Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/85

Rh Renaissance on the walls of its old buildings and its museums to produce the lamentable things one sees in the modern Italian exhibitions. The case is not a parallel one here, since we are considering a different race from that which peoples America to-day. None the less, we may feel humble enough if we set anything our sculptors have done beside those great heads and figures of the Mayas—art which may be ranked with that of the Egyptians, the Hmdus and the Chinese.

Working southward in his new discovery of America, the student finds an overwhelming treasure of art among the people of Central America, and certainly in the northern part of South America. Expeditions sent out by the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania have recently brought back magnificent pottery made to-day in the Upper Amazon country, as pure and as sure in design as the work that was done by the tribes before the time of Columbus. A climax in American art is reached when we come to the work of the Peruvians. Certain of their paintings (so to style them) made of the brilliant feathers of tropical birds carry the use of color to one of the most remarkable points attained by any artists.

I permit myself to wander so far afield because it is well to reassure ourselves, if only by this summary mention of the accepted and tremendous monuments of Indian art, that in them the red man has shown that his race must be accounted one possessing genius for expression in plastics. To-day no more work of a monumental character is being done, unless it be, as I have heard reported, among the Alaskans.

One characteristic, however, runs through all Indian art, ancient and modern, of monumental or of small size: it has the unbounded sincerity of a free people. If the language of art has any meaning whatsoever, then Indian productions of every type say that their makers believed in them and did them naturally, because they liked what they did. With the North Americans, as with other really primitive peoples, there seems to be no question of period of evolution. The prehistoric mounds of Arizona and New Mexico reveal pottery of a type similar to that which is being made to-day. Many of us prefer the recent work of some of the pueblos to that of their distant forbears. An even more encouraging sign of strength in the Southwestern Indians is that they have been able to use new materials, the water colours which they have obtained from the white