Southwestern Jewelry

Native artists in the American Southwest have been making jewelry in various forms for thousands of years. Much of it, though, would not be recognizable as what we think of today as Southwestern jewelry. The silver and turquoise jewelry that we find so distinctive today, actually originated in the 19 th century.

In the early to mid 1800s, Mexican plateros , or silversmiths, toured the Navajo and Pueblo Indian enclaves in New Mexico and Arizona , teaching the local Indians their craft. By the 1880s, Navajo artists in New Mexico had pioneered the craft of working with silver, turquoise, coral, opal, and onyx to make a stunning new form of Native American Jewelry. They then passed on this new art to craftsmen in the various Pueblo and Zuni Tribes in both New Mexico and Arizona.

This was when the "squash blossom" necklace and pendant—perhaps the most well-known type of Southwestern jewelry piece—first appeared. While the modern squash blossom first appeared in about 1880, the roots of this iconic jewelry piece go back much farther.

The crescent-shaped pendant of the squash blossom necklace is most likely derived from the iron ornaments that were worn on the horse bridles of Spanish conquistadores in the 16 th and 17 th centuries. These ornaments were often worn by Native Americans after being traded or captured from the Spanish. Ownership of these items, which the Indians called a najahe or naja , became a matter of pride, and over the years, they became used in various ceremonials. Once the use of silver by the Navajo became popular, it was inevitable that the silver necklace would become used to display the naja , creating what we now know as the squash blossom necklace.

Another distinctive southwestern jewelry item is the concho or concha belt, which is a series of decorated metal ovals, bound into a belt by a strip of leather.

This jewelry item also originates from the contacts that Southwestern Indians had with outsiders. Indeed, the name itself derives from the Spanish word concha , which means "shell". The origin of the concho belt isn't fully known, but the design probably comes from the oval hair ornaments worn by the plains Indians. The decoration of the silver ovals probably began as reproductions of Spanish and Moorish leather stamps observed as decorations on the leather harnesses of the conquistadores . The first modern concho belts appeared during the Basque Redondo period of Navajo history in the 1860s. As Navajo artists developed more sophisticated silversmithing techniques, such as soldering, the concho decorations became more elaborate.

In its early stages, Southwestern jewelry consisted mainly of hammered silver. Often, the silver itself wasn't mined, but hammered from existing US or Mexican silver coins. Local residents would also commission a work from a native artist, and provide him with silver candlesticks, teapots, or silverware to use in creating the work. The Navajo preferred to use Mexican coins for silversmithing, though, because of the higher purity of those coins, compared to US coins or sterling silverware.

By 1872, the Navajo silversmith Atsidi Chon taught his close friend Lanyade, a Zuni Indian, the craft. Lanyade, in turn, brought the craft to his fellow Zunis, who were already skilled metalworkers in copper, bass and iron. Lanyade also taught the art of working silver to first Hopi silversmith, Sikyatala, at the Hopi First Mesa at Sichomovi. As the skill of silversmithing spread like wildfire through the Navajo, Pueblo, Hopi, and Zuni communities, new techniques were continually—and quickly—learned. Craftsmen soon mastered the skills of soldering, and the use of silver dies. In the space of about 40 years, the craft of silversmithing among the Indians of the American Southwest went from the crude hammering of coins to a sophisticated and complex creative art.