"Here I was surrounded by rows and rows of shelves loaded with pottery from Sikyátki. I took out my sketch book and a pencil, quickly sat down and began copying designs. I applied to the biggest Indian art show in North America, the Santa Fe Indian Market, and was selected as one of the upcoming new artists from among several hundred applicants. I knew in my mind that there was no turning back." - Karen speaking of time she spent at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

In 1960, Karen Abeita was born in an Albuquerque hospital to a Hopi-Tewa woman named Lenora Nahoodyce Abeyta. Lenora had married an Isleta Pueblo man named Isidor Abeita, Sr. and moved from Hopi to Isleta Pueblo (which move was counter to tradition) but she returned to Hopi after Karen's birth, and Karen grew up in a traditional Hopi-Tewa home, a member of the Kachina/Parrot clan. She still lives a very strong traditional life where she speaks her native tongue and actively participates in tribal dances and ceremonies.

Karen says she has been a potter since she could first reach her hands into the clay bucket. Her grandmother, Mamie Nahoodyce, and her great-aunt, Patty Maho, and great-grandmothers, Po'Tsah-Weh, Pong Sayah, Kweh-Kah and several other aunts: Joy Navasie, Beth Sakeva and Sadie Adams, were all well respected potters.

Karen, however, credits her childhood friend, Fawn Navasie, with being her primary teacher. With her expertise and patience, Fawn taught Karen how to mold large pots, how to fire using sheep manure and, most of all, how to respect the clay and never forget to pray. She also believes that putting your heart and mind into what you are creating is the ultimate reward in the end because in front of your eyes is something you've created.

Karen says she thanks the clay for letting her be who she is. Her pottery is all hand coiled. The only tool she uses is a piece of gourd to shape her pots. Her pots range from 3 inches by 2 inches to almost 24 inches in diameter and 18 inches in height.

Her painting is done with brushes made from yucca leaves and the paint is made from the mustard seed plant. The boiled-down paint is poured onto a painting stone and rubbed back and forth to mix with black hematite. The painting is one of the most important procedures. An artist can paint the most beautiful design on pottery but if the paint wasn't mixed properly, it will all rub off.

After the painting is complete, the pottery is then fired outside with sheep manure. This can take up to 6 hours so patience is key. Cooling off too quickly or uncovering too soon will result in the pottery cracking. Karen prefers to allow the pots to cool slowly, taking most of a day, unless she does the firing in the evening and uncovers the pots the next morning.

The designs Karen paints on her pottery are usually near-duplicates of designs she's found on potsherds from the ancient village of Sikyátki. Today, Sikyátki is barely mounds of stone and dirt where the ground is littered with thousands of broken potsherds. To Karen, the ancient village is a gold mine. She says she has never seen duplicates of the same design. She also says she loves to stand on the highest point in the ruin and let her imagination free to take her back in time to when the village was alive. "What did a potter feel like when she was uncovering her just-fired pot? Was she excited? Did everyone in the village come to see the latest masterpiece?"

Karen says when she makes her journey to the ruins, she prays, then walks around and draws whatever designs she sees among the broken sherds. After filling several pages with designs, she goes home and begins to paint what she calls "a sherd pot."

A sherd pot can consist of hundreds of designs, none of them ever the same size, shape or style. It is also very time consuming to paint: a small sherd pot can take eight days from sun up to sun down to finish painting. It is a style she has worked long and hard to create and it still continues to evolve as she finds new potsherds with new designs.

Her pottery has taken her to many places. By invitation, Karen went to see the large collection of Sikyátki pottery in the vaults of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Previously she had seen complete Sikyátki pots only in pictures so seeing actual pots that had been made and used about two miles from her home back in the early 1300s was like a direct connection from the past to the present.

All the hard work and long hours were about to pay off. She soon proved to herself and the world that she, too, is an excellent traditional potter. Since then Karen has participated in more than 20 Santa Fe Indian Markets and has won numerous awards, including the prestigious Helen Naha Memorial Award. She has also won a First Place ribbon for Traditional Pottery at the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis.

