I often choose post topics in tandem: The motif that leads off the week with Monday’s photo meditation may inform the subject of Tuesday’s Indigenous Arts series. Perhaps at least as often, I’ve already chosen Tuesday’s topic, and Monday’s flows from that. This week, it was the former, but only by a matter of moments. Once I’d decided on yesterday’s featured image, today’s topic presented itself more or less immediately.
What I didn’t know then was the significance it would hold for us personally.
Yesterday’s imagery focused on the power of our people’s independent spirit in the face of a concerted campaign, under way now more than a half-millennium, of genocide — a spirit untrapped and untethered by the boundaries of the reservation system and the stark contraction of resources and expansion of harms that accompanied it. This spirit was, for me yesterday, embodied in an image Wings captured of a red-tailed hawk, its own wings extended skyward. It was, to me, the very picture of what it means to be free: beholden only to the winds, able to defy even gravity’s dictates.
And it immediately brought to mind another image, one found in art, in dance, in ceremony, in medicine, one that transcends them all so thoroughly as to be a part of daily life . . . one that, to me, embodies the touch of the spirits: Feathers.
I’ve written about feathers here before, mostly in the context of eagle feathers. Bald Eagle (and, to a lesser extent, Golden Eagle, which my own call the War Eagle, and) has become a pan-Native symbol of spiritual strength and power.
So, too, are the so-called lesser raptors, the Hawk Clan and their smaller brothers, Falcon and Kestrel, although 
none holds the iconic status of an indigenous archetype that Eagle does. But they are not the only birds that hold a place of honor in our people’s traditions, and theirs are not the only feathers that play a role in our lifeways. Depending upon the people and the culture, some birds hold specific pride of place, but over the last century, the spread of the ways of the Native American Church has brought the feathers of another bird into common use: the Northern flicker.
Feathers are used to send our prayers to spirit, in healing and ceremony and for daily practice. They are attached to regalia, to traditional dress for use in dance, and bound together to form honor fans. Wing feathers are often used individually; tailfeathers are ideal for the fans; plumes, the small downy feathers close to the body, often find purpose in adornment of people, places, and things. Feathers, and those to whom they first belonged, are sources of inspiration and spiritual strength. And they are an integral part of the imagery that makes up the body of indigenous art.
And so, let us begin with the birds themselves, the spirits who share their gifts with us in this manner. As is obvious from the photos immediately above, they have long been a source of inspiration for Wings’s photography — not surprising, given that he is named for them. They also appear regularly in other forms of Native art, from the graphic arts to figurative works.
Eagle and his extended relations have inspired Native artists since the dawn of time, and the great raptors and their feathers have occupied pride of place in the work of indigenous painters for thousands of years, whether their canvas is a modern high-tech fabric or an ancient sheer rock wall.
As you can see, Eagle occupies the top of the second boulder in this outcropping, part of what is now a petroglyph monument whose artworks date back a thousand years and more.
Today, graphic artists follow in the footsteps of their forebears in similar fashion, using Eagle and Hawk as model and muse, main subject and meticulous detail. One of the artists whose work we have long carried is Frank Rain Leaf. He and Wings grew up together in the old village, and both followed an artistic road, even if their paths diverged into different media. Frank’s specialty is painting, and both birds and feathers appear regularly in his work.
At right is one of his paintings that sold several years ago, entitled Eagle Keeper. In it, a young Pueblo man calls one of the magnificent birds to him even as the raptor’s great archetypal spirit watches from the background. At left is one half of a pair of Frank’s line drawings, a matched set featuring a Pueblo man in one and a maiden in the other, both attired in their best traditional dress. The young man wears an eagle feather in his hair, attached at the back of his head in the old way. It’s a common sign of status conferred by many of our peoples: marking a rite of passage, for example, into adulthood; an honorific given to a warrior or leader in recognition of his (or her, depending on the tribe) achievements. In some tribal nations, only the men wear eagle “feathers,” in the sense of the great wings and tailfeathers; women are given eagle plumes, the downy body feathers.
