Life — January 18, 1923 — page 11: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Analysis of Life Magazine Page 9 **The Cartoon:** The illustration depicts a Native American chief on horseback with an elaborate feathered headdress, speaking to a Native American woman standing beside him. The caption reads: "Navajo Square: Say! We're very near out of Navajo blankets. Chief: That's all right. I've wired the factory in New Jersey for a gross." **The Satire:** This cartoon mocks the commercialization and inauthenticity of Native American crafts. The joke's premise is absurd: a supposedly traditional chief ordering mass-produced "Navajo" blankets from a New Jersey factory rather than having them handmade. This satirizes both the appropriation of Native American cultural products and the irony of "authentic" indigenous goods actually being factory-manufactured imitations sold to tourists—a common early-20th-century practice.