For the month of August, we have been using this space to explore the roles of certain animal spirits in indigenous art. We’re keeping the focus on only a handful of such beings, those who are widely regarded as having close ties with multiple Native cultures and traditions. Last week, it was Turtle; the week before that, Horse.
This week, it’s an animal who symbolizes great power, including the powers of protection and healing: Bear.
I’ve written a great deal about Bear over the last two years; he is, after all, a popular figure in Southwestern Native art. Among the peoples of this area, he represents power, although the form that power takes may vary according to tradition. For some peoples to points far north and east of here, he is one of the keepers, or guardians, of the Four Sacred Directions (although, again, the relevant direction may differ among various traditions). For those in the latter group, he may also be assigned specific responsibilities and ancillary powers that relate to a given culture’s spiritual traditions.
For some cultures, he represents what is perhaps the most obvious association: strength, safety, and physical protection; he functions as a guardian of sorts. For others, however, his role is less intuitive.
Among certain peoples, Bear embodies the powers of Medicine, both physical and spiritual. In some nations, he is the symbol of the culture’s Medicine Society; for others, the link is less formal, but no less real. I wrote about that connection here nearly two years ago:
The bear is a popular symbol among many indigenous peoples all over Indian Country. There is a common misconception among the dominant culture that they represent protection or security. [There’s an equally common misconception that there is any one definition or symbolism associated with any given animal or spirit being, just as there’s the false notion out there that there is any such thing as “Native American religion” or “Native American spirituality.” There isn’t. Period. There are commonalities in some ways among some peoples, especially those closely related in ethnic and regional terms. But for every discrete group, there are significant differences in spiritual practices and symbols — and sometimes even within groups, as traditions evolved over centuries and millennia at farther reaches of a people’s lands.] At any rate, for some, yes, Bear does represent safety and security and protection. But perhaps more commonly, he represents protection” in a very different sense: For many peoples, he’s a medicine symbol. The association comes from Bear’s own behavior in the natural world — his ability to know instinctively which plants and roots are healthy and necessary to his survival, and his practice of using his powerful paws and claws to dig them out of the ground.
Here in this corner of our world, Bear often takes a very specific form. Where other cultures may show him standing, or —even when depicted on all fours — may choose to show him possessed of more natural proportions, with or without a fish in the mouth, like the on at right, he is perhaps most popularly conceived here as a humpbacked being. I’ve written about this phenomenon before, too:
In the Southwest, the humpbacked bear has become an icon of regional Indian art. Sometimes a heartline will wend its way across the bear’s body; sometimes not. Over the years, I’ve seen all sorts of explanations promulgated by [non-Indian] “experts” as to the origin of the humpback style, and not one of them sounds to me as though it bears any relationship to reality. I’ve always thought the explanation was much simpler than contorting false perceptions of Native spirituality into something that fetishizes (pun intended) a “humpback.”
Take a look at true vintage fetish carvings, those made before the advent of modern cutting and grinding tools. A century ago, when non-Indians first became fascinated with Indian culture in this part of the country, Zuni Pueblo’s carvers, in particular, were already famed for their skill, and tourists and colonizers began snapping up their work. The old tools perforce made following the lines of the stone itself necessary — and, of course, when a bear is on four legs, it’s higher and broader at the back end than near the front. And so it’s likely that carvers were simply following the evidence of their own eyes as to what a bear, down on all fours, actually looks like, within the constraints of the stone and the tools at hand. With some stones, that no doubt put the bulky “hump” a little farther forward than perhaps was realistic, but it got the job done as far as communicating the identity of the subject. Once the tourist trade got hold of it, it became a thing, and of course, then nothing else would do; nothing else would be considered “authentically Indian.” [Because, of course, what is “authentically Indian” in this society is to be determined by the norms and frames and mythologies and preferences of non-Indians. Fortunately, we are not circumscribed by the “definitions” of others.] Now, some Native artisans have reverted almost entirely to the vintage style of carving, using minimalist shaping, preferring to let the stone itself speak.
Figurative works, from sculpture to fetishes, are an especially popular medium from which Native artists summon the spirit of the bear, so we’ll begin with them.
