Chapter 660

Dec 19, 2023

Navajo Gourd

it's gourdous

Once upon a time I travelled to Durango, Colorado and purchased a Navajo gourd at a quaint little bookstore, the Southwest Book Trader. 

We were simply awaiting our hotel room to open, had a little lunch at a local hangout the 2nd Deli and Spirits splitting a reuben. On our walk back to our parked rental car we spotted this eclectic little shop. Friendly proprieter  looked like Gabby Hayes with big gray beard and hunched over frail frame. He wanted $33 for the nicer attractive Navajo pottery bowl which I didn't really need and was too bulky. He said $22 for the gourd but I bargained it down to $15, feeling like I won even though again it's not really anything that I need.

Navajo Traditional Teachings indicate the significance of the color red in their belief system. It's the highest color of the rainbow and indicates that is where you will go on to the next (4th) world when your time is up here in the present (3rd) world. We have come from the previous (2nd) world created by the Holy Ones of the First World. The next world is giving us the life form of water to sustain life and create rivers. I believe the gourd artist is using the arrow head triangle which  symbolizes awareness and vigilance.

The Buffalo is an important sacred animal and life builder, life guider spirit. It exudes the meaning of life: Joy, happiness, confidence and peace when you walk in beauty.

You can learn a lot from the Dine, as they like to call themselves.

On my gourd there are also symbols of the bear - power, adaptability and the clockwise spiral- path of life, but I don't want to bore you. 

Nelson Dodge Shirley was an accomplished Navajo artist. Her gourd above is on eBay currently. The Navajo Reservation is the largest Native American territory in the U.S. headquartered in Window Rock, Arizona. My gourd is signed on the bottom JRS '98. There are many Shirley decendants and perhaps the S is for Shirley- unknown?

Elfreida Begay at the Durango High School is the only teacher  authorized to teach the Navajo native language in Colorado. I'll contact her to see if by chance might know who made my gourd. She attended Fort Lewis College on the Native American tuition exemption, like the Hopi guy we met when we walked up that side hill there.

Don't know why but often during research I end up finding an interesting link to my story back near my old home town. Gourdlandia is an interesting place (and with an educational video) below Ithaca located in a hippie commune village, Ecovillage on Rachael Carson Way (ecologist namesake) . Run by ex-midwife now gourd farmer.

Lucas  did a little Iroquois art recently. They like to call themselves the Haudenosaunee with their logo representing the 5 nations across NY, later to accept the Tuscaroras making them the Six Nations. I expect it was a school project? I notice he had some of the same themes seen on the gourd; arrowhead, native animals, water, and the cycle of life.

I know there will be many of you who want to know much more about our Lagenaria Siceraria, bottle gourds, calabash, and many other names that have been around thousands of years BC.