Historical Account of Art Commission Among Indians

BURBANK AMONG THE INDIANS
by E. A. Burbank and Ernest Royce
Caxton Printers, Calwell, Idaho; $5

To anthropologists and artists, Burbank is known as the foremost living painter of American Indians. To members of the 128 tribes who were subjects of his portraits, he is still remembered as "Many-brush's." This account of his wandering commission from the Field Columbian Museum at the close of the last century recaptures, as his paintings preserve, much that is forever lost in the lives and habits of the "vanishing Americans. Even 45 years ago, when Burbank sought the famous and fierce Sioux Chief Rain-in-the-Face steadfastly declined to don war paint and feathers in place of the blue policeman's uniform with which he impressing his followers.

But much remained that the wheels of the white man's civilization has obliterated in the intervening decades. Burbank, now well past his 80th landmark and a long-time resident of San Francisco, talked to No Flesh, who remembered Custer's "last stand" and drew the map of the battle in the dirt with a stick, for the artist Repainted the last of the Panamints, of whom only 12 remained hidden away in the hills near Death Valley.

Because Burbank was interested in people as well as paint, and observed them with sympathy and understanding, his reminiscences are, warmly human. He takes up many a cudgel against our prejudicial misunderstanding of Indian nature. Many of us may not have been Indian tribes in California alone, all of whom Burbank visited - and none of whom, he insists, should properly be called diggers."

1945-01-07
Oakland Tribune
Page 2C

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