Of course, as the discussion above hints, not all indigenous artists here choose to adhere to the humpbacked style. Some take a more realistic approach, fairly exclusively. One such is Mike Schildt, a Taos Pueblo carver for whom bears are a specialty. His carving adheres to more natural lines, such as those found in the photo at the top of this post. Mike specializes in alabaster bears of various sizes and shapes, and over the years, we’ve had a couple of truly massive ones by him in inventory, both in the same pink alabaster shown here: one enormous one on all fours; and another only slightly less large, standing upright. We’ve also carried smaller sculptural pieces by him like those shown above, individual bears and whole families, small carvings that might more properly be labeled fetishes. Mike also works in spiderweb alabaster, and we’ll get to his spirit bears in a bit.
Some carvers choose explicitly to focus on the humpbacked f
orm, of course. This style is especially popular with fetish carvers, some of whom add inlay work in a form we’ll discuss in a moment. A couple of Taos Pueblo’s younger carvers specialize in such bears: brothers Jeremy Gomez (whose work is at left) and Justin Gomez (whose work is at right). They carve in similar styles, yet each has already developed his own distinctive signature. Jeremy’s tend to have longer bodies and more thoroughly squared faces; Justin’s, more angular postures and a more extreme humpbacked shape. Both come from a long line of artists, including an uncle, Emerson, who was a master carver of animal and other spirits, and whose body of work included stylized bears.
Then there are those carvers who decline to choose one form or the other. Ned
Archuleta is one such: One of the Pueblo’s master sculptors, Ned works mostly in alabaster and marble, and creates everything from large-scale sculptures to small pieces just shy of fetish size. We’ll get to his larger sculptural works toward the end of this post, but for the moment, I’d like to highlight the variance in two of his small sculptures that we currently have in inventory, pieces that show his range of talent and skill effectively. At left is a small medicine bear carving in the classic humpbacked style, its lines loose and flowing, with a sizeable arc to its back and facial features that consist mostly of short angled planes. At right, on the other hand, is another medicine piece of roughly the same size, but carved in a far more realistic style, down to the hairlines on the bear’s coat and the fully formed facial features accented with inlay eyes.
Finally, there are those who split the difference, as it were: works formed with the briefest of nods toward the humpbacked style, but decidedly lacking an actual hump. Tesuque carver Mark Swazo-Hinds falls, at times,into this camp. Mark has created humpbacked bears, too; years ago, we had a number of them in inventory, both full-sized sculptures and fetish carvings. But the two works by him in our current inventory that assume Bear’s form are more reflective of the clean, spare lines of the industrial-sized carvings for which Mark is probably best known. The larger one is shown directly above, and it is large: wrought from an enormous block of stabilized sandstone, then topped with a medicine bundle that includes turkey and macaw feathers, large turquoise beads, shells, and sherds of old black-on-white Pueblo pottery. it’s a magnificent piece, one that is all solidity and substance. But my own preference is for the smaller bear, shown just below:
I absolutely love this one, and I’ve been surprised that he hasn’t found his home yet. This is one formed in the same spare style as his larger brother, all rounded edges and a plain flat back, but he is the sun personified (bearified?): He’s summoned from the single most beautiful chunk of orange alabaster I’ve ever seen. The stone glows, quite literally, from within, and it shimmers on the surface, a function of the mineral flecks in the matrix that criss-crosses it. This bear carries a medicine bundle made from similar materials, adding significant symbolic power to his being.
Speaking of medicine bundles, we’ve discussed those here before, too. They can be added to virtually any carved spirit, particularly those that assume the form of animals, but Bear remains one of the most popular for this spiritual and cultural convention. As I wrote about them a couple of years ago:
The bundles. Another hallmark of Pueblo carving. You may hear people refer to them interchangeably as “medicine bundles” or “offering bundles.” It’s mostly a difference of letters strung together; they tend to mean the same thing. It’s a concept that is a little hard to translate for outsiders. In explaining it to customers, I use the Christian concept of tithing as an example: Stripped to its basics, the Christian offers 10% of her income to God, and in turn, God will protect her and hers, bringing her within the safety of his blessings. [Yes, I know that’s oversimplifying, but that’s the underlying dynamic in one sentence. I’m about to oversimplify the bundles, too, because that’s really the only way to do it in this medium.]
