ipl Pueblo Pottery Gallery

Cochiti and Santo Domingo Pueblos
(Kiua Polychrome Period)

Description by Larry Frank

These two pueblos are the most northeastern of the Keresan language villages. They lie just to the south of Tewa villages and accordingly have felt strong ceramic influences from those neighbors. After the Indian revolt of 1680 this influence became especially strong. Both Santo Domingo and Cochiti discontinued their manufacture of glazeware. For awhile they imported pottery from their Puname (early Zia) and Tewa area, and then gradually these pueblos began to make their own copes of the Tewa styles, using carbon paint for the Tewa-like decorations. The classic type of Tewa-like pottery at Santo Domingo and Cochiti bars the Kiua Polychrome. Kiua is the Indian name for Santo Domingo, and the type was made there principally in the period from 1760 to the present. At Cochiti also the type began about 1760 but by 1830 showed signs of evolving into a different one. By 1850 the style was so distinct that we give it the name Cochiti Polychrome (see below).

Cochiti Pueblo

The pottery type known as Cochiti Polychrome developed out of nearly one hundred years of the Kiua Polychrome tradition. By 1850 certain definitive Cochiti characteristics were discernible, principally in design. Cochiti motifs are isolated decorations, often with little relation to one another. The lines are finer than on Kiua Polychrome, giving the motifs a lighter, fussier appearance. A typical Cochiti feature is the habit of embellishing the encircling framing lines with pendant figures, usually simple arcs or triangles, but sometimes enigmatic, complicated adaptations of older feather motifs.

Santo Domingo Pueblo

When some of the potters of Santo Domingo finally began to break from the traditional styles of Kiua Polychrome, the departure was much less extreme than at Cochiti, as the pot on the left shows. The resulting vessels, known as Santo Domingo Polychrome, are distinguished from Kiua Polychrome as follows: *The jars are relatively tall, *decoration on the jars is usually not broken up into panels or bands, *red is frequently used in the motifs, *decoration is often naturalistic, with birds and foliage usually predominant, *bowls are rare, few being made. The center picture and the one on the right are more recent pieces.