no beauty's ever free II

INDIANS! (as they were obviously ubiquitously known then). indians were such a draw to these new american tourists that not only were they featured in so many of the railway posters, but locomotives, no, whole trains were named 'chief,' and destinations such as 'indian days,' and 'indian-detour tours,' were created by santa fe, canadian pacific, southern pacific, great northern, and other railroads to draw the sight-see-ers on.

the artwork, you may agree, is often stunning; railway posters seem to have the ability to maintain mystery and romance wherever they occur. indians were what? an unknown culture? or the tokens of one? 'wild' animals in zoo-parks? simple-minded crafters of pots and baskets? it's hard to know.

at the same time as they were being used as lures to well-to-do gentlemen and their wives and children, they focused another attention on their very existence:

The first European Americans to encounter the western interior tribes were generally fur traders and trappers. There were also Jesuit missionaries active in the Northern Tier. As United States expansion reached into the American West, settler and miner migrants came into increasing conflict with the Great Basin, Great Plains, and other Western tribes. These were complex nomadic cultures based on horse culture and seasonal bison hunting. They carried out strong resistance to United States incursions in the decades after the American Civil War, in a series of Indian Wars, which were frequent up until the 1890s, but continued into the 20th century.

The transcontinental railroad brought more non-Natives into tribal land in the west. Over time, the U.S. forced a series of treaties and land cessions by the tribes, and established reservations for them in many western states. U.S. agents encouraged Native Americans to adopt European-style farming and similar pursuits, but European-American agricultural technology of the time was inadequate for often dry reservation lands. In 1924, Native Americans who were not already U.S. citizens were granted citizenship by Congress.

In 1906, 300 Ute under the leadership of Red Cap left the White River Reservation in Colorado headed for South Dakota. The Ute were upset about the allotment of their reservation and increase of non-Indian settlers. In South Dakota, they hoped to form an alliance with the Lakota and with the Crow to stop the allotment program. The army stopped the group and detained them as prisoners of war at Fort Meade, South Dakota. The army was unconcerned that courts had ruled that Indians could not be detained or imprisoned without a trial. Nor was the army concerned that no actual state of war existed at the time. The army viewed the Ute as potential enemy combatants and felt that it had the right to hold them in prison indefinitely.

While the army often ignored due process of law when dealing with Indians, there are cases in which the army did attempt to see due process carried out. In 1915, a Mexican sheepherder was murdered in Colorado and popular opinion assumed that he had been killed by an Indian. The court of public opinion blamed Tsenegar, a Ute Indian, for the death. Subsequently a posse of 26 cowboys crossed into Utah and surrounded the Ute camp of Old Polk. Their supposed goal was to capture Tsenegar who was rumored to be in Old Polk's group. The cowboys, who were drunk at the time, began firing into the camp with no warning. The Indians had no idea who these men were nor why they were shooting at them. The Indian response was to fire back to distract the cowboys and then to slip away. When the smoked cleared, there were dead on both sides and the Ute had vanished.

In 1913 there was a rebellion among the Navajo which came to be known as the Beautiful Mountain Uprising. The uprising started when the Indian agent learned that Hatot'cli-yazzie, the son of Ba-Joshii, had three wives in spite of the agent's edict against plural marriages. Fed by information from the Indian agent, local newspapers painted a picture of the entire Navajo nation in revolt with a horrible massacre impending. To avert this massacre and save the non-Indians, according to the newspaper accounts, military action was needed. In response, the army sent in the cavalry with 261 men and officers to put down the Navajo "hostiles" who were under the leadership of Ba-Joshii. The Navajo force numbered only twelve men.

source: native american roots more background: "indians"

la vie en rose

The passion for mountains and mountaineering has a long tradition among Japanese printmakers. The ascetic Hiroshi Yoshida is maybe the most famous one. He was a passionate mountaineer and world traveler who had portrayed his personal experience in many woodblock prints of mountain landscapes.

During his short stop-over in Europe Hiroshi Yoshida had made sketches for two famous prints of mountain views in Switzerland - Mt. Matterhorn at daylight and a second version at night time - both made in 1925.

His son Toshi Yoshida had inherited his father's love for the mountains. Also quite a few of the sosaku hanga artists were avid trekkers like the arduous Azechi Umetaro or the less ambitious hiker Masao Maeda ("The finest panoramas are down in the middle heights.").

Passionate hikers and mountaineers know that each mountain region has its own individual character. A mountain landscape in Nepal is different from Switzerland. And the mountains in South Tyrol have their own specific personality. 1

かたつぶりそろそろ登れ富士の山
katatsuburi soro-soro nobore fuji no yama

little snail
inch by inch, climb
Mount Fuji!

The highest and most sacred of Japan's peaks, Mount Fuji, was the home of the great kami-sama or gods. Buddhists believed it was a mystical gateway between earth and heaven. Climbing it was a sacred pilgrimage. However, not everyone could make the climb. Therefore, imitation Mount Fujis (small, sculpted hills) were built at various temples so that one could reap spiritual benefit by climbing them. Issa's snail is climbing one of these pseudo-mountains. 2

it fascinates me, how if an artist is about to represent a mountain range, they will often focus on the same peak. as in the grand canyon. here is the astonishing 'horn' of the 'matter' (meadow) -- it's unmistakable. then there's the awfully similar 'yari' (spear) gataga (mountain). and the two-peaked landmark in the jungfraubahn (young woman's way).

and how similar are the styles of the western posters and the eastern prints.
were the aims of both as similar as they might seem? as we've seen, many of the prints coming out of japan, particularly during the meiji era, were 'selling' a japan of the past. and the travel posters were often selling similar dreams as well.

it has been said, Switzerland doesn’t exist but is rather an invention of the Swiss graphic designers. 4 as long as dreams sell better than reality, i guess the world will continue to be rendered for us in rose.

wear some flowers in your hair

okay, yes. it's california. i tried to find like literature on florida but it wasn't much there. my guess is because the push for population and tourists was earlier, so you're still getting a bit of the "victorian" look in the illustrations. and also, possibly, because the florida population tends latin as california tends asian. in any case, here we are again, drenched in beauty.

the more i look into this stuff the more i realize there's this other effect to the japonisme exposure that i haven't discussed enough, and that may be among the most important effects of all.

that is that the line between "artist" and "illustrator" has all but disappeared. toulouse- lautrec: which is he? steinlen? bonnard? names far less

familiar to us now, men who became "california impressionists": maurice logan, harold von schmidt (both pictured here), pedro de lemos, and so many more; these men (the ones i mention here) and others did magazine covers, and ads, and travel brochures, and fine oils and woodblock prints. they were the generation of students of the first wave of california impressionists (wendt, braun), who were the students of the first impres- sionists; and they were the teachers of the next generation, the artists painting and teaching today.

and the same is true, the line was gone, in the works, those tremendously influential works, of the japanese.