North American Native art

North American Native art diverse traditional arts of Native North Americans. In recent years Native American arts have become commodities collected and marketed by nonindigenous Americans and Europeans. Originally, these objects were produced in different cultural contexts and for altogether different purposes. In many cases native peoples endowed utilitarian objects with aesthetic qualities not strictly related to the objects' primary function. In addition, some groups produced articles symbolizing status positions or items of religious significance.

Characteristic Objects

The material culture of the Eastern Woodlands groups (such as the Cherokee and Iroquois—see Eastern Woodlands culture ), for example, included decorated pottery and baskets, quillwork and beadwork, birchbark utensils, plaited sashes, and carved wood ritual masks. Early Woodland cultures, including the Adena and Hopewell, are renowned for their elaborate grave offerings, including copper plates and earspools, objects made of other minerals (e.g. mica, silver, meteoric iron), shell and pearl beads, and ceramic vessels and figurines.

The mainstay of life for the Native Americans of the Great Plains (such as the Arapaho, Blackfoot, Crow, and Sioux) was the buffalo, whose skin, both rawhide and tanned, was used for clothing, containers, tepee covers, and shields. Triangular and quadrangular designs were often painted or embroidered on these items, with beads and porcupine quills. Featherwork, of which the familiar "war bonnet" is a prime example, was lavish. California, Great Basin, and Plateau groups (Pomo, Nez-Percé, Paiute) lived by gathering, hunting, and some fishing. They developed basketry, especially in N and Central California, as a highly refined art. Using a great variety of materials, these groups created many different basketry forms and techniques to make such items as baby carriers, collecting and winnowing baskets, fish weirs, and hats. As cooking and serving containers, the baskets were watertight. They also fashioned ceremonial and "gift" baskets imbued with religious significance. Featherwork was used for headdresses, capes, skirts, and mantles, in dance costumes, and as decoration, together with beads, on baskets.

In the Southwest, Native Americans generally practiced agriculture and lived in settled villages. In that region pottery making, particularly of jars and bowls, is still today a highly developed art with a rich tradition extending back to pre-Columbian times. An art of strong, graphic, geometric design developed for pottery decoration. Southwestern groups cultivated cotton to be spun into yarn, and used a backstrap loom with heddles prior to European contact. The Spaniards brought sheep to the region, which the Navajo adopted for weaving intricately patterned woolen rugs and blankets. Many designs for blankets were adapted from the ritual sandpaintings of the Navajo. The Hopi (see also Pueblo ) and Zuni developed brilliantly carved and ornamented kachina dolls to represent living spirits; these are greatly valued by collectors today. After the Spanish conquest, silverworking evolved among the Southwestern Pueblo groups, especially among the Navajo, Zuni, and Hopi, who perfected it to the level of fine art, largely as jewelry.

On the heavily forested Northwest Coast, the Native American groups (Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Kwakiutl, Nootka, and Salish) developed elaborate woodcarving techniques used to fabricate tools, houses, huge dugout canoes, totem poles, and other heraldic and ritual posts, as well as outstanding masks, bowls, and ladles. Human and animal figures were stylized to abstraction in this work. In addition, they made superb basketry and clothing by twining, and produced metalwork weapons and jewelry. In Arctic regions the skin and fur garments of Eskimo groups were elaborately tailored and occasionally decorated.

Eskimos carved sculptures of Arctic animal life (including seals, walruses, and polar bears) and hunting motifs, using stone, ivory, and bone, and made elaborate ceremonial masks. The subjects of their work were chosen from their extensive mythology as well as their everyday experience.

The Effects of European Contact

It is important to note that prior to European contact, Native American groups did not generally produce art for its own sake. Objects, often utilitarian in function, were adorned with symbolic elements drawn from their daily lives or cosmologies. In other instances minute differences in design motifs on clothing or residential structures served as differentiating mechanisms, rendering the identity of the group immediately apparent to knowledgeable outsiders. Standards of beauty, to the extent that they were considered at all, were based on traditional notions, not on innovation or experimentation away from the cultural norm.

With the coming of European populations and the devastation of Native American cultures, artifacts were avidly sought for museum and private collections. That early collectors attributed great value to often mundane objects almost certainly struck historic Native Americans as odd, so that when the articles were not stolen outright they were usually acquired by buyers at "bargain" rates. This has provoked numerous conflicts in recent years as Native Americans become increasingly vocal in calling for the return of museum items symbolizing their cultural heritage. In recent years the abject poverty of surviving Native American populations, combined with the growing demand for artisans' commodities in industrialized countries, has stimulated the emergence of increasing numbers of North American native artisans. Art has thus become a cottage industry serving tourist markets as well as demand by more discriminating collectors. Among the most sought-after articles are works of jewelry, Eskimo sculpture, as well as the textiles and ceramics of the Southwestern groups.

