The Queen and Her Council

This tapestry depicts a female leader (perhaps the Queen) displaying her two scarlet macaws and surrounded by her council of religious, secular, and military advisers. The pueblo people today who live in northeastern Arizona and along the Zuni and Rio Grande Rivers in New Mexico, are uniformly matriarchal societies. In that environment it doesn't take much imagination to conceive of a strong-willed woman being chosen by the people to fill the role of "Queen." As the saying goes, "The men own the gods, the women own the goods." This is a fact of life among the Pueblo people. She is wearing her finest hand woven cotton dress, and has symbolic lightning flashes from the ceramic pot on her head and damselflies and fireflies surround her on a field of stars. A stork watches her intently and at her feet are stacked black-on-white ceramic plate, bowl, ladle, and a cup, all with a step-fret designs. The scene is an amalgam of some of the hundreds of polychrome murals found in the ruins of kiva walls at Awat'ovi and Kawaika'a ruins in Arizona and at Pottery Mound ruins in northwestern New Mexico ca. 900-1120 AD.