It feels far warmer than we expected today, a product of mostly clear skies and vanishingly little wind. Despite new snow on the ground and the air’s sharp edge, there is more than a hint of spring upon the breeze this day.
We are, of course, coming up on meteorological spring four short days from now, although the equinox itself remains more than three weeks off yet. But in this place, such markers are never hard and fast lines anyway: We have had many spring-like days already, winter will keep returning until May, and the first day of spring in this place is the day the first meadowlark sings.
There are other markers of this threshold season here, too. Chief among them is the thaw, which is not so much [or at all] a single event as it is a long, unsteady process, one in which the waters freeze and melt, freeze and melt, in a seemingly constant cycle of climate and weather. Of course, we don’t get the freezes that we used to, and some years anymore there’s no natural snow to thaw in the first place. But we still see the signs on the Great River, and there will be a few of those this day: remnant patches of snow atop sandbars and rocks and frozen passages; shiny sheets of ice upon the shallows where the sun never reaches; crackling spiderwebs across other shady stretches where the water runs free at all times.
In a world webbed by winter, the spirits of spring are beginning to emerge, the world rising from the waters anew.
Among those spirits are those of the waters themselves: the shorebirds and wading birds, the turtles, the other small shelled creatures and the spirits of their ancient ancestors, too. It’s one of the features of Indigenous art in this place, and of colonial naming practices, too: shells. Part of it, perhaps, has to do with the presence of ancient shell mounds across these lands — fossilized into timelessness now, but the land remembers, and so do the people who belong to it. It’s yet another way of looking at the world’s renewal and rebirth, a set of stories that echo all across this land mass and the origins of the peoples Indigenous to it.
This week’s Friday Feature honors these connections, these spirits and names and adornments too, with a pair of works of wearable that share shapes and shades and spirits and symbolism, all while maintaining their own unique identities. It’s a pair of belt buckles in the traditional Indigenous style from this region known as conchas. And before we get to the two works, a little history and cultural context is perhaps in order.
I first wrote in depth about this jewelry style (and name) in this space more than seven years ago. Rather than duplicate that work, I’ll quote my earlier writing here. And while the truth of the words remains, one aspect that may not come through clearly in this excerpt is one that everyone needs to remember: The fact of colonial invaders getting words wrong when they impose “new” outside names on Indigenous peoples in no way invalidates the names as those peoples use them today. Indigenous people with the surname Concho are not misstating or mispronouncing that name. But it does have ramifications for the proper terminology for the jewelry items, and yes, we do side-eye non-Native dealers who refuse to get it right. As I wrote then:
Concha.
It’s the Spanish word for “shell.”
It’s a thing, a descriptor, a surname. Like most of the “given” names in this part of Indian Country, it was hung upon people, places, and things half a millennium ago by invaders who had no interest in learning actual names, but plenty of interest in “conquest” and “ownership.” One of the first and most important steps in assuming ownership of anything is naming it — see, for example, the scientific community’s practice of naming new species after the [European- and American-trained] scientists who “discover” them — and so it was when European invaders made their first appearance here.
The vast majority of “Indian” surnames in this area are actually Spanish, most often representing a region in Spain. Of course, European (and Christian) naming traditions bore no resemblance to those of the indigenous peoples on this continent, but it’s not only history that’s written by the perceived victors. It’s an existential phenomenon, touching and altering the very concept of identity.
But as with our peoples across the continent, the new names are here to stay, and they’ve mostly been absorbed into the various local cultures. They have not, however, managed to supplant traditional naming practices; they’ve merely become the public face shown to outsiders, masking the real identity and existence much deeper within.
Unlike a lot of the Spanish surnames found in New Mexico’s Indian Country, “Concha” is unusual in that it does not refer to a place, a geographic region, in Spain. Instead, it refers to an actual thing: a shell (for an English analogue, think conch shell). I’m not sure anyone remembers anymore how the first Indian person came to be called “Concha”: Perhaps it was an artist who worked in the tiny shells found around local watersheds; perhaps a trader in shells, since this area was one of the continent’s great historical trade routes in all directions. Perhaps it was simply a humorous nickname. Whatever the origins, it stuck. And it is now a word that is firmly enmeshed in local culture and tradition, both as a proper name and as an elemental part of the indigenous arts.
