Mississippian Caddo culture and religious identity is directly tied to their pottery. Their social and spiritual beliefs are embedded deeply within the designs. 

Caddo society is matriarchal, tracking lineage through women. The Caddo in 1600 were a horticulturalist community that relied heavily on their crop production and considers it sacred. Caddo women were the prime creators of their pottery, especially the Redware jars. The Jars were a pivotal aspect to daily Caddo life, but were essential to burials and religious ceremonies. They were also used for daily needs like storing food, water, and grain, but were also given as rare gifts to important people. 

The Caddo believe strongly in the next life after death. During burials, Redware jars were filled with food and supplies to ensure that their deceased traveled safely from this world into the next, as we send our dearly departed off with flowers or keepsakes. Caddo women typically made and designed the Redware jars, and their knowledge of making them could only be passed down from mother to daughter. 

Today, women like Jereldine Redcorn, who in the 1990s revived this nearly lost pottery tradition, are teaching this craft to descendants of the Caddo (a federally-recognized tribal nation). Caddo women have begun to create and pass down the art of creating Redware jars, as well as the cultural history behind them to continue on the cultural and religious legacy of their ancestors. Although Caddo knowledge of pot making was lost due to it being passed down orally, and no written records were kept, Jeri Redcorn, through trial and error, began restoring the process. 

Redware pots are “hand formed from coils of clay, engraved with hand tools, burnished with smooth stones and wood fired.” Self taught, Jeri Redcorn asked herself, “Can I really do this? I’m not an artist, I’m not trained. I’m a math teacher for goodness sake.” She now has officially been recognized as a Caddo artist. 

Learn more about the history and culture of the Caddo Nation here. 

Works Cited

“Caddo Pottery Introduction.” Sam Noble Museum, the University of Oklahoma. https://samnoblemuseum.ou.edu/collections-and-research/archaeology/the-art-of-prehistoric-caddo-potters/caddo-pottery-introduction/. Accessed December 2024.

Carter, Cecile Elkins. “Caddos.” In Ethnicity: The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Vol. 6. Edited by Celeste Ray. University of North Carolina Press, 2007, pp. 104-106.

McDonnell, Brandy. “Long-awaited landmark: Caddo potter Jeri Redcorn designs piece for First Americans Museum,” The Oklahoman, Sept. 13, 2021. https://www.oklahoman.com/story/entertainment/2021/09/13/caddo-potter-jeri-redcorn-designs-large-piece-first-americans-museum/5674622001/

My Prayer  is the work of Hopi-Tewa artist Thomas Polacca. He is the grandson of Nampeyo of Hano and the son of Fannie Polacca, both of whom are famous for their art as well. 

Hopi-Tewa pottery has been traditionally painted with designs that included birds and feathers. Thomas Polacca’s creativity has expanded that tradition by incorporating depictions of humans participating in rituals. He has also incorporated his signature style of relief carving and sgrafitto, which produces designs by carving into the surface of the clay with a knife to reveal a different color under the surface of the clay. According to some sources Polacca is one of the first Hopi-Tewa men to create and design his own pottery. He may be one of the first Hopi potters to add carving and incising to his ceramics.

Many Hopi people are strong believers in their religion. They believe that the rain, heat, and germination is linked to spiritual beings and can be controlled by prayer. A variety of things are considered a form of prayer, like smoke for instance. It symbolizes a rain cloud which prompts the worshipper to pray for rain. Hopi people also use smoking to communicate with their deity as a prayer to the six point cloud people, in exchange for rain. Participants in these ceremonies are revealed as “Katsina Dancers” or “Rain Dancers” where Hopi members impersonate the perfect spiritual beings who bless the Hopi poeple with their cherished rain. 

Thomas Polacca created the My Prayer jar as art, but as homage to his Hopi culture, he incorporated a Hopi man performing a rain dance as well as a cross showing the blending of cultures and religions today. The picture also includes a Katsina dancer with wings gliding over the canyon, with feathered wings and tall buildings in the distance that symbolize rain clouds.

Polacca's work is also in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Museum of the American Indian. 

Works Cited

Jacka, Lois Essary. “Contemporary Native American Ceramics: An Ancient Art Marches into the Twentieth Century.”  Southwest Art, 1988, Vol.18 (4), p.56. 

Loftin, John D. “Supplication and Participation: The Distance and Relation of he Sacred in Hopi Prayer Rites.” Anthropos, 1986-01, Vol.81 (1/3), p.177-201.

Gardner, Annette and Tiffany Chezum. The Olson Brandelle North American Indian Art Collection. Ed. Sherry Maurer, Rock Island: Augustana College, 2010, pp. 113-14.