For many traditional peoples, “offerings” are a way of life. We make an offering to Spirit (or to a particular spirit being), because it is our way, because it is a spiritual duty, because we give thanks for what we are given, but also because we wish to ask for something. That something could be protection, good health, help with a specific problem or task, or something else entirely. It’s probably a universal impulse: to promise something to forces more powerful than oneself in exchange for something desperately needed, or at least wanted. Fetishes are carvings that are thought by some to embody the spirit of the animal or other being evoked from the stone (or shell, in some cases). Different peoples have different explanations for and methods of “inspiriting” such carvings, but the concept — and the duties that attach thereto — are taken seriously. For example, some people set aside a special place for certain carvings, where they “feed” them with offerings of cornmeal and water. Those who create such carvings often add tiny things of value — offerings — such as bits of turquoise or coral or shell, perhaps some small feathers, tied on with sinew. These are a gift to the spirit that the carving represents, and the reasons for doing it might include an expression of thanksgiving, a prayer for assistance, a hope that the special traits and powers that belong to that entity will accrue to the carver or the holder. This is where the “medicine” connection comes in, since we define spiritual interactions and interrelationships, as well as physical treatments and remedies, as “medicine.”
Of course, within the context of Native arts, bear imagery is found in wide array of other media. Graphic arts are an obvious example, although at the moment we have nothing in that category in our inventory that includes bear motifs. I should point out that the vast majority of works in this genre would exclude photography: Most bears are not going to get close enough to human habitation to make it possible, and Native artists know well enough not to risk life and limb by approaching one. With one notable exception a few years ago, when a young bear crossed our yard one autumn morning as Wings first stepped outside at dawn, we only see evidence of their presence here in the form of scat (evidence that will appear with increasing frequency over the next couple of months, as they forage ever more widely to prepare for winter hibernation).
Speaking of winter, Mike Schildt, the carver I mentioned at the outset, regularly creates small collections in a stone that evokes the look of the snow: spiderweb alabaster. It’s actually ordinary white alabaster with a rich brown siltstone matrix, but the appearance is spectacularly beautiful. One of Mike’s spiderweb alabaster bear families appears below (and may be found in our Other Artists: Sculpture gallery), and they resemble not the Arctic look of the polar bear, but rather, the unusual white black bear (yes, I meant to string those three words together in that order) known variously as a ghost bear or spirit bear.
I wrote about spirit bears here a couple of years ago, too. As I said then:
The ghost bear is a phenomenon found among northern peoples. More properly called a “spirit bear,” its name in English fell victim to early mistranslation that, typically, didn’t account for cultural conceptual differences, and so “spirit” became “ghost.”
It’s a real thing.
If any remain in the northernmost reaches of the United States, I haven’t heard about it, but the spirit being itself remains. Today, the conventional wisdom is that it never existed outside the northwest coast of British Columbia, but the ghost bear appears in stories among tribal nations on the U.S. side of the international boundary, too. In Canada, however, the ghost bear is alive, and in one area, thriving relatively well. In the wild, the spirit bear thrives naturally precisely because of its color: Its white fur makes it less visible to the fish in the rivers and streams where it hunts for food, making it easier for the spirit bear to catch them. But it’s endangered by the proposed Enbridge pipeline project, and organized efforts to save it are under way.
For the First Nations in the lands that are part of the bears’ remaining natural habitat, it has special status.There are numerous “explanations” of its meaning floating around the Internet, but none of them rings especially true in and of themselves. Too much has been derived from a children’s book by a (of course) white author presuming to “explain” the spirit bear. But the tribal nations themselves are protective of the animal and its greater meaning, and they have been relatively successful in getting the Canadian government to recognize the animal’s importance.
The province of British Columbia has named the spirit bear as the province’s official animal. It’s also illegal in Canada to hunt the spirit bear. There is exactly one in captivity: a spirit bear reportedly found abandoned as a cub, possibly because its mother was killed by another predator. It was rescued and raised to adulthood, and early attempts were made to release it into the wild, but according to officials, it subsequently appeared evident that it would be unable to survive in what would have been its natural habitat. It has since been moved into a conservancy park, where officials say they have attempted to create as natural a habitat for it as possible.
