Tyra Naha (Tewawina) was born in Cortez, Colorado in 1973, to Hopi-Tewa potter Rainy Naha and a Ute father. Her grandmother was Helen Naha, First Featherwoman. Her great-grandmother was Paqua Naha, First Frogwoman. Among her other relatives were Burel Naha, Sylvia Naha and Nona Naha. Needless to say, Tyra was exposed to a lot of pottery making as she was growing up.

Tyra signs her pieces with a feather, a 3, and a spider, denoting her place in the Featherwoman generational order, and her clan. The Heard Museum records that she has been known as Tyra D. (Black) Tewawina, Tyra D. Black, Tyra D. Black-Naha, Tyra D. Tewawina, Tyra Dee Tewawina and Tyra Tewawina.

Some of the Awards won by Tyra

• 2000 Santa Fe Indian Market, Classification II - Pottery, Division F - Traditional Pottery, painted designs on matte or semi-matte, all forms except jars, Category 1301 - Seed bowls up to 7" in diameter: Second Place
• 2000 Santa Fe Indian Market, Classification II - Pottery, Division F - Traditional Pottery, painted designs on matte or semi-matte, all forms except jars, Category 1306 - Other vases: First Place
• 1999 Santa Fe Indian Market, Classification II - Pottery, Division F - Traditional Pottery, Category 1303 - Other bowl forms: Third Place
• 1999 Museum of Northern Arizona Hopi Marketplace, Pottery Division, Tiles and Plates: First Place
• 1998 Museum of Northern Arizona Hopi Marketplace, Pottery Division: First Place. Awarded for artwork: Seed bowl
• 1997 Museum of Northern Arizona Hopi Marketplace, Pottery Division, Decorated Bowls: Second Place
• 1997 Museum of Northern Arizona Hopi Marketplace, Pottery Division, Polychrome Tiles, Figures, Ladles: Honorable Mention

The Hopi People

Walpi, as seen by Ansel Adams in 1941

Looking across Tewa Village to First Mesa

The Hopi People and Their Pottery

Pottery was being made in the area of the Hopi mesas before generational migrants from the area of central Mexico began to arrive in the 600's. Those migrants brought a much better ceramic technology with them. They also brought a whole new design vocabulary, architectural advancements, more defined rituals and better seeds, along with other agricultural advancements. They spread out across the Southwest between the Colorado River and the Rio Grande, from the Chihuahua and Sonora deserts north to the Great Salt Lake, and they multiplied. The weather of this countryside was very fickle, though, and they had to discover new ways to store their food and keep it good for years. The best tool for preserving things was pottery. Then they began decorating their pottery with their prayers for the seed within, and for the survival of their people.

For hundreds of years those designs were repetitive geometrics, in black-on-white or black-on-gray-white bisques, most matte but more and more polished as time went on. In the 900's, from the south again, figures in black-on-white were introduced. Then came figures and designs in red-and-black-on-white. Then came figures and designs in various combinations of red, black and white on various backgrounds. Each step in the development of decorative and color schemes is reflective of experiential religious developments within one clan or another, one pueblo or another. A lot of what flowered into what we know now as "Sikyátki style and design" was developed in bits and pieces along the rim of Antelope Mesa. It took the experience of Sikyátki to put it all together. Just as the design palette of Sikyátki reached its peak, the village's chief determined they had strayed too far from the traditionally conservative Hopi path and they needed to be put to death for it. He arranged with the elders of Walpi and other villages to have the deed done and sometime in 1625 it was completed. Everyone in the village was killed except for a few ritual specialists who were saved for their spiritual value.

From a mural found at Awatovi

The styles and designs of Sikyátki lived on on some Awatovi pottery for a few years but the entire design palette changed after the Spanish arrived in force in 1629. San Bernardo Polychrome came into production almost immediately with the reduction in labor force as so many of the Awatovis were forced to serve the priests and build a mission. The design palette changed, too, when all the kachina designs were forced out by the Franciscan priests. Almost everything changed again with the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. There was a general return to themes prevalent before the Spanish arrived across the entire Southwest, except by then most potters were firing their pots using sheep, cow or horse manure. Around the Hopi mesas, a merging of designs and supernaturals with the layouts from the San Bernardo and Sikyatki phases happened. Some archaeologists have termed the pottery that was produced for 100 years after the Pueblo Revolt as "Payupki phase." It faded out around 1780, about the same time the last of the Tiwas and Keresans returned to the Rio Grande Valley from the village of Payupki on Second Mesa. After that came the phases of Polacca Polychrome, including the white-slipped years after the times of drought and disease in the 1800s that were spent at Zuni.

