Mysteries of Zuni Silver: and Who Was Mingos House Anyway?
By Ernie Bulow
In the beautiful book on Zuni silversmiths by Jim Ostler, Marian Rodee and Milford Nahohai – page 84 – there is a photo of an elaborate mosaic eagle dancer. I have admired that piece many times. The other day I happened to read the caption. It was from the Heard Museum collection, made by Bruce Zunie, and dated 1925.
Dorothy and Bruce Zunie
Bruce Zunie was born in 1931, served as Chief of Police in Zuni for some years, and died prematurely in 1971 – aged 40. Since it was a tribal publication, somebody should probably have caught the error, but the wrong date obviously came from the Heard, who almost certainly got it from C. G. Wallace who once owned the piece.
I went to talk to Dorothy Zunie, Bruce’s widow and got an interesting story. She went to work for Wallace as a teenager, still in high school. Her first job was as his housekeeper. Her father Harry Cheeku (spelled Chico by the Anglos) worked for the trader primarily as a buffer. Dorothy soon moved to the shop, buffing and doing finish work, and before long was shaping and setting stones in Navajo silverwork.
Dorothy and Bruce married when he got out of the service and started making jewelry together. Bruce’s job as Chief of Police took much of his time and he would lay out a piece and Dorothy would complete it during the day. This was the case with many unknown wife collaborators including Dan Simplicio’s wife
We paged through some books and magazines together and Dorothy pointed out pieces made by her and Bruce attributed to other artists – some to Leo Poblano.
Eagle Dancer Inlay by Dorothy and Bruce Zunie
Dan Simplicio Sr. was a relative of Bruce’s and they sometimes collaborated. Some of the Zunies’ patterns have survived, though most are lost. Dorothy says that some of the sketches were done for them by another great Zuni artist, Anthony Edaaki, including the one for the magnificent eagle dancer.
Fame is a fickle thing at best – and when it runs counter to strong cultural taboos it becomes truly problematical. Zunis, Navajos and some other Native Americans avoid bragging, standing out from the crowd, or being too obviously successful. There are even mechanisms for spreading the wealth among the people.
Add to that a general feeling that it is best not to confide any sort of information to the outside world and the problem becomes serious. There is a strong belief among Zunis that their culture has survived as long as it has by keeping to itself and keeping Zuni lips zipped.
Until the middle of the last century, most Zuni artists tried to stay anonymous. In the huge collection of jewelry given by trader C. G. Wallace to the Heard Museum, only two silversmiths signed their work, and even they only signed sometimes. Practically everything the outside world knows about the early jewelry of the Zuni comes from Wallace’s notes.
It is true that John Adair wrote a seminal book on the subject in 1940, but he didn’t include some of the great silver workers of the period – and doesn’t touch on the three-quarters of a century that has passed since. So what? Shouldn’t the jewelry speak for itself? Of course it does.
But what about the forgotten master jewelers, or the ones whose work is given to other artists? My interest in this subject grew out of the suspicion that some of Wallace’s brightest stars – Mingos House in particular – never existed.
There was, in fact, never a Zuni named Mingos House, nor the family name of House in Zuni at all. Yet some really fine pieces bear his name. In a recent book, Japanese writer/collector Toshio Sei notes the similarity between his work and some pieces attributed to the great innovative artist Teddy Weahkee. He concludes that it certainly is a mystery, but leaves it at that.
Arnold Cellicion, master of inlay
In the same book, Sei notes that one of the four Cellicion brothers (all master jewelers along with their wives), the eldest, Arnold, doesn’t have any identified existing work. Since Arnold’s widow, Neva, is still alive it seemed logical to ask her. She – backed by two of her daughters – pointed to those same pieces that might belong to Mingos – or Teddy Weahkee – as their work. “But we just did the stones,” she said. “Somebody else would always set them.”
I pointed out to them that some sort of documentation would be needed: something beyond the collective word of the extended family. They gave me that look that said, “Everyone in Zuni knows which styles belong to which people.”
Arnold’s daughter Florence asked me if a family-owned piece would do. Of course it would. Florence had given a knifewing set, glued on cardboard as they did back then, to her son Rickell, also a master silversmith. He said he was about to set it into a bow guard, and kindly let me photograph it. The shape of the wings is very distinctive, though some Zunis think that others of the Cellicion brothers did similar work.
