West by Southwest Ernie Bulow

from April 2018 Gallup Journey Magazine

by Gallup Journey

Event Calendar

WORKING WHITE METAL

WARNING: MAY CAUSE BLINDNESS

SIMEON SCHWEMBERGER TOOK THIS PICTURE NEAR ST. MICHAELS EARLY IN THE LAST CENTURY. IT ILLUSTRATES THE MOST PRIMITIVE CONDITIONS. HE IS PULLING A SILVER SLUG FROM A CRUDE SANDSTONE MOLD. THE COALS ARE ON THE ROCKS TO THE RIGHT.

THIS PHOTOGRAPH OF CHIEF MANUELITO’S FAMILY CLEARLY SHOWS HANDMADE BEADS AND CAST NAJAS IN 1864.

When Dutch scholar Dr. H. F. C. Ten Kate, Jr. visited Zuni in 1885, he stayed with Cushing, who had recently acquired a house, a wife, a sister-inlaw and a black servant, and he penned this observation: “The art of the silversmith has long been known to the Zunis, and the Navahos have undoubtedly learned much from them.” (2004:5)

He didn’t know he was supposed to put it the other way around. He further writes of Governor Pino’s silverwork: “Palawahtiwa is one of the busiest silversmiths in the pueblo, and the rings, armbands, buttons and belts which he makes are examples of fine and tasteful work.”

It is very difficult to understand why writers on the subject of Native jewelry work so very hard to take the art away from them. Mexicans taught Navajos, Navajos taught Zunis, or maybe that was also Mexicans, and white men taught Hopis just before WWII. Honestly, it’s in the book—books.

Most authorities still maintain that Navajos did not have silversmithing until after the Long Walk when they came home in 1868. But what about the photograph of Manuelito’s family taken when they arrived at Fort Sumner four years earlier. The women are wearing necklaces of silver beads with classic Navajo najas as pendants.

John Adair reports a story about the most famous early Zuni silversmith Juan Deleosa [De Dios] that goes, “Juan learned the technique of casting from a Navajo,” but goes on to say, that he didn’t see the part about applying mold release (greasing the stone) so his pieces stuck to the rock. He probably got the story from Juan himself, but there are two elements that make no sense. Why was he learning from a Navajo when casting was already being done in the village, and how could he have missed an important step if he was watching his tutor make a casting?

Perhaps only tufa casting was being noted, since the earliest molds at Zuni were made of clay and bound with metal. A military man staying with Cushing in 1882 noted clay molds laying about. One of these was collected from a man named Lanyade.

John Adair collected an odd story told by Lanyade who claimed that around 1872 a Navajo named Atsidi Chon [Ugly Smith] came to Zuni, picked him out because he spoke Navajo [at least a third of the tribe probably did at that time], and lived with him for a year, teaching him the art. Atsidi Chon left the village driving a large herd of horses and sheep. So at that time, Lanyade claimed he was the only man in Zuni who made jewelry.

Regardless of where the knowledge of crafting silver into jewelry came from, those early days are easily documented when it comes to the working of the metal. It was difficult, demanding, didn’t pay all that well, and it had some really bad consequences: back problems, lung disease, and blindness. These were effects of working in poorly ventilated spaces, sitting on the ground. The Zunis were a little better off because they lived in larger houses and could, and did, work standing up. The drawing in Cushing’s memoir does show his

WILLIAM PENNINGTON WAS AN EARLY PHOTOGRAPHER IN THE FOUR CORNERS AREA AND THIS STAGED PHOTO SHOWS A SILVER ARTIST WITH A MORE ATTRACTIVE SET UP. NOTE THE LARGE NUMBER OF STAMPS TO THE RIGHT OF THE ANVIL.

Ernie’s Selfie

West by Southwest

by Ernie Bulow

THE ZUNI POTTERY MOLD WAS COLLECTED IN 1904, BUT IT IS PROBABLY MUCH OLDER. THE METAL COLLAR SUGGESTS IT WAS MEANT TO BE USED MANY TIMES. THESE PUNCHES WERE FOUND IN THE AREA OF FT. WINGATE, DATING BACK MORE THAN 100 YEARS. IRON WAS PRECIOUS SO THEY ARE VERY SHORT.

friend Balwatewa sitting on the ground.

Soldering is the basis of most modern Native jewelry. Once that is mastered the other parts come naturally to a gifted smith. Imagination. But no matter how inspired those early smiths were, they had to literally put their faces in the fire to solder. Coals are hot, but they burn hotter when blown upon. For a whole generation Navajo and Zuni silver workers used a blowpipe not much more than a foot long, put their faces down to the coals and blew.

Many Navajos accepted this outcome as an occupational hazard and learned to be medicine men, an occupation they could follow when they went blind.

Oh, I forgot to mention, there was no flux, which makes the solder flow, and no solder either. Small filings mixed with spit were strategically placed. Of course, the piece would melt just seconds after the filings so the artist had to be good. But his face was still in the hot coals.

The bellows was an important step. A second person could pump the bellows while the smith crafted the silver and nobody got burned. Once a bellows was introduced, many artists simply made their own. One Zuni apparently didn’t read the instructions because he made his bellows with two chambers and that made it possible to keep a steady stream of air on the piece, rather than gusts.

It is impossible to tell how primitive and workintensive early silver working was. Virtually all tools had to be made from scratch or adapted from other items. I have two very early punches that came from the vicinity of Fort Wingate. They are both very short (the shortest is just one inch) due to the scarcity of iron in the first days, and they are crudely made. These aren’t stamps in the usual sense, but they allowed the smith to dome up the silver plate from the back side to create simple designs.

Anvils were very expensive and many were created from pieces of railroad track. Some were made from other iron pieces and with lots of work they could be made to look like anvils, but much smaller. Virtually all stamps were made by hand, but small files were also almost impossible to lay hands on. Hammers were repurposed from carpentry or some other trade like shoe making. Cobbler’s hammers are often seen in early pictures.

Because of the tool problem, elders tell me that many early smiths worked together or even in shared shops. And, they were cheek-by-jowl as the saying goes, sitting close together so they could reach tools.

It was common to carve channels into the top of the anvil so that small bars could be made in three basic forms: V-shape, half round, and, more rarely, square. No processed silver was available so coins were melted and laboriously turned into plate, wire, and bezel as needed.

When the United Indian Trader’s Association was created in the middle of the last century, one of their goals was to keep authenticity in Indian jewelry work so they demanded that pieces were made by hammering out slugs for plate and drawing silver wire from scratch. That didn’t work out too well.

Some truly magnificent pieces were created with these primitive tools and techniques.

THE BLOWPIPE IS ABOUT EIGHTEEN INCHES LONG, ROLLED FROM SOME HAMMERED DOWN COPPER. THE MOUTHPIECE IS FROM A BULLET CASING. THE FINGER RING MADE IT A LITTLE EASIER TO CONTROL AND PROBABLY KEPT THE FINGER FROM GETTING BURNED.