Hopi, Polacca Polychrome Jar, Late 19th century, Collected by Mr. George Wharton James, Gift of Edith Emma Farnsworth, 421.G.191.
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Pueblo
The introduction of domesticated plants from Mexico between 300 B.C. and A.D. 1000 resulted in a more sedentary life and the beginning of pottery making and construction of permanent villages. The descendants of these early farmers are known today as the Pueblo Indians—the Hopi, Zuni, Acoma, Laguna, Isleta, San Ildefonso, Santo Domingo, and a number of smaller communities.
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The Pueblos occupy nearly thirty villages in New Mexico and Arizona, where they have preserved their ancient traditions through centuries of contact with other cultures. Though culturally similar, they speak six different languages, and though culturally similar, their traditions differ from one village to the next.
After railroads reached New Mexico in 1880, an influx of metalware from the eastern United States brought a decline to the ceramic tradition. At the same time, potters began making small, portable pieces for sale. The founding of the Santa Fe Indian Market in 1922 and the growing popularity of Native American art has kept the tradition alive, and many potters from the pueblos have been recognized as being among the world's leading artists.
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Athabascan
Around A.D. 1400, Athabascan speakers—Navajo and Apache—emigrated from western Canada to the Southwest. Their relationship with the Pueblos was sometimes cordial but often combative. The acquisition of the Arizona and New Mexico Territories by the United States in 1846 eventually put an end to the intertribal conflict. The Navajo were subdued by the U.S. Army in the 1860s. The Apache continued to raid and range over vast areas until the 1880s.
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Navajo, Pictorial Rug, c. 1925–40, Purchased by the General Charles McCormack Reeve Fund, 491.P.3779A.
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The Navajo became famous for their skill as weavers, using wool from sheep introduced by the Spanish and techniques shared by the Pueblos. The Apache became known for, among other things, their innovation and skill as basket makers.
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Tolowa, Apron and Skirt, Late 19th century, Gift of Merle McHaley Martin, 5080.G.1–2.
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California
The Native Americans of California live in diverse natural settings. Prior to European colonization, many groups moved between summer and winter camps. The coastal regions are well watered in early and late winter but dry otherwise. The mountainous areas are inhospitable in winter but supportive in summer. The deserts of the east and south are expansive but offered meager resources.
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Over several thousand years, California natives changed their food ways (seed gathering becoming more important than hunting) and developed trade and village settlement. Numerous migrations into the region resulted in more than twenty-two language families being represented here.
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Columbia River Plateau
The people of the Northwest Plateau live between the Cascade Range and the Rocky Mountains, in a pocket of land extending north into Canada. Their languages are Salish, Shahaptin, Algonquian, and Athapaskan. Prior to the modern era, they lived in small, semi-permanent villages. Some agriculture was practiced, but gathering, fishing, and hunting for deer, elk, mountain sheep, and rabbits was generally more important.
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Yakama, Man’s Vest, 1929–35,Gift of Ms. Marjorie Clausen, 94.9.1.
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The villages were related through extensive intermarriage, trade links, and regional trade fairs. By the early nineteenth century several of the tribes had acquired horses, which allowed them to have greater contact with the Plains Indians. The result was the adoption of a number of Plains cultural items, including hide clothing and tipis and feathered headdresses.
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Haida, Dancing Frontlet, Late 19th century, Gift of Mrs. Wahtawaso Tethrault Gillespie, 611.G.4.
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Northwest Coast
Along the Pacific Rim of North America, from northern California to southern Alaska, exists one of the most artistically rich cultural areas in the Western Hemisphere. The bountiful ocean and forests of this area provided such abundant sustenance that inhabitants did not need to develop agriculture. The resulting leisure time allowed for the development of a strong tradition of artistic and spiritual creations.
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Most people in this region moved from winter villages to spring, summer, and fall fishing camps and food-gathering stations. It was in the winter villages that the social, religious, and artistic lifeways associated with the people of the Northwest Coast were most evident.
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Arctic and Subarctic
The Arctic and Subarctic are huge areas stretching across Alaska and Canada. With land covered in snow and darkness for nearly half the year, the region has the lowest population density in the Americas. The predominant group is the Inuit, who live across the Arctic north, speak one language, practice similar ways of living, and share common beliefs. Inuit people who live on the coasts depend on seals, walruses, and whales for food and clothing, while those further inland make greater use of caribou.
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Yup’ik, Carved Box, c. 1870s, Frederick Hasting Rindge, Gift of Mrs. Merritt Adamson, 980.G.128.
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To the south of this region, Athapaskan speakers live in the western portions of the Subarctic, and the Algonquian speakers live in the eastern portions south of Hudson Bay. Here enormous caribou herds serve much the same purpose as bison did for the people of the plains.
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Ojibwa or Micmaq, Top Hat and Hatband, c. 1850, Gift of Mr. Greg Thorne, 43.X.1.
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Northeast Woodlands
The northeastern United States and adjacent areas of southern Canada is the home of scores of tribal groups. In the fertile woodlands and eastern prairies, they sustained themselves through agriculture, hunting, and gathering. The coastal, lake, and river tribes found a bounty of fish and aquatic life. Most of the tribes in this area were Algonquian or Iroquoian speaking, the former having the larger population and territory.
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Despite the Algonquian predominance, which extended from the seacoast to the Mississippi River, the Iroquoian Confederacy emerged as a powerful military force during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The annual cycle of hunting, gathering, and farming determined the religious and social life of the groups in the area. Winter hunts took most of the adult males away from home for months at a time. Planting and harvest times provided events for celebration. As matrilineal societies, females owned significant property and played important roles in the political processes and decision making.