Knowing that only the very best win the Helen Naha award and are counted in the company of award-winning Hopi-Tewa potters like Rondina Huma, Steve Lucas, Mark Tahbo, Rainy Naha and Dianna Tahbo, Karen feels that she has achieved a major goal in her life. Another goal she set for herself is to put all the designs she has collected from the ruins of Sikyátki in a book.

Some Awards Karen has Won

• 2020 Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market, Classification II - Pottery, Division A - Painted, native clay, hand built, fired out-of-doors: Second Place. Awarded for artwork: "For the Love of Dragon Flies"
• 2018 Santa Fe Indian Market. Helen Naha Memorial Award. Southwestern Association for Indian Arts
• 2017 Santa Fe Indian Market, Classification II - Pottery, Division B - Traditional, Category 601 - Painted polychrome pottery in the style of Hopi, any form: Second Place
• 2016 Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market, Classification II - Pottery, Division A - Traditional, native clay, hand built, painted: Second Place
• 2015 Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market, Classification II - Pottery, Division A - Traditional, native clay, hand built, painted: First Place
• 2010 Santa Fe Indian Market, Classification II - Pottery, Division B, Category 501 - Painted polychrome in the style of Hopi, any form: First Place
• 2002 Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market, Classification VIII - Pottery, Division A - Traditional: Best of Division. Awarded for artwork: "Shards, Shards, Shards"
• 2001 Santa Fe Indian Market, Classification II - Pottery, Division F - Traditional pottery, Category 1302 - Other bowl forms: Third Place
• 2001 Santa Fe Indian Market, Classification II - Pottery, Division E - Traditional pottery, jars painted designs on matte or semi matte surface, Category 1201 - Jars, Hopi: Third Place
• 2000 Santa Fe Indian Market, Classification II - Pottery, Division J - Pottery Miniatures, 3" or less in height or diameter, Category 1605 - Traditional forms, other bowls: Third Place
• 2000 Santa Fe Indian Market, Classification II - Pottery, Division E - Traditional pottery, jars painted designs on matte or semi matte surface, Category 1201 - Jars, Hopi (up to 6" tall): Third Place
• 2000 Santa Fe Indian Market, Classification II - Pottery, Division F - Traditional pottery, Category 1302 - Seed bowls (over 7" in diameter): Third Place
• 1999 Santa Fe Indian Market, Classification II - Pottery, Division E - Traditional pottery, jars, painted designs on matte or semi-matte surface, Category 1201 - Jars, Hopi (up to 6" tall): Second Place
• 1999 Santa Fe Indian Market, Classification II - Pottery, Division F - Traditional pottery, painted designs on matte or semi-matte surface, all forms except jars (in the style of Hopi), Category 1301 - Seed bowls (up to 7" in diameter): First Place
• 1999 Santa Fe Indian Market, Classification II - Pottery, Division F - Traditional pottery, painted designs on matte or semi-matte surface, all forms except jars (in the style of Hopi), Category 1302 - Seed bowls (over 7" in diameter): Second Place
• 1998 Santa Fe Indian Market. Pottery, Classification II - pottery, Division E - traditional pottery, jars..., Category 1201 - Hopi (up to 6" tall): Third Place
  - Division J - Pottery Miniature, Category 1604 - traditional forms, seed bowls, other than black: First Place
  - Classification II-Pottery. Division E - traditional pottery..., Category 1201 - Jars, Hopi: Third Place
  - Division F - traditional pottery..., Category 1301 - Seed bowls: Third Place
• 1997 Santa Fe Indian Market. Classification II - Pottery, Division I - Traditional..., Category 1301 - Seed bowls: First Place
• 1995 Santa Fe Indian Market. Hopi Jars: First Place
  - Bowls over 6 inches: Second Place
• 1995 Lawrence Indian Arts Show, Lawrence, KS. 3 dimensional (large Hopi jar): Best of Show
• 1994 Santa Fe Indian Market. Category - Hopi Jars over 9 inches tall: First Place
• 1994 Gallup InterTribal Ceremonial. Category - Hopi Jars: First Place
• 1994 New Mexico State Fair. Category-Hopi Jars: Second Place
• 1993 Santa Fe Indian Market. Santa Fe, NM. Category 1443 Misc. Jars and Vases: First Place
  - Hopi vases: First Place
  - Cat., Seed Jar: Honorable Mention
• 1992 Santa Fe Indian Market. Category 1401-Seed bowls. Second Place

