History Wing — Southwest Jewelry Field Guide

History

• Origins of Navajo Silversmithing: Atsidi Sani and the First Smiths — How one Navajo blacksmith learned iron from a Mexican craftsman, and the four-position dating debate over when silver work began.
• Bosque Redondo and the First Smiths — Primary witness testimony on what the silver books document about silversmithing before, during, and after the Long Walk internment (1864–1868).
• First Turquoise Setting in Navajo Silver — Atsidi Chon sets the first known turquoise stone in a silver ring, c. 1878, witnessed by Grey Moustache. And how Atsidi Chon carried the craft to Zuni.
• The Trading Post Era: Pawn, Traders, and the Making of a Silver Economy — How trading posts became the commercial backbone of Navajo and Pueblo silversmithing, and what the pawn system actually was.
• Fred Harvey Era Tourism Jewelry — The railroad curio trade, Herman Schweizer, and the "Harvey style" that simplified Southwest silver for a national tourist market.
• The Hallmark Story: Why Southwest Silver Gets Stamped — From the IACB's 1935 founding through Ambrose Roanhorse's prototype dies and the grassroots adoption of personal marks — why the hallmark exists and what it means.
• The Guild Story: The Navajo Arts and Crafts Guild — From Fort Wingate 1939 to the national guild network: how Ambrose Roanhorse, Chester Yellowhair, and the Indian school programs shaped who learned the craft and what standards governed it.
• The White Hogan Era: Kenneth Begay and Scottsdale Modernism — The 1946 founding of White Hogan Silver, the Begay-Kee family workshop, and the modernist aesthetic that put Navajo jewelry in Scottsdale galleries.
• The Modernists: Loloma, Kabotie, and the Transformation of Southwest Jewelry — Charles Loloma introduces gold and precious stones; Fred Kabotie builds Hopi overlay into a tradition; the movement that freed a generation of smiths from fixed expectations.
• Women in Southwest Silversmithing — From Grey Moustache's 1918 first record through Roanhorse's 1937 tally of 29 Navajo women smiths to Verma Nequatewa and Sherian Honhongva continuing the Loloma workshop.
• Old Pawn Explained: What It Is, What Dead Pawn Means — The definitive collector's reference on what old pawn and dead pawn actually mean, how the six-month rule worked, and what pawn tickets add to provenance.