Even among tribes in which women do not wear eagle feathers on their person, however, they may carry them in fans. If you’ve ever been to a powwow, you’ve no doubt observed women dancers carrying honor fans, often exceptionally large and elaborate fans made of eagle feathers arrayed outward, held fast at the base by hide ornamented with intricate beadwork. An example of such a fan appears in the delicate air-spray painting above by Comanche artist Tim Saupitty.
I have always privately thought of this young woman as a Dragonfly Dancer, given the beautifully ethereal colors of her regalia and the small fragile dragonfly spirits that dance in the air around her along with butterflies and deer. She carries a shawl over one harm; in the other hand she holds the traditional honor fan made of eagle feathers. A moment ago, I mentioned eagle plumes? That’s what she wears in her hair. It’s a finely representative work, an homage to tradition that is still lived today.
Wings, of course, has long used feather imagery in his silverwork, and we’ll get to the in a moment. But he oncesummoned the spirit of the fan, as well: into the pair of earrings shown at right. They were long, slender tassels of silver, narrowed near the top, then flattened and flared slightly into long lightweight drops. He scored a fine line near the rounded tip of each, then hand-stamped each end in a pattern of slim “feathers” fanned outward in an arc. The name of the pair was as simple, and as inherent, as its design: Honor Fan.
The birds who are the source of these gifts are often represented in Native art in the figurative genres, as well. One of our artists, Randy Roughface, carved the eagle sculpture shown immediately above out of local Pilar slate. He has also created the work below, on the left: an eagle spreading its wings to take flight, summoned out of alabaster in shades of ivory and mossy green and fiery orange. Both of these were small works but definitely well within the sculpture category.
At right, however, is a much larger work, one by Taos Pueblo master carver Ned Archuleta. It, too, was coaxed from alabaster, in this case, in a putty color shot
through with bits of dark red siltstone and shimmering flecks of mica. This was a complex work of compound spirits: Bear below, a traditional elder at center, and rising above it all, Bald Eagle, all perfectly balanced so that none overshadowed the others. This piece was truly spectacular, and sold a few years ago.
Birds and feathers are also popular subjects for artisans whose medium is the smaller carvings known as fetishes. As I’ve noted before, I dislike the term, given how popular culture defines the word and the dismissiveness that its usage implies. However, it’s become the accepted label to such an extent as to virtually irreversible at this point, so we use it in spite of our profound misgivings.
In the past, in addition to fetishes by Taos Pueblo carvers and those from a few other regional tribal nations, we
used to carry a substantial selection of carvings by artisans from Zuni, who are widely regarded as the masters of that particular indigenous art form. Among them were eagles, as well as some birds unidentifiable by species. We also carried a few ravens, like the one at left by Calvert Bowannie. Like most fetishes, these were highly stylized, with only a passing nod to realism, but Mr. Bowannie’s style was a bit different. He is known for his highly polished jet birds with the inlaid turquoise eyes, and for giving them articulated wing and tailfeathers. These were popular pieces, smooth and silky and sized perfectly to the palm of one’s hand, the sort of works that were well-suited to those who believe, as our distant cousins in the Pacific Northwest do, that it is Raven who brings the Sun.
Sometimes, fetish carvers will choose to focus not on the whole bird, but solely on the feathers. One of Taos Pueblo’s up and coming young carvers, Jeremy Gomez, has long created such works. Several years ago, he carved fetishes out of local Pilar slate in a feather series, small and graceful and silky as soapstone, perfect to hold in one’s hand. Thereafter, he followed them up with a hybrid form that straddled the genres of fetish and jewelry: carved stone earrings and necklaces in fetish-like form, but with findings to permit the owner to wear them. Among them were two pairs of eagle-feather earrings: one of orange alabaster, long since sold, and the one shown at left, of Pilar slate — the sort of earrings that you cannot resist touching, but that are still lightweight enough to wear comfortably.
Around the same time, he also created a pair of necklaces in the same informal series, the two shown at right. These were crafted of outstanding specimens of orange alabaster in a light peach shade, bits of stone with a striated matrix that flowed horizontally like waves of water, and that captured the light just like the Eagle’s own real-life feathers catch and reflect the sun.
