Apache Round Dance

In his mural series, Apache
Round Dance, the Chiricahua Apache artist Allan Houser composed two scenes of
dancers on the east wall of the eighth-floor penthouse at the Department of the
Interior building. One painting shows five women, including one with a baby
swaddled on her back, dancing around baskets filled with bread and meat. In the
other composition, twelve men also dance the Apache Round Dance. Houser noted that the dance “lasts until about
twelve at night then lunch is served of Indian bread and boiled beef or sheep.”
In this mural, Houser chose to deviate from painting only the traditional dress
of the Chiricahua Apache, which was expected by the Section of Fine Arts.
Instead, he dressed a few of his male dancers in 1930s contemporary clothing, including
jeans with rolled cuffs and shoes instead of moccasins.

Allan Houser, or Haozous, was commissioned in
1939 to create a series of murals at the new Department of the Interior
building in Washington, D.C. He was one of four Native American artists who
painted 2,200 feet of murals for the penthouse, which served as the employee
lounge. Zia Pueblo artist Velino Herrera painted the north corridor, and
Potawatomi artist Woody Crumbo covered the south corridor. In the main room,
the walls were divided between Houser and Navajo painter Gerald Nailor. The
Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, insisted on commissioning artwork by
Native American artists. Because of this mandate, the Section of Fine Arts
invited Herrera, Crumbo, Houser, and Nailor to participate in the penthouse
project and contacted two Kiowa artists, James Auchiah and Stephen Mopope, to
paint murals for the cafeteria.