Felipa Trujillo

1908-1986

Cochiti

Felipa Herrera Trujillo was born into Cochiti Pueblo in April 1908. Her parents were Juan and Estefanita Arquero Herrera. Ada Suina was her niece through blood, Helen Cordero was her niece through marriage.

Felipa was educated at the St. Catherine's Indian School in Santa Fe. After graduating, she married Paul Trujillo of Cochiti and they had six children.

Felipa had grown up helping her mother make pottery. They made polychrome jars and bowls, many with lizard spouts. After her mother died around 1960, Felipa expanded into making figures and started signing her own name to her pieces.

Before there were storytellers, pueblo potters were making Singing Mothers. There is one Singing Mother that has been dated to pre-1930 and it has been attributed to Felipa. That would make her one of the earliest of the modern era Cochiti potters.

In 1969 Felipa got her first commission to make a nativity set. She started out by painting Spanish colonial dress on the figures. Then she changed to forming and painting Indian dress on them.

Examples of Felipa's work can be found in many collections and museums, including the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. The Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe put on an exhibit entitled “What is Folk Art?” in 1973. Felipa was one of seven Cochiti potters whose storytellers and other figures were part of that exhibit.

Felipa participated in the Santa Fe Indian Market and the New Mexico State Fair, winning ribbons at both for her storytellers and other figures. She passed on in 1986.


100 West San Francisco Street, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501
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Cochiti Pueblo

The view west from Cochiti Lake
View west across Cochiti Pueblo

Cochiti Pueblo lies fifteen miles south of Santa Fe along the west bank of the Rio Grande. Frijoles Canyon in what is now Bandelier National Monument is the site of the pueblo's most recent ancestral home. The Eastern Keresans may have relocated to the Bandelier area from the Four Corners region around 1300.

Cochiti legend says that Clay Old Woman and Clay Old Man came to visit the Cochitis. While all the people watched, Clay Old Woman shaped a pot. Clay Old Man danced too close and kicked the pot. He rolled the clay from the broken pot into a ball, gave a piece to all the women in the village and told them never to forget to make pottery.

Ancestral home of the Cochiti people
At Bandelier National Monument

In prehistoric times, human effigy pots, animals, duck canteens and bird shaped pitchers with beaks as spouts were common productions of the Cochiti potters. Many of these were condemned as idols and destroyed by the Franciscan priests. That problem stopped when the Spanish left in 1820 but the fantastic array of figurines created by Cochiti potters was essentially dormant until the railroad arrived. Then Cochiti potters were among the first to enter the tourist market and they produced many whimsical figures into the early 1900s. Then production followed the market into more conventional shapes.

Legend has it that a Ringling Brothers Circus train broke down near Cochiti Pueblo in the 1920s. Supposedly, the tribe's contact with the ringmaster, trapeze artists, opera singers, sideshow quot;freaks" and exotic animals paved the way for a variety of new figural subjects. However, shortly after the railroad passed through, a delegation of Cochiti men got on the train and traveled to Washington DC. There they were introduced to the President, spoke to Congress, and were taken on a tour of the "highlights" of American civilization in Washington and in New York City, incuding the Metropolitan Opera, the Bronx Zoo and a performance of the Ringling Brothers Circus. As none of the men could read or write, nor draw, what they brought back to Cochiti was what they remembered of things they had never seen before. The stories they told must have been wild. An astute observer will find angels, nativities, cowboys, tourist caricatures, snakes, dinosaurs, turtles, goats, two-headed opera singers, clowns, tattooed strongmen, Moorish nuns and even mermaids in the Cochiti pottery pantheon, many produced only since the early 1960s and based on characters described in Cochiti's oral history.

A few modern potters make traditional styled pots with black and red flowers, animals, clouds, lightning and geometric designs but most Cochiti pottery artists now create figurines. Most notable is the storyteller, a grandfather or grandmother figure with "babies" perched on it. Helen Cordero is credited with creating the first storyteller in 1964 to honor her grandfather. The storyteller style was quickly picked up by other pueblos and each modified the form to match their local situation (ie: clay colors and tribal and religious traditions). In some pueblos, storytellers are also now made as drummers and as a large variety of animals.

Today, Cochiti potters face the challenge of acquiring the clay for the white slip. Construction of Cochiti Dam in the 1960s destroyed their primary source of their trademark white slip and gray clay. Now the white slip comes from one dwindling source at Santo Domingo, Cochiti Pueblo's neighbor to the south.