By the mid-1800s, the Hopi pottery tradition had been almost completely abandoned, its utilitarian purposes taken over by cheap enamelware brought in by Anglo traders. Hopi pottery production sputtered along until the 1880's when one woman, Nampeyo of Hano, almost single-handedly revived it. Nampeyo lived in Hano on First Mesa and was inspired by pot sherds found among the nearby ruins of the ancient village of Sikyátki. Like every other potter around First Mesa at the time, Nampeyo was producing jars, bowls and canteens, often with one surface slipped white and decorated with designs in black-and/or-red. At the urging of Anglo traders' Alexander Stephen and Thomas Varker Keam, she began experimenting with polishing the surface of pieces coiled entirely of Jeddito yellow clay and then painting her designs directly on that. 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 serving bowls decorated inside; seed jars with small openings and flat tops; painting methods of splattering and stippling and very distinctive designs. The Sikyátki style seems to have evolved as various Zuni-, Keres- and Towa-speaking potters came together with Water Clan potters from the Hohokam areas of southern Arizona and northern Mexico, and they began working with clays found in the nearby Jeddito valley area. Over the years, other clans came to the area and made their own contributions to what we now refer to as "Sikyátki Polychrome." According 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

Most Hopi pottery is unmistakable in its shapes, colors and designs. The Hopis are blessed with multiple excellent clay sources, each offering a different deep color after polishing and firing. Most Hopi pottery uses a buff, red, white or yellow clay body. Some kachina carvers make pottery and sometimes carve and etch their surfaces. Most Hopi potters, though, form their pieces and paint their decorations using colors derived from boiled-down plants, watered-down clay and from crushed minerals.

Much of the symbology painted on Hopi pottery is themed with "bird elements:" eagle and parrot tails, feathers, beaks and wings, and with katsinam (images of their gods) and permutations of 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 potters who existed 200-and-more years ago.

The above paragraph applies mostly to potters from the vicinity of First Mesa. The few potters from Second and Third Mesas seem to derive their design palettes from farther back in time, to the geometric designs, patterns and figures of the rock art prevalent before the advent of the katsinam, and the emergence of the Medicine, Sacred Clown and Warrior societies 800 years ago.

The view south from near Old Oraibi

Other Resources:

Micaceous clay pots are the only truly functional Pueblo pottery still being made. Some special micaceous pots can be used directly on the stove or in the oven for cooking. Some are also excellent for food storage. Some people say the best beans and chili they ever tasted were cooked in a micaceous bean pot. Whether you use them for cooking or storage or as additions to your collection of fine art, micaceous clay pots are a beautiful result of centuries of Pueblo pottery making.

Between Taos and Picuris Pueblos is US Hill. Somewhere on US Hill is a mica mine that has been in use for centuries. Excavations of ancient ruins and historic homesteads across the Southwest have found utensils and cooking pots that were made of this clay hundreds of years ago.

Not long ago, though, the making of micaceous pottery was a dying art. There were a couple potters at Taos and at Picuris still making utilitarian pieces but that was it. Then Lonnie Vigil felt the call, returned to Nambe Pueblo from Washington DC and learned to make the pottery he became famous for. His success brought others into the micaceous art marketplace.

Micaceous pots have a beautiful shimmer that comes from the high mica content in the clay. Mica is a composite mineral of aluminum and/or magnesium and various silicates. The Pueblos were using large sheets of translucent mica to make windows prior to the Spaniards arriving. It was the Spanish who brought a technique for making glass. There are eight mica mining areas in northern New Mexico with 54 mines spread among them. Most micaceous clay used in the making of modern Pueblo pottery comes from several different mines near Taos Pueblo.

