Tomasita Reyes Montoya
1899-1978
Ohkay Owingeh
(San Juan)
Tomasita Reyes Montoya was born into Ohkay Owingeh in February 1899 and passed on in May 1978. She became of the seven original potters of the Ohkay Owingeh pottery revival in the 1930s. She was active as a potter from the early 1930s until she died. She mostly made incised polychrome redware bowls, jars and vases. Some of those included fine line designs. She also made some micaceous jars and bowls and used micaceous clays to decorate some of her incised pots.
By the early 1930s, most arts and crafts at Ohkay Owingeh had almost died out. In the early 1930s a group of eight women came together to try to revive something. At first they started with embroidery. Then they learned about some pre-contact pottery that had been found in a dig on the west side of the Rio Grande on Ohkay Owingeh land. From that pottery those women distilled a form and style for the making of original Ohkay Owingeh pottery (pre-contact with the Spanish). They named it Potsuwi'i, after the ancient pueblo where it had first been found. Of those original eight women in the group, seven became potters.
As they were growing up, Tomasita taught her daughters, Rosita de Herrera and Dominguita Sisneros Naranjo, how to make Potsuwi'i pottery, too.
100 West San Francisco Street, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501
(505) 986-1234 - www.andreafisherpottery.com - All Rights Reserved
Ohkay Owingeh (San Juan)
Ohkay Owingeh Mission
In 2005 San Juan Pueblo officially changed its name back to the original name (before the Spanish arrived): Ohkay Owingeh (meaning: Place of the strong people). There are numerous ancient pueblos in the countryside around today's primary village of Ohkay Owingeh that have been archaeologically excavated and dated, but none of those excavations have yielded a date for the establishment of the village on the east side of the Rio Grande that was discovered by Don Juan de Oñaté in 1597.
The people of Ohkay Owingeh speak Tewa, and may have come to the Rio Grande area from southwestern Colorado or from the San Luis Valley in central Colorado. There is an archaeological record that possibly tracks their ancestors as they moved downstream through the valleys of the Ojo Caliente and Chama Rivers to the Rio Grande in the 1300 and 1400s. There is also an archaeological history showing there were Tanoan groups living in the area for hundreds of years before that.
Spanish conquistador Don Juan de Oñate took control of Ohkay Owingeh in 1598, renaming it San Juan de los Caballeros (after his patron saint, John the Baptist). He established the first Spanish capitol of Nuevo Mexico across the Rio Grande in the village of Yugue-Yunqué, an area he renamed San Gabriel. In 1608, the capitol was moved south to an uninhabited area that became the Santa Fe we know today.
After 80 years of progressively deteriorating living conditions under the Spanish, the tribe participated in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 (one of the revolt's ringleaders, Popé, was an Ohkay Owingeh shaman) and helped to expel the Spanish from Nuevo Mexico for 12 years. However, when the Spanish returned in 1692, Popé had died, that tribal unity had collapsed and the individual pueblos were relatively easy for the Spanish to reconquer.
Today, Ohkay Owingeh is the largest Tewa-speaking pueblo (in population and land) but few of the younger generations are interested in carrying on with many of the tribe's traditional arts and crafts (such as the making of pottery, weaving of baskets and knapping of flint). The pueblo is home to the Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council, the Oke-Oweenge Arts Cooperative, the San Juan Lakes Recreation Area and the Ohkay Casino & Resort. The tribe's Tsay Corporation is one of northern New Mexico's largest private employers. With the tribe's modern foray into casino operations, the younger members of the tribe say it's much easier to make a living flipping burgers, dealing cards or working security jobs than pursuing the production of traditional arts and crafts. This has become a problem everywhere there are Indian casinos, no matter who the tribe is.
100 West San Francisco Street, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501
(505) 986-1234 - www.andreafisherpottery.com - All Rights Reserved