The Zuni have traditionally used small stone carvings of animal figures as power objects and mediators between themselves and the spirit world. Any object that has special meaning can be used as a fetish. In this fascinating, informative, and beautifully illustrated guide to the fetishes of the Zuni people of New Mexico, Hal Zina Bennett explores key principles of Native American spirituality and how early Zuni teachings can benefit us all today. He provides an excellent guide to Zuni traditions and an intriguing picture of their early life, along with detailed instructions for using fetishes for mediation, reflection, and insight in modern life. He describes key fetish figures, including the Guardian of the Six Regions, their legendary meanings, and the personal qualities each figure can support and help its owner develop. In explaining the nature of fetishes and the psychological and spiritual benefits that we can gain from their use, Bennett provides illuminating cross-cultural comparisons, stimulating exercises, and journaling opportunities.

The best general reference for collectors.

This book explores the magic and mystery behind the animal figures or fetishes skillfully carved by Zuni artists. It also discusses the symbolic meanings associated with each one.

This sequel to Zuni Fetish Carvers focuses on the second generation of Zuni fetish artists who produced the widely popular objects during the 1970s. The author includes interviews of the featured artists as well as the traders and dealers who popularized the carvings.

All S.W. tribes make & use fetishes but the Zuni are considered the source of most skillfully carved personal charms.

Describes the many materials used in carving and features several color examples of each. Adds many carvers and families creating fetishes and carvings yesterday and today.

How Can Fetishes Help Us in our daily lives? What does the bear represent? The frog? The wolf? What powers do they contain? Noted Indian trader Kent McManis explains the different types of fetishes with special emphasis on the two major traditional types: the protective/healing group and the hunting group. He also has included dozens of new carvings to update the latest generation of artists coming into the field. Also provided are family trees for the more prominent families, along with more than two hundred fetishes in full color.

This sequel to Zuni Fetish Carvers focuses on the second generation of Zuni fetish artists who produced the widely popular objects during the 1970s. The author includes interviews of the featured artists as well as the traders and dealers who popularized the carvings.

A description of various types of Zuni Indian fetishes and their place in the Zuni religion and ceremony.

The burnt-red badlands of Montana's Hell Creek are a vast graveyard of the Cretaceous dinosaurs that lived 68 million years ago. Those hills were, much later, also home to the Sioux, the Crows, and the Blackfeet, the first people to encounter the dinosaur fossils exposed by the elements. What did Native Americans make of these stone skeletons, and how did they explain the teeth and claws of gargantuan animals no one had seen alive? Did they speculate about their deaths? Did they collect fossils? Beginning in the East, with its Ice Age monsters, and ending in the West, where dinosaurs lived and died, this richly illustrated and elegantly written book examines the discoveries of enormous bones and uses of fossils for medicine, hunting magic, and spells. Well before Columbus, Native Americans observed the mysterious petrified remains of extinct creatures and sought to understand their transformation to stone. In perceptive creation stories, they visualized the remains of extinct mammoths, dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and marine creatures as Monster Bears, Giant Lizards, Thunder Birds, and Water Monsters. Their insights, some so sophisticated that they anticipate modern scientific theories, were passed down in oral histories over many centuries. Drawing on historical sources, archaeology, traditional accounts, and extensive personal interviews, Adrienne Mayor takes us from Aztec and Inca fossil tales to the traditions of the Iroquois, Navajos, Apaches, Cheyennes, and Pawnees. Fossil Legends of the First Americans represents a major step forward in our understanding of how humans made sense of fossils before evolutionary theory developed.

Showcases the work of nearly ninety Native American artists of the Southwest, working in a variety of media, and including such artists as Diego Romero, Roxanne Swentzell, Virgil Ortiz, Tammy Garcia, Tony Jojola, and Dylan Poblano.