Native American Jewelry & More

2009-03-10T07:45:00.000-07:00

Native American Indian Jewelry has been found in excavations of prehistoric ruins. Bead making is an ancient craft. Bead necklaces are often called heishe, from the Santo Domingo word for shell. Seashells are the most common material used for beads. Seashells used in Native American Jewelry are Spiny Oyster Shell, Mother of Pearl, Abalone, Conch and Clam. They have been important trade items in the Southwest for over 1,000 years. Native American Jewelry using silver work is not an ancient art. It was learned from the Mexican Silversmiths in the 1850s. Mexican Silversmiths would trade their Silver Trinkets for cattle from the Navajo. This association would lead the Navajo Blacksmiths to learn the art of Silver making. Navajo sand casting is one of the oldest silver working techniques among the Navajo. The Navajo Indians traded their jewelry with Zuni Indians for livestock. One of the Navajo early silversmiths taught the Zuni the art of silversmithing around 1872. Later a Zuni silversmith taught the Hopi silversmithing around 1890. The Native American Artists never mined the silver used in making their jewelry. Native American Indian Jewelry Styles Native American Indians are known worldwide for their beautiful Turquoise Jewelry. Each Native American Indian Tribe has their own unique style of jewelry making. Although over the years various artists from the Navajo, Zuni, Hopi and Santo Domingo have made jewelry that is not considered a style from their tribe. The Zuni Indian Jewelry techniques include mosaic, channel inlay, cluster, needlepoint and petit point using a variety of stones and shells. The Navajo Indian Jewelry Artists are famous for their Squash Blossom Necklaces. Navajo Jewelry Artists use larger pieces of turquoise, coral and other stones surrounded by distinctive scrolls, beads and leaf patterns made of sterling silver. Navajo's are the largest producers of Native American jewelry. The Hopi Indian Silversmiths use the overlay technique with infrequent use of stones in their jewelry. Making jewelry with the overlay technique involves sawing the design out of one sheet of silver and then overlaying it on a second sheet to which it is then sweated or soldered. The background is oxidized to darken it with the top layer of the jewelry polished. The Santo Domingo Indians have been making bead jewelry since ancient times. They use Seashells, Turquoise, Jet and Coral in their jewelry. Our featured Santo Domingo Artists are members of the Palace of the Governors program located in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They are held to strict standards in making their jewelry such as Heishi beads must be cut, drilled and ground by hand. This is a painstaking process: a single necklace may require the fashioning of hundreds of tiny beads. All of the Native American Indian Tribes use Sterling Silver in their jewelry. Sterling Silver is 92.5 percent silver and 7.5 percent copper. Silver is very soft so copper is added which makes it malleable. The American Southwest is home to the various Native American Indian Tribes that make our beautiful jewelry. The Navajo Indian Nation is located in the northern portion of Arizona and New Mexico. It is the largest reservation. The Hopi Indian Reservation is located in Arizona. The Santo Domingo Pueblo is located in New Mexico. The Zuni pueblo is located in New Mexico. Native American Jewelry making skills are taught from one generation to the next. There are also a variety of schools to learn Native American Jewelry making skills. However, families take pride in continuing the traditions of artist excellence and a sense of pride in themselves and their culture. Hallmarks In the beginning it was enough to know which tribe made the Native American Jewelry. Later Native American Jewelry Artists started marking their jewelry with their initials. The stamps used to mark the jewelry are handed down from one generation to the next so the initials may be their parents or grandparents. Native American Indians from the Navajo and Zuni Tribes make beautiful Jewelry using Turquoise Stones that come from various mines in the American Southwest. Southwest turquoise mines are located in Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. The mines have names and the turquoise is referred to by the name of the mine. An example would be Sleeping Beauty Turquoise. Some mines are still active. Other mines have been closed due to the supply of turquoise being depleted. Some mines were closed due to the discovery of gold. The Sleeping Beauty Turquoise mine is located in Gila County, Arizona. Sleeping Beauty Turquoise is relatively abundant. The turquoise mine produces uniform blue turquoise that is easily matched and used in many styles of Native American Jewelry including Zuni needlepoint and inlay pieces. The Number 8 Turquoise mine is located in Eureka County, Nevada. It was discovered in 1925 and first mined in 1929. The mine was closed due to the discovery of gold in 1976 when the Newton Gold Company claimed the area. It has a personality of its own with golden brown to black distinctive spider web matrix and unique bright powder blue and green background. It is used by Navajo Indians in making a variety of Native American Jewelry. The Boulder Turquoise mine is located in northeast Nevada. Nevada has been an important source of turquoise since prehistoric time. The majority of known deposits lay in a belt that trends north-northeasterly across the central part of Nevada from Mineral and Esmeralda Counties on the south to Elko County on the north. This belt coincides with a zone of strong tectonic activity that occurred in late Debonian and Mississippian times. Host rocks for the deposits are lime stone, shale, chert, intrusive bodies or metamorphosed volcanic and sedimentary rocks. Turquoise normally forms narrow veinlets or small nodules along altered zones in host rock, but on rare occasions large slabs and nodules have been recovered. You can easily identify these narrow veinlets in the Boulder Turquoise surrounded by the host rock. Production from the property has been small due to the limited amount of time allowed to mine due to the remote location and winter weather conditions. The Sunnyside Turquoise mine is located near the town of Tuscaroa in the Tuscaroa mountain range in the northeast part of Nevada. The mine is no longer in operation as it has become part of a gold mining operation and a privately owned ranch. A considerable quantity of Sunnyside Turquoise was shipped from the property for several years in the 70’s to Arizona and New Mexico, where it has become part of the well known turquoise and silver jewelry collection sold by the Native American Indian Tribes in these areas. A spider web matrix of colors ranging from golden brown to black set off the unique color of the stone. Part of the turquoise is fairly dark blue and very hard. A little greenish blue color is also found in a dark jasperiod. Beautiful green and green/blue colors are also found. Turquoise from this mine is rarely seen today. The Dry Creek Turquoise mine is located near Battle Mountain, Nevada. Dry Creek Turquoise is a natural stone and has not been treated with any process to change the color and/or the hardness of the natural material of the stone. To date, no other vein of the Turquoise has been discovered anywhere else other than at Dry Creek and when this vein runs out, that will be the last of it. Because this turquoise is as rare as the sacred buffalo, the Indians call it “Sacred Buffalo Turquoise” So many geological chains of events must synchronize to create just one thin vein of turquoise that the mineral can rightly be envisioned as a fluke of nature. Turquoise is the rare and improbable product of an incalculable number of chemical and physical processes that must take place in the right combination and proper environment over a time span of hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of years. We have listed just a few of the types of Turquoise that are used by the Native Americans in making their beautiful jewelry. We find the information on Turquoise mines fascinating and hope you enjoy it too.

