Last Friday, we featured Easter-egg colors that reflected the hues of the natural world at this time of year: spring green and coral. Today, we highlight similar shades, but embodied in a form that resembles another seasonal visitor: Serpent, or Snake.
For some indigenous cultures of the Southwest (and elsewhere), Snake is taboo, something to be avoided at all costs. It’s easy to see why, since snake venom can be so deadly. Too, once the colonizing forces of Church and Crown invaded, they brought with them the notion of Satan as Serpent, and while it bore no relationship to traditional cultures of the day, as Christianity spread by force, it no doubt served to reinforce older conceptions.
But it’s not true of all Native cultures, either in this area or elsewhere across Indian Country. For some, Snake is, as so many spirits are, value-neutral: a being of great power that must be handled with the proper respect, as is true of all power, wherever derived. In others, Snake can be affirmatively a beneficial spirit, as seen in the connection between Rattlesnake’s rattles and the rattles that make up a part of the kit of some tribes’ medicine men. Perhaps most often, there’s the obvious tension between good and bad that is immanent in power generally, and the attendant need for balance. And, of course, there are the many peoples for whom a Water Serpent plays a role in origin stories and spiritual framework, a creature characterized as snake or serpent but distinct from the more ordinary land-bound creatures that bear similar names.
Here, we saw our first snake of the season two days ago: We had stopped at the local nursery to pick up seeds for planting, and saw a slender slithering tail vanish beneath a pile of wood and plastic. It appeared to be only a garter snake; they and bull snakes are both common to the area. Every now and then, we find a bull snake nearby, plotting entry to the chicken coop in search of a fat egg (or ten). In the weeks to come, though, it’ll be time to watch where we walk when out in the fields, because baby prairie rattlers will begin to put in an appearance.
Snake also appears metaphorically, in the art of many of our peoples, in symbolic form: as spirals, or coils. You can see the motifs in ancient pictographs and petroglyphs, and in many more contemporary art forms, from painting to carving to jewelry. One popular manifestation is a style common to Native beadwork jewelers, and it is that style that’s featured here today: coil bracelets, sometimes called simply “snake bracelets.”
It’s a style that we’ve carried for years; it’s very popular, in part because it’s more affordable than heavy beadwork necklaces, and because it permits the wearing of a great deal of turquoise beadwork as a bangle without fear of the bracelet falling off and getting lost. Ours are made by the mother/daughter team of Clarita and Vera Tenorio of Kewa Pueblo, and we have only two remaining in inventory. Both may be found in the Other Artists: Miscellaneous Jewelry gallery here on the site. From the description of the one shown above:
This coiled bracelet is one of the trademark traditional styles of mother/daughter team of Clarita and Vera Tenorio (Kewa Pueblo). After choosing more than 200 chip-style turquoise nuggets in varying shades of blue and green, lightly polished and drilled in the centers, they string them on a spiraled length of sterling silver wire; the wire’s own tension forms the coil. Each end terminates in a single piece of bright coral paired with a tiny round sterling silver bead.
Turquoise; spiny oyster shell; sterling silver
$95 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The one below is similar, but not identical:
Some 200 subtly-shaped free-form nuggets of blue and green turquoise are lightly polished, drilled, and and strung on a tense length of spiraled silver wire. Each end of the strand is capped by a single piece of drilled coral and a tiny sterling silver round bead. The flexible coil style fits nearly any wrist. By Clarita and Vera Tenorio (Kewa Pueblo).
Turquoise; coral; sterling silver
$95 + shipping, handling, and insurance
In each, the coral and spiny oyster shell accents pick up the rusty red of the copper matrices in the green turquoise, giving the coils a rainbow-like effect. It’s perhaps a fitting image, considering that some of our relatives further south, across artificial borders, conceived of the rainbow itself as a serpent.
My own version of the coiled bracelet is a bit different; it’s one that they’re not making much anymore, thanks to the scarcity of the materials. In mine, the beads a small naturally-shaped barrel beads of deep red branch coral, accented at intervals with single free-from beads of green turquoise. The coral is now rare enough that such a bracelet, were you to find one for sale, would be extremely expensive — compared to the ones shown here, perhaps prohibitively so. [No, it’s not for sale; it was a gift from Wings not long after we met.] But the versions shown here are equally beautiful in their own way, with their sheer abundance of beautifully-matrixed turquoise and bright scarlet accents.
It’s the rainbow serpent, coiling powerfully around your wrist.
~ 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.
