Native American Art

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Tipi Painting

Cone-shaped tents called tipis (also spelled tepees) were constructed of wooden poles covered with buffalo hides, which women prepared and sewed together with sinew. Prominent families or individuals might treat their tipi as a surface on which men could paint their military exploits or record supernatural experiences gained through dreams or visions. Each painting was unique, but figures in paintings were typically flat, simplified, and shown in profile. Some men rode horses in these images or listed their successes in battle through drawings of stacked guns or other weapons in long rows. In visionary images, men represented their helping spirits, often thunderbirds and eagles, which were sometimes accompanied by powerful bolts of lightning.

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Clothing and Adornment

Images like those painted on tipis also adorned robes of buffalo hide and elaborate shirts worn by high-ranking men in Plains tribes. These garments might be quilled and beaded as well, in collaboration with a female artist. Men also painted these personal images on their shields and shield covers. In subject matter and linear style, these images recall rock art made in the region hundreds of years earlier.

Traditionally, men and women made different types of art. Representational, relatively naturalistic paintings recorded the experiences of men, whereas the creation of abstract, geometric designs in paint, quillwork, and beads belonged to women. Plains women acquired porcupine quills and quillwork techniques from native women in the Northeast. They also wrapped quills around the long stems of pipes, along with feathers, bird skins, and other items. The pipe stems were then inserted into carved stone pipe bowls. Quills in carefully conceived patterns also adorned clothing, moccasins, bags, tipi liners, and horse gear. Some women claimed that ideas for their most creative arrangements of quills came to them in dreams.

The first glass beads reached the Plains by around 1790. They were relatively large and opaque. Brought to the area on horseback, they were called pony beads, although some people said they got their name because a pound of the beads could be traded for a horse. Pony beads had almost completely replaced quills by about 1840. At that time, smaller “seed beads,” were imported from Italy. More regular in shape, seed beads made it easier to create even, balanced patterns. After World War I (1914-1918), Czechoslovakian glass beads replaced Italian beads. Some native groups developed distinctive beadwork styles. The Western Sioux, for instance, used characteristic thin lines and forked elements on a solid background. The Eastern Sioux beaded with curved lines and floral elements. The Crow produced heavily beaded garments with large diamonds shapes, triangles, and other geometric designs in pinks, lavenders, yellows, blues, and greens often bordered in white.

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After about 1900 and relocation on reservations, many native women increased their production of heavily beaded works. They no longer needed to keep their burdens lightweight for a semi-nomadic way of life. Many nonnative collectors of beaded works preferred richly decorated pieces, and women were aware of the tastes of their customers. Marketing these artworks successfully was crucial to income because it was difficult to farm on reservations and other work was hard to find.

Women’s societies honored women for artistic achievement. Prayers and ceremonies accompanied certain acts of decoration, which were considered equivalent to the acts of bravery that brought men honor in warfare. By the 1920s, traditional beadwork was in decline, although some horse tack (saddles, bridles, and other equipment) was still produced for use on holidays and on other public occasions. Today, beading and tailoring are popular again for the creation of elaborate items of traditional-style clothing worn at festivals and dance events called powwows.

Manufactured fabrics became an alternative to hides in the late 19th century, as soldiers, traders, and settlers brought these materials to the Plains. Nonnative people also brought ink and paper with them, and Plains men used ledger books (bound books meant for accounts) in which to make line drawings. Their drawings recorded traditional practices as well as a world that was changing rapidly around them.

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Arts of the Southwest

The Southwest, including New Mexico, Arizona, and southern Colorado and Utah, was the home of various native groups with different origins and histories. They include the Pueblo people, who probably descend from the prehistoric Anasazi; the people known today as the Mogollon or Mimbres; and the ancestors of the Pima and Papago, who are called the Hohokam by archaeologists. Apache and Navajo people arrived in the Southwest relatively late from an earlier homeland in western Canada.

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Pottery

Anasazi women produced remarkable pottery during the prehistoric period. The most numerous examples have geometric designs painted in black on a white background. Mimbres people made white bowls shaped like smooth hemispheres and painted with black lines. Their images range from geometric designs to animals and humans in what looks like the representation of a miniature world. Are the human figures engaged in ritual activities or do they represent legendary figures? No one today knows. Some of the animals are familiar—sheep, fish, and reptiles—but others consist of animal features in unusual combinations and probably represent mythological beings. These bowls are found in burials, placed over the faces of the deceased. Scholars have noted a long-standing Pueblo belief that the sky is a similar dome that arches above the earth. Each bowl had a small hole at its base that might have been considered a passage to the spirit world. The hole also may have referred to distant Pueblo ancestors who were said to have emerged from a hole in the ground to begin their lives on Earth.

During the historical period Pueblo people constructed pottery by hand by stacking coils of clay, smoothing the surface of the clay, and painting the pot with slip (a thin mixture of clay and water) before firing. Pottery types vary from village to village. Women from Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico paint delicate and intricate geometric designs on pots that are made of a fine, lightweight white clay. Potters of the San Ildefonso Pueblo, also in New Mexico, specialize in heavy black on black ware, in which matte black designs appear on a shiny black background, although they also produce works in red. Many of these pots feature images of water serpents, important in legendary histories of the area, or patterns based on feather forms. Although the history of pottery making in a village seems to dictate current styles, anthropologists have found that many Pueblo potters stress the individuality of their designs within those traditions. Many women claim that some of their most original ideas come to them in dreams.

In the early 20th century some talented potters, such as Maria and Julian Martinez of San Ildefonso, became known as artists by signing their names to their works, encouraged by enthusiastic tourists and collectors who wished to purchase their pieces. Maria constructed the pots that Julian painted. Hopi potter Nampeyo became known for designs that are based on ancient potsherds (pottery fragments) recovered from Sikyatki, site of an ancient Hopi village near her pueblo. Nampeyo’s Sikyatki-style pots have characteristic geometric and curved forms that seem to refer to the wings and beaks of birds. Native peoples of the Southwest also are known for their baskets. The shapes, patterns, and weaving styles of these baskets make them recognizable to experts as the work of an artist from a particular native group.

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Kachina Figures

Many works of art are related to the Kachina religions of Pueblo peoples, best known from the traditions of the Hopi and the Zuni. Kachina has several meanings. Kachinas are spirits closely bound to the agricultural cycle of life, death, and rebirth, which helps explain the appearance and disappearance of kachinas according to the seasons. After death, people themselves are said to join the kachinas in the form of rain clouds. Kachinas are also the name given to costumed dancers who in seasonal ceremonies represent the presence of the kachina spirits in Pueblo life. There are hundreds of different kachinas, yet specific mask features, costumes, colors, and other accessories identify the particular kachina associated with a dancer. Finally, the name kachina also applies to the carved, painted, and decorated figures originally made to educate Pueblo children so that they could recognize the different dancers in ceremonies. Since the start of the 20th century, some artists have made kachina figures for nonnative collectors. Some Pueblo people approve of these sales as a way to make a living, whereas others insist that kachinas are a form of religious art and never meant to be playthings.

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