Another review of "Legacy and Legend"

The Image of the American Indians at the Huntington LibraryThe most important artists that represented the American Indians, either after seeing them first hand or according to various sources (when imagination and myth became all powerful), were European or at least European trained. They really knew little about the Indians, so the images were both Romantic and dramatical. As new technologies for copying and reproducing made the works cheaper, the artists tried to offer the public the unusual of Indian culture: distinct clothing and weaponry, rituals, hunts. The life of the Indians was exotic, strange, pagan and at the same time fascinating.

These representations are still powerful, many of these changing very little over time. The men are still depicted as hunters and warriors, women are hardly seen and on the whole the Indians seem to be all blood thirsty and fanatically opposed to the White man.