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Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest, with a Few Observations by J. Frank (James Frank) Dobie
page 38 of 247 (15%)
instance, with the interdicted crosses between white men and
black women. The Spaniards, on the other hand, crossed in
battalions with the Indians, generating _mestizo_ (mixed-
blooded) nations, of which Mexico is the chief example.

As a result, the English-speaking occupiers of the land have
in general absorbed directly only a minimum of Indian
culture--nothing at all comparable to the Uncle Remus stories
and characters and the spiritual songs and the blues music
from the Negroes. Grandpa still tells how his own grandpa
saved or lost his scalp during a Comanche horse-stealing raid
in the light of the moon; Boy Scouts hunt for Indian
arrowheads; every section of the country has a bluff called
Lovers' Leap, where, according to legend, a pair of forlorn
Indian lovers, or perhaps only one of the pair, dived to
death; the maps all show Caddo Lake, Kiowa Peak, Squaw Creek,
Tehuacana Hills, Nacogdoches town, Cherokee County, Indian
Gap, and many another place name derived from Indian days. All
such contacts with Indian life are exterior. Three forms of
Indian culture are, however, weaving into the life patterns of
America.

(1) The Mexicans have naturally inherited and assimilated
Indian lore about plants, animals, places, all kinds of human
relationships with the land. Through the Mexican medium, with
which he is becoming more sympathetic, the gringo is getting
the ages-old Indian culture.

(2) The Pueblo and Navajo Indians in particular are impressing
their arts, crafts, and ways of life upon special groups of
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