September first, and there’s no question that Autumn has fully arrived. Unlike us, Nature is not bound by any calendar but her own, and — also unlike us — other living beings follow her lead far more naturally, with far less resistance.
The birds certainly know. The first of the month, and already, the robins and the bluebirds have arrived. I was fortunate enough to capture Robin’s image this morning, perched contentedly atop the tallest latilla. With the bluebirds, I was not so lucky; they are nervous creatures, easily spooked at the first hint of motion or sound. Still, I was privileged to have a flock of them fly past me and settle in the aspens as I went outside for morning prayers.
Here, we tend to classify the seasons (and much else) by the birds who accompany them. They are, after all, our most frequent wild visitors, and those who appear in the greatest diversity and abundance. Still, there is another wild spirit that I associate with Fall, with the feel of winter not far off on the crisp morning air. I wrote about it here last year, as a matter of fact, almost to the day.
To me, the first days of Autumn begin the season of the Buffalo:
I’m not entirely sure why, but this time of year, to me, is the time of the Buffalo. My own people are in the Ricing Moon now, with the Leaves Turning Moon just peeking over the horizon, due to arrive in a week or so. But I’ve always associated late summer and early autumn with the ranging of the buffalo. Perhaps it’s an unconscious association with an image permanently etched in my memory: About this time several years ago, we traveled up to Picuris to buy buffalo meat from the Pueblo’s Bison Project. We were lucky enough to be there at the end of the day, and as we returned to our vehicle, the herd came thundering over the hill from the meadow, headed into the fenced area for their evening feeding. Adults and calves alike, running at top speed in the slanting late-day sunlight, their dark brown curls contrasting with the lush green grass. It touched a chord of ancestral memory so deep I felt the drumbeat of their hooves throughout my body, and I felt tears welling as I gazed at them through the eyes of our grandparents. To the buffalo, they were coming home after a day out grazing. To me, they were coming home to a place of historical memory deep in my soul, and so was I.
For this week’s entry in our Jewels and Gems series, it seems appropriate to feature a stone named for these powerful and magnificent spirits of Autumn. And so, we turn today to magnesite, one fo whose variants is known as White Buffalo.
I wrote about magnesite here late last year as part of our Turquoise Tuesday series, in the edition covering turquoise impostors and mimics:
Magnesite is a popular stone for Indian jewelry, in part because like jasper, it appears in beautiful, bold patterns, but is far less expensive for both artisan and buyer alike. Generally speaking, it appears in shades of white and off-white, with big, arresting matrices in intense shades of black and brown. There are a couple of variants, which we will cover here, but its chemical composition is fairly simple: MgCO3, or, in English, magnesium, carbon, and oxygen.
Some magnesite manifests in classic crystal formations, trigonal in shape and translucent in effect, In one particular deposit found in Brumado, in the Bahia region of Brazil, it appears in a rare rhombohedral formation, one that resembles a type of calcite crystal found in Iceland. The rarity of this form of magnesite, and thus, its far greater value, has reportedly resulted in some dealers mislabeling of the far more common calcite as rhombohedral magnesite.
The form of magnesite used in Southwestern Native jewelry, however, takes a different form: white, opaque, and generally with darker matrix inclusions. the more archetypal crystalline form of magnesite is a stunningly beautiful stone, one that would lend itself to delicate jewelry such as that in the form of wire-wrapped crystals.” However, I suspect that its crystal structure makes it much harder to work with for purposes of cutting and cabbing, and classic Indian jewelry from this part of the country is built around the cabochon form of gemwork. The opacity and variation in color and crystalline structure are a result of the minerals that co-occur with the magnesite in the deposits where this type is found.
The form of magnesite used by Native jewelers and smiths usually comes in two variants: White Buffalo, and Wild Horse. They are, in a sense, the same stone; the labels are divided by color and pattern of matrix. And the labels themselves are, to be frank, wholly opportunistic: The point of the names is to associate them very specifically with Native motifs. “Wild Horse,” of course, evokes images of mustangs, caught and only half-tamed by Native warriors. “White Buffalo,” on the other hand, borrows the imagery of Native prophecy, of what is sacred to our cousins to the north and has since become an intertribal symbol of sorts, one representing sovereignty, independence, survival in a new world marked by a return to the old ways.
I wrote about the distinctions between these two forms of magnesite last year also. Rather than paraphrase myself, I’ll simply reproduce it here:
White Buffalo
We have talked about magnesite on a few occasions already; it’s impossible to discuss Sacred White Buffalo turquoise without mentioning its chief impostor. There is, as I said then, an actual Sacred White Buffalo turquoise. Most of what is sold as such on the market is not it. It’s not even turquoise.
Magnesite contains no copper, no iron, no aluminum, no zinc — none of the major minerals found in turquoise. It’s a white stone, or, rather, whitish; some of it is virtually the color of snow, while much of it is more off-white, ivory, or even a very pale beige in color. It sometimes appears with virtually no matrix whatsoever, but most of it does have inclusions; generally speaking, however, they are the sort of inclusions that make it readily identifiable, and it’s usually a good way to tell that it’s not turquoise. The matrices range in color from a golden-bronze shade to brown, and from silvery-gray to charcoal to black. The form that appears with matrices in the black shades is the kind most likely to be labeled “White Buffalo.”
