1937 sarcasm: "Obviously, from this picture they were riding along naked and the Indians scalped them for indecency." ....

On October 7, 1937, John Collier, commissioner of Indian affairs, commented on the mural, by literally making fun of it and it's depiction of the nude women being pillaged by Indians. 

"That's the craziest thing I ever saw," he said. "There could not be any fact to this." 

and

"It starts out being a slander against the pioneer women, as I view it. Obviously, from this picture they were riding along naked and the Indians scalped them for indecency." ....

and

"The presumption might be the Indians were so shocked by this party of nude ladies with some gentlemen riding across the desert in a large bus that they scalped them." 

Collier also pointed out that stage coaches that carried the mail, which is what this mural is supposed to depict, generally carried only 4 to 6 people, while this one had at least 15. Source: 1937, Oct 8. Albuquerque Journal.

          And responding to Frank Mechau's "historic fact" that is to justify the scene - the capture of three New Mexico women by Indians and how they were later rescued naked, in a snowstorm, he adds:

"The girls were supposed to have been herding sheep when found and rescued unclothed. 

No one could herd sheep unclothed in a snow storm in New Mexico 

and not be dead in a short time from cold." 

Collier's response made me literally LOL. No joke.

And it's about to get even better because Mechau is going to defend himself, yet again.

Frank Mechau 

1937, Oct 14. Albuquerque Journal

            ARTIST DEFENDS MURAL AGAINST COLLIER ATTACK   

                              - Indian Stage Coach Painting is Explained - 

          Colorado Springs, Co. Oct 13 - Artist Frank Mechau, asserting he did not "bear down on history" as strongly as he might have, defended ... his Indian stage coach raid mural - which includes three nude women - against a critical attack by Indian Commissioner John Collier.              
          Mechau, apparently amused by the criticism, intimated Collier may know his redskins but is on less ground in the fields of arts analysis and history.  [What an ass.]
         Collier last week dubbed the mural, in the Washington DC post office building, "the craziest thing I ever saw."
          Mechau, at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center where he is teaching painting, said: "I can easily translate the remark to read in my favor.  [ that line totally cracks me up.]

          "It seems to me the Commissioner of Indian affairs has been somewhat loose in his approach."

          The mural, entitled "Dangers of the Mail," was interpreted by Collier to depict Indians scalping the nude women after pillaging a stage coach.

           Mechau took a different view. "They are only being roughly handled," he said. 

          "No artist ever cared or wished to be considered an archaeologist or ethnologist," the youthful Colorado-born painted explained. 

"My intention was to create an imaginative reconstruction of a massacre into a pattern of forms simplified and arranged and intensified into plastic inevitability."  

Here... let me translate that for you: 

"I used artistic and historical license to fictionalize a massacre that looks pretty in a mural because I believe this type of thing did and has happened, and it probably looked like this."   

3. So, to add to his list of excuses from my previous post, he said, Oct 14, 1937 that he created an "imaginative reconstruction of a massacre" but on Dec 1, 1935 he said that he "had done a great deal of research to ensure all of the details were historically accurate." And when the mural was unveiled in 1937, he said it was "justified by historical facts" of a real event. 

4. Is, of course, his totally insane comment that Commissioner saw the images as scalping, while his interpretation was that the women were "only being roughly handled." What do you think? 

Next: Manchu is liar.

And then... how this story has worked itself into a modern-day censorship debate.

1937, Oct 8. Albuquerque Journal. 

1937, Oct 8. The Daily Capital News