After the railroad reached Santa Fe in 1880, Tesuque Pueblo, which is not far from Santa Fe, was drawn into its tourist economy. At about the same time, New Mexico suffered a drought that took a toll on the agricultural production of the Tewa-speaking people of Tesuque, one of the oldest pueblos in the region. To sustain themselves, some turned to producing work for the tourist trade. While they had long made functional items, they began making smaller pottery pieces specifically for tourists. Most popular werel ceramic “rain gods,” which were handcrafted but produced in large quantities for tourists from the 1880s onwards, similar to katsina dolls. 

Many such items were sold at “Gold’s Old Curiosity Shop and Museum” in Santa Fe, which was started by Jake Gold, the son of a Polish immigrant. Historian Hal Rothman suggests that while the tourist trade brought necessary income to communities without many other choices, it can also be seen as a kind of economic colonialism. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tourists and anthropologists were interested in pottery from Tesuque, but by the 1920s the mainstream art community unfortunately regarded them as mass-produced and not worthy of the designation “art,” while anthropologists saw them as inauthentic.

The jar reflects the economic, historical, cultural, environmental, and artistic concerns of the artist, whose work synthesizes old and new. Given its size, this jar was probably made for the tourist market. It includes common designs of Tesuque pottery of the time, including rain clouds, birds, and a red ring at the bottom. Hopi people have been using rain clouds and birds as designs for centuries, and the lines representing falling rain may have been an innovation that developed after contact with the Spanish. Pueblo artists’ adaptation to the tourist market as a means of cultural and economic preservation is an important part of their history.

Works Cited

Anderson, Duane. The Olson-Brandelle North American Indian Art Collection. Ed. Sherry Maurer, Rock Island: Augustana College, 2010, pp. 245-248.

Fewkes, Jesse Walter. Designs on Prehistoric Hopi Pottery, Bureau of American Ethnology, 33rd Annual Report, Government Printing Office, 1919, p. 256.

Rothman, Hal. Devil’s Bargains: Tourism in the Nineteenth-Century American West, University Press of Kansas, 1998.

“Tesuque Pueblo Pottery: A Glimpse into the Santa Fe Market of the Early 1900s.” Adobe Gallery, https://www.adobegallery.com/art/historic-tesuque-pueblo-pottery-bowl-rain-cloud-designs. Accessed January 2025.

“Tesuque Rain Gods.” New Mexico Historic Women Marker Program. https://www.nmhistoricwomen.org/new-mexico-historic-women/tesuque-rain-gods/. Accessed January 2025.

The Hopi are one of the oldest living cultural groups in the United States. They have lived in what is now the Southwestern United States for several thousand years and are the descendants of the ancient Pueblo people. Since at least the twelfth century they have lived in villages atop high, dry mesas in Northeastern Arizona, east of the Grand Canyon, and Oraibi Village. While this sash is probably from the early 20th century, similar sashes with corn husk woven into them have been found dating to AD 1200.

The Hopi religion and culture are founded on agriculture. Hopi people on the reservation strive to grow traditional crops in a traditional manner. Their daily lives, culture, religion, and social organization are framed around the agriculture associated with growing the three crops corn, beans, and squash. The crops grown by the Hopi are used for subsistence and ceremonial purposes. Corn is the most widely cultivated of all crops on the Hopi reservation and the connection is sacred; according to Dennis Wall and Virgil Masayesva, “the Hopi people sustain the corn and the corn sustains the Hopi culture.”

Corn is linked with Hopi women, both are fruitful and bear children, thus assuring the continuity of life. Hopi brides are philosophically connected with corn. Cornmeal and its preparation appear repeatedly in Hopi wedding activities. Sometimes a couple must wait several years until they can accumulate the amount of corn and other goods necessary for their wedding. The Hopi flat-braided cotton sash, also known as a big sash, is a critical component of of Hopi ritual regalia. It’s an integral part of a Hopi bride’s wedding trousseau and is also worn by men and women in various other ceremonies. Its long flowing fringe evokes falling rain. 

This big sash may have been presented to a bride on her wedding day. A bride receives one or two robes and a wedding sash in her wedding case and she is to carry the case of gifts in a procession walk from her mother-in-law’s house to her parents’ home where the ceremony is complete and the Bride and Groom consummate the marriage. 

See images of a traditional Hopi wedding ceremony that occurred in 2019 here. 

Works Cited

“Hopi Rain Sash.” Rhode Island School of Design. https://risdmuseum.org/art-design/collection/hopi-rain-sash-44581. Accessed December 2024.

Wall, Dennis and Virgil Masayesva. “People of the Corn: Teachings in Hopi Traditional Agriculture, Spirituality, and Sustainability.” American Indian Quarterly, vol. 28, nos. 3 & 4, Summer & Fall 2004, pp. 435-453.

Wright, Barton. “Preparation of Hopi Wedding Items.” The Olson-Brandelle North American Art Collection, ed. Sherry Maurer, Augustana College, 2010, pp. 89-90.