LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Zuni Indians: New Mexico
built 643 days ago
The Zuni Indians of western New Mexico have been making beautiful pottery for over a century. In this intimate and personal book fourteen contemporary Zuni potters tell us in their own words about the traditions and techniques of their craft--how they collect and handle clay, how they fire and decorate pots, and how they learn, develop, teach, and adapt their art. Some of these potters have learned in the traditional way from their mothers, but many have ... taken advantage of modern mobility and education to learn at school and by visiting museum collections of pueblo pottery. Their work and their lives combine tradition and innovation.
Source:
The Zuni Indians of New Mexico believe strongly in six cardinal guardian fetishes. Each is symbolic of a direction and has a specific color which is synonymous with the direction. The guardian fetish of the North is the mountain lion (yellow). The South (red) is the badger, the West (blue) is the bear and the East (white) is the wolf. Additionally, the mole is the guardian of the Nadir or inner earth (black) and Zenith is the Eagle (all colored bird forms).
Source:
The Zuni Indians of New Mexico use wild turkey feathers for ceremonial clothing and prayer sticks. Turkey hunters have a unique opportunity through the Zuni Feather Project to donate their feathers to help meet the needs of the Zunis. Each wild turkey has 5,000 - 6,000 feathers, and a majority of them can be salvaged for Zuni use.
Source:
For the Zuni people A'ts'ina and sites continue to be sacred places, parts of a larger homeland that once stretched far beyond today's Zuni Reservation. The symbols and pictures communicate both the mundane and the spiritual. Eventually a new breed of travelers took inspiration from the Indian scribes. With points of steel they continued the story in records of conquest and colonization.
Source:
As the prehistoric population of the Zuni region gradually increased in size through internal population growth and immigration, the mobility of communities became constrained. Each community required an agricultural area, presumably near its habitation, and an increasingly larger sustaining area for resource procurement. As the number of communities increased, the amount of available agricultural land decreased, and new settlements adversely impacted the ecology of the sustaining areas used by previously established communities. Regional packing of population into a finite area greatly diminished the ability to expand or maintain the settlement system, leading to a major change in the form and distribution of settlements.
Source:
The Zuni gods are believed to reside in the lakes of Arizona and New Mexico. The chiefs and the shamans during religious festivals carry out two different types of ceremonies. Song and dance accompanies masked performances by the chiefs while the shamans pray to the gods for favors ranging from fertile soil to abundant amounts of rain. The shamans play an important role in the community as they are looked upon for guidance as well as knowledge and healing. There are different levels of expertise for all shamans with the goal ultimately being to reach the top level so they can assist in all aspects of Zuni life.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
New Mexico