.
There are many facets of this situation which we might
explore, but we will confine ourselves to the matter of the
meaning of Indian traditions in this milieu-their meaning
not only to Indians but also to non-Indians. Many Indians as
they grow up react violently against this whole body of
traditions. The "old Indian ways" come to seem to them to be
obstacles to the ways that teachers and others identify with
progress. Under this tutelage they try to separate
themselves from this aspect of the traditions. They may
ridicule them or they may sullenly seclude themselves, and
in this way family life is often characterized by deep
schisms. Such young people, also, as they listen to leaders
discussing old injustices-the other side of Indian
traditions-may become as violently opposed to this other
side of Indian tradition as to the so-called "old ways." To
them they come to stand for negativism and hopelessness, and
they seek rather to embrace the hopeful equality and focus
on the future which is offered in the schools and in
individual economic success. Many move on then into the
general stream of American life and put the whole set of
Indian traditions behind them. In proportion to their degree
of individual adjustment they cease to think of themselves
as Indians, and even though some may continue to live on
reservations they become a different people.
But for most of those who remain on the reservations, and
for many who do not, the meaning of the traditions is
otherwise. Some become devoted, as they grow up, to many
features of the "old ways." They may, because of various
influences, react strongly against what is held up to them
as progress and find religious meaning or aesthetic
satisfaction in the so-called older ways. They may, as many
Zuni veterans of World War 11 have done, balance the
traditional Zuni way against the American and find the
latter wanting. Others may not be attracted in this way, but
as they come up against difficulties in achieving the goals
set for them in school or jobs begin to see the minority
traditions of their elders as full of truth and meaning. For
some of this sort, then, who were never really attracted to
the old beliefs and customs as a way of life, but who were
greatly attracted to the white way of life, come to accept
the whole body of tradition or parts of it is symbols of
protest against the frustrations they have met. In those
ways and in varying combinations the traditions gain
significance in Indian lives. The point is that Indians are
pulled in various ways, that personal and family conflicts
develop, that these conflicts are expressed in what
community life exists on reservations, and this is the
milieu in which Indians are growing up. It is this milieu
for better or for worse out of which Indian art will
continue to grow, if it is to grow at all.
It may be that this situation is not creative, that
reservation life is simply a cul-de-sac of
incompatibilities. It appears so to many observers and they
conclude that the solution to the whole difficult problem is
simply to eliminate the reservations, that is, the minority
situation of the Indians. That may be so. The contradictions
may be too numerous and unresolvable. But it is out of such
situations, on a grander scale possibly, but nevertheless
basically the same, that new creative growth has come
repeatedly in human history. Certainly in religion this has
been true, when the times have required the reconciliation
of new and old situations which have overtaken people. I
suspect that this has often been the case in art, also.
Perhaps the reservations are too small in scope; too few
people are involved for them to have creative potential. It
seems to me, however, that in the Southwest of all places in
the United States that the chances are greatest for creative
growth. Here the elements of older Indian ways of life have
continued to function to a greater extent; here, the Indian
population is the largest, and here, perhaps, as indicated
in a meeting of this sort, there may be more realization of
the possibilities. Of one thing I am sure, and that is this:
If teachers, if non-Indian artists, if we in general who
claim to be interested in "Indian art" misread the
situation, there is small chance of anything worthwhile for
our civilization coming out of it. We are in a sense the
anvil against which any creative forces among Indians must
strike. If we are seeking the development of Indian art
purely in that Indian life which existed before white men
appeared here, then we are working from an artificial
standpoint toward an artificial result which will be
hopelessly restricted in significance. Further, if we regard
the minority status side of Indian tradition as merely
negative, as something that they had better forget, as we
try to forget it, then our view is thoroughly limited by our
own traditions and there is little likelihood of mutual
stimulation.
(The second half of Dr. Spicer’s address will appear in
the May issue of Journal of American Indian
Education.)
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