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John White, the English, owner of such an “ironical” surname was the first, great describer of Indian themes; he depicted men, customs, insects and flowers accurately and precisely and in his bookplates we can see a change of standpoint with regard to previous reporters. His journey “pocketbook” of Virginia is an important document, though the subjects are somewhat idealized, but it was the usage of the 16th century's painters idealizing their subjects, either princes or merchants. The advertising goal of the images promoted by the royal customers in order to find settlers was not alien from this idealization. Eagerness of possession – today we speak of eagerness of knowledge – had always animated the Europeans and the geographic “discoveries” embodied its modern, middle class soul. Venetian Ramusio wrote a monumental work in many volumes on navigators, discoveries and travels, and it is still useful reading his descriptions. But a “mass culture” imposed more sensationalism and less erudition very early : behind courageous explorers there were thousands of readers avid of emotions, who followed their deeds comfortably in their slippers! In the 1890s in Italy the Illustrated Journal of the Travels and Adventures on Land and Sea reported facts and chronicles of adventures, while inside there was room for serial novels more adventurous than reality itself. Therefore not only scientists and settlers flooded Indian Country, but also novelists, who generously fed European and American cultural unconscious mind: the West was born this way.

There are Indians of sterling character, the heroes, and Indians broken to pieces, comic clowns, this way the manichean world of the cartoonists roves inventing foregone characters, that is intellectually low priced.

Speaking only of Italy, we remember first a cartoon appeared in 1967, The History of the West, a familiar saga with the American frontier as a background, drawn by Tarquinio, Polese and D'Antonio (who also was the script writer). Tarquinio came from the Buenos Aires graphic school, where he had collaborated with Pratt, Pavone, Faustinelli, Breccia and Ungaro, the giants of the Italian western cartoon. Watanka is a cartoon of 1975 and tells the story of a “new” Indian, seen according to the canons established by Little Big Man and Bury My Heart in Wounded Knee. All the story, and the tribes are fancy, but the episodes are stuffed with real events such as the Battle of Alamo. Interestingly, the “guiding spirit” of the the protagonist is Kate, a white woman he loved, killed by the whites. Kwasind is as fancy as Watanka; it is set in the Great North during the French and Indian wars. Since it is a Latino cartoon the French are the good ones and the British, together with renegade Indians, are the villains. Turok Son of Stone is set in the Indian prehistory, even if the protagonist has an improbable English eponym!

With Wheeling, by the Venetian Hugo Pratt, we enter a very different field, that of the great cartoon. Also set during the colonial wars and the war of independence, it cos Pratt so a great research work that he was invited to give two lectures at the Fort Henry 's Wheeling Club. Sergeant Kirk, published in Argentina in 1953, is another Pratt's bestseller; it is the story of a chivalry sergeant who deserts after been involved in a massacre of Pueblo Indians and joins the Indians.

In the classic tradition of the western movie there are Pecos Bill by De Vita and Papparella (1950) and Red Ryder, Italian translation of the cartoon by Fred Harman published in 1938. Completely different is Red Nostril by Gordon Bess, published in 1968, which pokes fun at the classic western epic.

The popularity of E. S. Curtis's Indians is certainly prodigious, perhaps because his pictures are very near to reality as we have been conditioned and, maybe want, to see it. It is not by chance that, though today nobody puts in doubt the non objectivity of photography and the existence of photographic tricks, a lot of people do not accept to apply these criteria also to Curtis's works. This illusion was fed in some way by Curtis himself, who though of, and advertised, his photographs as science-art, that is a means that gave art poetry to science objectivity.

Curtis's age, from late 18th to early 19th century, was a period when Indian extermination was seen a parable of the Manifest destiny theories, when the positivist stereotypes created the various racial “– nesses” and Indianess among them. It was also the era of the anthropologists eager to record the words and images of the last members of the “vanishing race” and Curtis, who shared the racist prejudices on Indianess and the Vanishing Race, was the best bard of these ideas.

One of his great revolutions was bringing his studio among the Indians and not the Indians to his studio; the other was his choice of not taking pictures of the different cultures, but crating the stereotype of the Indian perceived as “alien” independently from the subject, which becomes indistinct and always confirming the stereotype. In order to depict “his” reality Curtis, by means of clever tricks and retouching, eliminated all the European objects which might contrast with the Untutored Savage he wanted to represent: this way umbrellas and hats disappeared, but neither horses or rifles were erased. If the subject was nor picturesque enough Curtis gave him his studio props such as war shirts, warbonnets and other paraphernalia, indifferent to anthropological truth. His absolute lack in tact made him photograph ceremonies the subjects he paid sometimes reproduced in the wrong way not to violate ceremonial secrets. This way his work may be considered a masterpiece of photographic art as much as Leni Riefenstahl's famous pictorial record of Berlin Olympic Games, and a scientific mystification. Only too late, after many publishing failures, the deaths of his very clever technician Adolf Muhr and his patron P. Morgan, Curtis began to reconsider his ideas about Indianess at the end of his career and his life. The myth he had created had stuck so much that survived his very father's sense of guilt.

The peoples of southwestern Alaska, that used to draw geometrical patterns on ivory, were traditionally the most prolific Inuit graphic painters. They depicted episodes of family life, legendary heroes, animals and guardian spirits engraved on bowls, drums, spoons and other surfaces. These drawings, usually made during feasts and other ceremonial occasions, belonged exclusively to the artist's family.

Painting was a male activity, even if the stories, a family heirloom, belonged both to men and women; therefore men did not let women paint: “If we want the women to do such things, we let them sew the figures on the fur clothes”. A woman developed her artistic talent illustrating stories: the narrator told them drawing pictures in the mud or snow with a “stories' knife”, a scimitar-like tool in ivory, bone, whalebone or wood that a male kin made for a girl. These “stories' knives” have a limited existence and seem to disappear in the 1970s, when women began to use a sharp tool. Their traditional use was limited by taboos: for example, a girl could not use her knife when menstruated lest the river banks might collapse. A drawing was necessary for the story to go on, it was finely drawn and lasted only a few seconds before being destroyed and substituted by the next drawing.

Once carving mask making, painting and sewing were important activities in the Inuit villages; today their importance is limited and more innovative works are made by young educated people. In the south of the country most crafts for sale are made by women, while in the north ivory objects and graphics are produced by men. Recently women have shown a greater artistic freedom in graphics thanks to non governmental traditional graphic programs. An example is the union of a traditionally female activity such as sewing with graphics; in mid-Seventies Inuit women began to produce appliqué cloth paintings, a craft which stresses manual ability more than productivity.

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