PLATE 8
Courtesy K. M. Chapman
PRESENT-DAY POLISHED BLACK WARES
technique, yet the development has been purely Indian, and the basic processes of today are essentially the same as they were a hundred or a thousand years ago.
A somewhat similar revival has taken place at the Hopi towns in Arizona. In 1897 Dr. J. W. Fewkes of the Bureau of Ethnology was excavating the ruin of Sikyatki near First Mesa. Nampeo, a woman of Hano, the wife of one of the workmen, observed the beautiful old bowls that came from the graves, skillfully copied their designs and then searched out beds of clay that could be burned to the exact shades of the ancient pieces. Her work was a direct imitation of a lost style rather than a development, such as Maria’s, of a current one; but the effect has been no less extraordinary. Nampeo’s bowls and ollas were so attractive that they sold well; they were copied by other women for sale and for their own use, and thus the potter’s art of the Hopi was not only greatly stimulated but also radically changed.
In addition to their economic importance, the cases of San Ildefonso and Hopi are of great interest as anthropological phenomena. The stimulus at both places was of course partly commercial, but it could scarcely have acted without an inherent capacity for rapid artistic and technical progress among the Indians themselves, nor could it possibly have brought about such great results without the inspiring example of exceptionally gifted leaders. It is, therefore, quite conceivable that other stimuli, as the discovery of new clays of surpassing excellence, or of fine new pigments, may have proved equally potent in ancient times, and that some of the striking mutations in pottery making, which have so puzzled archaeologists, may have been originally started by such discoveries, and been brought to fruition by the genius of prehistoric Marias and Nampeos.
A. V. Kidder
Director Pecos Expedition