First, let’s clear up a few things: The word is, unequivocally, concha. C-O-N-C-H-A. It is not “concho.” There is, indeed, no such thing. That’s a misspelling, a mispronunciation, an error, and the town of Concho Springs notwithstanding, in the Native arts world in 2014, there’s absolutely no excuse for getting it wrong. But non-Native art dealers constantly misuse the word, and it drives me up the wall. This is a word, and also people’s name; get it right. It’s not in the least difficult to do.
So, in this Native arts world, what is a concha?
It’s most often assumed by outsiders simply to refer to a type of iconic Southwestern Indian-style belt, but in fact, it actually refers to the shape of the pieces that compose such belts and other types of silverwork. It’s simply a medallion of sorts, generally rendered in silver, that takes the rough from or shape of a shell. Now, these are not what a lot of people think of as shell shapes (i.e., not clamshells); these are traditionally oval and slightly domed, to give a slight convexity of shape to them, like a shell. Today, the genre has expanded to include round or rectangular shapes; Wings even does a scalloped version unique to him. But the original shape was oval, and the medallions were usually created in groups to form a repeating pattern for use across a leather belt or a hatband.
Silver, of course, was always at a premium, so while you can still occasionally find an old belt made of heavy poured and rolled ingot, you’re more often likely to find versions that are a testament to Native thrift and improvisation: conchas made of rolled silver coins. Yes, you read that right: An old traditional method of making concha belts involved taking silver coins and rolling them, flattening and extending the surface, and then adding traditional stampwork. We have a couple of those old belts, and they’re amazing.
A good concha belt, even a contemporary one, can easily run into four figures, but that’s out of the range of the average customer. So now, many Native artists use the style to create smaller, freestanding pieces: a pendant, a pair of earrings, a pin, a barrette [. . . and, of course, buckles].
I’ve had occasion to consider shells in other traditions recently, as something crossed my screen in reference to “chakras.” The scare quotes are not to invalidate the chakras themselves, placed in the context of their own Indigenous tradition and beliefs; it’s simply to denote that they are not a part of our traditions, and to affirm that we do not appropriate from those of others in the colonial way that is so rampant now.
At any rate, the reference intrigued me for one specific reason: the fact that I already knew I would be featuring these two works today. And so I did a little skimming, learning that in at least some interpretations of such practices, shells are associated with various chakras, and more, that in at least some forms of such work, the human body is itself regarded as a shell. The color associations for each chakra also captured my attention, given that the two works featured here today involve notions of “the center,” “heart,” worlds and medicine . . . and a pair of focal stones in remarkable shades of green marbled and webbed and patched with pale golden yellows. Given the green represents the central “heart” chakra, and yellow the near-central “solar plexus” chakra, the links seemed unusually pointed, leading to wonder once more whether there are certain associations, certain truths, that Indigenous people the world over find and hold in common in some respects.
Today’s featured works hold much in common, certainly: belt buckles, both; both wrought in traditional, old-school, freehand vintage concha style; both possessed of centering spirits of the medicine of the waters and of worlds reborn. Both are found in the Buckles Gallery here on the site. We begin with the more classically shaped of the two, the scalloped oval shown above; from its description:
The Center of All Things Concha Belt Buckle
In our own small plane of existence, from our own human perspective, our world is the center of all things. Indigenous cultures affirm this reality in our origin stories, in how we understand Turtle Island beneath the skies, amidst the winds, above the point of emergence. Wings pays tribute to this vision, one lived daily among his own people, in this complex concha belt buckle, a flowering shell-shaped disc of heavy sterling silver that blossoms into traditional symbols of the world as we know it. Celestial patterns, rising sun and setting moon and the light that flows between them, edge the scalloped buckle in concentric rings. Its repoussé center, lightly domed by hand, is chased in a loop of hundreds of individual arrow stamps tracking the motion of the spiraling winds. Ancient kiva steps symbols lead inward to the very center, heart and womb alike, where rests a large oval cabochon of emerald green turquoise with a golden brown matrix that looks for all the world like a map of Turtle Island. On the reverse, only Wings’s hallmark appears, in the embrace of another spiritual center: the Morning Star Lodge, a place of healing and medicine, guidance and power. The buckle stretches 3.75 inches across by 3-1/8 inches high; the stone is 1-3/16 inches across by 7/8″ high (dimensions approximate). Reverse shown below.
