Women of Cochiti

The panel names no one, but the form it describes began with Helen Cordero in 1964. The collector Alexander Girard, who had bought her small clay figures at a Santo Domingo feast day, asked for a larger seated piece with children, and she shaped her grandfather Santiago Quintana, a storyteller, with five grandchildren climbing on him; she was one of them. That first Storyteller is in the Girard collection at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe. Cordero, who died in 1994, made only male storytellers, since each was him.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Women of Cochiti Cochiti Pueblo Women of Cochiti are known for reviving the historic figurative tradition now referred to as Storytellers, adult clay figurines surrounded by children. The efforts of these women have bloomed into a vibrant cottage industry, inspiring many potters and have greatly enhanced the economic welfare of Cochiti. Storytellers are now widely collected as art, appearing in major museums and private collections around the world.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bandelier National Monument — 11 mi
  Rooms carved into soft volcanic tuff in Frijoles Canyon, named for a Swiss scholar who was led there in 1880 by a man from Cochiti Pueblo.
• Fuller Lodge — 18 mi
  The upright-log dining hall of a boys' ranch school, which fed and housed the Manhattan Project after the Army bought the school in 1942.
• Valles Caldera National Preserve — 18 mi
  A crater thirteen miles across, floored with grass, left by an eruption 1.25 million years ago and owned privately for 140 years under a law that called it vacant land.
• Palace of the Governors — 22 mi
  The long adobe on the north side of the Santa Fe plaza, called the oldest public building in continuous use in the country, though its own founding date is in dispute.

More markers nearby

• La Bajada — 6.7 mi
• Pueblo of Santo Domingo Kiua — 7.9 mi
• Kewa Women's Co-op — 11 mi
• Gold and Turquoise — 12 mi