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180 Western American Literature available. Adams defines “Big Four’ (p. 13) in one way only: As the four crewman’s unions. He ignores both of the more customary usages — the nickname for the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis Railway and the collective label for Messrs. Huntington, Stanford, Crocker, and Hopkins, who founded the Central Pacific. Adams usually handles technological terms correctly. When he is off the mark, however, he is off it completely. He says that “Blowing down” a steam locomotive is done “To reduce the water in a locomotive boiler when it is carrying too much steam.” The term actually refers to the flushing out of dissolved solids that accumulate in the bottom of the boiler in order to prevent foaming. In the davs of steam, few practices were as essential as this, especially in the West with its often alkaline waters. Such lapses fortunately are rare. We can wish, however, that Adams and his publisher had either given his subject the space it requires or had reduced its scope to fit the space available. G. FRANKLIN ACKERMAN Voyageurs National Park ESKIMO ART: Tradition and Innovation in North Alaska. By Dorothy Jean Ray. (Seattle and London: .University of Washington Press, 1977. 298 pages, $29.95.) Indian Artists at Work. By Ulli Steltzer. (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1977. 163 pages, $14.95.) North American native arts are prospering today as never before; from the silver and turquoise workers of the American southwest to the soapstone carvers and printmakers of the Northwest Territories, native artists are riding a wave of interest that has been growing rapidly for the past two decades. My own interest, however, has been tempered in recent years by the persistent and troublesome notion that the work presupposes a cultural legitimacy now dead for three and four generations. One question surfaces repeatedly: how can an art form remain vital once severed from its original purposes? Two books published in 1977 by the University of Washington Press look at specific groups of native artists and, though the approaches differ greatly, both provide interesting cerebral fodder for anyone interested in art (and cultural) adaptation. By far the weightier of the books is Dorothy Jean Ray’s ESKIMO ART: Tradition and Innovation in North Alaska. Published to coincide with an exhibition at the university’s Henry Art Gallery, the book is the eleventh Reviews 181 volume of the gallery’s eclectic Index of Art in the Pacific Northwest. The book is a well-organized effort, consisting of 69 pages of lucid text and over 300 black-and-white photographs of Eskimo artifacts, artworks and artists. Ray limits her discussion to the arts and crafts of that segment of Alaska stretching from St. Michael to the U.S.-Canada border, describing the traditional art forms and their uses (religious, ceremonial and utilitarian) and then moving on to trace the evolution of the arts from the date of the first encounters with the European world to the present day. What emerges is a sad history, although Ray presents her material with an anthropologist’s objectivity. When Captain James Cook first dropped anchor off Sledge Island in 1778 the art of the Eskimo was so intricately bound with the rituals of everyday life the language contained neither the word “art” nor “artist”; today a multitude of craftspeople churn out whatever the market demands, objects of “ethnic origin” suggested by non-native dealers and which have very little in common with either traditional Eskimo design or materials. The market, obviously, has replaced religion as the primary motivation for the creation of art. The pathos of the situation is revealed when one realizes the market extends its own definition of Eskimo art and the artist, to survive, accepts the alien description of his own culture. Ulli Steltzer’s book, Indian Artists at Work, deals with another group of native artists in a different fashion. A photographer, Steltzer spent a a year travelling through British Columbia photographing Indian artists and recording statements by the artists about their work. In the resulting volume, a coffee-table compilation of some 200 blackand -white photographs and brief accompanying text, we find native artists who are seemingly...

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