Storytellers

The invention of the storyteller form is considered to be Helen Cordero of the Cochiti Pueblo, New Mexico, though the tradition of figurative pottery predates Helen by many centuries. Figurative pottery in the Southwest has been dated to perhaps as early 300 B.C. and certainly as early as 400 A.D. among the Anasazi, the predecessors of today's Pueblo Indians. Discouraged and repressed as idolatrous by European clergy seeking to convert the native Americans, figurative pottery from the period of colonialism is rare, nearly to the point of non-existence, if not for an underground pattern of secrecy maintained in the pueblos.