Don’t get me wrong; much turquoise has the sort of matrix that manifests in flecks or blocks or swatches rather than fine spiderwebbing. But the difference here is that actual Sacred White Buffalo turquoise has a webbed matrix; White Buffalo magnesite has only blocky or flecked matrices. Personally, we also distinguish between the two by the name. The turquoise is a sacred stone of sorts, and thus gets the full name when discussing it. It seems disrespectful to add the word “sacred” to the name of the pretender, so we refer to it only as “White Buffalo magnesite,” being careful to add that final identifier to make clear what it actually is. We were disgusted to learn that an otherwise seemingly reputable dealer from whom Wings had bought for years was selling the magnesite out of a tray labeled “White Buffalo Turq.” When questioned, they admitted that it was magnesite, and indeed were not knowledgeable enough to know of the existence of (or difference in) the actual turquoise, but without asking, no one would know.
Wild Horse
There is another form of magnesite popular in Indian jewelry, one that tends to manifest with matrices in the brown spectrum. With Wild Horse, the matrices are often far bigger inclusions that mere flecks. Sometimes the blocks of color resembles mesas and canyons, and can be mistaken for picture jasper because of their desert-landscape effect. The actual matrix colors range from golden shades through bronze to copper and brick red all the way to deep, rich browns.
You will frequently see Wild Horse misidentified as “Crazy Horse,” yet another example of the dominant culture’s continual quest to appropriate the most sacred and significant icons of Native cultures. There is no such stone as “Crazy Horse.” Period. The use of it is disrespectful in the extreme; that’s a name that belongs solely to the great warrior’s own people, and specifically, to his blood descendants. In situations like this, it’s important to get the name right, and the name is “Wild Horse.” If you see it mislabeled accordingly, you should correct the seller. They won’t thank you, but it’s a point that needs to be made (sadly, again and again and again and again).
The photo of the wide cuff above shows an especially “colorful” cabochon of white buffalo magnesite, one that contains a full range of possible matrix colors within an off-white stone: wisps and patches of beige, golden-bronze, brown, dove gray, charcoal, and near-black. The dragonfly pin shown immediately below is an example of more classic white buffalo magnesite, the kind that appears to be solely [near] white and [near] black:
It makes for a starker contrast, which is probably part of its attraction. For myself, I prefer the fuller range of shades and the subtler blends of the multicolor matrices, like those found in this cuff bracelet that Wings created five or six years ago:
Again, you can see the broader range of hues, with traceries of golden bronze underlying the darker matrix. This one was also especially beautiful, in the the black matrix was indeed closer to jet in color, and appeared in the more classic matrix form of partially webbed lines, rather than the plainer patchwork for which most of this stone is known.
The variations found in this form of magnesite are subtle in other ways, particularly in the crystalline structure (i.e., in mineralogical terms) of the stone. An example is occurs in the degree of opacity of the stone. For example, some of it appears to be nearly as opaque as an egg, like the rectangular cabochon Wings used in this hook bracelet:
It gives the stone an almost yellowish cast. The inclusions in it are near jet in color, and they are somewhat webbed, but the lines tend flow into broader streams, marked here and there by what look like small pools of ink. The patterning also resembles the stone in the turtle necklace featured in the photo at the top of this post. That stone was less ivory, more fully white, but the matrix color and patterns were very similar.
But this stone also manifests in a more translucent form, one that carries more of the characteristics of trigonal magnesite:
As you can see toward the right-hand side of the oval cabochon in the cuff immediately above, there’s a bit more of a translucent effect to this stone, glossier, less flat and dense-looking. The matrix is the same blackish color, but one manifesting in smoky wisps that range from dove-gray to the color of lead.
But both the White Buffalo and Wild Horse variants possess a greater market value than the plainer forms of the stone. This is due in part to the beauty of their matrix and in part to the the fact that they have now been successfully linked in the market’s collective mind with Native culture, jewelry, and art. Unfortunately, it’s also often priced far higher than its actual worth when masquerading as a different stone entirely. As I wrote when we covered its turquoise counterpart here, the far more valuable gemstone whose identity is often mistakenly conferred on it:
If it’s so valuable, though, why is it that you can find white cabochons labeled “White Buffalo turquoise” all over the place for as little as a buck or two a carat?
Remember what I said about pretenders?
We’ve covered this briefly a few times already. There are a couple of exceptionally inexpensive stones that are often used as substitutes for turquoise: magnesite and howlite. We’ll take the latter one first.
Howlite is a white stone, one that is much coarser, chalkier stone than turquoise. That chalky nature also means that it’s absorbent. This makes it easily dye-able, turning a white stone into brilliant clear shades of blue and green. It does not, typically, have a great deal of matrix, but neither does all turquoise; many of the Arizona forms of turquoise, such as Sleeping Beauty and some Kingman, are examples. Undyed, however, it generally looks like an opaque off-white stone, sometimes with minor inclusions that manifest as wisps of brown or gray. It is sometimes marketed as “White Buffalo turquoise,” but it’s not turquoise at all, and should never bear that name.
