Taos is the northernmost of the Pueblos, and consequently became the “buffer state” between the fierce Apaches and the no less warlike plains tribes. Warrior bands from either side, returning from a raid into the other’s country, were sure to fall upon the inoffensive Pueblos of Taos, either to remove the sting of defeat or to increase the glory of victory. As a result the Indians of Taos became the most warlike of the Pueblo tribes, and when the Mokis (mo´-ki) of northern Arizona, long before the coming of the Spaniards under Coronado in 1640, found even their rocky mesa tops to be insufficient protection against the marauding Navajos (nav´-a-ho) and Apaches, it was to Taos they sent for aid. Taos planted a colony on a mesa top near them and called it Tewa (tay´-wah). This colony exists today, and speaks the Taos language, not that of its Moki neighbors. But for all that the barbaric chant of the happy worker in the cornfields, or at evening the low flute note of the love call springs more easily to his lips than the harsh war cry; for the Taos Indian’s heart is in his fields and his home tucked away in a canyon of the Sangre de Christo (sahn´-gray day kris´-to) Mountains not far from the Rio Grande in northern New Mexico. Mr. Couse has followed the Indians in their hunts through the mountains they loved so well. He has listened to the call of the flute in some mountain glade or the player’s prayer to the god of the waters beside some rushing stream. He has learned the Pueblos’ ways of thought and action, and has recorded much of it on canvas. Living in such close touch with the Pueblos, gaining and holding their faith and confidence, watching with deep understanding the growth of his models from boyhood to manhood, he has come as close to the spirit of the Indian as white man ever can. PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR. VOL. 3. No. 9. SERIAL No. 85 COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC. [Illustration: FROM THE PAINTING IN THE COLLECTION OF DR WALTER B. JAMES COURTESY KNOEDLER & CO. THE SILENCE BROKEN BY GEORGE DE F. BRUSH] “THE SILENCE BROKEN,” by George de Forest Brush, which pictures the poetry of the primitive Indian nature, is the subject of one of the intaglio-gravure pictures illustrating “Painters of Western Life.” GEORGE DE FOREST BRUSH Monograph Number Five in The Mentor Reading Course Mr. Brush is known as a painter of other subjects than those to be found in the Far West. His portraits have great distinction. It is, however, as one of the painters of the Great West that he is considered here, and in that field of art he ranks among the very first.