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Anasazi Cylander Jars – circa 1000.  These were made about 800 years ago in 4 corners region where Arizona meets New Mexico, Colorado and Utah.  The Anasazi were farmers who built villages but also had multistory apartments and roads to connect them.  These jars are from one of these "apartment" complexes at Pueblo Bonito, in Chaco Canyon.  These jars were made with coils of clay that were layered over a flat base and then given a smooth surface by hand or with the use of a scraper.  The smoothed surface was covered with a slip (a thin mixture of clay and water) and painted with a mineral-based color.  When the pot was dry, it was fired, or baked, in a kiln to harden it and set the decoration.  We don’t know what they were used for.  

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Sikyátki Bowl, c. 1350–1700  About 200 years later, by the mid-1300s, Sikyátki potters from about 125 miles west of Chaco Canyon, had developed a decorative style that was strikingly different from the symmetry and basic geometric designs of the jars found at Pueblo Bonito.  While Anasazi pots have a background of white slip (watery clay), the background of Sikyátki pottery is bare clay and decorated in a wider range of colors. Firing was done at higher temperatures, made possible by the use of coal.  This also made the pots more durable.  Decorations combine abstract geometric shapes with forms derived from nature: rain clouds, stars, the sun, animals, insects, reptiles, and birds.

The inside of this Sikyátki bowl, has geometric decoration on the exterior, but greater attention is focused on the interior, which contains a reptile type creature.  The creature is mythical because it wears a feather headdress, and its snout and one of its toes are extremely long.  

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Baleen Basket – Carl Toolak circa 1940.  Baleen basketry was developed in the 20th Century by men.  The Inupiat have a long history of hunting whales.  Whales supplied food, fuel, and construction materials, and the Inupiat wasted none of it, including the baleen, a material that men traditionally worked.  Baleen is pliable and resilient, making it ideal for sled runners, bows, rope, and even for fishing line.  This basket also has a decorative Ivory seal in the middle. 

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Edward S. Curtis was a photographer and ethnologist whose work focused on Native Americans of the west.  He received a $75,000 grant from J. P. Morgan to produce a 20 volume set of books and 1500 photographs of Native Americans.  Curtis was given no salary; the money was just to cover fieldwork and expenses.  He traveled and hired a journalist and anthropologist to help write and record Native languages.  What was supposed to take 5 years took more than 20 yrs.

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The woman in this photo is an Eskimo from Nunivak Island, in southwestern Alaska.  It is the second largest island in the Bering Sea and 8th largest island in the United States.  Nunivak Is a permafrost volcanic cone island of arctic tundra, with a current population of just over 200 people.  More than one hundred years ago the population was nearly 800 but an epidemic in the early 1900s wiped out much of the population.  The Nunivak Eskimos live a traditional lifestyle and speak both English and Eskimo. 

She wears a simple, everyday fur parka.  She and her baby are covered in fur and skins.  Interestingly, the baby’s hands are not covered.  Eskimo clothing is the most effective cold weather clothing developed to date.  Women made clothes and footwear from animal skins, especially from caribou, reindeer, and seal.  These were sewn together using needles made from animal bones, walrus ivory, and bird bones and threads made from other animal products, such as sinew.  Clothing tended to be loose fitting.  The word maklak has been borrowed into English as mukluk, as the name for Eskimo skin boots  Maklak means bearded seal – skins used for soles of boots.

One of their most popular forms of the Nunivak art are masks. The masks vary enormously. They are typically made of wood, and painted with few colors. Traditionally the Nunivak masks were carved by men or women, but mainly were carved by the men.  Shamans told the carvers how to make the masks.  Masks ranged in size and could be small three-inch finger masks or maskettes (or dance fans), but also ten-kilo masks hung from the ceiling or carried by several people.  Masks had different purposes.  Some were used to bring luck in hunts.  Over the long winter darkness dances and storytelling took place in the men’s house using these masks.  Most masks were traditionally destroyed after being used.