Because Neva and Arnold never set any pieces they were likewise never able to sign any pieces. Which still leaves the question – who was Mingos House? Laurencita Mahkee, long-time staff member of Zuni Arts and Crafts Guild, offers an interesting etymology. An old man named Minku Dooley lived in the middle village, not too far from Wallace’s store.
It was common in those days for several smiths to share a work shop, such as the one maintained by Horace Iule. For one thing it allowed access to a larger array of tools, which were hard to come by. Minku, who made adobe bricks with his wife, had a spare room. Thus pieces made in this shop came from “Minku’s House.” Might be.
A more widespread practice was the use of “house” names: made-up monikers to put on pieces jointly produced by several artists or pieces when the trader didn’t actually know the maker. Another such name was John Gordon Leak. Again, there is nobody named Leak in Zuni. But there was a John Leekity who made similar jewelry.
Knifewing set by Neva and Arnold Cellicion
As it turns out, Leekity, known in Zuni by the name of Choo’tsana (small corn), was another master of mosaic inlay who never set his own pieces. It is a matter of record that Wallace had more Navajos working for him than Zunis, and it was generally their job to set the stones in silver.
Older jewelers in the village don’t think Leekity made anywhere near all the pieces attributed to him and similar pieces have been attributed to everyone from Old Man Leekya, to Dan Simplicio, to several modern stone workers.
One of my best sources of clarification is needlepoint innovator Bryant Waatsa, who has been active since the beginning of the modern era, worked for Wallace, and knew all the famous artists. Looking through the famous Wallace catalog from Sotheby’s (1975) the source of most attributions of Zuni art, he found many errors.
Pointing to a fine set of inlayed Salamopias (protectors of the six directions) he told me they were not made by “Red Leakala” as the caption said. “They were made by Walter Nakatewa.” I asked him why he was so sure and he told me he had seen them made. It turns out that four families once lived in the house as in-laws. The Waatsas, the Soceeahs, the Bowekatys and the Nakatewas.
Walter Nakatewa was Bryant’s father-in-law. I asked Neva Cellicion what she thought – she was Red’s sister – and she said her brother Morris, known as Red, had never made any jewelry at all. I thought the matter was ended until I learned that another silversmith, Chris Jamon, said that it was another brother, Howard, who originally went by that name.
Then Chris’s wife recalled that when she was a little girl the whole family was called the “red people” in Zuni. Bright red hair runs in their genes and still pops up three generations later. According to some Zunis they all had red hair, but Neva and her sister kept theirs dyed black.
There is a photo in one of the jewelry books that shows the sister, Maryetta Soseeah, with a good bit of her flame-red roots showing. Zuni Councilman Loren Leekela agrees that his uncle Red never made any jewelry. As for his father, Howard, “He would never have made Kokko (Katsina) figures because he was very religious. Neither of them ever made those pieces.”
That seems pretty convincing, but I have to report that Leonard Martza, another smith from the classic period, is quite insistent that Morris Leekela did, indeed, make jewelry. Hugh Bowekaty, another of Nakatewa’s sons-in-law, agrees with Bryant that he didn’t.
Leonard is on the other side of the controversy. He spent a good deal of his career making the silver for other people’s stone work. But it turns out that Leonard’s sister Genevieve collaborated on many of his pieces and his granddaughter has worked with him in recent years.
And what about the smiths who were on their way to fame and then got lost in the shuffle? There are many of them, for sure. The magnificent needlepoint work of William Nakatewa, one of the creators of the style, has never gotten the attention it deserves.
Bowman Paywa opened a bakery and a promising career came to an end. The fabulous husband and wife team of Tom and Mary Weebothe were once top of the heap. Pauline Dishta worked on many of the famous pieces by Joe Zunie and was master of the covered wagon design, continued in a slightly different form by Lincoln Zunie.
One of the most original, accomplished smiths of all times, Ukwine Neese, is another lost genius. A necklace by him is pictured in the November issue of New Mexico Magazine and belongs to Richardson’s Trading. John Adair obviously admired him and devoted several pages to his working technique.
Hopefully it is not quite too late to bring great talent to light, to correct the many mistakes that have found their way into print, and to give a face to the amazing artistic talent that is Zuni Pueblo.
