Dig It - 6/8/26

Recollections Episode 2, “Then Came The Hippies” 

Well Fellow Seekers, by Hippies I mean the whole “Counter Culture” with their interest in native beliefs, customs, and costumes, beads, belts, etc. Remember Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix...

However, outside of the Southwest, there were few museums that had collections of early Southwestern jewelry on display: the Laboratory of Anthropology and the School of American Research, here in Santa Fe, as well as the Heard, the Museum of Northern Arizona, and the Southwest Museum in California. I know there were others, but I can’t think of them. I can’t think of any in the greater metropolitan area of New York that had collections of silver on display except the Barnes, outside of Philadelphia.

Anyway, native southwestern jewelry was becoming popular with the rockers. Jim Morrison wore a concho belt. Jimi Hendrix wore a concho belt and squash necklace, just to name a few. There was certainly some early literature on "classic" native silver, but no “artsy” picture books on the subject. Then everything changed in 1978, with “Indian Silver Jewelry Of The Southwest 1868-1930” by Larry Frank and Milford J. Holbrook II. They illustrated museum and private collections in big, bold photos. Also in the 1970s were two major museum exhibits of Native American art—Sacred Circles in 1976 and Native American Heritage in 1977. Both exhibits had extensive catalogs and pictured “Classic Period Southwestern Native Jewelry" and gave the general public more exposure and access to photos and information on the subject.