De Grazia: The Man and the Myths

9: Appreciating the Indians

77 9 Appreciating the Indians He walked in beauty, his Indian friends said of him This grizzled son of Arizona Whose spirit soared on the cloudtips And whose heart knew the earthbound creatures —Arizona Highways 1 de Grazia loved To Travel over Indian land, whether Navajo, Apache, Taos Pueblo, Hopi, Yaqui, Cocopah, or Papago (now Tohono O’odham). He took off on his first drive around the Navajo Reservation in the late 1930s. The trip exposed him to a new world, one “remote . . . from mine.” Bumping along roads that were no more than wagon tracks in the sand in his beat-up “junk heap,” at first he thought the reservation must have no people living on it. Then he began to spot Navajo children tending sheep, a lone Navajo rider, a Navajo trading post. Eventually he discovered that he could learn about the people best at the trading posts. He spent hours in them, at places so remote they didn’t appear on maps. While the trading posts served as social centers, De Grazia soon realized that Navajos traveled long distances to them primarily to trade their wool for necessities.2 He became captivated by the Navajos’ soft voices, their dignified and gracious approach to each other, and their manner of shaking hands. He noticed that they didn’t shake hands like they were pumping water, as white men do; instead their handshakes were a soft brushing of the hands, without any show of strength. chapTer 9 78 He made many trips to the Navajo Reservation, sometimes as an artist, others just to enjoy the tranquility and peace that he needed. Then he began to see the land he loved changing—and not for the better. “Now the wagon tracks I first knew are hard-surfaced highways —sleek and slick and fast. The pickup truck is replacing the wagon. This they tell me is a sign of progress. It is a way of life, which I have found simple and noble at the same time, [that is] disappearing.”3 On one trip De Grazia painted nothing but wagons because he feared they would be replaced by a different kind of wagon—a station wagon. He sought to capture the spirit of the wagons. “Funny how the wagon has come to mean so much to me,” he said. “With Indians and horses, with no Indians, overcrowded with many Indians. I love the wagon. The Indian loved it too, when he learned from the early Americans to use it.”4 De Grazia traveled to other reservations as well. He felt at home on them. “I never felt that I was better than an Indian. And I’m sure an Indian never felt he was better than me.”5 Long trips to witness tribal ceremonies became common. He often traveled six or seven hundred miles to see an Indian fiesta, only to find it had been postponed. “That’s why I have to charge so much for my paintings,” he joked.6 He would study the Indians, taking care not to offend them. The corn dances, deer dances, hoop dances, footraces, chicken pulls, rabbit hunts, and greased pole contests all showed up in some of his best paintings.7 “I try to convey an instant freeze,” he said, “a moment, capture a thought or mood in color. But I always try to go beyond the intellect. I want the onlooker to participate—to be part of the painting. It should be an emotional experience.”8 As writer Adina Wingate pointed out, “He knows and understands the Indians and the land he chooses to depict, and in this there is a deep abiding respect for the cultural heritage and the ceremony that embellishes their lives.”9 As do the Indians, De Grazia believed that human beings and nature should be in harmony. Once in 1967 a young Indian woman with three teenaged stepchildren and five younger children of her own spotted an older man dressed liked a prospector at a Veterans Day parade on the San Carlos Apache Reservation. She didn’t recognize him, but she took note of him because of the way he dressed and the fact that he drove Appreciating the Indians 79 a white Jeep with four new tires, which meant he had cash. The woman discovered that the Apaches knew the stranger as the Man with Strange-colored Eyes (they were blue-green). He passed out bags...