A Taos Pueblo Indian, blanketed in colorful splendor, enjoying a moment of shade, evokes for the viewer what it must have been like to live at Taos Pueblo a couple hundred years ago before the intrusion of the hustle and bustle of the newcomers.

The magnificent manner in which the artist filled the canvas with a colorful cottonwood tree in its fall splendor, illustrates how small humans are in the overall scale of the land. The fall colors of the tree and hillside and the cleanliness of the land bring to mind the Natives' respect for Mother Nature-something lost in the 20th century's disposable lifestyle.

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Pottery making by the Tohono O'odham women is a part-time effort as there is no significant market for it as there is for New Mexico pueblo pottery.    Part of the reason is that the few potters mostly do not speak English but only speak their native language.  Another reason is that most potters do not seek out buyers but wait for buyers to find them.

Effigy vessels, such as this, particularly ones made with a slot for deposits of coins, were made for sale to non-Indians.  The outlets for such wares are the trading posts close to the reservation and the occasional Indian dealer who visits the reservation.  Black-on-red wares are not evident in traditional pottery of the tribe before the mid-1800s so it is suspected that it was a style developed to sell to tourists and not for use by the natives.

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The Jicarilla Apache are known to have had contact with Plains Indians at some point in their history. They made raids on the Plains Indians but always returned to their Mountain home.  They went on buffalo hunts and raids for horses and lived in teepees covered with skin or cloth, and they made parfleches like those of the Plains Indians.

They also had contacts with Puebloan peoples and is where they learned their agricultural knowledge and possibly learned pueblo basketry techniques.  Yet, they were and are Apache and their lifestyle adheres closely with that of Apache tribes.

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Although Arthur W. Hall specialized in etchings and dry point in his earlier career he was always adept at sketching and painting. He was greatly influenced by years spent in Europe as well as extensive travels in the United States. As an artist he found the scenery and light in Northern New Mexico too good to pass up and in 1942 chose New Mexico as his home. With the exception of a brief period spent in Arizona he would remain here until his passing in 1981.

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It has been said that Tony Abeyta paints landscapes from his emotional feelings.  He does not portray them as actual locations but as an emotional experience one derives from earth meeting sky, color predominating, rain clouds intermingling with blue sky, trees and plants responding to wind and memories returning of past experiences.  It is with this emotion that he painted this scene of a pair of small adobe buildings nestled among Chamisa and Cottonwood trees at the base of a mountain with rain falling in copious amounts from beautiful puffy white clouds.  It is almost a dream home settlement.

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According to information published by the noted expert on historic Pueblo pottery, Frank Harlow, pottery production declined considerably at San Ildefonso Pueblo until, by 1830, its output was limited to large storage jars and a few smaller jars.  Families at San Ildefonso traded food and other items to Nambe Pueblo potters in exchange for pottery needed for their use.  This continued until around 1880, at which time pottery production at San Ildefonso underwent a revitalization sparked by the arrival of tourists on the newly instituted the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway cross-country train.  The new pottery being produced was designated as San Ildefonso Polychrome with a beginning date of 1880 and an end date that is yet to be determined. 

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This ring consists of a beautiful turquoise stone with a chocolate brown matrix set in a triangular shaped twisted wire bezel. The split shank is hand stamped. The Southwest Indian Jewelry ring is unsigned and in very good condition. 

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This sterling silver spoon has a stamp design on the handle that is typical of Navajo stamp work from the 1920-1930 period.  It is not stamped with the name of a maker, which is not unusual for that period. 

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Carl Von Hassler specialized in painting scenes of Northern New Mexico villages, specifically selecting a single homestead in any of the four seasons.  In this painting, he selected an adobe structure with a steeple nestled among cottonwood trees with their leaves turning yellow at the beginning of the fall season.  The church or possibly school house has a pitched roof with painted tin as its cover.  The other buildings are flat-roof adobe structures. 

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The Diné are a people who have added much beauty to their world and ours. Beauty is a quality they particularly appreciate; it is a repeated theme in their songs, ceremonies and in their rugs and jewelry.

The Diné lifestyle and arts are those of a nomadic. They depend heavily on the horse and lavish their creative talents in weavings and silverwork on them. Perhaps there is some correlation in living with nature that sparks their creativity.

In the early twentieth century, banks were non-existent on the Navajo Reservation. As a result, the Navajo tended to invest their wealth into jewelry and if they needed money, they could pawn the jewelry at the local trading post. One popular form of jewelry that is distinctly Navajo is the concha belt.

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It is known that Maria and Julian Martinez, after their marriage in 1904, became known as the best pottery couple in the pueblo, but this might not have happened had another couple from San Ildefonso not moved to Cochiti Pueblo in 1905.  That couple, Martina Vigil Montoya (1856-1916) and her husband Florentino Montoya (1858-1918), were the finest potters from there from as early as the 1880s.  They were masters at creating magnificent Polychrome jars.  Martina had learned pottery making from her mother, Toña Peña Vigil, who also was a very talented potter.  Florentino had studied the designs of Toña's pottery and adapted his style on hers. 

