Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/87

Rh deerskin: the character, the action of the man is rendered with an immediacy for which our painters and poets strive all their lives. The impedimenta of the endlessly complicated art of Europe has, in the later decades, proved such a hindrance to the, expression of these simple and powerful ideas that it is small wonder if many men are trying to throw off the load—and if they delight in the work of the Indian, whose swift, sensitive line and grasp of composition yield results near enough to our own for us to understand them,—different enough from our inbred art to give us the special pleasure that comes from things that are new to us. Familiar or strange, the red man's work is beautiful, and in quite the sense of the word that we have always given to it. The black pottery of the Santa Clara pueblo has not the measureless refinement that, in centuries of continuing culture, brought perfection to the Egyptian vases of the later dynasties, but it has the vigour and largeness of design of the very early period of the art of Egypt. And to-day—I come back to the word because what is most important to remember is that this work is still being produced—certain head-dresses, batons, and figures used in the religious ceremonies flame with a magnificence of red and green such as the Hopi country shows in daylight, or glow in pale marvels of white and gray, like the desert under the stars.