Hopi

Tewa Village and First Mesa

The Hopi people live in villages on or around three mesas in northeastern Arizona. Some of these villages have been continuously occupied since the 12th century. The Hopi are not so much a "people" as a collection of clans that came together in times of drought and other misfortune. The Hopi mesas have long been seen as sanctuaries. As a result, the landscape around First Mesa is littered with the remains of villages once founded by people belonging to similar clans but speaking many different languages.

As a result, the Hopi pottery tradition is also quite varied with roots traced as far away as vitrified ceramics found in the environs of Valdivia, Ecuador, and produced between 1200 and 1500 BCE. Archaeologists excavating in the abandoned pueblos around First Mesa also found sherds of pottery styles and painted designs found in the Rio Salado region and among the ancient Sinagua settlements in the Wupatki, Tuzigoot, Walnut Canyon and Homol'ovi areas (all abandoned between about 950 and 1250 CE).

The area around Jeddito was occupied by Towa-speaking people beginning in the late 1200s. The Jeddito area is where Jeddito yellow is found, the clay that made the pottery of Sikyátki so spectacular. Beginning in the 1200s, Keres-speaking people arriving from the east began to build what became Awat'ovi, on Antelope Mesa between Jeddito and First Mesa. Sikyátki itself was also built by people from the east beginning in the early 1300s. At first Sikyátki was inhabited solely by the Kokop (Firewood) clan, then the Coyote clan came and grew to become the largest single clan in the village. Why the village was destroyed is shadowed in myth but Jesse Walter Fewkes (the first archaeologist to excavate in the area) felt the village was destroyed before the first Spanish visitor arrived in 1540. Oral history has it that Sikyátki and its people were completely wiped out but the clans that inhabited that village have somehow continued to exist. Modern dating techniques have set the destruction of Sikyátki around 1625.

The Hopi Cultural Center

The ruins at Awat'ovi (on Antelope Mesa, east of Walpi and south of Keams Canyon) have yielded potsherds in styles and with designs that were also prominent in the prehistoric village now known as Pottery Mound (in central New Mexico). Among the potsherds found at Pottery Mound are plain and decorated Hopi products, white clay products from the Acoma-Zuni area and red clay products from north-central New Mexico. Pottery Mound was abandoned about 100 years before the Spanish arrived in New Mexico in 1540. Also similar to Pottery Mound, Awat'ovi had several kivas painted with layers of wall murals, each painted on top of the whitewashed last.

It has been reported that many of the residents of Awat'ovi were Keres-speaking people from the Four Corners area and were not as resistant as other Hopis were to the Christianizing practices of the Spanish Franciscan monks when they came into the Hopi lands around 1609. As Awat'ovi was the only pueblo in the Hopi region where a Christian mission was built, most archaeologists attribute that to the reason why residents of Walpi and Old Oraibi destroyed the village and killed nearly all its residents in the winter of 1700-1701. However, at the time of that destruction, Awat'ovi was the largest and most populous pueblo in the Hopi mesas. It was also around 1690 that the people of Walpi were relocating from their old pueblo at the foot of First Mesa to their new location atop the southernmost finger of First Mesa, a move made for defensive reasons. This was after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 and everyone was expecting the hated Spanish to return, with more soldiers and priests.