Up there, it’s known in the dominant culture as the Kermode bear: named, natch, for the white man who “discovered” it in 1905, Francis Kermode, the then-director of the Royal British Columbia Museum. No, he didn’t “discover” anything. Our peoples have been familiar with the spirit bear as long as there have been people and bears. But nothing exists until the dominant culture says it does, and so it must be appropriated wholly, down to presuming to “name” it. What he did do, in conjunction with a white zoologist, is research the bear from a dominant-culture perspective.
In terms of its identity, it’s actually a black bear. Which points up the problems with the European way of naming things, based on what the [non-]discoverer first perceives as a physical characteristic, rather than as so many of our peoples do, which is to name things based on their inherent characteristics and behavior. Think about the last time you saw a female blackbird that was black. You haven’t. Ever. So the salient characteristic of the blackbird . . . um . . .isn’t. My own people call them by a name that means “those who gather.” Watch the behavior of the group, not the preening feathers of the male of the species.
But back to the spirit bear: Yes, it’s a black bear . . . with a genetic variation that turns its fur white. It is not a polar bear; that’s an entirely different species, found in another geographic region entirely. And it is not an albino bear; eyes, nose, lips, and paws are dark brownish-black, not pink. It is simply a genetic variant — and a rare one. It makes for a beautiful animal, one with great meaning to the first peoples where it is found.
Bear imagery is often found in such media as beadwork and leatherwork, too. In both genres, it includes motifs such as bear paws, as well as the image of the bear itself; much depends on the particular artistic context. Leatherwork, in particular, may also include adornment with bear claws, although those are rare, especially today. I’ve seen medicine bags and jewelry fobs, such as those used as keychains, advertising “bear claw” accents that are clearly from dogs, or at most, possibly wolves. Bear claws are much more intimidating, and much harder to come by.
At the moment, we have only one such item in inventory that incorporates a bear motif, and in this instance, it’s the whole bear, in the traditional Southwestern humpbacked style: the twisted-fringe bag shown immediately above. [No, we don’t even have these bags posted in the Leatherwork section of the Other Artists gallery here the site at the moment, but they are available for purchase; simply inquire via the Contact form at left.] The bags are made by an Ojibwe artist in Minnesota, but they commission the medallions from Southwestern and Plains artisans, including silver conchas by Diné silversmith Sunshine Reeves, and beadwork medallions like this one by other artists. In this instance, the bear is made with black and white beads that give it the look of Acoma pottery, formed into the classic humpbacked shape associated with Pueblo and Navajo art. It also bears the iconic Southwest-style heartline, another concept we’ll discuss in a moment. I have this same bag in a rich dark brown leather, edged in black; on mine, the beaded bear appears in white with a heartline on a gradient of red, orange, and yellow and with turquoise eyes, all against a turquoise background.
Before we continue with the leatherwork medium, I want to detour a bit for just a moment to address the heartline motif that I mentioned a moment ago. I’ve written about it in the past, on a couple of occasions. One occasion was the day after the community here had suffered the loss of a member, when I wrote:
[O]n a morning when my thoughts are inextricably intertwined with all the myriad chips and pieces of life that bind us all together, the heartline exemplifies the spirit that infuses it and all of us together.
I’ve written about the motif before: We use the term “heartline,” although there are some who call it the “breathline” or the “lifeline,” but the meaning is always the same — the pathway by which the animating spirit that gives life to a being enters and wends its way through the body to and past the heart. It evokes the look and feel of a lightning bolt, and in some cultures, lightning can fulfill a similar, if symbolic, animating function.
I noted a couple of years ago that Wings uses them regularly in certain silverwork pieces:
Most of them get a version of the heartline so popular in Southwestern Indian art, but these are usually double-terminated, sometimes winding gently across the surface of the animal’s body, sometimes taking on the sharper, more powerful pattern of the lightning bolts tossed by Thunderbird. Around here, the line itself is variously called a “heartline,” “a breathline,” or a “lifeline,” depending on the artist’s choice of terminology, but his are always a heartline, with all the symbolism that the word implies.
Then, I was referring specifically to his Buffalo pendants and pins, but they apply to his versions of Bear, too. As you can see from the pendant shown above, he prefers to summon the great being in a more realistic image than the now-stereotypical humpbacked version. He also, as I noted above, tends to use the double-terminated version of the heartline, giving the creature a sense of infinite life and animism and power.
