Bread.
It’s one of the few things, in its literal, tangible form, that may be universal. In its metaphorical sense, it certainly is.
In the desert, we talk a lot about the fact hat water is life, but so, too, is bread.
Sustenance.
This time of year, when it’s ceremonial season, it feeds more than just the body. It feeds the spirit.
For women, one of the tasks for ceremonial events, feast days, and other rites grounded in tradition is among the most basic: feeding the bodies of the people participating. This is true, of course, all over Indian Country: The ingredients, preparation methods, and resulting dishes may differ, but the task of feeding people, and the care that goes into it, is very much of a cultural piece.
Here, much of it is done in the old way, and much of the focus is on bread in very literal terms. Bread is, of course, only one part of the large, filling, nourishing meals they prepare, but traditionally and symbolically, it is perhaps the central part of both the preparation and the ensuing feasts. It requires preparation; dough is made in large batches. Over the course of the next day (or several days), the women make Indian bread, frybread, and pah’wen (a local form of flatbread that contains masa, or corn flour, and resembles gorditas).
Indian bread — or, as it tends to be called here, Pueblo bread — is baked in round loaves. It’s a basic, traditional bread known to cultures all over the world; today, you will find some bakers who use yeast, but more often, it’s baking powder and soda. Frybread, of course, is a relatively recent adaptation of ancient whole-grain flatbreads, one that arose out of starvation, privation, and genocide to become a staple of Native cooking. Today, some people use healthier oils for frying and different flours in an effort to retain a cultural staple in a healthier way; others modernize by using yeast instead of baking powder to enhance its puffy quality. I’ve written about frybread elsewhere at length, including with my own recipe for it. I make it only a few times a year, as a rare treat.
But here in this place, there is one thing that distinguishes the making of bread from the making of it anywhere else: the ovens. Traditional homes in and around the old village still have the ancient hornos (the Spanish word for “ovens”), and they are maintained faithfully to permit regular use. They tend to be used primarily for baking Indian bread, but are also used for other baked foods, particularly the dessert items for any feast: regular pies; prune pies (or other fruit pies), which are small turnover-style pastries filled with a fruit and sugar mixture or pie filling; old-fashioned sugar cookies, which are then decorated with sprinkles or other sweet accents; biscochitos (Spanish for “little biscuits,” or “cookies”), tiny Spanish-influenced cookies infused with anise.
As with any culture, its traditions are built around a nourishing and nurturing that feeds the body, keeping it alive, yes, but also healthy and able to participate fully in the culture and community. In so doing, it feeds the spirit of individual and community alike, but today, it feeds the spirit in another way: weaving more threads in the blanket of cultural history and tradition, linking the people to their ancestors, who did likewise so many years ago, and to their children and grandchildren who will continue the practice for the generations to come.
It’s comfort food in the most basic sense.
It’s also sustenance in the most basic sense: sustaining the people, and The People.
It’s one of the reasons Wings chose the photo above for inclusion in his recent one-man show. It captures, in one image, that 1,000-year-long history of survival . . . and sustenance.
From the photo’s description here on the site:
SUSTENANCE
The earth feeds us, nourishes us. Whether at planting time, with the help of the Corn Maidens; during the monsoon season, when the rain kachinas aid tilling and cultivation; at harvest time, the blessings and bounty extracted from the earth under the watchful eyes of our ancestors; or through the long winter months, warming the food the earth gives us throughout the rest of the year.
The hornos, the earthen ovens, are used year-round: for baking Pueblo bread for ceremonies and feast days; for cooking food for families; even for firing the micaceous pots that our artisans have made for millennia and still use for cooking and storage.
A little soot marks the opening, where tendrils of heat reach outside, but the oven is swept and kept spotlessly clean, ready for use whenever the need arises. Burlap covers the entry, blocked by a stone; two wooden boards serve as the baking platform when in use. It’s an icon of our culture, of sustenance, mixing and melding food and earth in the warmth of home and family, in the way of my mother, and her mother, and her mother before her, into the mists of ancestral memory.
Signed on white matting; brown wooden frame.
Size including frame: 17.75″ by 20.25″.
$625 + $100 shipping, handling, and insurance.
The hornos themselves are a subject of frequent questions. They’re a component of the guided tour of the old village, but for those who don’t take the tour, they’re an object of curiosity. I’ve been asked all kinds of questions about the domed adobe structures: “Are they beehives?” “Are they miniature playhouses for children?” “Are they doghouses?” Inevitably, it necessitates an explanation of their name, the correct pronunciation, the etymology, their purpose and use, and usually, of the dispute over whether the Spanish provided the structure itself or merely the name (we subscribe to the latter explanation). We’ve recounted the history innumerable times.
But it’s an image, an icon, that never gets old. However clear the symbolism from a cultural perspective, it speaks as art, too, simply, but with breadth and depth. There’s a reason I’ve always loved this photo, why it draws me back and draws me in, again and again and again.
It was taken in winter, when the hornos see less frequent use; a tiny bit of green remains at the corner of the building, not yet browned entirely by cold and snow. The ground, drying now from the last round of precipitation, appears under the shadow of the arbor the same color as the earthen adobe of the oven itself.
You really need to view the picture closely to see the detail: the individual pieces of straw in the adobe, standing out in such stark relief that you’re tempted to reach into the photo itself to pluck one and hold it up to the light. The soot stains above the opening from the heat and flame, granular, adding a new layer of color and texture to the surface. The glow of the cast-iron plate covering the opening, peeking out from its own cover. Ancient grease stains dotting the burlap cover and the wooden boards used as a platform, creating their own random artwork on variegated surfaces. The stone holding the cover in place, once nearly white, now worn smooth and dark in the hollows from centuries of hands picking it up, holding it, moving it into place. The broom in the background at the right, two or three sprigs of chamisa bound skillfully by yarn, used to sweep the cinders out of the oven and clean it thoroughly.
It’s an image that harks back to an earlier time, for most who view it. The existential beauty of it is that it is not history, it’s not past: It’s here and now. It’s stability, it’s sustenance, it’s survival. Of culture and identity, of tradition, of the old ways, of the people.
It has sustained the people for a millennium, and it will feed the bodies and the spirits of the generations to come. When it comes down to it, there’s little more that you can ask ask of an object, or even of an image.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
