THE ARTIST'S SOUTHWEST 



By Howard McCormick 



Illustrations of kachina and snake dance ceremonies from the Author's photographs 



HUNDREDS of peaceful Indians in Hopiland trudge down the steep 

 mesa sides to till their meager fields and carry their products to 

 homes on the wind-swept tablelands, living a life of contentment 

 and simplicity. Consider a civilization with no artificial social demands, no 

 extended business contact such as fret and worry the white man; a place 

 where no time is known except as marked by the daily position of the sun, 

 where one day is like another in that each rising and setting of the sun is the 

 occasion for a prayer asking for rain, good crops and happiness. 



The artist 's most adequate pen or capable brush becomes commonplace 

 in registering impressions of Hopiland. The limitless sky with its gor- 

 geous but subtle gradation of color is the one big impression of the mesa 

 country. At the zenith a positive blue fuses into a cool blue green, then 

 into yellow green, and finally into delicate lavendar as it nears the horizon, 

 only to be violently arrested by a long strip of distant mesa of almost pure 

 cobalt. The sun beats down and illuminates the grayish-yellow sand with 

 a brilliancy seemingly beyond the power of paint to suggest. On the 

 yellow sand lie bones whitening in the sun, startlingly brilliant. 



Paraders in the Anyah kachina ceremony, which is common to Zuiii and Hopi 

 pueblos. There are a great variety of kachina beings or gods believed in and represented 

 by the Southwestern Pueblo peoples. New conceptions of such beings wholly different 

 from the oldtime Indian ideas are constantly being introduced. Navajo Indians and white 

 cowboys even are represented for the amusement of the spectators 119 



