Knifewing Dancer Inlaid Pendant
The Zuni Pueblo is 40 miles south of Gallup, New Mexico. It has been there for around 1400 years. During that time, several villages made up the Pueblo. After the arrival of the Spanish and, more precisely, after the Spanish returned in 1696 following the Great Pueblo Revolt, they condensed into one village.The Zuni were agricultural people who lived along the Zuni River, a tributary of the Colorado River. They were also known for their polychrome pottery, early pieces of which are highly collectible today.
In the mid-1800s, Zuni metal smiths began fashioning jewelry out of copper. Much of it was for their own use, but as the tourists started to come to the Southwest in the late 1800s, much of it was sold in Gallup, the hub of the Native tourist trade.
The Navajo were the first southwest tribe to work with silver and turquoise. In the late 1800s, a Navajo silversmith named Atsidi Chan is credited with teaching a Zuni artist to make jewelry with this new, shiny material and to combine it with the "Sky Blue" stone that had held an important place in Southwest Native culture for centuries.
Navajo turquoise and silver jewelry primarily consisted of heavy, stamped silver, much of it set with turquoise stones. My dad explained, "If the design was based on the silver, it was probably Navajo. If it was based on the stones, it was probably Zuni." It was a pretty basic explanation, but essentially true at that time.
The Zuni had a real advantage over the Navajo in their ability to grind stones and shape them and obtain shells, coral, jet, and other materials because of their proximity to Gallup. They lived in homes, much as the Anasazi culture had centuries before. They had next-door neighbors, and they lived their lives in one community. The Navajo lived separately from other families in their traditional hogans. They were more isolated and traveled in the summers to better graze for their sheep. They couldn't carry the grinding wheels, anvils, and other tools that the Zuni were able to keep in their homes.
I don't want to say that Zuni jewelry was more sophisticated, as I don't think that is true. Navajo designs were beautiful, just made under different conditions and with different tools. But Zuni jewelry was more detailed.
Initially, the silversmiths from the village arranged stones in patterns set on silver. As time went on, the stones were more precisely shaped. Then the Zuni began creating mosaic patterns, which differ from inlaid jewelry. To inlay material, multiple openings in a silver design surround the material. In mosaic jewelry, the stones, turquoise, jet, coral, shells, and other materials are cut to fit next to each other without silver dividers. Many anthropologists believe this type of stonework was first made in the Southwest by the Hohokam people of Southern Arizona. That culture lasted from about 300 AD to 1500 AD.
I don't know if that is true, but one day I got a call from the Mesa Verde National Park superintendent, Bob Heyder. He said, "I have something I think you will find interesting. Can you come over to the Park?"
Well, how do you think I answered? An hour later, I met him at the old museum storage building. He told me this story: "Years ago, one of the Navajo workers on a road we were building found a pot with a lid secured by beeswax that a bulldozer had uncovered. It was intact. Navajo people don't want to touch or have anything to do with something that the Anasazi handled. He didn't want to be associated with it, but he knew it might be important, so he buried it under a tree on the side of the road. He retired from the Park recently and came to my office and asked me to come with him. When we got to the tree, he told me, "There is something buried you will want to know about," and he left.
Heyder called the park archeologist, and they uncovered the pot. Upon opening, it revealed a rounded sea shell, about 3 inches in diameter, inlaid in the mosaic style, with rows of turquoise ground down into triangular shapes. Interlocking rows of mica cut the same way laid next to it. There was also shell and other materials. The material was attached to the shell with pine pitch, and two holes were drilled in the hinge of the shell. In the pot, under the shell, was a long strand of "string" made with bark and rolled together with beeswax. And there were hundreds of small shell beads, rolled to a round shape and drilled. Someone had spent a long time making this necklace but never finished it.
Superintendent Heyder thought the person who buried it may have been part of the migration to the Rio Grande in the 1400s, and they had no way to carry it. It also told him that the maker planned to return someday. Perhaps when these people left Mesa Verde, they initially viewed it as a temporary move until the weather changed or the climate warmed.
I don't know, but this necklace made me realize that Pueblo people have made mosaic jewelry for a long time! A museum remodel is underway at the National Park, and I hope the necklace will be on display when it is finished.
The necklace I want to share with you today is a 1950s-era mosaic necklace by an unknown Zuni artist that depicts the Knifewing Dancer. This God is a Sky deity whose wings and tail feathers are made of obsidian knives. He is the subject and hero of many Zuni legends. According to an early anthropologist, Frank Hamilton Cushing, who lived with the Zuni in the 1880s, he was likely the primary War God of the Zuni.
The individual pieces of turquoise, coral, jet, mother of pearl, and spiny oyster shell are set on a background of exquisitely detailed silverwork. The silver beads are handmade. It is about 70 years old, and I don't believe I've ever seen one better. As time went on, the Zuni put more and more detail into their inlay and mosaic work. I understand that and if you can do it, why not? Contemporary Zuni jewelry is in a class by itself, but this powerful and beautiful necklace exemplifies elegant simplicity.