Some carvers, however, choose to incorporate feathers themselves into other works. An example appears in the medicine bear fetish shown above, another work by Ned Archuleta. This piece is a traditional humpbacked bear wrought out of pink alabaster, with what is known variously as an “offering bundle” or a “medicine bundle.” I’ve written here before about the purpose of these small bundles, which function both as an offering to the spirit of the animal that the carving represents and as a means of enhancing its particular power(s), or “medicine.” They generally consist of small stones, shells, or beads combined with feathers, and are tied onto the carving’s back with sinew. In this instance, the feathers are parakeet feathers, but macaw and turkey feathers as well as the downy plumes from other birds, are also common.
This style of carving, which converts a carving that may be beautiful and collectible but is spiritually ordinary into something of power and significance, is also practiced by some Native sculptors of larger works. One of those best known for larger-sized medicine carvings is Mark Swazo-Hind
s of Tesuque Pueblo. He and Wings have been friends and fellow artists for probably thirty years or more, and over that time, Wings has purchased many of his works, some for his own private collection, others to sell inthe gallery. At left is one we acquired in more recent years, a medicine bear carved out of the most eye-dazzling piece of orange alabaster that I’ve ever seen. Mark’s medicine bundles are things of beauty, but also ofcomplexity: Instead of the usual tiny nugget beads and fragments of shell, he uses large polished cabochons drilled into beads and whole shells, then adds old pottery sherds and a stunning assortment of brilliant macaw and boldly striped turkey feathers. A more modest use of the same feathers appears in the sandstone katsina sculpture at right, one designed to hang on the wall.appears in the sandstone katsina sculpture at right, one designed to hang on the wall.
Speaking of katsinam, feathers are integral to their existence, too. And I’m not talking about the existence of the actual katsinam, the ancestor spirits, although based on the details of their representation and personification, it applies to them, as well. Here, I’m referring to the wood figurative carvings that in the old days used to be called “kachina dolls.” As I’ve noted here before, we do not use that term; 
these are not “dolls,” in any sense in which the outside world uses that term; these are the material embodiments of actual spirits, and should be addressed accordingly. The work katsina, or kachina, will do.
At any rate, as you can see from the examples shown here, feathers are integral part of the dress of traditional katsina figures. Above at left is Morning Singer, whose headdress is rimmed with feathers in a style reminiscent of a warbonnet, and accented with a pair of feathers at the the very top. At right is Aya, The Runner: He wears a single eagle feather at the back of his sack mask, and also carries one in his hand — which, I should note, is actually a softening of his character by the carver, Josh Aragon (Hopi/Laguna). Aya is an enforcer of discipline, and he usually carries a 
yucca whip, but Josh has portrayed him here as a somewhat gentler spirit, using the eagle feather to persuade rather than the lash of the whip.
The Longhairs, too, feature feathers in their dress. To the outside wo
rld, they areperhaps the most recognizeable of the katsinam, these Bringers of Rain. They traditionally wear feathers, too, and Josh portrays his with a single feather at the back of the case mask, a second one held in the hand. In this particular instance, the feather is styled more like a macaw feather, but as you can see at right, Josh has braided eagle feathers into his long locks on the reverse.
Even Wings own tribute to the katsinam, the mixed-media figurative work shown directly below, one that is entitled, simply, Kachina, wears the feathers of his real-world (and spirit-world) counterparts.
While we’re on the subject of art made of wood, there are a couple of other genres we need to mention: ornamental works like medicine wheels and dreamcatchers; and traditional weapons, such as arrows and shields. At right is a set of sma
ll medicine wheels, the sort designed to hang over a doorway or over the rear-view mirror of one’s vehicle. Dreamcatchers similarly are usually
made in the form of a hoop with feathers dangling from its lower arc. We’ve looked at both items here before as a part of this series, but I want to return to the medicine wheel just for a moment, because it’s an item that has found expression in Wings’s own work. A couple of months ago, he created a cuff bracelet in the form of a medicine wheel, shown at right. Instead of attaching feathers to dangle from the wheel on its top, he let the feathers flow naturally from the setting, forming the cuff’s own band. In a few moments, we’ll get to the mechanics of how such bands are made.