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Alice Seely is an amazing woman and an amazing artist.  She had a rewarding young life living in Santa Fe near Canyon Road and Garcia Street with her parents in a John Gaw Meem adobe home.  The family was well off financially.  Her family heritage is mixed Indian, Spanish and Anglo as were many Santa Fe residents of the time.  Her paternal grandparents lived in a small Spanish village in Northern New Mexico and were descended from Pueblo and Comanche Indians.  Her biological father was a New Mexico muralist and landscape painter.  Her step father was Navajo artist Narciso Abeyta (Ha-So-De), father of artist Tony Abeyta.  Alice is a painter, jeweler, and amateur horticulturist, raising hundreds of Iris on her farm in Ruidoso, New Mexico. 

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Rarely are we able to find pottery sculptures by Elizabeth Abeyta, Navajo artist and daughter of acclaimed painter Narciso Abeyta, and sister of Navajo artist Tony Abeyta.   Her sculptures are rarely seen on the market since her untimely death in 2006.

This elegant piece depicts a seated Pueblo Koshare clown leaning back slightly with legs spread out, eyes closed, and arms outspread.  He holds a Mudhead Katsina doll in each hand, has one tied around his neck, wears a hieshe necklace and has leather straps on his ankles and wrists.  Around his neck is a leather strap that holds a water canteen.  On his head he wears the customary clown headdress, normally with horns of untanned sheepskin that are traditionally stuffed with heavy grass and tasseled at the tips with crinkled cornhusk strips.  His arms and legs are painted in black stripes as would be on a real Koshare. 

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It is most interesting to see a painting of this subject matter by Tony Abeyta, as much of his earlier work was devoted to Navajo religious or ceremonial subjects, particularly involving the Yei and Yeibichai Navajo supernatural beings.  This painting can be interpreted as representing the Virgin Mary - mother of Jesus.

Many paintings of the various representation of Mary-Our Lady of Guadalupe, Nuestra Senora de la Conception, and others-have Mary standing on a crescent moon, a symbol of Islam, a symbol that has been carried historically on the flags of many Muslim armies throughout history. That the moon beneath her feet has at times taken the shape of the crescent serves as a reminder of her intercessions against Islam.  She is connected to the Spanish Reconquista and their ultimate defeat of the centuries-long Islamic invasion of their homeland.  1P5-1Peter5 website

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The Cochiti Pueblo painting illustrates a farmer having opened the sluice gate so water flows to his fields.  A young boy kneels nearby, apparently playing rather than assisting.  The painting is quite detailed with hills in the background, foliage in the foreground, water in the Acequia, birds flying overhead and outlines of clouds.  Quite an accomplishment for a high school student.

The painting is signed in lower center Johnnie Quintana and dated 1957.  It has recently been framed with acid-free materials and placed back in the original frame which appears to be an Indian School handmade frame.

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Helen Hardin, from the very beginning of her career, was at the cutting edge of Indian-influenced art. Her art, though obviously drawing on her Indian heritage and tradition, was very much in the mainstream of modern aesthetics. This fine acrylic painting on artist board does not reflect a date. It is a simple drawing of a fish but a work exhibiting exceptional drafting skills and superlative technical rendering. It is quite exceptional and striking, as the work of Helen Hardin tends to be, with a true sense of the complexities and intricacies involved in the creation of such a work. 

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Yei are the Holy People of the Diné who are represented in sand paintings. They are both female and male and they are pictured with masks. Female Yei are represented with square or rectangular frontal masks and male are represented with a rounded mask that covers the whole head.

There has always been a strict rule that sand paintings be destroyed before sunset and never produced in permanent form. It is not surprising, then, that there was an uproar among the Diné when the first rugs were made depicting Yei Holy People. It is believed that the first ones were woven around 1880 although they were not generally seen until after 1900. By 1920, they were being woven throughout the Navajo Reservation.

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This San Juan Pueblo artist Ka-Tside Tahn is listed in The Biographical Directory of Native American Painters.  However, there is no other information concerning him except his Tewaname and that he was exhibited at the American Indian Exposition and Congress in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1932.  There is no English name, no birth or death dates or any educational or profession information.  

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Dolly Joe Navasie is best known by her name White Swann. She is a daughter of Eunice Navasie (Fawn) and granddaughter of Poli-Ini who were her mentors. She learned to work with clay from age six and learned to paint pottery by age seventeen. She uses traditional coil method and all natural pigments, polishes her pottery with river stones and fires outdoors using sheep dung for fuel.

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The members of the Yavapai-Apache Nation, a sovereign Native American tribe from the Verde Valley, Arizona, have two culturally distinct backgrounds and speak two indigenous languages. The Yavapai originate from Yuman-speaking peoples known as the Pai and the Apache descend from an Athapaskan background similar to other Apache groups to the East.

Originally, the Yavapai and Apache tribes were separate and distinct tribes who coexisted peacefully for several hundred years. They have existed as one tribal nation since 1934. The Yavapai-Apache Tribal reservation is located at Camp Verde, about 90 miles north of Phoenix and 50 miles south of Flagstaff, along Interstate 17.

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