Adventures in the Arts | Page 8

he resorts to our present-day store ribbons and cheap trinkets for accessories, he does it with a view to creating the appearance of racial ensemble. He is one of the essential decorators of the world. A look at the totem poles and the prayer robes of the Indians of Alaska will convince you of that.
In the buffalo dance, then, you perceive the redman's fine knowledge of color relations, of the harmonizing of buffalo skins, of white buckskins painted with most expressively simple designs symbolizing the various earth identities, and the accompanying ornamentation of strings of shells and other odd bits having a black or a grey and white lustre. You get an adjusted relation of white which traverses the complete scale of color possibility in monochrome. The two men representing the buffalo, with buffalo heads covering their heads and faces from view, down to their breasts, their bodies to the waist painted black, no sign of pencillings visible to relieve the austerity of intention, legs painted black and white, with cuffs of skunk's fur round the ankles to represent the death mask symbol, relieving the edges of the buckskin moccasins--in all this you have the notes that are necessary for the color balance of the idea of solemnity presented to the eye. You find even the white starlike splashes here and there on backs, breasts and arms coinciding splendidly with the flecks of eagles-down that quiver in the wind down their black bodies, and the long black hair of the accompanying hunter, as flecks of foam would rise from waterfalls of dark mountain streams; and the feathers that float from the tips of the buffalo horns seem like young eaglets ready to leave the eyry, to swim for the first time the far fields of air above and below them, to traverse with skill the sunlit spaces their eyes have opened to with a fierce amazement. Even the clouds of frozen breath darting from the lips of the dancers served as an essential phase of the symbolic decoration, and the girdles of tiny conchlike shells rattling round their agile thighs made a music you were glad to hear. The sunshine fell from them, too, in scales of light, danced around the spaces enveloping them along with the flecks of eagle-down that floated away from their bodies with the vigors of the dance, floating away from their dark warm bodies, and their jet-blue hair. It is the incomparable understanding of their own inventive rhythms that inspire and impress you as spectator. It is the swift comprehension of change in rhythm given them by the drummers, the speedy response of their so living pulsating bodies, the irresistible rapport with the varying themes, that thrills and invites you to remain close to the picture. They know, as perfect artists would know, the essential value of the materials at their disposal, and the eye for harmonic relationships is as keen as the impeccable gift for rhythm which is theirs. The note of skill was again accentuated when, at the close of the season's ensemble with a repetition of the beautiful eagle dance, there appeared two grotesqueries in the form of charming devil spirits in the hues of animals also, again in startling arrangements of black and white, with the single hint of color in the red lips of the masks that covered their heads completely from view, and from which long tails of white horsehair fell down their grey white backs--completing the feeling once again of stout animal spirits roaming through dark forests in search of sad faces, or, it may even be, of evil doers.
All these dances form the single spectacle surviving from a great race that no American can afford actually to miss, and certainly not to ignore. It is easy to conceive with what furore of amazement these spectacles would be received if they were brought for a single performance to our metropolitan stage. But they will never be seen away from the soil on which they have been conceived and perpetuated. It is with a simple cordiality the redman permits you to witness the esthetic survivals of his great race. It is the artist and the poet for whom they seem to be almost especially created, since these are probably nearest to understanding them from the point of view of finely organized expression; for it is by the artist and the poet of the first order that they have been invented and perfected. We as Americans of today would profit by assisting as much as possible in the continuance of these beautiful spectacles, rather than to assist in the calm dismissal and destruction of them. It is the gesture of a slowly but surely passing race which they themselves can not live without; just as we, if we but knew