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The Religious Use of Various Stones: Domingo

While Major Hyde was exploring this neighborhood in 1880, he was visited by several Pueblo Indians from San Domingo, who stated that the turquoise he was taking from the old mine was sacred, and must not go into the hands of those whose Saviour was not a Montezuma, and these Indians offered, at the same time, to purchase all that might come from the mine in the future. About ten miles from Tempe, Arizona, in ruins designated as Los Muertos, there was found enclosed in asbestos, in a decorated Zuni jar, a sea-shell coated with black pitch, in which were incrusted turquoise and garnets, in the form of a toad, the sacred emblem of the Zuni. Incrusted clam shells, representing toads, may be seen in the Brunswick Collection, the Christie Collection in the British Museum, and in the Pitorini Museum, Rome.

At the annual Fiesta which is attended by the San Felipe, the Navajo, the Isleta, the Acoma, the Jicorrilla, Apache and other Indians at the Pueblo of Santo Domingo, a place situated about three miles west by south of Wallace Station on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, a carved wooden image of the saint, about four feet in height, and said to date from the time of the conquest in 1692, is carried in procession through the principal streets to a small tent made of the finest Navajo blankets, where it is placed on an improvised altar. Here various offerings are made. Among them strings of turquoise beads, both round and flat, of the choicest color, are suspended from the ears of the figure, and from a string which encircles its neck. On the centre of the breast is one of the curious turquoise-encrusted marine clam-shells similar to the one found by Lieutenant F. H. Cushing in the excavations near Tempe, Arizona. The writer saw a fine example of this ornamental object suspended from the neck of the Virgin of Santo Domingo, at the Annual Fiesta, August 4, 1890. With the exception of a black band of obsidian running across the centre, the entire exterior of the shell is covered with a sort of miniature pavement of little squares of turquoise which are cemented to it with a black shellac-like substance obtained from "the grease-wood" plant common in New Mexico.

It has been suggested that the types of ornamentation used by the aborigines of Central America may become fashionable at the time of the opening of the Panama Canal. In jewelry the crayfish model, as shown in a gold-plated ornament discovered in the Chiriqui district of Panama, offers a striking and peculiar form which might win favor; a curious frog pattern could also be used. If the local usage in ancient times is to be considered, the emerald and other green stones would be given the preference for decoration, as stones of this color were the most in favor among the primitive inhabitants of Central America because it symbolized the verdure of field and forest, and hence youth and vigor. When set in gold these stones gained in symbolic value, for gold, having the color of the sun, was regarded as typical of force, courage, and vitality.