Recent Hopi Pigements II

Weather: Very cold Thursday morning, then rain yesterday in the night and early this morning; later the temperature dropped and snow fell.

What’s blooming: Tansy, purple asters; globe willows turning yellow; next year’s buds visible on peach.

Animal sightings: Mice trying to get into house; chickadees.

Weekly update: Alexander Stephen was told the yellow ochre the Hopi used for prayer sticks and their bodies in the 1890s came from the base of a pool under a spring in Grand Canyon near the salt deposits. A trip to the salt lands was part of male initiation activities. The initiated also made other trips west when necessary.

Men sometimes mixed the yellow pigment with water that had boiled squash.

Women used rabbit bush flowers for yellow for their baskets. Stephen saw Ericameria nauseosa used by men associated with one kiva. They boiled the flowers with fibrous alunogen or sandy gypsum. Both minerals were found on mesa cliffs in the region; the first is found near coal deposits.

Black could come from several sources, but Stephen observed, coal, charcoal, soot and corn smut were not interchangeable. They were "used separately for different occasions." To get black for weaving, men mixed seeds from sunflower plants they cultivated with roasted piñon gum and boiled sumac twigs.

For baskets, Whiting says women used Helianthus petiolaris seeds and purple corn for deep purples, and darkened them with piñon gum. Stephen saw men use purple corn with the greasy, salty clay used to cook potatoes. They strained the dyed water through sumac berries. Black and purple could both be used to represent Above.

Red was the most variable, as it had been in the earlier murals at Awátovi. As mentioned in the post for 28 June 2009 on Maltese Cross, red fades without the right alloy or mordant. It took centuries for European glass makers to produce a decent red.

Whiting said there was no satisfactory, natural source for basketry. At best, a pink could be produced from a winged pigweed, Cycloloma atriplicifolium. Men sometimes used white corn meal with an aniline dye on the body of a Kachina dancer.

Hematite still was used, usually mixed with white corn meal or bean meal. Stephen reported some came from Shushtuban Tukwi, a mountain some 15 to 20 miles southwest of Walpi. They also took some pigment from the ruins of Kautaktipu in the foothills of the western valley. He observed there was "a great deal of iron ochre and selenite" gypsum mixed in the shale near the coal deposits.

Stephen was told red was the color of warriors. Its ritual import no doubt dated back before the drought of the late 1200s, when ceramics were black, white and red. In addition to the usual red ochres, the Hopi had two special reds.

One was a glistening, red, sky stone applied to prayer sticks at the winter solstice in 1892. Stephen thought the shiny hematite might have had a meteoric origin, but was told it came from a mining town north of San Carlos, which, by road today, lies 244 miles away in Apache territory to the south. The Captain Jack claim contains specularite and magnetite in limestone with evidence of past mining activity.

The other was vermillion, which both women and young men used to adorn themselves. It had attracted the interest of the Spanish, who thought it was cinnabar. The mercuric sulphide was critical to processing silver ore. They asked so many questions, Stephen was told the pigment came to be called Spanish red, Kas’til shü’ta. Natives no longer gave details about it.

When Americans penetrated the west after the discovery of silver in Colorado, in 1864, they too searched for mercury. Jacob Vernon Hamblin was a Mormon who settled in Kanab, Utah, in 1869. From there, he and his son, Lyman, explored the Colorado River and proselytized the Navajo.

Lyman was given a sample of the red pigment by the Pai Utes, who had received it from the Shivwits Utes who lived north of the Canyon. He told an aide to John Wesley Powell, who was exploring the area in the 1870s. It looked so much like cinnabar, Frederick Dellenbaugh tracked the source to a cave in Grand Canyon "in a side gulch about three thousand feet down the side of the Canyon, and two thousand feet above the river."

The Hopi reservation was created in 1882, that of the Havasupai in Grand Canyon in 1880. The new boundaries and the privatization of land between, no doubt, altered the ways the Hopi could travel outside their prescribed area. That change, in turn, probably was altering relationships between the two groups in the 1890s.

At the time Stephen was in Arizona, the Hopi were trading with the Havasupai. They traveled west to Cataract in the fall for buckskins. Stephen Hirst says, the Havasupai came east in February to exchange "baskets, buckskins, red paint, mescal, corn, salt, and shells" for "jewelry, blankets, pottery and horses." Their red was believed to have magical properties and was traded far to the east.

The vermillion-colored pigment probably came from a cave in Diamond Creek Canyon. George Billingsley noted, when that red claystone was mixed with deer tallow, it had protective properties against sunburn. An assay ordered by Dellenbaugh showed it was an "iron ochre," but the "greasiest, most penetrating stuff I ever saw."