Most outsiders who visit Cochiti Pueblo these days do so on the way to or from either the recreation area on Cochiti Lake or Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument.


Map showing the location of Cochiti Pueblo

For more info:
at Wikipedia
official website

100 West San Francisco Street, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501
(505) 986-1234 - www.andreafisherpottery.com - All Rights Reserved

 

Asittinggrandmotherstorytellerholdingonechild, Click or tap to see a larger version
See a larger version


Felipa Trujillo, Cochiti, Asittinggrandmotherstorytellerholdingonechild
Felipa Trujillo
Cochiti
$ 375
dkco4f318
A sitting grandmother storyteller holding one child
4.5 in L by 3.25 in W by 5.75 in H
Condition: Very good
Signature: Cochiti Felipa


100 West San Francisco Street, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501
(505) 986-1234 - www.andreafisherpottery.com - All Rights Reserved

Storytellers

Pueblos: Cochiti, Jemez, Acoma, Isleta, Santa Clara

Helen Cordero storyteller with ten children


Helen Cordero
Cochiti Pueblo
Judy Toya storyteller with sixteen children


Judy Toya
Jemez Pueblo
Marilyn Ray storyteller with three children


Marilyn Ray
Acoma Pueblo

Historically, clay figures have been present in the Pueblo pottery tradition for most of the last thousand years. However, figures and effigies were denounced as "works of the devil" by the Spanish missionaries in New Mexico between 1540 and 1820. Before and after that time the art of making figurative sculpture flourished, especially at Cochiti Pueblo.

The "storyteller" is an important role in the tribe as the Native American people did not have a written language to record anything for posterity. The closest thing they had to a written language were the designs they used to decorate pottery, textiles and stone. The storyteller's role was to preserve, retell and pass down the oral history of their people. In most tribes that role was fulfilled by men.

The first real storyteller figure was created in 1964 by Cochiti Pueblo potter Helen Cordero. She made it in memory of her grandfather, Santiago Quintana, and the stories he sang to her and other children in their native Keres when she was young.

Helen's creation struck a chord throughout all the pueblos as the storyteller is a figure central to all their societies. Most tribes also have the figure of the Singing Maiden in their pantheon and in many cases, the mix of Singing Maiden and Storyteller has blurred some lines in the pottery world. Today, as many as three hundred potters in thirteen pueblos have created storytellers, and their storytellers are not only men and women, but also Santa's, mudheads, koshares, bears, owls and other animals, sometimes encumbered with children numbering more than one hundred! Each potter has also customized their storyteller figures to more closely reflect the forms, dress and decorations of their own tribes, often even of their own clans.


100 West San Francisco Street, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501
(505) 986-1234 - www.andreafisherpottery.com - All Rights Reserved

Estefanita Arquero Herrera Family Tree

Disclaimer: This "family tree" is a best effort on our part to determine who the potters are in this family and arrange them in a generational order. The general information available is questionable so we have tried to show each of these diagrams to living members of each family to get their input and approval, too. This diagram is subject to change should we get better info.

    Estefanita Arquero Herrera (1889-pre-1965) & Juan Herrera
    • Berena Cordero (1911-) & Elutero Cordero
      • Snowflake Flower (Stephanie Rhoades, Estephanita Cordero) (1931-) & Cipriano Loretto (Jemez) - Snowflake Flower learned from her cousin, Mary Martin
        • Phillip Loretto
        • Mary Frances Loretto
        • Patricia Ann Loretto
        • Mary Mildred Loretto
        • Jonathan Loretto
      • Ada Suina (1930-) & Tony Suina
        Tony's mother was Aurelia Suina (1911-)
        • Caroline Grace Suina (1955-)
        • Maria Suina
        • Marie Charlotte Suina (1954-)
        • Patty Suina
        • Regina Suina
    • Felipa Trujillo (1909-1986) & Paul Trujillo (c. 1910-)
    • Tonita Herrera
    • Candelaria Herrera
    • Santiago Herrera

Some of the above info is drawn from Southern Pueblo Pottery, 2000 Artist Biographies, by Gregory Schaaf, © 2002, Center for Indigenous Arts & Studies

Other info is derived from personal contacts with family members and through interminable searches of the Internet and cross-examination of the data found.

100 West San Francisco Street, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501
(505) 986-1234 - www.andreafisherpottery.com - All Rights Reserved