Traditional weapons also use feathers, for both symbolic and eminently practical purposes. Arrows, of course, are made using wooden shafts with fletched feathers attached at one end; their function is to guide the arrow to its target. At left, you can see examples of such arrows in the quiver of the pictured bow-and-arrow set, made by Wings’s brother-in-law, Daniel Marcus. [Incidentally, the turkey-feather items hung below it on the right are powwow headpieces.] This set was constructed the old way, and is fully functional, if less efficient, perhaps, than modern [i.e., non-Native] bow-and-arrow sets. But warriors often attached feathers to all sorts of weapons, including axes and tomahawks and especially shields. Such artifacts of war were also treate
d as objects of art, beautified and personalized with paint, beadwork, and, yes, feathers. The feathers also served spiritual functions, calling upon the spirit of the bird for strength and prowess and bravery in battle, and for protection for one’s own life. [By the same token, warriors who rode horses into battle would often attach feathers to the animals’ manes and tails, for similar reasons.] The imagery of the fletched arrow finds its way into other forms of art, as well. As you can see at right, Wings incorporated the feathered-shaft theme into one of his miniature collector’s spoons, a work wrought in his own medium of sterling silver. Over the years, he has created a whole series of spoons, a few of them featuring handles in the shape of an arrow’s feathered shaft.
Finally, we come to what is, perhaps understandably, my favorite part of today’s post: the part where we explore, through the lens of Wings’s work, feathers in the form of wearable art.
Of course, sometimes it’s not the feather alone, but also the bird. About ten years ago, he created the work shown 
above, a large sterling silver pendant hand-cut in the form of a Thunderbird, or, perhaps, an eagle. In some traditions, the two are not so very far apart, after all, given that the Golden Eagle is known as the War Eagle. He also once created a highly stylized thunderbird pendant (shown at left) using a combination of sterling silver and
bright green Royston turquoise, with hand-scored “feathers” in the wings and tail. Finally, one of his most popular motifs is the Water Bird (sometimes called the Peyote Bird), a spirit that is significant to the practices of the Native American Church. He has, over the years, created an untold number of concha belts, pendants, pins, and pairs of earrings in the Water Bird motif, some highly styled and barely suggestive of the bird’s outline, others like the pair depicted here at right, with articulated wing and tailfeathers.
Outside of the Water Bird, Wings’s first use of the feather as a model for his silverwork was, generally speaking, in the form of a cuff bracelet. An early version appears in the large photo above, in which the eagle feather itself forms the band of the cuff, saw-cut by hand and then hand-scored to create the feather’s individual barbs and stamped to suggest its mottled color patterns; next, the center shaft created of slender sterling silver wire and overlaid down the band’s center; and finally, the piece then bezel-set at the top with a turquoise cabochon.
That basic style has served him well over years, but he has varied it somewhat, sometimes creating a much smaller,
slimmer band with a modest stone; sometimes omitting the stone altogether but creating a band made, in effect, of two feathers joined together at the base of the shaft. In this latter variant, when he overlays a strand of delicate
silver wire to form the shaft in relief, he begins at one end, and before extending it to the opposite tip, he wraps it around the center where the two feather shapes adjoin, strengthening it, adding texture and depth, and suggesting the imagery of joining, of unity. An more complex example appears at left in the form of a cuff he made as a gift to our much-loved friend of ours, a warrior and elder, not long before he walked on some two and half years ago.
Since he began creating cuffs in the shape of an eagle feather, Wings has expanded the motif far beyond bracelets. A few years ago, he created a series of pendants, simple in the extreme, in the same general form and shape as the eagle feather design he uses in the cuffs: hand-cut with a jeweler’s saw, the barbs created by meticulous and labor-intensive hand-scoring of the surface, hand-stamped in the mottled design common to their real-life counterparts, and overlaid with sterling silver wire to give the shaft a fully articulated presence. He created them pointing downward, as though held at the base of the shaft. And they were held in exactly that way, by a bail above a bezel set with a gemstone: sometimes turquoise, once serpentine, and once, memorably, a fiery orange orb of pure amber (pictured at right). It was as though Father Sun himself held the feather, which gave the piece its name — Greets the Sun, an homage to the prayers with which, aided by an eagle feather, we greet the dawn.
