Navajo Indian Silversmiths With Silver Belt Ornaments Engraving 1883

Description: Navajo Indian Silversmiths With Ornaments Engraving 1883 Print 132 year old original print from Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1880-81. by J. W. Powell, Director. Washington Government Printing Office 1883.NAVAJO SILVERSMITHS. BY Dr. WASHINGTON MATTHEWS, U.S.A.Leather belts studded with large plates of silver are favorite articles of apparel, and often contain metal to the value of forty or fifty dollars. Plate XX represents an Indian wearing such a belt, in which only three of the plates are shown. Single and double crosses of silver are represented attached to his necklace. The cross is much worn by the Navajos, it is not intended to represent the "Cross of Christ," but is a symbol of the morning star. The lengthening of the lower limb, however, is probably copied from the usual form of the Christian emblem. These smiths also display much ingenuity in working from models and from drawings of objects entirely new to them. Size of sheet: 11.5” X 7.5".Payment Terms: I accept credit card via PayPal.Shipping Terms: High bidder pays winning bid plus USPS MAIL.Insurance extra email for quote after auction ends.To save you money on your shipping costs I am happy to combine shipping on multiple items, please do not pay until you receive a combined invoice. I will send you one invoice with combined shipping rates.Refunds, Returns: If you are not satisfied upon receipt, you may return it to me for a full refund of the bid and shipping. Among the Navajo Indians there are many smiths, who sometimes forge iron and brass, but who work chiefly in silver. When and how the art of working metals was introduced among them I have not been able to determine; but there are many reasons for supposing that they have long possessed it; many believe that they are not indebted to the Europeans for it. Doubtless the tools obtained from American and Mexican traders have influenced their art. Old white residents of the Navajo country tell me that the art has improved greatly within their recollection; that the ornaments made fifteen years ago do not compare favorably with those made at the present time; and they attribute this change largely to the recent introduction of fine files and emery-paper. At the time of the Conquest the so-called civilized tribes of Mexico had attained considerable skill in the working of metal, and it has been inferred that in the same period the sedentary tribes of New Mexico also wrought at the forge. From either of these sources the first smiths among the Navajos may have learned their trade; but those who have seen the beautiful gold ornaments made by the rude Indians of British Columbia and Alaska, many of whom are allied in language to the Navajos, may doubt that the latter derived their art from a people higher in culture than themselves.The appliances and processes of the smith are much the same among the Navajos as among the Pueblo Indians. But the Pueblo artisan, living in a spacious house, builds a permanent forge on a frame at such a height that he can work standing, while his less fortunate Navajo confrère, dwelling in a low hut or shelter, which he may abandon any day, constructs a temporary forge on the ground in the manner hereafter described. Notwithstanding the greater disadvantages under which the latter labors, the ornaments made by his hand are generally conceded to be equal or even superior to those made by the Pueblo Indian.Their tools and materials are few and simple; and rude as the results of their labor may appear, it is surprising that they do so well with such imperfect appliances, which usually consist of the following articles: A forge, a bellows, an anvil, crucibles, molds, tongs, scissors, pliers, files, awls, cold-chisels, matrix and die for molding buttons, wooden implement used in grinding buttons, wooden stake, basin, charcoal, tools and materials for soldering (blow-pipe, braid of cotton rags soaked in grease, wire, and borax), materials for polishing (sand-paper, emery-paper, powdered sandstone, sand, ashes, and solid stone), and materials for whitening (a native mineral substance—almogen—salt and water). Fig. 1, taken from a photograph, represents the complete shop of a silversmith, which was set up temporarily in a summer lodge or hogan, near Fort Wingate. Fragments of boards, picked up around the fort, were used, in part, in the construction of the hogan, an old raisin-box was made to serve as the curb or frame of the forge, and these things detracted somewhat from the aboriginal aspect of the place. A forge built in an outhouse on my own premises by an Indian silversmith, whom I employed to work where I could constantly observe him, was twenty-three inches long, sixteen inches broad, five inches in height to the edge of the fire-place, and the latter, which was bowl-shaped, was eight inches in diameter and three inches deep. No other Navajo forge that I have seen differed materially in size or shape from this. The Indian thus constructed it: In the first place, he obtained a few straight sticks—four would have sufficed—and laid them on the ground to form a frame or curb; then he prepared some mud, with which he filled the frame, and which he piled up two inches above the latter, leaving the depression for the fire-place. Before the structure of mud was completed he laid in it the wooden nozzle of the bellows, where it was to remain, with one end about six inches from the fire-place, and the other end projecting about the same distance beyond the frame; then he stuck into the nozzle a round piece of wood, which reached from the nozzle to the fire-place, and when the mud work was finished the stick was withdrawn, leaving an uninflammable tweer. When the structure of mud was completed a flat rock about four inches thick was laid on at the head of the forge—the end next to the bellows—to form a back to the fire, and lastly the bellows was tied on to the nozzle, which, as mentioned above, was built into the forge, with a portion projecting to receive the bellows. The task of constructing this forge did not occupy more than an hour.

Price: 19.49 USD

Location: Sacramento, California

End Time: 2024-11-29T17:16:28.000Z

Shipping Cost: 5 USD