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Great Plains
The Great Plains are between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River, from western Canada to Texas. The dry climate has been a significant factor shaping the life on the Great Plains, forcing nomadic hunters out of the area about 1,000 years ago. The tribes we associate with the Plains settled there from the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries when successive tribes moved to settle along rivers on land suitable for agriculture.
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Delaware, Moccasins, c. 1876, Gift of Miss Catherine Gregory, 1848.G.4A–B.
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Most groups ventured onto the Plains only for seasonal hunts until the introduction of horses in the 1600s and firearms in the 1700s allowed for greater mobility and hunting efficiency. As a result, bison became a food staple and groups began to winter on the Plains. The pursuit of large bison herds brought many divergent linguistic groups into frequent contact with each other. The Plains sign language developed, facilitating communication between speakers of more than two dozen languages.
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Nayarit, Male Figure, 400, Gift of Sidney and Adeline Newman, 2023.G.4.
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Mexico
Geographically, Mexico is arid in the northern half, coastal and interior grasslands begin somewhat north of Mexico City, south of Veracruz rainfall is heavy and tropical vegetation yields to deciduous and pine forests in the higher elevations. Between the fourth and ninth centuries A.D. four remarkable civilizations developed in Mexico. Possibly started by the Olmec culture of Veracruz, these were the Teotihuacán in the central valley, the Zapotecs of Oaxaca, the Totonacs in Veracruz, and the Mayans of southern Mexico and Guatemala.
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Finally, Nahuatl speakers from the north came to eventually establish the Aztec civilization.
The arrival of the Spanish, whose strong inclination to convert the native population to Catholicism and a European approach to governance, brought sweeping changes to the native way of life. The indigenous people adapted to the situation by borrowing images, modifying ideas, and appropriating manufactured goods.
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Central America
In the popular imagination, the Mayan civilization defines Central America. High Mayan culture existed between A.D. 250 to A.D. 900. The Mayans were noted for their calendar, advanced astronomy, stonework in jade, polychrome ceramics, a glyphic writing system, and highly complex social lives.
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Guatemala, Woman’s huipil, c. 1911, Gift of Mr. Charles F. Lummis, 326.G.222.
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In the millennium before the arrival of the Spanish, as the Mayan culture declined, the local populations had less long-range contact and a great variety of local cultural forms developed.
Indigenous peoples are still prevalent throughout the region. For example, Mayans constitute nearly half of Guatemala’s current population and, except for Costa Rica, most of the population of Central America is ladino, that is, of mixed European and Native heritage.
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Chimu (Peru), Double-Bodied Jar, 1050–1470, Gift of Claude Wesley Calvin, 1859.G.9.
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South America
South America has a vast array of cultures and history. The weaving, pottery, and metalwork by groups in the northwestern regions alone has attracted lifetimes of study by collectors and ethnographers. Although the tropical forests of the central Amazonian watershed make long-range contact difficult, the people here shared small village-based societies, practiced slash-and-burn agriculture, and depended on small game and fish.
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The northwest coast is generally arid, and agriculture is practiced along the rivers. The authoritarian Incan civilization in the highlands of the central Andes depended upon the llama the and cultivation of many valuable crops, particularly potatoes. The people of the southern Andes had less favorable agricultural conditions, resulting in more diffuse settlement patterns. Unlike the Incans, they successfully resisted European settlement in places until the early nineteenth century.
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Hispanic Southwest
The Hispanic Southwest was at one time governed by Spain and then by Mexico. Because of the region’s relative isolation, European ideas of religion, governance, and land use were uniquely interpreted by the local population. When images of Spanish Catholicism, such as saints, were impressed upon the indigenous people, they assigned new meanings to these images that related to their own traditional culture. During several centuries of isolation, modernization, and relative prosperity, diverse cultures—Spanish, Mexican, Native American, and American—have continued to make new meanings and new images.
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New Mexican Artist, Tinwork Niche, Early 20th century, Gift of Mrs. E. C. Hegemann, 1449.G.12.
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Jessie Benton Frémont, Frémont Flag, c. 1841, Gift of Ms. Elizabeth Benton Frémont, 81.G.5A.
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Western Americana
Like the Hispanic Southwest, the American West is defined as much by the history of contact as by the geographic location. Here cultures came together to form new ways of thinking about land, society, and the individual. The farm of the Middle West and the hacienda of Mexico formed the ranch where the crops and fields of one and the subsistence economics of the other developed into rangeland and the cattle industry.
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We see an instance of such diverse forms in Frémont’s flag. Here, on a thoroughly American symbol in a European form, the eagle holds a calumet pipe and arrows, three unmistakably Native American icons. Western Americana expresses the heterogeneous personal experiences of the new individuals weaving a novel social fabric for the United States. It is no wonder that the American West has so thoroughly captured the imagination. Fine art, literature, and cinema portrayed a new role for the individual and a society previously unimagined.
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Painting and Drawing
The work of artists collected by the museum’s early donors, as well as the work of artists who were themselves donors, was produced largely in Santa Barbara, Taos, and Los Angeles. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, artists attempted to record a vanishing way of life and document the people and places of regional significance. They depicted this in images of daily life—whether missions, portraits, or still lifes. Plein air watercolors were the successors of expeditionary sketches. The topics and styles, however, had changed. Rather than romanticized images of exotic cultures and picturesque places made for people on the East Coast or Europe, art here was about a unique ethnic diversity and social heritage in the West.
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E. Martin Hennings (1886–1956), Head of the Council, 1930s, Oil on canvas, Carl and Elisabeth Waldo Dentzel Collection, Gift of Mrs. Elisabeth Waldo Dentzel, 3023.G.43.
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