Navajo Silver Beads and Squashblossom Necklaces

                                           Monument Valley on the Navajo Indian Reservation

                                  Young woman from Laguna Pueblo, circa 1885. wearing her
                                  Navajo-made silver beads with naja pendant.

            Silver beads were among the first items made by Navajo silversmiths.  Before the Navajo learned to make their own silver beads, they greatly coveted the shell and turquoise beads made by their neighbors, the Pueblo Indians.  Even after they developed their own style of silver beads, they were often worn in combination with shell and turquoise beads acquired from the pueblos through trade.

Navajo Silversmith of the 1800s displaying his art

            It is surmised that the Navajo learned bead-making during 1870s.  Originally they beat out a Mexican dollar, drew on it the shape of disc large enough to make half a bead of the desired size, and cut the disc with scissors to use for a pattern.  The silversmith then cut out the rest of the coins while his assistant shaped them into hollow hemispheres with his matrix and dye.  He would work them in several larger cavities to bring them to the proper form.  Then the hemispheres were leveled at the edges and perforated by holding them on a piece of wood, convex surface down, and hammering through them with the shank of a file.  In this way, a neck was left projecting from a hole that was not filed off until the soldering was completed. The hemispheres were then strung on strong wire in pairs, forming globes.  The wire was bent at the ends and secured with a washer after the globes were pressed tightly together. 

                           Samples of contemporary hand-made Navajo sterling silver beads.
                           Currently, these are almost impossible  to obtain because the price
                            of silver has become so prohibitive that two-thirds of Navajo silver-
                            smiths have quit and sought other employment.  This has caused a
                            major crisis in the Southwest because Native American-made silver
                            jewelry is at the heart of our economy.

            A mixture of borax, saliva and silver, pasted onto the seams before putting them into a fire, soldered the beads together in one operation.  Afterwards, they were finished by filing, polishing and blanching.  By the end of the century these beads, though difficult to make, were so popular that hardly a man or woman of any real stature in the tribe did not possess a string of these homemade silver beads.

                                            Samples of Navajo-made squashblossom beads

The development of the ‘squash blossom’ bead as a Southwestern motif was undoubtedly influenced by Spanish or Mexican trouser and jacket ornaments worn by the early explorers who had contact with the Navajos.  They had silver pomegranate charms that dangled from short silver chains on their garments.

            The pomegranate had been a favorite design element with the Spanish for centuries.  It can be found on the coat-of-arms of the city of Granada, which literally meant ‘pomegranate.’  The form was used extensively in liturgical art.  Carved and gilded pomegranates can be seen in many of the Spanish missions in Mexico.  The Navajos readily adapted this motif as a bead component, together with plain silver beads and a ‘naja’ pendant to form their legendary squashblossom necklaces. 

                                    Introduced by the Spaniards, the pomegranate motif has figured
                                    significantly in Southwestern design.
 

            The shorter and rounder pomegranate evolved into the more elongated squashblossom motif that reflected more of the ingeniousness plant life of the Southwest.  Squash has always been an abundant food in the Southwest and a staple of the Indian diet.  The long delicate blossoms are admired for the beauty and are also eaten as a rare delicacy. A favorite Pueblo recipe was to deep fry them in a flour batter.

            Many squashblossom beads, however, are almost identical to the tiny flowers in the central part of a sunflower.  Sunflower blossoms have three elements, trumpet, bulb, and stem, in similar proportions to those found on the earliest beads.  Some experts, notably John Wetherill of Kayenta, one of the earliest traders among the Navajo, claims that this form came directly from the sunflower.

                                 Contemporary squashblossom  necklace made by Navajo artist,
                                 David Lister.  Note how he honors tradition, yet tweaks it with
                                 his positioning of the four Bisbee turquoise components close to
                                 the naja.  Usually the turquoise would be spaced evenly between
                                 the squashblossom beads.  Lister is a Marine veteran who won a
                                 Purple Heart for heroism in Viet Nam.  He was named an Arizona
                                 Indian Living Treasure in 2007, an honor bestowed on Arizona  
                                 Indians who have a significant achievements in the arts or cultural
                                 preservation and a lifetime of service to their tribal communities.

            The Yalalog Indians of Mexico strung beads of coral and trade glass interspersed with silver pomegranates during the latter part of the 18^th and early part of the 19^th centuries.  The pomegranates are actual beads themselves, with a cast hole and vestigial sepals.  David Neumann, in his article published in El Palacio, May 1948, expresses the opinion that the Navajos may have got the squashblossom idea for their stringing directly from the Yalalog who spread these ornaments over a wide area of Mexico where the Navajo had a chance to observe them and perhaps trade for these beads that came to be so closely identified with their culture.

                                     Navajo Woman in the 1800s wearing her squash blossom necklace

            The naja is a heavy cast piece of a single or double crescent, the tips of which usually end in small round buttons or tiny hands.  The naja, like the cross, swastika or ankh, is one of those ancient symbols that are lodged in the collective unconscious of man.  It is futile to argue about who originated it.  These symbols crop up independent of time or culture, in separate and remote parts of the globe, and simultaneously in different cultures, unaware of each other.  The naja as a symbol can be observed in such divergent cultures as ancient Crete, Rome, Africa, Middle Serbia and Moorish Spain. 

            Among the American Indians who used it before the Navajo are the Shawnee and Delaware people.  The Comanche adopted it as a symbol with the double cross on top, terminating in a naja at the base.  In the old world it was used as an amulet, fastened to the bridle of a horse to ward off the evil eye.  The Romans and Moors had crescent-shaped amulets made from two boar tusks joined together with brass, iron silver, gold or bronze.  It’s certain that many of the conquistadors carried this traditional ornament on their bridles.

                                          Silver saddle trappings such as these influenced the Navajo

            German silver najas dangled from the horse trappings of the Kiowa-Comanche in the early part of the 18^th century.  Early in the 19^th century, the Delaware brought the art of silversmithing to Oklahoma.  The eastern tribes had learned it from the English and French.  The Delaware in turn taught the Kiowa.  Arthur Woodard, historian, archaeologist, and Curator of History at the Los Angeles Museum, theorizes that the Navajo acquired this motif firsthand from the Plains Indians who were the first to wear concho belts.

                                                  Window Rock on the Navajo Reservation

            Woodard states that “the average Spanish or Mexican used his silver horse gear only for special occasions such as weddings, fiestas etc. and seldom on a campaign.  The opportunity for capture of such items from the Spanish would be rare compared to the chances of taking them in battle with the Ute or Kiowa.  Hence we may conclude that the naja came to the Navajo in its various forms from the bridles used by the Ute and the Kiowa, and those same najas were identical in form with those first used centuries ago in Europe to ward off the evil eye from horses.”

            Some cultural anthropologists feel this theory is stretching the point, as the Spanish influence was so dominant all over the Southwest and Mexico at the time that is seems inevitable that they contributed it to both the Plains and Navajo culture.

                                                     A view of the Navajo Reservation

            What remains, however, is the fact that the Navajo took this motif to great creative heights and continue to play with it, inventing variations that give new meaning to this powerful symbol.  At this point in design history, it is so overwhelmingly identified with the Navajo people that few realize its ancient origins.

           

           

Next blog: approximately November 1 on the history of California Indian shell beads.