One of the hallmarks of indigenous culture is storytelling. It’s a way to pass the time where few other forms of entertainment may be readily available, true, but in our cultures, it’s much more than mere leisure-time amusement. It’s more than what today we might call “family bonding” time, and more than a way to build relationships among the older and younger generations. It’s also much more than a way to teach lessons, although it’s that, too.
It’s a way to keep culture itself alive.
Our stories are as varied as the peoples (plural) who tell them, and as the people (singular), as well. A survey of tribal nations within the same geographic region, the same ethnic subgrouping, or the same language family will turn up variations of very similar traditional stories. And yet, within those same groups, the same stories vary within other subgroups, as well. And thus you get dozens, perhaps hundreds of nations with their own origin stories that have basic similarities and yet vast differences; nations from all over the country that tell stories of how their own ancestors were given/invented the drum, the dreamcatcher, the jingle dress; variations within the same nation as to details of those stories, or even their fundamentals.
Stories tell our children where they came from. They tell us who we are. They tell us how to live, how to walk the red road, how to go well through life according to the old ways that Spirit has given us. They tell us how to be wise, and how to be wary. They teach us the meaning of courage and honor and respect and the sacred. And sometimes, they do all these things while making us laugh, such as when Coyote decided to lie in wait for the maidens picking strawberries.
In Pueblo cultures, this tradition has been given figurative expression and tangible form in a medium called, aptly enough, the storyteller.
It’s an art tradition that, according to the dominant culture’s “collectors” and “experts,” has existed only since 1964.
Ask a Pueblo elder, and she or he will tell you differently.
According to the received wisdom of the outside world, the “inventor,” so to speak, of the storyteller was a woman named Helen Cordero, of Cochiti Pueblo. If you read closely, however, you’ll see that “inventor” is perhaps too strong a word, even there: Supposedly, she was creating pieces to the specifications of a white man who was a collector and “expert.” [And, yes, like it or not, I will virtually always put the word expert in quotation marks when talking about non-Indians, because while they like to style themselves “experts” on our cultures, I have yet to meet one who actually is, their own and their peers’ assertions to the contrary notwithstanding. The actual experts on Indian cultures are Indians.]
As one biographer notes, Cochiti Pueblo already specialized in a sculptural art form known as the “Singing Mothers,” speculating that the collector in question had that imagery in mind when requesting small seated adult figures overrun with small children. The same book quotes Ms. Cordero herself as remembering her own grandfather, ” a really good storyteller,” surrounded by his grandchildren, as she visualized how to fulfill the collector’s commission.
The account makes perhaps too much of whether Ms. Cordero’s first such storyteller was male. The fact of the matter is that elders today who were alive long before the magic date of 1964 can remember sculptors and potters in their own families making just such figures, male and female alike, holding children in their arms, on their laps, on their shoulders, the adult depicted with mouth open in a circle to tell the old stories and sing the old songs. And today, of course, the styles vary among the Pueblos, and among the artisans within each Pueblo. One Taos Pueblo artist makes both Grandmother and Grandfather storytellers, and it’s always interesting to see the confusion on people’s faces trying to decide which is which; invariably, they get it wrong. In her work, the adult with the hair tied up in a traditional bun is the grandmother, while the one with the two long braids is the grandfather. Today, of course, male members of the Pueblo who dress traditionally tie their hair up in the bun, as do married women — but in the old days, the men wore their hair in two long wrapped braids. Her style harks back to an older time, giving it layers of additional meaning. It’s a stylistic execution that’s also reflective of the storytellers that Wings, born in 1949, recalls from his own childhood among an extended family full of artists, including potters and sculptors who made such pieces.
I should note here that none of what I say minimizes Ms. Cordero’s own contributions to the larger body of work made up of what are now called “Pueblo storytellers.” She was, by whatever designs of humans, fate, or Spirit, the person who midwifed the style’s entrée into the world outside Pueblo societies generally. Her own work now occupies a place of broader historical significance, is much in demand, and is very valuable by any measure.
Today, not all storytellers are made with human elders. One artist who lives at Pojoaque has adopted the medium, but she places her children atop and around animal figures, like the horse shown at right. It’s not out of the realm of possibility; many of our peoples do regard specific animals as spirit beings, some benevolent and tasked with teaching and helping their human charges.
It’s interesting to me, though, to see the differences in this storyteller and those made by Taos Pueblo artists. You see, although this artist is married to a man from the pueblo where she lives, she herself is from one of the northern tribal nations. And while superficially, the piece looks very like those made by Pueblo artisans — micaceous clay, painted features and clothing, lots of small children with round heads and even rounder open mouths — upon closer examination, it bears none of the detail specific to the other storytellers shown here, all of which are made by Taos Pueblo potters. It’s a good example of how art can cross cultural boundaries, but the intrinsic form and identity lose something in translation.
All of the pieces shown above are from our own inventory in years past: at the top, my favorite of a whole series done by Wings’s aunt, Juanita Suazo DuBray, whose work we profiled here; second, a very large version by his cousin, Henrietta Gomez, who specializes in pottery with an incredibly smooth, warmly glowing sheen like that shown here; and third, the storyteller horse, one of three by an acquaintance, Margaret Quintana, dating back to 2007 or so. At the moment, we have only four storytellers left in stock, all much smaller than those shown above:
These are likewise made by a relative: Wings’s cousin, Aaron Mirabal. From their description in the Other Artists: Sculpture Gallery here on the site:
Miniature storytellers sit atop a shelf or nestle in the palm of your hand. Fashioned of the local micaceous clay by Aaron Mirabal (Taos Pueblo), each represents a traditional grandmother passing on stories, songs, and lessons to the next generation of children. Children and elders alike wear hand-painted traditional dress in bright colors; the grandmothers feature old Hopi-style butterfly rolls in lieu of the single hair bun more common locally. Each of the larger ones includes three children, and stands some 4″ high by 2.5″ wide by 2.5″ deep; the smaller ones include two children apiece, and stand 2.5″ high by 1.75″ wide by 1.75″ deep (all measured at highest/widest/deepest points; dimensions approximate).
Micaceous clay; paint
Larger storyteller: $155 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Smaller storyteller: $75 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Each is a tiny little piece of traditional culture rendered in clay, an art form that goes back many more years than most outsiders know, depicting a way of life that goes back millennia more than that.
~ 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.
