How did the Navajo learn silversmithing? While it is thought that the Navajo borrowed the styles of the naja, concha and metal covered bridles from the Plains Indians and early Spanish conquistadores, they learned the techniques of silversmithing from the Spanish and Mexican silverworkers.
Early Indian silversmiths followed the same process that the Mexican blacksmiths used to produce ironwork. It is not known exactly when the Navajo began to work silver but most scholars place the time around 1850. A Mexican silversmith named Nakai Tsosi taught the craft to Atsidi Sani, the first Navajo to learn silversmithing. Tools and silver were scarce in early Northern New Mexico. Therefore, these first Indian silversmiths (mostly men) hammered shapes out of silver primarily using melted down coins. They cut the shapes with a cold chisel, shaped them with a file and decorated them with a file, stamps and occasional rocker-engraving. The year 1868 marks the beginning of what we call the first phase (or classic style) of Southwest Indian jewelry. Today many women are silversmiths.
During the earliest period of silver making (classic period or first phase) the form of silver pieces and also their decoration came to have special symbolic significance. The colors of certain stones, such as turquoise and coral, and the use of four decorative elements in a design became associated with the cardinal directions. (Quadrantal symmetry is a way of describing cardinal orientation or the importance of the four directions.) The cardinal directions are prominent features of Navajo beliefs about the creation of the world and the origin of the Navajo people. Division of the world into quadrants, each associated with a specific mountain on the periphery of Navajo territory, brought order out of chaos and implies a center point at which north-south and east-west axes intersect and which is a part of both axes and all four directions. This center point can be described as a point which goes beyond the limits of all concrete things and dualities and is in perfect harmony and totality. Dualities such as double or paired forms suggested the relationship of earth and sky, hot and cold, material or immaterial. Six elements, for example a row of six stones, echoed the six inner forms of the sacred mountains. In this way a variety of silver objects from necklaces and belts to canteens and bridles express a distinctively Navajo art form or style with distinctly Navajo symbols and meaning.
The name for turquoise comes from an old French word meaning "Turkish," because turquoise was originally imported into Europe through Turkey. This miraculous gem of blue and green is technically a hydrated basic phosphate of copper and aluminum (cuprous aluminum phosphate), along with some iron, calcium and silica. The typical scientific formula is CuAl6 (PO4)4 (OH)8 * 5H20. The blue and green colors of turquoise are determined by its copper content. More quantity of copper produces blue while more quantity of iron produces green. Turquoise mines produce a wide variety of turquoise which may vary from dark blue to white in color. Turquoise is a mineral that can be called a fluke of nature. Many geologic events must come together to create just one thin vein of turquoise. It is the product of an incalculable number of chemical and physical processes that must take place in just the right combination and proper environment for over hundreds of thousands - possibly millions - of years. The southwest region of the United States is an ideal environment for turquoise which is generally found at high elevations in arid regions, in copper deposits.
Compared to other gem stones, turquoise is relatively soft. The most porous forms (and therefore low-grade forms) of turquoise are called "chalk." Better quality turquoise is harder. (Because many of the stones are soft, porous and pale, they are today often injected with plastic resins and dyes to produce intensely colored "stabilized" turquoise. This artificial turquoise is made from plastic or from turquoise powder mixed with a plastic binder. Jewelry made of beads or stones crafted from stabilized turquoise have little worth. There is a limited quantity of natural turquoise of good color and hardness that can be cut and polished to a shiny luster and that is highly valued. This is the stone that is used in fine quality Indian jewelry.
Turquoise is found in surrounding rock and extraneous material from the "mother" rock and from other foreign minerals and materials (such as the copper, calcium, iron and silica) become incorporated in the turquoise deposits at an early stage and then permanently enmeshed in the final hardened vein of blue or green stone. This foreign material is called "matrix" and is what makes the turquoise from the Southwestern United States unique. New Mexico's gem-quality turquoise is world renowned.
Turquoise has a variety of meanings for all of the Pueblo Peoples. Turquoise is most often associated with the sky. It has religious significance as an offering and a fetish. It is associated with sacred personages. There are several language groups to which the different Pueblo People belong. Among the Tewa it is called "Turquoise Woman" or "Turquoise Mother." At Zuni Pueblo, turquoise has a male association to the person of Turquoise Boy. It was used as a trade good. It is an important symbol of wealth, a gift between humans and spiritual beings as well as a gift from human to human. It has an association with directions. For the Hopi, Zuni, Keresan, Jemez and Tewa peoples, its association is with the North; however, for the Tiwa peoples of Taos, Picuris, Sandia and Isleta, it relates to the South. Finally, all Pueblo Peoples believe that turquoise has the power to make someone or something attractive or desirable to others in this world or in some other world.
The use of turquoise as a bead strung on cotton, vegetal fibers, sinew or rawhide predates by hundreds of years the use of turquoise with silver. Artifacts from over two hundred prehistoric mines suggest that Native Americans have mined turquoise for close to two thousand years. More than half a million turquoise stones have been found at Pueblo Bonito, one of the Great Houses in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, an Anasazi archeological site. Cerrillos (which is Spanish for "little hills") mines in New Mexico supplied the majority of turquoise before the arrival of the Spanish. Turquoise was most likely traded for parrot feathers and copper bells, two things found in archaeological sites of the Southwest which would not be naturally from the area.
Coral is formed from the hard outer skeletons of tiny animals called polyps. Until about 200 years ago, people thought that coral polyps were plants. In fact, they are related to sea anemones and jelly fish. Most polyps are only about 1/4 inch (5mm) across. Hard corals live in huge colonies and are reef-building. The tiny, one-celled algae that live inside the polyps' bodies help them secrete limestone. This cements the reef together.
Soft corals do not have stony outer skeletons. The stony, cuplike casings built by hard coral polyps protect their soft bodies. The casings are made from chemicals that the polyp extracts from seawater.
Corals grow in an amazing variety of beautiful shapes and patterns, creating fantastic formations. Some look like miniature trees or mushrooms, dinner plates, or feathers. The way a coral grows depends on its species, how it copes with the battering of waves, and the space and sunlight it receives.
Coral is not found in any of the oceans of the Americas. Therefore any coral that is used in necklaces would have come to the Americas through trade after the Spanish Conquistadores arrived in 1521.
Spiny oyster has a color similar to the color of the coral beads found in this necklace. It is found on coastlines of the Americas. Spiny oyster is principally made of calcium and could have been drilled with a sharp stone such as obsidian.
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