sonating the buffalo, the third with bow
and arrow in hand, doubtless the hunter, and two women representing
the mother buffalo, furnish the ensemble. Aside from an occasional
note of red in girdles and minor trappings, with a softening touch of
green in the pine branches in their hands, the adjustment of hue is
essentially one of the black and white, one of the most difficult
harmonies in esthetic scales the painter encounters in the making of a
picture, the most difficult of all probably, by reason of its limited
range and the economic severity of color. It calls for nothing short
of the finest perception of nuance, and it is the redman of America
who knows with an almost flawless eye the natural harmonies of the
life that surrounds him. He has for so long decorated his body with
the hues of the earth that he has grown to be a part of them. He is a
living embodiment in color of various tonal characteristics of the
landscape around him. He knows the harmonic value of a bark or a hide,
or a bit of broken earth, and of the natural unpolluted coloring to be
drawn out of various types of vegetable matter at his disposal. Even
if he resorts to our present-day store ribbons and cheap trinkets for
accessories, he does it with a view to creating the appearance of
racial ensemble. He is one of the essential decorators of the world. A
look at the totem poles and the prayer robes of the Indians of Alaska
will convince you of that.

In the buffalo dance, then, you perceive the redman's fine knowledge
of color relations, of the harmonizing of buffalo skins, of white
buckskins painted with most expressively simple designs symbolizing
the various earth identities, and the accompanying ornamentation of
strings of shells and other odd bits having a black or a grey and
white lustre. You get an adjusted relation of white which traverses
the complete scale of color possibility in monochrome. The two men
representing the buffalo, with buffalo heads covering their heads and
faces from view, down to their breasts, their bodies to the waist
painted black, no sign of pencillings visible to relieve the austerity
of intention, legs painted black and white, with cuffs of skunk's fur
round the ankles to represent the death mask symbol, relieving the
edges of the buckskin moccasins--in all this you have the notes that
are necessary for the color balance of the idea of solemnity
presented to the eye. You find even the white starlike splashes here
a