NO. 7 WHITE INFLUENCE ON INDIAN PAINTING—EWERS 3 
rendered, elongated body which is geometric in character and drawn 
in outline only. The arms are lines extending outward from the 
shoulders and bent about midway of their length (i.e., at the elbows). 
At the ends of these arms are solid ball hands with the five fingers 
extended as lines. The legs are relatively short, bent at the knees. 
The grossly shaped upper legs are connected to linear lower legs. 
The foot is merely a continuation of the line of the lower leg at an 
angle from it. There is no attempt to portray body clothing. Yet the 
conventionalized representation of the phallus and scrotum may be 
an indication that the Mandan and their neighbors wore no breech- 
cloths at that period. Some contemporary descriptions of those In- 
dians also suggest the absence of the breechcloth in the men’s costume 
of the time. 
The enlargement of one of the mounted figures painted on this 
robe (pl. 3) shows the same style of rendering the head, arms, and 
body of the human figure. Notice that the man does not straddle 
the horse but merely sits atop it. There is no attempt to render the 
figure below the waist. The head and body of the horse are drawn 
in outline. The animal has neither eye nor mouth, but the ears are 
indicated one above the other and the mane is drawn in a conven- 
tionalized manner. The horse’s neck and body are decorated in 
geometric fashion with lines forming angular patterns some of which 
are partially filled with spots of color. As in the human figures, 
the upper legs of the horse are thick and the lower ones are mere 
lines. The hoofs are hook-shaped extensions of the legs. 
This primitive Mandan painting accented the general character- 
istics of the human form—the roundness of the head, the straight- 
ness of the limbs, the bilateral symmetry of the body, qualities Rudolf 
Arnheim has referred to as characteristics of the drawings of both 
primitives and children. (Arnheim, 1954, p. 131.) 
Details of the human figure were unimportant to the primitive 
Mandan artist. His head remained featureless. Bodies were crudely 
proportioned and appendages grossly generalized. Although his me- 
dium was paint, he used color sparingly. His heavy outlines gave 
to his work more the character of drawing than painting. He had no 
knowledge of color modeling or such other sophisticated concepts 
as foreshortening and perspective. When one object overlapped an- 
other he did not try to eliminate the outlines of the more distant one. 
Note the handling of the quiver carried by the warrior illustrated in 
plate 2. But generally there was no overlapping of human or animal 
figures which were scattered over the surface of the robe, each being 
rendered individually beside, above, or below the others. 
