GRAMPA, TELL ME A STORY BUT DON’T FORGET THE POPCORN
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THIS SINGING MOTHER, CREATED BY AMACIO CORDERO-COCHITI, LOOKS LIKE AN EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY PIECE.
THIS CLOTH DOLL IS THE NAVAJO VERSION OF THE STORYTELLER.
26
January 2019
ntil quite recently, at least for the Zunis and Navajos, the oral tradition was the only way to pass on knowledge; history, folktales, taboos, religion, and traditions. Sadly, the elders of the current population no longer gather the family around the kitchen table for an evening several times a month, and many don’t even know the traditional lore themselves. For cultures with no written record, this is a tragedy. Television and cell phones can’t take all the blame. In just the last generation, automobiles, telephones, and single-family dwellings are also to blame. It would be doubly heart breaking to believe that people have simply lost interest in their history and lore. Human effigies are quite rare in prehistoric Native cultures, and the same is true up until a few years before the turn of the last century. The railroads produced a huge jump in tourists and curious Anglo Americans with THIS COCHITI FIGURE, money to spend. DATED 1875-1880, IS Ironically, it was the CALLED A STORYTELLER. tourist business that created a demand for pottery in general, and human portrayals in particular. Pottery depicting people is pretty much restricted to the Pueblo of Cochiti, and the earliest examples clearly showed a resentment of Europeans. The figures are distorted in a number of ways, being fat, ugly, out of proportion, and sporting various kinds of odd facial hair. They always have open mouths. Admittedly there is also the element of humor in these pieces: Natives are often seen by Anglos as childish and simple-minded, when in reality they were making fun of Anglos who paid money to take home and enjoy these caricatures. They have been called “mocking,” often “comical” or “humorous;” “satirical” is probably the best, but that only works if the buyer doesn’t realize he’s the point of the satire. The artists got around that problem by using circus freaks, cowboys, ministers, or ethnic exaggeration, usually of Hispanics. The caricature form has been revived—with a vengeance—by Cochiti potter Virgil Ortiz, pushing
folk art into fine art. As with most Tribal art, the origin of the storyteller figure has as many configurations as there are people who write about them. A seated figure with a huge
HELEN CORDERO-SUPPOSED FIRST STORYTELLER
THIS FIGURE PUSHES THE LIMITS—TRY TO COUNT THE BABIES.
