The Humanistic Tradition, Book 5 Romanticism, Realism, and the Nineteenth-Century World

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CHAPTER 27 The Romantic View of Nature 23

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of the northwestern tribes: “The Earth does not belong
to us; we belong to the earth... We did not weave the web
of life; we are merely a strand in it. Whatever we do to
the web, we do to ourselves.” Following ancestral tradition,
Native Americans looked upon living things—plants,
animals, and human beings—as sacred parts of an all-
embracing, spiritually charged environment. Their arts,
which for the most part served religious and communal pur-
poses, reflect their need, at the same time, to protect the
balance between these natural forces, and to take spiritual
advantage of their transformative and healing powers.
Woodcarving, pottery, basket-weaving, beadwork embroi-
dery, sand painting, and other Native American crafts
make significant use of natural imagery, but do so in ways
that are profoundly different from the artistic enterprises of
European and American Romantics: whereas Western
artists perceived nature from “without,” as a source of moral
and aesthetic inspiration, Native American artists per-
ceived nature from “within,” as a power to be harnessed and
respected. A polychrome water jar from the Zuni Pueblos of
the American Southwest is treated as a living being whose
spirit or breath may escape from the bowl by means of an

opening in the path (the double line) painted around the

vessel’s shoulder (Figure 27.17). In the body of the deer

represented on the bowl, a “spirit” line links heart and

mouth—a convention that derives from prehistoric pottery

decoration.

Not the panoramic landscape, but the natural forces and

living creatures immediate to that landscape, preoccupied

native artists. As Catlin observed while living with the

Plains Indians, natural forms embellished all ceremonial

objects, one of the most important of which was the carved

stone pipe. Pipes were often presented as gifts to seal tribal

alliances. They were believed to be charged with supernat-

ural power, and pipe-smoking—both public and private—

was a sacred act. Among the Plains Indians, pipes were

considered “activated” when the stem (symbolic of male

power) was joined to the bowl (symbolic of the maternal

earth). Often produced jointly by men and women, Plains

pipes were carved out of catlinite, a red-colored stone quar-

ried in southwestern Minnesota (so named because Catlin

was the first to bring east samples of this distinctive miner-

al). Legend identified the stone variously as the flesh of a

mythical tribal people or the congealed blood of all dead

Figure 27.16 GEORGE CATLIN, The

White Cloud, Head Chief of the Iowas,

1844–1845. Oil on canvas, 28  227 ⁄ 8 in.

Catlin considered the Native Americans

of the northern plains, the frontier

between the United States and Canada,

the least corrupted by contact with other

Americans. In paintings introduced to

Europeans, he presented them as

“nature’s sovereign nobility.”