White was taken for granted. Kaolin or white clay mixed with sand or gypsum was used on men’s bodies and as an undercoating on wood, as it has been centuries before on polychrome pottery. It wasn’t mentioned for weaving or basketry. Even if bleaching were possible, light colors weren’t practical.

The Hopi use of color does recognize the difference between the sacred and the profane, as it recognizes the differences between ceremonial blue and the colors found in nature.

Notes:
Billingsley, George H. "Mining Activity in the Grand Canyon Area, Arizona," in D. P. Elston, G. H. Billingsley, and R. A. Young, Geology of Grand Canyon, Northern Arizona (With Colorado River Guides): Lee Ferry to Pierce Ferry, Arizona, 1989.

Dellenbaugh, Frederick Samuel. "Indian Red Paint," Masterkey 7:85-87:May 1933; quoted with additional comments in Watson Smith, Kiva Mural Decorations at Awatovi and Kawaika-a, 1952.

Hirst, Stephen. I Am the Grand Canyon: The Story of the Havasupai People, 2006.

Peterson, Jocelyn A. and Mark H. Hibpshman. Status of Mineral Resource Information for the San Carlos Indian Reservation, Arizona, 1981.

Stephen, Alexander. Notebooks, 1882-1894, edited as Hopi Journal, 1936, by Elsie Clews Parsons.

Whiting, Alfred F. Ethnobotany of the Hopi (1939).

Photographs: Local uses of pigments on Española shop signs painted directly on stucco; buildings with other surfaces have applied signs.

1. Boomerang thrift shop, Riverside Drive, Anna Dillane, owner; wisteria vine climbs the corner of the building and spreads along the roof; sign with store name is attached to the wall.

2. Same as #1; at the base of the wall, flamingos wander in the grass.

3. Hollywood Theater, Riverside Drive; mural dramatizing the business covers the front and entrance side of a converted house.

4. Los Compadres car wash, Chama-Los Alamos Highway. Paintings of a car being washed were on the west (street) and north sides; the name was painted on the south. After the business closed this summer, the walls were painted white.

5. Jessica’s Fashions, Riverside Drive, Andres Gallegos, contact. Someone added details to this sign and painted another on the front; the store was open a week ago Friday. Everything had been painted over last Sunday morning when I went to take a more recent picture.

6. Another Man’s Treasure thrift shop, Cook’s Bridge Road, Amanda Sena, owner. If a building is not actively being used, the paintings of a closed business may remain. This had been a day care center. When the current thrift shop opened, the owner painted her sign over the previous name and left the rest of the day care pictures. Most are from Winnie the Pooh; one is of Goofy.

7. The Water Store, Riverside Drive, Dyna Padilla, owner; small sign signifying the nature of the products sold.

8. Baila Conmigo dance studio, Chama-Los Alamos Highway, Juana Maria Duarte Ontiveros, instructor; detail with name exploits hopes.

9. Saints and Sinners bar and package liquor store, Riverside Drive, Dennis Salazar, owner; detail with name amplifies customer’s self image.

10. The Original Chimayo Trading Post, Riverside Drive, Leo Trujillo, owner; detail with name is Native sun symbol.

11. Pegasus Auto Sales, Riverside Drive. The simplest painted sign is a name with no adornments.

12. Lovin’ Oven doughnut shop, Riverside Drive, Alexandra Stone, contact. Where I grew up in Michigan in the 1950s, merchants did not paint the bricks of their stores. Instead they painted their windows using water-based paints. This one shows a pueblo bake-oven and a pueblo-style house frosted with snow.

Skunkbush

What’s blooming in the area: Pink and white flowering trees, Bradford pear, tulips, mossy phlox, purple mustard, hoary cress, one tansy mustard 3' high, first stickseeds, dandelion; Russian olive leafing; new growth on loco, snakeweed and chamisa; ring muhly and cheat grass growing; globemallow coming up Village ditches were running last Sunday.

What’s blooming in my yard: Cherry, sand cherry, few forsythia flowers, daffodils, puschkinia, hyacinth, vinca; purple lilac buds visible; apple, spirea, rugosa rose and red barberry leafing; peach, apricot and snowball leaf buds expanding; St John’s wort, David phlox, sidalcea, speedwell, salvia, catmints, ladybells and fern-leaf yarrow up; first peony emerging red; new growth on snow-in-summer; red leaves on sea pink, soapworts and beardtongue turning green.

Inside: Brazilian bougainvillea, South African aptenia, kalanchoë and rochea weed.

Animal sightings: Miller moth on house one cold morning, more birds out when I leave for work.

Weather: Cold temperatures some mornings, high afternoon winds end of week, soaking rain yesterday; 13:34 hours of daylight today.

Weekly update: I had great plans for the garage corner, a climbing Iceberg or rose of Sharon, something tall with white blossoms I could see from the kitchen. I’ve settled for a two-foot high volunteer skunkbush with insignificant yellow flowers.

