INDIAN ART IN NORTH AMERICA—ARTS AND CRAFTS [R]

INDIAN ART IN NORTH AMERICA—ARTS AND CRAFTS

by Frederick J. Dockstader

Director of the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation

Publisher: New York Graphic Society, Greenwich, 1961

First edition, fourth printing, hard cover with slip cover, 223 pages, 248 illustrations

From the Slip Cover:

“The magnificent art and decorative craftsmanship of the Indian tribes of North America appear in all of their colorful variety and complexity in this superb volume. Examples are included of the work of every major region in the areas now comprising the United States and Canada, of most of the numerically important or artistically pre-eminent tribes, and of all of the major techniques employed by Indian artists.

“No reader of this book can long continue in a misapprehension of the stereotyped image of ‘the Indians.’  The varying cultures which developed on the North American continent—from the Eskimo hunters of the Arctic to the woodland League of the Iroquois, and from the Pueblo agriculturalists to the nomads of the Great Plains—are all represented.  Each found its own ways of using available natural resources for utilitarian objects, for religious and ritual purposes, or for sheer aesthetic pleasure.  The book abounds in beautiful examples of characteristic shell and quill work, pottery and weaving, deer and buffalo hide painting, carved stone pipes and tomahawks so commonly associated with Indian cultures.  Less familiar are illustrations of mysterious stone effigy sculptures from the death-cults of the ancient Southwest; sophisticated carvings in stone and ivory from the Midwest; elaborate horse-trappings and costuming from the Great Plains; and a fascinating variety of masks.”