Copyright by E. W. Deming 



interpreters of the Great Mys- 

 tery, to make him strong, brave 

 and generous. In his emaciated 

 condition and with his strong 

 faith, the visions were real to him 

 and influenced his whole life. 



The white man owes the red 

 man a debt greater than he can 

 ever repay and is in honor bound 

 to record as true a history of the 

 oldtime Indian as possible, that 

 future generations may know and 

 appreciate this stone age people 

 surviving until to-day. 



There has never been in 

 literature or in art a more splen- 

 did subject to treat. Here is a man different from any other, with deep 

 poetic and religious tendencies but never a fanatic. It is this man and this 

 race, as far as possible uninfluenced by civilization, that I wish to set forth 

 in the decorations at the American Museum. With the Plains Indians I 

 shall be able to eliminate everything of white influence. I have taken for the 

 paintings that period after the horse was introduced. Horses were brought 

 over in 1541. Afterwards they were stolen by Indians and began to drift 

 north. The Indian at that time was in no way influenced by the white man. 

 Each panel of the series in the Plains Indian hall is planned to tell the 

 story of a certain stock of Indians, the way of living, customs, decoration 

 of lodges, life in the tipi, transportation, everything that can be told; be- 

 sides a hundred little things that there is no record of at all, children play- 

 ing with make-believe travois, animals, tame crows, around the camp — 

 matters that give color and reality to the life. The Indian boy of to-day 

 does not even know of these things with the changed way of living and the 

 lack of the oldtime way of telling stories. 



Other panels in the series will show the Sioux visiting the Blackfoot; 

 a Pawnee hunting party coming in — the earth-lodge people ; the return 

 of a Comanche war party bringing in stolen horses; a sun dance, probably 

 Cheyenne, typical of a religious ceremony; and a buffalo run with the 

 Blackfoot and Sioux tribes. 



Studies for mural decorations in the Southwest Indian hall of the' Ameri- 

 can Museum have been made during the past two years by Louis Akin, 

 and most unfortunate was his recent death. He was not only an interpreter 

 of the Indian, but was also one of the few, almost the only artist, who realizes 

 in his studies and pictures the romance and mystery of the wonderful 

 country of the Pueblo Indian. As a co-worker in recording the Indian, I 

 grieve for his loss, and for the delay that must follow in making that true 

 pictorial record of the American Indian which both art and science demand. 



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