Sterling silver; Colorado Evans Mine turquoise
$1,800 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I need to issue a caveat here: When Wings acquired from a regular, long-standing supplier the lot of cabochons that included this focal stone, I inquired as to their provenance, because the color and matrix patterning was unusual. It was clear that they were American turquoise, and sold as natural (i.e., untreated in any way), but they had no label beyond a lot number. I was told by the employee (one who has been in this business a very long time) that they came from “the Colorado Evans Mine.” I grilled her rather pointedly, because to my knowledge, the only Evans Mine in existence that has produced turquoise is the one in Baja, México. She insisted that the description was accurate, and I thought perhaps the suppliers themselves, or someone close to them, owned shares in a new mining operation in Colorado. The green shades and the pale gold patchwork matrix certainly fit with Colorado material, particularly in the southern reaches of that state.
I have since come to learn that there is likely no such mine. Literally no one in the industry will admit ever to having so much as heard of it. I suspect that it was a matter of crossed wires, or at least labels: turquoise mined in Colorado, probably in the old King’s Manassa District or perhaps Villa Grove, or central Colorado’s Leadville District . . . and when the inventory was entered into their computer database, mistakenly tagged with the “Evans” label from Baja. My money is on Manassa; it’s that characteristic deep emerald green, with the golden- and bronze-colored patchwork matrix that is also the hallmark of such material. As such, it’s probably far more valuable than if it really were Evans, since that signature deep green is relatively scarce.
The second of today’s featured works, more recent, is no less clearly a traditional concha, but its shape is round rather than the more customary oval. It, too, is centered by a high-grade turquoise cabochon in emerald green and gold, but this one hails from one of Nevada’s more high-value mines: Damele. From its description:
A World of Medicine Concha Belt Buckle
At the center of the mountains, above the seas, in the embrace of the light sits our world, a world of medicine. Wings summons seas and sunlight and the shelter of the peaks into a hoop in miniature with this traditional concha belt buckle, big and bold and wrought of solid sterling silver. It’s a perfect orb with edges scalloped entirely freehand to evoke the rays of the celestial sphere at the center of our orbit, domed from the reverse in classic repoussé fashion to give it dimension and depth. The stampwork consists of two concentric circles of chased freehand scorework to delineate the doming, plus more scorework radiating out from the beneath the focal cabochon in a layered motif of arrows and points and peaks and the shelter of every sacred lodge. Each pair of the central scored lines is conjoined in an inverted sunrise pattern at their open ends, a pattern ringed by two separate concentric hoops of arrow motifs. The inner score ring is edged on the outside with more sunrise symbols, then linked to the outer ring by a chased and scaled pattern, like directional arrows decorating the dancing skin of a water serpent, coiled and always in motion. The scalloped edge consists of three additional radiant motifs linking it to the scored lower line of the dome work, all of the freehand stampwork clear, consistent, impossibly bold and so deep that its imprint shows faintly on the reverse. At the center rests a single center cabochon, set into a scalloped bezel and trimmed with delicate twisted silver. The stone is ultra-high-grade Damele turquoise, layered and mysteriously translucent and manifest in its classic turtle-shell pattern of green mineral and matrix, evoking the medicine of Grandmother Turtle, who allowed her shell to create a world for the People. Prong and loop are hand-made and soldered securely to the underside; the entire piece is buffed to a rich Florentine finish, aged and glowing. Buckle is 3-3/8″ across; Damele turquoise cabochon is 3/4″ across (dimensions approximate). View of reverse shown below.
Sterling silver; ultra-high-grade Damele turquoise
$1,800 plus shipping, handling, and insurance
Like the first buckle, this one is a masterpiece of traditional, old-style freehand silverwork. The doming is do deep and the scorework so sharp that both appear to be accented with overlays, but in fact, each is one single piece of silver, shaped through skill and hard labor. This one reminds me of the waters, the repeating serpent-scale pattern seeming to be in constant orbital motion around the raised central section and the Damele turtle-shell focal cabochon. That patterning is in fact one of Damele’s hallmarks (although there is plenty of material from that mine that manifests differently): the unmistakable cross-hatched veining of Grandmother Turtle’s own shell, the concha that in some traditions gave the First People a world on which to live and thrive.
Now, as winter perforce begins its annual contending with spring, the seasons dancing, overlapping, trading places, and occasionally, conspiring, we are witness to the thaw, to the runoff of the snowmelt and the world rising from the waters once more. Even as wounded as it is at this moment, it’s the world that sustains us — at once shell and shelter, the medicine of lifeblood and breath, earth and survival.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2022; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