Major Collections

Museums with major collections of North American native art include the American Museum of Natural History, New York City; Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago; National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, New York City; National Museum of Canada, Ottawa; Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard, Cambridge, Mass.; Provincial Museum, Victoria, British Columbia; Robert H. Lowie Museum of Anthropology, Univ. of California, Berkeley.

Bibliography

See F. Dockstader, Indian Art in America (3d ed. 1968); A. H. Whiteford, North American Indian Arts (1970); J. Highwater, Arts of the Indian Americas (1983); E. L. Wade and C. Haralson, The Arts of the North American Indian (1986).

Native North American art Traditional art produced by the indigenous peoples of North America. The Inuit of the Arctic area have been producing ivory carvings since prehistoric times and are also noted for their ceremonial masks (made from driftwood or whalebone). The nw region is best known for its totem poles, while in California, basket-weaving and pottery were specialities. Similar crafts were practised by the Pueblo peoples of the sw, who also created remarkable prehistoric wall paintings. The decoration of animal hides was popular in the Great Plains, while in the Eastern Woodlands, there was a preference for copper ornaments and stone carvings.

Native Americans in Drama. The immediacy of whites‐versus‐Indians wars and the proximity of many settled Indians to American 18th‐century cities made Native Americans figures of interest to several early American dramatists. The first play to center on them, however, was written not in English but in French. Le Père‐Indien was the work of LeBlanc de Villeneuve, a French officer stationed in New Orleans, and was given an amateur mounting there in 1753. Although it had no influence on later plays, its story of an Indian father who sacrifices his life for the sake of his son foreshadowed numerous pictures of noble, tragic primitives that would long characterize plays of Native American life. In 1766 the maverick Major Robert Rogers published his semihistorical if romanticized tragedy of Ponteach, but no record of performance survives. One reason for its failure to find a stage may have been an implicit contempt or at least condescension on the part of most whites toward Indians. This could explain why the earliest Native‐American–themed plays to reach the stage and sometimes find success, although they, too, generally depicted the Indian as wronged and doomed, were couched in musical terms. Tammany (1794), The Indian Princess (1808), and Harlequin Panattatah; or, The Genii of the Algonquins (1809) are examples. The Indian Princess is probably the first play to deal with Pocahontas, who for decades remained a favorite of dramatists, including George Washington Parke Custis, Robert Dale Owen, and John Brougham. But the immediate inspiration for the deluge of Indian stories that flooded American stages in the 1830s and 1840s certainly can be ascribed to John Augustus Stone's Metamora (1828), which was turned into one of the raging successes of contemporary theatre by Edwin Forrest. Perhaps because by this time most theatrical centers were far removed from Indian territory, such plays could generally offer a romanticized view of these imposed‐upon natives, often fighting to the death to protect what they saw as their heritage. The lengthy list of now‐forgotten works would include Sassacus, or, The Indian Wife; Onylda, or, The Pequot Maid; Ontiata, or, The Indian Heroine; Osceola; Tuscalomba; Carabasset; Narramattah; Wacousta; Wissahickon; and many others. Apart from Metamora, the most popular play on the subject during the first part of the 19th century was undoubtedly Brougham's burlesque, Pocahontas; or, The Gentle Savage (1855). Taking a light‐hearted look at both Native Americans and settlers, it served as a sort of bridge between the basically humanistic, romanticized pictures that preceded it and the more indifferent, even negative depictions that arose after the Civil War. Native Americans in the late 19th century almost never served as heroes or heroines as they had before; they were generally minor figures or, more often, a band of drink‐crazed marauders doing the villain's bidding. Across the Continent (1871) is a typical example. The Wild West shows offered by Buffalo Bill ( William Cody) and others also fostered period perceptions. The pendulum swung back at the beginning of the 20th century with such plays as Strongheart (1905) and The Squaw Man (1905). But a further rise in the popularity of Native‐American themes in the theatre may have been discouraged by the growth at the time of silent films, which offered a greater range and freedom of action when recounting tales of the Wild West. Thereafter Native Americans rarely appeared in American drama. At best they were consigned minor roles, often comic. The wise Sitting Bull in Annie Get Your Gun (1946) exemplifies this treatment.

Two exceptions were Arthur Kopit's Indians (1969), which attempted to make modern audiences share the guilt for their forefathers' behavior toward Native Americans, and Christopher Sergel's Black Elk Speaks (1981), based on John Neihardt's book about the history leading up to the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. Both well‐intentioned plays failed to find an audience in New York but enjoyed many productions in regional and amateur theatres. Theatre by and about Native Americans has not been very widespread in modern times, though ritual dramas, in which the audience were all participants, was very common throughout the hundreds of North American tribes that existed before the arrival of Europeans. These performances were built around legends and the history of the community, so the art form died out when the communities were broken up. In the 1970s attempts were made by contemporary Native Americans to revive this form of theatre. The Red Earth Theatre in Seattle and the Native American Ensemble Theatre in New York were two early groups, later joined by others. But a revived Native American theatre still was experiencing growing pains at the end of the century.