The artist presents here a picturesque and dramatic scene from the Northwest Native American’s social life. The “potlatch” ceremony, practiced throughout the area, with its accompanying richly carved totem poles, splendidly decorated canoes, and ostentatious insignia and costumes of office and rank was elaborate.  The potlatch ceremony, which combined the giving of lavish gifts with the destruction of property was a way to repay debt and gain social prestige.  It combined a huge and feast with gift offering and a ceremonial burning of goods and property into the Potlatch.  Potlatch means to give away.  It is unlike any ceremony in western society.  The practice was banned by the United States and Canada  because  it was considered wasteful and contrary to “civilzed” values.  Potlatches were performed to mark births, deaths, adoptions, weddings, etc.  Often at these ceremonies people were given specific family rights.  Dances were performed.  Sometimes goods which had been accumulated over years were used to repay debts and others were destroyed.  The status of any given family was raised not by who has the most resources, but by who distributes the most resources. The hosts demonstrate their wealth and prominence through giving away goods.  If the guest did not return 100 percent on the gifts received and destroy even more wealth in a bigger and better bonfire, he and his people lost face and so his 'power' was diminished. 

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Mort Kunstler is an American historical artist.  He got his start as an illustrator in New York and worked for National Geographic where he learned the importance of historical accuracy in his depictions.  He is best known for dramatic scenes.

The recipients of gifts at this festival receive these as loans, which they utilized in their present undertakings.  But after the lapse of several years they must repay them with interest to the giver or to his heir.  Thus the potlatch comes to be considered by the Native Americans as a means of insuring the well-being of their children if they should be left orphans while still young; it is, we might say, his life insurance. 

Only the Haida (hy'-duh^) and a few nearby tribes made totem poles.  These tribes lived along the Pacific Coast in the northwest part of America, where cedar trees grew in abundance.  The branches were removed and the bark was scraped off before the carver began forming animal shapes all over the pole.  Each carving is called a totem.  Some totems tell the story of the origins of the tribe.  Others tell about ancestors.  The carvings were painted using pigments from soft minerals and earth.  Totem poles have always had special meaning to families. The Haida told stories about how the totem animals helped people in the family in the past.  They believed their totem animals protected them when there were in trouble.

The Kwakiutl tribe was of the Northwest coast.  Carved cedar wooden masks were used for several purposes. Sometimes dancer-storytellers wore masks to act out totem stories during special parties.  These masks, like the totem poles, were beautifully carved and brightly painted.  Some of the masks had eyes made of pieces of shell. The Kwakiutl moon masks were flat to suggest the moon and indicated a specific phase of the moon.  Wearing the mask was an honor and they were past down through generations.

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At some time after the arrival of the Spaniards in the Southwest, the Navaho took to the raising of sheep and became herders and stockmen. The women learned weaving and made the Navaho blanket world famous. They also learned silversmithing and produced work of high excellence, for which Pueblo importers came to trade, bargaining in sign language.

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Sand paintings are not something of and for themselves, but they are a part of a performance which continues for a period varying from one to nine days  which is commonly referred to as a “Chant” or a “Sing.” These words simply mean a combination of many ritualistic acts carried out in a fixed order.  They include preparation, purification, performance with and disposal of, materials, all carried out with the greatest of care. Herbal medicine is gathered, used and disposed of.  Prayer sticks, made of reed, decorated with paints accompanied by their prescribed feathers, are prayed over and carefully deposited at places where the gods they invite to the ceremony will not fail to see them.  Each act is accompanied with song.  A
dozen Native American artists worked eight hours to create this colored sand painting for a Navaho disease-curing ceremony in the 1880’s.  The four stick figures represent the guardians of the Navaho crops — corn, beans, tobacco, pumpkins.  Encircling most of the painting is the elongated rainbow ~ whose empty hands was placed the medicine.  After the ceremony, the painting was destroyed.

Kachinas are supernatural spirits who guided the tribes of the Southwest.  For six months of the year, kachinas lived in the "World Below" and came up above ground from the winter solstice to the summer solstice

Kachina dolls were carved out of wood by southwestern tribes such as the Zuni and Hopi.  They were clothed in masks and costumes to look exactly like the men who dressed up as kachina spirits.  These dolls were not playthings.  They were given to the children to teach them to identify the many different kachinas and the parts they played in tribal ceremonies.