Since then, he has also put the same motif to use in other ways. One dear friend commissioned, over time, an entire set of a jewelry featuring amethyst stones. She wanted a barrette to hold her long thick hair, and given that Wings had in his inventory of stones a sizeable oval amethyst cabochon, he knew exactly what he would create for her: an eagle feather anch
ored with the amethyst, a wearable prayer feather. It’s shown above; before completion, he added a second tiny amethyst cabochon to the tip, as well.
Another dear friend who lives in the same region of the country recently commissioned a pair of earrings in feather form. She had seen a post featuring the necklace shown above, Greets the Sun, and she wondered 
whether the design could be translated into earrings. She, like myself, loves long, dangling drops, and given the design, the style seemed perfect for her. Wings created a pair uniquely her own, featuring spiderwebbed turquoise anchor cabs and tiny bright blue Sleeping Beauty cabs at the tips. Their name was RainFeathers, a testament to the Skystones that serve as their invocation and benediction. They are similar to, but more complex than, smaller earring styles he has created over the years, such as the onyx pair at right, a pair named, quite simply, Black Eagle.
In the last couple of years, Wings has branched out a bit in his use of the eagle-feather imagery. In late 2014 or early 2015, he created a new cuff for a dear friend of ours who lives on the East Coast, a man who is a warrior in his own way, one
who fights for justice using the power of the law and his own words. He had contacted us out of the blue a few years previously, seeking to commission a cuff; he had had difficulty finding an artist who, as he put it “knows his spirit,” but he felt that Wings would be able to do it. Wings did, creating a big, bold, magnificent cuff of solid sterling silver set with old turquoise and coral. Our friend informed us that he donned it like armor before going into court. Now he needed one to match it, to balance out the other wrist. He didn’t want an identical cuff; he wanted something equally substantial, but with a different look and feel, while retaining the same spiritual power. The cuff above was the result. In it, Wings drew on his tradition of eagle-feather cuffs, but in a whole new way, turning the feather itself into the overlay on the broader band. It’s the same hand-cut style, with hand-scored barbs and hand-stamped orbs, and with a second overlay of twisted silver to form the shaft . . . all affixed to a broad, heavy band that he sculpted at the ends and hand-stamped across the surface. Our friend chose the stone from a series of photos of the best of Wings’s supply of old natural turquoise cabochons, a very old, very large oval of Number Eight turquoise in a perfect robin’s-egg blue. Wings elevated it above the band via the insertion of a small sterling silver post, to which he soldered the bezel itself.
It was a spectacular piece, one infused with spirit, and it perhaps set the stage for Wings’s next departure from his old pattern. Last year, he made a small series of anticlastic cuff bracelets, concave surfaces with sides sloping gently
upward, elevated bezels set with magnificent Kingman turquoise stones. He decided, at one point, to experiment with the anticlastic shape, and see whether he could induce a feather cuff to assume its form. First he cut the band by hand, as usual, showing the separations between sections of barbs. In this instance, instead of hand-scoring lines to represent the individual barbs and stamping the mottled surface design on it, he chose to omit that entirely, as well as the overlaid shaft, and create a stylized “shaft” with a chased stampwork pattern right on the band’s surface. Then came the shaping, which, given the excised portions of the cuff’s edges to create the feathery effect, was no sure thing. It took time, labor, and a great deal of patience, but eventually, he coaxed it into the classic anticlastic shape. Then he set the post for another raised bezel, and set the bezel with a magnificently large round hawk’s eye cabochon. On the side, he added a solitary small accent in the form of a tiger’s eye, bringing together the imagery of earth and sky just as the feathers bring us earth-bound beings together with the spirits who dwell in the heavens by way of prayers and smoke.
Finally, Wings last year created four separate necklaces that invoked the imagery of the wingéd ones and their feathers that are gifts to us. First was a piece so highly stylized as to be nearly abstract, a long, slender ellipse of Botswana agate in blacks and grays and whites, set into silver with a tiny moonstone suspended from its lower tip. Its name is The Night Eagle, and it represents the power and protection of the great raptor even in the dark hours when we sleep.