It’s not clear in the photo of the belt shown above, but the leather of the belt itself contains a type of bear motif: stamped bear paws symbols. When Wings creates concha belts, he makes the leather belt itself as well as the conchas, cutting and beveling the leather by hand and most often hand-stamping it at intervals into whatever symbol he feels led to add to it. In the case of the belt above, one that incorporated the motif of the Four Sacred Directions, he chose the bear paw to add a sense of the animal’s power to the belt itself.
When it comes to silverwork, Wings uses the bear-paw motif with some regularity. In actuality, there are two basic
forms
that the image takes. Depending upon who does the artwork, the appearance will vary, of course, but generally speaking, they fall into two fundamental style categories: the flat-soled bear paw shown on the underside of the miniature bowl in the photo above, and on the handle of the spoon shown at right; and the curving, long-clawed bear paw that appears on the handle of the spoon shown at left.
What most people perhaps don’t realize is that they actually represent two different sets of paws. The flat-soled ones symbolize the bear’s hind paws, which in real life are designed to support the bulk of the animal’s weight, and to allow it a solid footing when it stands upright. The curving ones with the long claws, and with a more mobile appearance, represent the bear’s front paws, which the animal uses both for defense and to dig in the earth for needed roots and other vegetation. [In some instances, artists will also use the curving, long-clawed image to represent a badger’s paw, a symbol of fierceness and bravery.] In a sense, the two motifs might be said to represent different aspect’s of Bear’s nature: the hind paws symbolizing stability and strength when the animal acts as a guardian or warrior; the front ones linked to its qualities as a healer or signifier of Medicine.
I suspect that most artists tend to use both symbols as Wings does — mostly inerchangeably. Using the two in the same work, as he has done on occasion, seems to integrate both of Bear’s common traditional identities, turning the animals into, in effect, medicine warriors.
That’s a motif that is reflected, almost by default, in the work below:
It’s one in Wings’s signature Warrior Woman signature series — in this instance, a work entitled Bear Medicine. He added the stamped symbol that represents Bear’s hind paws to the moon that this female warrior holds in her left hand. But look closer . . . specifically, at her head. Every Warrior Woman’s head and hair are formed from the same stamp: the one representing Bear’s front paws. It imbues every entry in the series (indeed, the archetype of the design itself) with Bear’s great power, and helps to ensure that each Warrior Woman, whether pendant or pin, is in fact a Medicine warrior of a sort.
That notion of healing appears again in this work:
In Native art, the hand motif can mean many things: identity; ownership; healing. Wings often uses it to represent the last quality — in other words, as a medicine symbol. In the earrings shown here, the addition of the bear-paw stamp was designed to supplement the imagery of hand, heart, arrow, and flowing water: all united, integrated into a whole that represented guidance, harmony, healing, and life itself.
I said at the outset that around here, Bear represents power. It’s a meaning that exists in virtually every form of symbolism I’ve seen ascribed to the great creature, regardless of cultural variation: As a symbol of protection of the clan, of bravery in battle, of the healing of the people, as a guardian of the winds and the sacred directions, it is, fundamentally, a signifier of great power. I’m going to close today’s post with two works from one of our artists (one sold; one still in inventory) that demonstrate that power in very clear ways. Both are sculptures by Ned Archuleta. The first is shown above: Tiwa Messengers, a now-sold work that signifies some of the spirits of the people here, Eagle at the top, an elder at the center . . . and, at the base, Bear. In this instance, it’s a stylized version of the humpbacked bear, one with more fully articulated limbs and features and possessed of a clear sense of motion.
The second remains in our inventory at the moment, and it’s always been one of my favorites:
The name of the piece is BearHawk, and it’s a beautifully mysterious invocation of the power of the spirits, of the way in which those guides represented by the spirits of animals are at one with the human spirit, and can find expression in the wisdom of traditional elders and medicine persons.
These two pieces, like Wings’s own work, seem to me to bring together all of the pieces of Bear’s identity as a spirit and integrate them into a harmonious whole, one that embodies and transcends the identity found in the title of this post: Medicine Warriors.
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