Southern Tewa warriors and their families began arriving in the area in 1696 and were steered to take up residence at the foot of First Mesa, along the only route to the mesa top (in that location, the Tewas would be the first people to encounter incoming Spanish military - the people of Walpi felt they would make a good first line of defense should the Spanish attempt to reconquer them). The Tewas were also good at repulsing Ute, Paiute and Navajo raiders. After they won a decisive battle with Ute raiders they were allowed to build Tewa Village (also known as Hano) at the gap between the rocks on the trail up First Mesa. Some of the Tewa women were potters and in the ages-old way, they slowly shared what they knew with Hopi potters, and vice versa. That cross-pollination went on for years, and not just with pottery. Cross-cultural marriages happened, too, and today the people are known as Hopi, Hopi-Tewa and Tewa, depending on their ancestry. And while Tewa Village is completely surrounded by the Hopi Reservation, many of the residents are fluent in Tewa, Hopi and English. Some are fluent in Spanish and Navajo, too. There is a tribal injunction against any Hopi speaking Tewa: they may understand what is being spoken in Tewa but they are not allowed to speak Tewa themselves.

During those same troubled times Towa-speaking people migrated into Hopi and Navajo territory (primarily in the Jeddito Wash area) to escape the violence of the Spanish reconquest. They established familial ties that are still in place today (which may explain why Jeddito Wash is a Navajo Reservation island surrounded by the Hopi Reservation).

The village of Sichomovi was founded in the 1600s by members of the Wild Mustard Clan, Roadrunner Clan and others who'd come to the area from east of Santa Fe (Pecos Pueblo and the pueblos of the Galisteo Basin) via Zuni. They seem to have stopped at Zuni for a few years and assimilated somewhat. When they moved on to Hopi, there were quite a few Zunis among them, that's why the people of Walpi (and some from Zuni) refer to Sichomovi as a Zuni pueblo.

They arrived at Hopi around 1600 CE and became known as the Asa clan. They had traveled from the Abiquiu area through Santo Domingo, Acoma, Laguna and Zuni, picking up and dropping off people, technology and social practices along the way. Some settled at Awat'ovi while others continued to Coyote Spring (under the gap at First Mesa). They built a new pueblo where Hano now stands (it was known as Hano back then, too). A few years later drought and disease caused them to relocate again.

The quality, styles and designs of Sikyátki had lived on in Awat'ovi pottery, although the potters of Awat'ovi were also enamored of using a white slip on top of the Jeddito clay base. The potters of Awat'ovi also introduced some new designs (the "Awat'ovi star" being one) but after the village was destroyed, very little of their knowledge and practice passed on. Hopi ceramics entered a virtual Dark Age for almost 200 years.

By the mid-1800s the Hopi pottery tradition had been almost completely abandoned, its utilitarian purposes being taken over by cheap enamelware brought in by Anglo traders. Hopi pottery production sputtered along until the late 1800s when one woman, Nampeyo of Hano, almost single-handedly revived it. Nampeyo lived in Tewa Village by First Mesa and was inspired by potsherds found among the nearby ruins of Sikyátki. Today credit is given to Nampeyo for fully reviving the Sikyátki style. She was so good that Jesse Walter Fewkes, the first archaeologist to formally excavate Sikyátki, was concerned that her creations would shortly become confused with those made hundreds of years previously.

Sikyátki pottery shapes are very distinctive: flattened jars with wide shoulders; low, open bowls decorated inside; seed jars with small openings and flat tops; painting methods of splattering and stippling and very distinctive designs. The Sikyátki style originally evolved when migrant Keres and Towa-speaking potters got together with migrant Water Clan potters from the Hohokam areas of southern Arizona and northern Mexico and they began working with clays found in the Jeddito area. Over the years other clans came to the area and made their own contributions to what we now know as "Sikyátki Polychrome." Accoding to Jesse Walter Fewkes, that merging of styles, techniques and designs created some of the finest ceramics ever produced in prehistoric North America.

Today's Hopi pottery tends to be a white, yellow, orange or buff colored background decorated with designs in red and black mineral paints. Painted designs sometimes fill the entire space, often with an asymmetrical and symmetrical design. Most of the symbology painted on Hopi pottery is themed with "bird elements:" eagle tails, feathers, bird wings and migration patterns. Many Hopi, Hopi-Tewa and Tewa potters are members of the Corn Clan and their annual religious cycle revolves around the seasons of corn. The vast majority of today's Hopi pottery shapes and the designs painted on them are obvious descendants of the work of Sikyátki and Awat'ovi potters.