Around the same time, he also created a series that he called The Firebird Collection. It consisted of three separate 
necklaces, all formed of pendants in bright red rosarita (gold slag) that called to mind shapes vaguely reminiscent of birds’ wings and tailfeathers, as well as a pair of earrings and a slender cuff. The first (and largest) necklace, shown above, was ep
onymous: The Firebird, an embodiment of the great spirit bird who emerges from the flames, formed of sterling silver, rosarita, and old natural coral, strung on beads of apple coral and jet. The second, RedWing, shown at right, was a tribute to the blackbirds who make their home here in summer: rosarita and coral set in sterling silver, strung on branch coral and jet. The third, RedTail, appears at left; it was an homage to the triangular scarlet tailfeathers of the red-tailed hawk with whom we likewise share this land. It consisted of a single bold rosarita triangle, suspended from a strand of beads composed of sponge coral, onyx, Picasso marble, and heishi in various shades and sizes.
The cuff in the collection evoked the spirit of the fire, but not the birds. The earrings, however, assumed the form of
hummingbirds, themselves fierce and fiery spirits. In that, they resembled necklaces that he has made in the past, including the one shown here for a 
friend who commissioned it as a gift for his wife: a hand-cut hummingbird set with garnet, beak extracting nectar from a flower; the entire piece strung on either side from sterling silver snake chain. Wings created a complementary pair of earrings to coordinate with it, using the same fluted squash blossoms that formed the flower in the necklace, but tipping them at their open bottoms with a single garnet cabochon.
This is only a small selection of Wings’s works inspired by the wingéd ones and the feathers that hold them aloft. His photography gallery contains a whole series devoted to their spirits, as well. I’d like to close today with an image from it: of the same spirit whose feathers formed the fan in the photo at the beginning of this post.
I mentioned then that, when I chose this week’s themes and topics, I had no idea of their deeper significance.
Late yesterday morning, we learned sad news about one of Wings’s old friends. As is so often the case in Indian Country, where distance still separates, news travels slowly or not at all, and they had lost touch over the last decade and a half. His friend was a Native artist, too, and one who similarly found expression through multiple media, but he was most famous for his beadwork. It was he who created the beautiful peyote fan pictured above.
His name was Mitchell Boyiddle, and today’s post is dedicated to his memory.
Mitchell was a Kiowa living in Oklahoma, but he was a nationally renowned artist. He won awards almost routinely: at Santa Fe Indian Market, at the Red Earth Festival, from Indiana’s Eiteljorg Museum. He was generous with his talent, contributing pieces to fundraising and other events. He and Wings became friends decades ago, a relationship cemented in art and spirit. Wings commissioned a great deal of work from him over the ensuing years, including the beadwork on his own ribbon shirts and traditional regalia, and the peyote fan shown above. Mitchell also made him a miniature fan composed of an iridescent magpie feather flanked by a pair of flicker feathers, one red-shafted and one yellow-shafted, bound by bright intricate beadwork. He was a master at creating fans, collecting feathers in flawless condition, wrapping their shafts in buttery-soft white hide and binding them securely, adding thick waterfalls of fringe in tiny, meticulously wrapped individual strands. But his brilliance was most visible in his beadwork.
Mitchell has been much on our minds in recent weeks. The fan, in use, seemed to speak insistently, but its message was not clear.Then, some weeks ago, an image crossed my Twitter timeline, a photo from an announcement of a benefit powwow. It featured an image of the drum, the beater resting atop it. The beater’s handle was elaborately beaded —intricate, meticulous, truly fine work in colors and patterns that told us instantly that it had to be Mitchell’s work. Finally, yesterday, we turned to Google, and learned the truth.
Mitchell Boyiddle walked on on April 28th, 2011. It is late, but today, we mourn — and we celebrate the life of an artist who was one of our masters, a valued friend, and a good man, a man who carried the touch of the spirits.
As I write this, a flicker has alighted nearby just at this moment. He calls to me from outside the window. In our way, they are messengers of the spirits. Maybe this day the message he brings is a greeting from Mitchell.
Mitchell, fly well and strong in the spirit world, and may you touch the spirits.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