The Navajo reservation is the largest Indian Reservation in the United States and covers parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Most of Southwest Affinity's jewelry is made by Navajo silversmiths that live, work and raise their families on or near the reservation in New Mexico and Arizona. We do feature jewelry made by Cherokee, Zuni and Hopi Indians as well, but for the most part Navajo silversmiths make the jewelry that we carry.
Most Navajo silversmiths come from a long line of silversmiths in their family, for this is a time honored trade that is past down from generation to generation. Many of the artists today, both men and woman, produce jewelry which is better classified as art that is worthy of display in museums.
Personal adornment found in the southwestern area consisting of Arizona and New Mexico is thought to date back to the first half of the 1st millennium AD and consisted of bracelets made from a shell carved in the shape of a frog. Also found were birds and snake motifs in pierced work along with other jewelry made from shells and covered with turquoise mosaics. Evidence shows that as far back as the Archaic period people decorated shells with carvings and/or enamel work. Feathers and turquoise were the materials available to the Native Americans for personal ornamentation until the arrival of the white man.
It is my understanding that sometime around the 16th century the Spaniards came to the southwest and at that time the Mexican people learned how to smith silver from the Spaniards. It is generally believed that the Navajo Indians didn't actually start working silver until after their four year imprisonment at Fort Sumner where they had been taken after their capture by American forces under the command of Christopher (Kit) Carson in 1863-64. It was generally assumed that since they had no silver with them at Fort Sumner that they hadn't started working in silver yet. However, as Raymond Friday Locke in his book The Book of the Navajo points out, "people do not take valuables, such as silver jewelry, to prison with them." It is reported that the Navajo "Captains" wore silver belts in 1795 and then again in 1855, W.W. H. Davis said he saw the Navajos wearing "many valuable belts of silver." So whether they started working silver back in the mid 1800's because they were impressed with the silver buttons that the Mexican soldiers wore on their uniforms (as I have read) or they had been working silver since the 1700's, basically it isn't an ancient art to them. What we do know is that the Navajo are reported to be the first Indians to learn the skill of silversmithing from the Mexicans. A Navajo man named Atsidi Sani or Old Smith apparently learned to work silver from a Mexican after his return from Fort Sumner and then taught this to his sons. Then four years later, Atsidi Chon or Ugly Smith, the first Navajo known to make a conche belt moved to Zuni where he reportedly taught the Zuni Indians the craft of silversmithing. Twenty-seven years later a Hopi Indian named Lanyade learned this skill.
Many things influence the designs used in the Navajo jewelry. The designs seen from other traders from across the Mississippi River, the Spaniards, Mexicans and of course, it was just natural for them to carry their own designs and traditions into the making of their jewelry. There are designs dating thousands of years ago that were found etched on the walls of caves that are being used in jewelry that is made today . . . such as the famous hunched back flute player Kokopelli.
Although the beautiful gem stones are a very important part of the jewelry made by Navajo silversmiths, the Navajo's focus is mostly on the ornate detailed designs made with the silver. Over many generations they have developed their skills, talents and designs into an art form all their own. Many people from all over the world have come to appreciate and love the look of the southwestern jewelry that they handcraft today.
So whether you are interested in the traditional southwestern jewelry pieces of the Navajo people such as bears, eagles, buffalos, turtles, wolfs and other fetishes that represent various meanings to the Native American people or the most modern styles of to days jewelry you have come to the right place. Our silversmiths make something for everyone!