Hilda and Arthur Coriz were a team of husband and wife potters from Santo Domingo Pueblo. Hilda was a sister of award-earning potter Robert Tenorio and began making pottery with his encouragement. Arthur learned to make pottery by watching Hilda and Robert. When they first started learning the traditional art, Arthur and Hilda would make pots while Robert would create decorative designs and do the painting. Within two years time, they were working on their own with Hilda making pots and Arthur painting them. They eventually became full-time potters, winning numerous awards at the Santa Fe Indian Market shows between 1983 and 1998. They also participated in exhibitions at the Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Arts & Crafts Show.

They always made their pottery using the traditional methods of Santo Domingo potters. They used only natural clays and the Rocky Mountain bee plant, also known as wild spinach, and honey for making black paint. Together they made traditional polychrome jars, bowls, dough bowls, and canteens. Arthur and Hilda's favorite designs included birds, clouds, flowers and animals like the deer and bighorn sheep. They signed their pottery as "Arthur and Hilda Coriz", often inside the outline of a pot.

Arthur died in 1998 and Hilda in 2007. Their daughter Ione Coriz (b. 1973) also makes traditional Santo Domingo pottery. In 1988 Ione Coriz placed Third and in 1989 she earned Second Place for her pottery in the ages 18 & under divisions at the Santa Fe Indian Market.

Some Awards Earned by Hilda and Arthur

• 1998 Santa Fe Indian Market. Class II - Pottery, Div. F - Traditional pottery, Cat. 1304, Other bowl forms, First Place
  - Cat. 1206 - Jar, Second Place
• 1996 Santa Fe Indian Market. Class II - Pottery, Div. E - Traditional pottery, Cat. 1206 - Jars, Third Place
• 1993 Santa Fe Indian Market. Class II - Pottery, Cat. 1303 - Jars, Third Place
  - Cat. 1404 - Other bowl forms, Second Place
• 1992 Santa Fe Indian Market. Class II - Pottery, Cat. 1303 - Jars, Second Place
• 1991 Santa Fe Indian Market. Class II - Pottery, Cat. 1303 - Jars, Second Place
  - Pottery, Cat. 1403 - Other bowl forms, Second Place
• 1990 Santa Fe Indian Market. Class II - Pottery, Large Pottery Award, Best Traditional Pottery Bowl or Jar, 15"
  - Pottery, Div. F - Traditional pottery, Cat. 1203 - Jars, Second Place
• 1989 Santa Fe Indian Market. Class II - Pottery, Div. F - Traditional, Cat 1203 - Jars, Second Place
• 1988 Santa Fe Indian Market. Class II - Pottery, Div. Jar, canteen, First Place
• 1988 Gallup InterTribal Ceremonial. Pottery, jar, canteen, First Place
• 1986 Santa Fe Indian Market. Class II - Pottery, Div. G - Traditional pottery, Cat. 1209 - Canteens, First Place
• 1983 Santa Fe Indian Market. Class II - Pottery, Div. F - Traditional, Third Place

Santo Domingo Pueblo Mission Church

Santo Domingo Pueblo is located on the east bank of the Rio Grande about half-way between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. Historically, the people of Santo Domingo were among the most active of Pueblo traders. The pueblo also has a reputation for being ultra traditional, probably due, at least in part, to the longevity of the pueblo's pottery styles. Some of today's popular designs have changed very little since the 1700s.

In pre-Columbian times, traders from Santo Domingo were trading turquoise (from mines in the Cerrillos Hills) and hand-made heishe beads as far away as central Mexico. Many artisans in the pueblo still work in the old ways and produce wonderful silver and turquoise jewelry and heishe decorations.

Like the people of nearby San Felipe and Cochiti, the people of Santo Domingo speak Keres and trace their ancestry back to villages established on the Pajarito Plateau area in the 1400s. Like the other Rio Grande pueblos, Santo Domingo rose up against the Spanish oppressors in 1680, following Alonzo Catiti as he led the Keres-speaking pueblos and worked with Popé (of San Juan Pueblo) to stop the Spanish atrocities. However, when Spanish Governor Antonio Otermin returned to the area in 1681, he found Santo Domingo deserted and ordered it burned. The pueblo residents had fled to a nearby mountain stronghold and when Don Diego de Vargas returned to Nuevo Mexico in 1692, he attacked that mountain fortress and burned it, too. Catiti died in that battle and Keres opposition to the Spanish crumbled with his death. The survivors of that battle fled, some to Acoma, some to fledgling Laguna, some to the Hopi mesas. Over time most of them returned to Santo Domingo.

In the 1790s Santo Domingo accepted an influx of refugees from the Galisteo Basin area as they fled the near-constant attacks of Apache, Comanche, Ute and Navajo raiders in that area. Today's main Santo Domingo village was founded about 1886.

In 1598 Santo Domingo was the site of the first gathering of 38 pueblo governors by Don Juan de Oñaté to try to force them to swear allegiance to the crown of Spain. Today, the All Indian Pueblo Council (consisting of the nineteen remaining pueblo's governors and an executive staff) gathers at Santo Domingo for their first meeting every year, to continue what is now the oldest annual political gathering in America. During the time of the Spanish occupation Santo Domingo served as the headquarters of the Franciscan missionaries in New Mexico and religious trials were held there during the Spanish Inquisition.

Today, the people of Santo Domingo number around 4,500, with about two-thirds of them living on the reservation. The pottery traditions of the pueblo almost died out after the railroads arrived and many Santo Domingos went to work laying tracks. Even today many Santo Domingo men work as firefighters for the US Forest Service in fire season and practice their artistic talents during the rest of the year.

Potter Robert Tenorio began working to revive the Santo Domingo pottery tradition in the early 1970s. His influence can be found among many of today's Santo Domingo potters, even if they say he only stimulated them to learn on their own.

While today's Santo Domingo pottery is known for designs described as simple geometrics, another outstanding feature is boldness: the lines are thick and well-defined. In the 1920s, Kenneth Chapman, from the Museum of New Mexico, went to Santo Domingo and made drawings of many of the designs that were being painted on Santo Domingo pottery "before they disappeared." Thomas Tenorio said he got most of his designs from that collection.

As religious leaders forbid the representation of human figures as well as other sacred designs on pottery made for commercial purposes, birds, fish and flowers are common design motifs. Depictions of mammals are rarely seen. Another typical Santo Domingo style is to paint in the negative, meaning cover the pot in panels of big swatches of black and red so that only a few lines of the cream slip show through.

Clemente & Nescita Calabaza (maternal side) & Andrea Ortiz (paternal side)

• Juanita Calabaza Tenorio (1922-1982) & Andres Tenorio
  
  • Mary Edna Coriz (1946-) & Luciano Coriz
    
    • Angel Bailon (1968-) & Ralph Bailon
  • Paulita Pacheco (1943-2008) & Gilbert Pacheco (1940-2010)
    
    • William Andrew Pacheco (1975-)
    • Rose Pacheco (1968-) & Billy Veale (Dineh)
  • Robert Tenorio (1950-)
    Among Robert's students:
    
    • Ambrose Atencio
    • Corine Lovato
  • Hilda Coriz (1949-2007) & Arthur Coriz (1948-1999)
    
    • Ione Coriz (1973-)
    • Warren Coriz (1966-2011)
• Gilbert Pacheco's sisters who became potters:
  
  • Laurencita Calabaza
    
    • Santana Calabaza
  • Trinidad Pacheco
  • Vivian Sanchez