Title: Imagining Indians in the Southwest : persistent visions of a primitive past /
Authors: Dilworth, Leah.
Publisher: Smithsonian Institution Press,
Year: 1996
Subjects: Fred Harvey (Firm) History.; Indians of North America Southwest, New Pictorial works.; Indians in literature; Indians of North America Southwest, New Public opinion.; Public opinion United States; Indians of North America Industries Southwest, New.; Tourism Southwest, New History.; Indians of North America Southwest, New Industries.
Abstract: In Imagining Indians in the Southwest, Leah Dilworth examines the creation and enduring potency of the early twentieth-century myth of the primitive Indian. She shows how visions of Indians - created not only by tourism but also by anthropologists, collectors of Indian crafts, and modernist writers - have reflected white anxieties about such issues as the value of labor in an industrialized society, racial assimilation, and the perceived loss of cultural authenticity. Dilworth explores diverse expressions of mainstream society's primitivist impulse - from the Fred Harvey Company's guided tours of Indian pueblos supposedly untouched by modern life to enthnographic descriptions of the Hopi Snake dance as alien and exotic. She shows how magazines touted the preindustrial simplicity of Indian artisanal occupations and how Mary Austin's 1923 book, The American Rhythm, urged poets to emulate the cadences of Native American song and dance. Contending that Native Americans of the Southwest still are seen primarily as living relics, Dilworth describes the ways in which they have resisted cultural colonialism. She concludes with a consideration of two contemporary artists who, by infusing their works with history and complexity, are recasting the practices and politics of primitivism.
Contents: 1. Representing the Hopi Snake Dance. Textualizing the Snake Dance. The Snake Dance in Ethnographic Exhibits. The Snake Dance as a Tourist Attraction. Cultural Incorporation of the Snake Dance. The Snake Dance as a Spectacle -- 2. Discovering Indians in Fred Harvey's Southwest. The Rise of the Fred Harvey Company. The Spectale of Fred Harvey's Southwest. Appearing and Disappearing in Fred Harvey's Southwest. The Machinery of the Tourist Spectacle. The Touristic Exchange. Re-presenting the Touristic Encounter -- 3. The Spectacle of Indian Artisanal Labor. The Development of Markets for Indian Crafts. The Collector-Connoisseur. The Indian Artisan. Imagining Primitive Labor. Artisanal Craft as a Tool of Reform. Limitations of the Artisan Stereotype -- 4. Modernism, Primitivism, and the American Rhythm. Modernist Primitivism. Cultural Nationalism and Regionalism. Primitivism as a Cultural Cure. The Indian and Aesthetic Authenticity. The Semiotics of Playing Indian.