I first noticed a 2" sprout in late May of 2000, with leaves I thought might be from a white-flowered snowberry that had someone hitchhiked from Oakland County, Michigan. They have similarly lobed edges, but these members of the sumac family come in sets of three with the center leaf broken into three parts and mature into a more intense, more leathery green.

Skunkbush seeds have hard shells that don’t allow germination until they’ve been cracked or softened, often by heat or association with charred wood. The Cerro Grande fire raged for several weeks near Los Alamos in early May of that year. Ash-carrying winds may have dropped a scarified seed when they hit my garage.

In arid climates, where willows are scarce, basket weavers learned to use Rhus trilobata branches for both the upright, structural warp and the twining weft. Basket fragments made from skunkbush were found in Jemez Cave that date back more than 2,000 years. One of the remains had been dyed black. Centuries later the Navajo were still mixing the strong-scented leaves and tart scarlet berries with calcinated piñon gum to produce a black dye for baskets.

Basket making in the greater southwestern cultural area has been dated back 10,900 years with pieces found in Fishbone Cave in Nevada. Twined baskets woven between uprights date back to 8000 bc and tighter laced-together coiled baskets to 5000 bc. Before pottery, wicker ware was used for cooking and portable storage, as well as tools like nets.

Kat Anderson believes the mass production of basket work necessary to sustain a gathering society involved two technology complexes, one centered on production and the other on managing raw materials. She’s talked to people in California who remember when weavers burned their wicker sources several years before they were needed to encourage new, straighter, more supple growth that had time to cure before use.

A full size basket requires 675 new shoots. Anderson notes a mature, unmanaged skunkbush patch produces 6 usable shoots, while one that’s been burned produces 102. When seven patches of a suckering plant are required to produce one essential, easily destroyed implement, she believes burning had to have been an essential activity for hunter-gathering populations in the Sierra Nevada.

The farther one looks back into prehistory and the more perishable the artifacts, the more our knowledge is based on scant, scattered, providential discoveries. Vorsila Bohrer has described a split-twig animal figurine dating back 3,500 years made from a single six-foot strand of this sumac species which normally grows about four feet high including the upper branches. She believes the raw material could only have been produced by fire.

John Peabody Harrington found the antiquity of plant lore embedded in language itself. In the early twentieth century Tewa speakers used descriptive, compound names for plants, but they used single words for 36 species that had no known etymology. They were either very old terms, retained from an older language, or borrowed, or both. They included some of the most common plants like corn, pumpkin, yucca, piñon, and kun for skunkbush.

When any part of an integrated material culture is altered, the other parts may be lost or degenerate. Pottery began replacing baskets in the sixth century, the Forest Service started discouraging fires before World War I. By the late nineteenth century, only the Hopi maintained a strong basketry tradition integrated into their clan structure while the Zuñi were buying fine ware made with ko’se o’tsi from Apache craftsmen.

In the early twentieth century Santa Clara and Jemez pueblos were still using skunkbush for baskets, but they had probably forgotten how to manage their raw material. Mature kun growth hardens and was being used for arrow shafts by the Santa Clara and hoe handles by the Jemez. Today, the Jemez complain no wild sumac grows near their pueblo.

Relics of a pre-Pueblo past persist in the Tewa language, in the traditions of the Hopi, and in feral plants still found in prehistoric fields on the Pajarito Plateau. It’s pure chance that the repetition of the primeval interaction between fire and a refractory, fire-adapted plant dropped a skunkbush seed in my yard when one of man’s earliest tools was destroying the streets of one of science’s most advanced communities.

Notes:
Anderson, M. Kat. Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California's Natural Resources, 2005.

_____ and Michael J. Moratto. "Native American Land-Use Practices and Ecological Impacts" in Sierra Nevada Ecosystems Project: Final Report to Congress, volume 2, 1996.

Bohrer, Vorsila L. "New Life From Ashes: The Tale of the Burnt Bush (Rhus trilobata)," Desert Plants 5:122-125:1983, cited by Anderson, 2005.

Dunmire, William M. and Gail D. Tierney. Wild Plants of the Pueblo Province, 1995, discusses Jemez Cave and pueblo.

Robbins, William Wilfred, John Peabody Harrington, and Barbara Friere-Marreco, Ethnobotany of the Tewa Indians, 1916.

Standley, Paul C. Some Useful Native Plants of New Mexico, 1912, cited by Leonora Scott Muse Curtin, Healing Herbs of the Upper Rio Grande, 1947, republished 1997, with revisions by Michael Moore, on Navajo dye.

Stevenson, Matilda Coxe. The Zuni Indians, 1904, reprinted by The Rio Grande Press, Inc., 1985.

Photograph: Skunkbush buds in front of white stuccoed garage wall, 5 April 2009.