Magnesite is a bit more difficult to dismiss (as a gemstone, I mean; as a turquoise pretender, it’s easily dismissed, provided that people are forthright). It, too, is a mostly-white stone, and a harder one than howlite, not so easily dyed. Some dealers in mass-produced stones and beads will dye it blue or green and market it as “turquoise,” but the more frequent issue that arises is its marketing in its white form.
Magnesite appears in a couple of forms that, properly labeled, make for beautiful Indian jewelry in their own right: White Buffalo magnesite; and Wild Horse magnesite. The White Buffalo version tends to be mostly white, with little blocky patches of matrix that occur mostly in shades of gray to near-black. An example is shown in the photo at [the bottom of this post], and you can easily see the difference in matrixing compared to that of the nugget shown elsewhere in this post: Blocks and flecks and smoky wisps, but no spiderwebbing. Wild Horse is actually more beautiful yet, with bold swatches of matrix in irregular patterns that range in color from a light golden bronze to deep chocolate brown, and with occasional wisps of gray and black. They’re gorgeous stones, and make for gorgeous jewelry.
They’re simply not turquoise.
Most magnesite is not an especially expensive stone. That does not, however, mean that Native jewelry made with magnesite is not valuable; it most certainly is. But as you can see from the price of the one remaining item in inventory, shown below, it is far, far less expensive than a piece made with a cabochon of actual turquoise of similar size (to say nothing of the extent to which the price would rise were it the actual and rare Sacred White Buffalo turquoise).
The notable exception is the one I mentioned above, the rhombohedral crystals found in Brazil. Part of this is due to its relative accessibility: It’s found all over the world. there are large and well-known deposits in Europe, particularly in Austria, Germany, Italy, and Spain; in parts of Asia and Australia; and here in the United States. Locally, perhaps the most abundant sources are found in Pennsylvania, but there are also established deposits in Arizona, Nevada, Texas, and even on New York City’s Staten Island. And it’s not confined to this world: Thanks to the work of the Rover, scientists have established that there is magnesite on Mars.
Magnesite, in and of itself, has no particular significance for us (nor, to our knowledge, to any other Native peoples). We don’t imbue the stone with healing properties or spiritual significance. Certain New Age “crystal traditions,” of course, do (as they seem to do with virtually every mineral in existence). Much of what I’ve seen written about magnesite’s so-called “metaphysical properties” is quite obviously linked directly to its name. It is true that the word “magnesite” derives ultimately from the same Ancient Greek root as both magnesium (magnesite’s primary constituent element) and magnetite. All come from the proper name Magnesia, a district in the Thessaly region of Greece. The words give rise to the implication that these minerals possess a magnetic quality, which is no doubt the source of magnesite’s supposed “metaphysical properties” of “alignment” when one is somehow out of balance. In addition, various sources refer to it as a stone of peace, of healing, and of self-love.
For us, of course, it’s none of those things. It does, however, carry the significance of its name, a name whose symbolism makes it a naturally attractive medium for Native artisans of diverse cultural backgrounds and traditions. It is that connection, that relationship to concepts of strength and courage in the face of grave danger and terrible existential harm, of the eventual triumph of Native sovereignty and independence, of the promise of a new world of the old ways, that makes it one of Wings’s own preferred stones when he’s not working with turquoise.
At the moment, we have only one item remaining in inventory that incorporates White Buffalo magnesite. It’s the cuff bracelet shown immediately below, with a band made of simple dual-strand half-round wire, stamped only with directional arrows that meet in the center beneath the large oval magnesite cabochon in snowy white touched with bits of charcoal. From its description in the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Finding Buffalo Cuff Bracelet
A large oval cabochon of White Buffalo magnesite, bezel-set and trimmed in twisted silver, rests at the center of this dual-strand sterling silver cuff. Hand-stamped directional arrows lead two and from the stone; while tiny round hoops accent the band’s underside. (Side view shown below.)
Sterling silver; White Buffalo magnesite
$385 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Although our current inventory contains only this one finished work, Wings does have a number of White Buffalo magnesite cabochons in his supply of stones. A few are small matched paris suitable for earrings; others are larger, some more free-form and at least one in a more standard geometric shape, that would be perfect for earrings, pendants, or belt buckles. If the stone speaks to you and you’re interested in commissioning a piece with it, please inquire using the Contact form at left.
For us, it’s a beautiful, and beautifully simple, accent that coordinates with the winter snows to come, and with the current autumnal air, evoking as it does the great creatures that once populated much of Turtle Island and shared their gifts with us — food, clothing, shelter, weaponry, art, medicine, and spiritual items. And as the year begins to wind down toward winter, as the days grow shorter and the air colder, it’s not merely a matter of finding Buffalo, but of what it represents: finding strength; finding courage; finding hope.
~ 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.
