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| Hopi pots on a stand before a hotel |
Hopi Indians are not very well prepared for tourists. They live in
the middle of nowhere in the God-forsaken north-eastern corner of
Arizona, only one tarmac road leads to their reservation. There is
only one little hotel in the whole reservation and only a couple of
shops selling arts and crafts. On a car park in front of the hotel
there is usually also a couple of stands offering handicrafts,
usually katsina dolls and artfully decorated pots. There is also a
small shop with arts and crafts in Old Oraibi, but that is all.
It is very different in Taos or Santa Fe, where half of the shops in
historic centres sell beautifully crafted Indian pots, often real
masterpieces. The Rio Grande Indians correctly recognised the market
and are aware that American tourists have to buy souvenirs wherever
they go. The pots sold in Taos and Santa Fe are not fakes made in
China, they are authentic locally made Indian crafts. Every pueblo in
New Mexico has its own style. For example San Juan pueblo is famous
for black pots decorated with incised black pattern whereas the Zuni
are famous for pots painted in black and white design. The pueblos
from the Rio Grande also make sure the tourists come to them. Taos
Pueblo has been designated Unesco Heritage site, which resulted in a
constant flow of tourists. The Hopi had a similar proposition. The
Bureau of Indian Affairs suggested that Old Oraibi, a village
continually inhabited for more than a thousand years (it is a record
in the States) could be preserved as a monument and a new village of
modern houses would be built nearby for the people to move in. The
Hopi didn't want to listen. Who said that Oraibi is in the middle of
nowhere? For them this is the centre of the world. A village is a
living organism and a sacred place, the guardian spirits come here
when rituals are performed. An idea that old houses should be changed
into a museum is a strange idea of the white man.
In
the Rio Grande pueblos pottery is treated as a separate art genre. In
the old city centres of Taos, Santa Fe and Albuquerque, where the
tourists come, shops are full of big and small pots decorated in
various patterns, typical of each tribe. Very decorative, the pots
have no practical use, they are not glazed inside and water would
leak out of them. They are treated purely as works of art produced
for collectors. This ceramic madness, however, started not on the Rio
Grande, but at the God-forsaken north-eastern corner of Arizona, in
the Hopi country. To be precise – all Pueblo Indians both in the
Rio Grande valley and in Arizona, had been producing exquisite
pottery for thousands of years, but at the end of the 19th
century white traders brought metal pots and the old art of pottery
slowly died out as nobody needed clay pots any more. The process
started earlier by the Rio Grande, which was closer to the cities of
the white man. Transcontinental railway passed through Santa Fe and
one could even go to New York on that. There was no railway in the
Hopi country, there wasn't even a proper road there, it was much more
difficult to reach. There were, however, people who wanted to reach
it despite the difficulties. They were archaeologists, who dug out
ancient ruins and found shreds of pottery there. The styles of
pottery changed over the centuries but among the ruins only shreds
could be found, not the whole beautiful pots. The archaeologists
employed local Indians as manual workers at the excavations and one
of them, Jesse Fawkes who worked in the Hopi country, asked his
workers whether there is a potter somewhere who could make copies of
the ancient pots. One of the workers said that yes, his wife could do
it. The wife's name was Nampeyo.
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| Nampeyo |
She
was born around 1860 in a village of Hano in the Hopi country. She
grew up in a place where two cultures met because inhabitants of Hano
were immigrants there. They came in the 18th
century when after the failure of the great uprising against the
Spanishin the Rio Grande valley. The Spaniards persecuted those
Indians who joined the rebellion and some of those rebels ran away to
live among other tribes. The Hano people were among them. They built
their village on a top of a mesa, just next to two existing Hopi
villages, Sichimovi and Walpi. The Hano people kept their separate
culture and language but geographical closeness resulted in mixed
marriages and a mixing of cultures. Nampeyo is the best example of
this.
In her time nobody made clay pots in the village of Hano any more,
Nampeyo learned the art of pottery from her aunt who lived in Walpi.
She was a keen learner, liked to experiment and was fascinated by the
shreds that her husband sometimes brought from the excavation. She
decorated some of her pots with ancient designs. What she produced
was appreciated by archaeologists who wrote about her in the press.
This, in turn, was noticed by the press, who went all the way to Hano
to meet her. At that time the press were almost always men. Nampeyo
had a lot of charm and this charm influenced what the press wrote
about her. Charm aside, the pots she produced were of the highest
quality. Collectors wanted to buy them for quite a lot of money.
Today her pots sell for thousands of dollars.
As Nampeyo's popularity grew, she was invited to exhibitions in the
great cities in the east. It was a really big world for a simple
village girl. Demand for her pots grew so she taught her daughter and
later the granddaughters how to make them. Today in Hano there is
quite a lot of lady potters, descendants of Nampeyo.
Even on a stand on the car park in front of the only hotel in the
Hopi country one can see echoes of the style of the great artist.
Looking at one of the pots I mentioned her name and the lady seller
was surprised that I know it. Clearly most of the American tourists
who passed this way had no idea. I must admit that I had only known
about it for a couple of days as I had learned about Nampeyo a few
days before in a museum in Phoenix. The lady seller said that she
herself is not from Nampeyo's family but her daughters are, because
her husband is.
I am not a collector. I travel with a backpack in which there is not
much room for souvenirs. This time, however, I decided to acquire a
little pot in the style of the great artist. Wasn't too expensive,
wasn't too big, I could fit it in my backpack. To my surprise when I
bought the pot the lady seller decided to fold her stand and go home.
She decided she had earned enough that day and she doesn't need to
stand there any longer.
When
will these Hopi learn how to run a business? When will they
understand that one needs to want more and more and more, all the
time, without rest?
Don't they realise that if they act like this they will always live
in the God-forsaken corner of Arizona, a a middle of nowhere? Or
maybe they really think this is the centre of the world?
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| Pot made by Nampeyo in the museum in Phoenix |
You will find this article, and many others, in my book "ART ETHNO".
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