As we understand it, potters Robert Vigil and Clarence Cruz have said there are two basic kinds of micaceous clay that most potters use. The first kind is extremely micaceous with mica in thick sheets. While the clay and the mica it contains can be broken down to make pottery, that same clay has to be used to form the entire final product. It can be coiled and scraped but that final product will always be thicker, heavier and rougher on the surface. This is the preferred micaceous clay for making utilitarian pottery and utensils. It is essentially waterproof and conducts heat evenly.

The second kind is the preferred micaceous clay for most non-functional fine art pieces. It has less of a mica content with smaller embedded pieces of mica. It is more easily broken down by the potters and more easily made into a slip to cover a base made of other clay. Even as a slip, the mica serves to bond and strengthen everything it touches. The finished product can be thinner and have a smoother surface. As a slip, it can also be used to paint over other colors of clay for added effect. However, these micaceous pots may be a bit more water resistant than other Pueblo pottery but they are not utilitarian and will not survive utilitarian use.

While all micaceous clay from the area of Taos turns golden when fired, it can also be turned black by firing in an oxygen reduction atmosphere. Black fire clouds are also a common element on golden micaceous pottery.

Mica is a relatively common component of clay, it's just not as visible in most. Potters at Hopi, Zuni and Acoma have produced mica-flecked pottery in other colors using finely powdered mica flakes. Some potters at San Ildefonso, Santa Clara, Jemez and San Juan use micaceous slips to add sparkle to their pieces.

Potters from the Jicarilla Apache Nation collect their micaceous clay closer to home in the Jemez Mountains. The makeup of that clay is different and it fires to a less golden/orange color than does Taos clay. Some clay from the Picuris area fires less golden/orange, too. Christine McHorse, a Navajo potter who married into Taos Pueblo, uses various micaceous clays on her pieces depending on what the clay asks of her in the flow of her creating.

There is nothing in the makeup of a micaceous pot that would hinder a good sgraffito artist or light carver from doing her or his thing. There are some who have learned to successfully paint on a micaceous surface. The undecorated sparkly surface in concert with the beauty of simple shapes is a real testament to the artistry of the micaceous potter.

Paqua Naha aka 1st Frogwoman (c. 1890-1955)

• Joy Navasie aka 2nd Frogwoman (1919-2012) & Perry Navasie
  
  • Grace Navasie Lomaquahu (1953-) & Olson Lomaquahu
  • Leona Navasie (1939-)
  • Loretta Navasie Koshiway (1948-)
    
    • Charles Navasie (1965-)
    • Lana Yvonne David (1971-)
  • Marianne Navasie (1951-2007) & Harrison Jim
    
    • Donna Navasie Robertson (1972-)
  • Maynard Navasie (1945-2003) & Veronica Navasie (1945-2003)
    
    • Bill Navasie (1969-2004)
• Helen Naha aka Feather Woman (1922-1993) & Archie Naha (d. 1993)
  
  • Burel Naha (1944-2025)
  • Rainy Naha (1949-)
    
    • Amber Naha (1991-)
    • Tyra Naha (Tewawina) (1973-)
  • Sylvia Naha Humphrey (1951-1999)
  Student of Helen, Rainy and Sylvia:
  
  • Nona Naha (1958-2021) & Terry Naha
    
    • Terran Naha
• Helen Naha & Hugh Sequi
  
  • Cynthia Sequi Komalestewa (1954-)

Agnes Navasie (Joy Navasie's mother-in-law)

• Eunice Fawn Navasie (c. 1920-1992) and Joel Nahsonhoya
  
  • Dawn Navasie (1961-2022)
  • Dolly Joe White Swann Navasie (1964-)
  • Fawn Little Fawn Navasie (1959-)
  • Student: Gloria Mahle
• Justin Navasie & Pauline Setalla (1930-)
  
  • Agnes Nahsonhoya (1956-)
    
    • Derek Nahsonhoya
  • Dee Setalla (1963-)
  • Gwen Setalla (1964-)
  • Karen Namoki (1960-)
  • Stetson Setalla (1962-)