Claw, Silas
Silas Claw was born into the Dineh Lok’aa’dine’e (the Reed People) clan in December 1913. He grew up near Cow Springs but was sent away to boarding schools for his education. After ten years of formal education, he left Tuba City High School and returned to Cow Springs to help his family with their herds of sheep and cattle. Around 1949 he married Bertha Little of the T’od’ich’i’i’nii (the Bitter Water) clan.
Silas had learned to speak English while he was at the boarding schools but Bertha never went to a formal school and never learned more than a few words of English. The Claws never had any children of their own but they did help raise ten nieces and nephews that belonged to Bertha’s brother who lived nearby.
Silas and Bertha raised sheep on a farm they inherited from Bertha’s family near Cow Springs. A problem with that was the limitation the Federal government placed on the size of Navajo and Hopi sheep and cattle herds when Glen Canyon Dam was built on the Colorado River. Those limitations prevented the people from being able to support themselves solely on the products they derived from their herds.
Through the years Silas would often leave home and seek seasonal employment to supplement their income. Those experiences found him working with the Indian Division of the Civilian Conservation Corps, picking vegetables for Mormon farmers in Utah, working on railroad track repair gangs, and assisting with bona-fide archaeological excavations. During the 1970s, Silas worked on excavations around Black Mesa and other areas of the Navajo Nation. He also acted as an interpreter and field assistant for anthropologist Scott C. Russell.
The early 1970s was when the Hopis filed a suit in Federal Court that caused major disruptions in the area around Cow Springs and Black Mesa. A large piece of land there was in dispute between the tribes and a Federal judge ordered the removal of all people living in the area until the case was sorted out. The people still claimed ownership of their land, could still camp out on it and could hunt, fish and graze their sheep, cattle and horses there. They could dig clay and cut firewood, too, but they couldn’t build anything new nor could they repair anything existing without first getting explicit written permission from both tribes. Neither tribe gave any permissions for 20 years. Then a Federal Judge decided in favor of the Dineh. Both tribes lost about 20 years of potential prosperity in the meantime (the case dragged on so long the Hopi tribal chairman who filed it didn’t live long enough to see the Hopis lose everything they would have gained had he accepted a much more generous offer from the Navajo Nation ten years earlier).
That forced removal from the land caused most of the Cow Springs-area residents to relocate to HUD housing in Tuba City until the case was finally adjudicated in the mid 1990s.
Silas and Bertha said they learned to make pottery on their own, beginning around 1968. However, the home of Rose Williams was close by and Rose was always happy to answer people’s questions and help them learn, as long as they spoke and understood Dineh: Rose never went to a formal school and didn’t learn to speak English either.
While Silas and Bertha each could and did make pots on their own, in collaborations Bertha usually made the vessel body while Silas did the decorating. Their earlier vessels (during the 70s) were traditional and conventional in both form and manufacture. It was in those early years that the Claws made a couple changes in their process. First, they substituted a marine varnish on items made for commercial sale to tourists while they continued to use pine pitch only for fellow Dineh. They didn’t use acrylic paint on pitched surfaces either, the pitch made the acrylics run. The marine varnish didn’t cause the acrylics to run and they saved a lot of time and energy by not having to gather and prepare the pitch. It was also during this time that they began to add appliqués to their wares. The 1970s saw a lot of experimentation with appliqués of ears of corn, plants, animals and other items placed around the vessel. This new technique was strictly for economic purpose, hopefully making their wares more desirable. Using a thin coat of marine varnish also worked best with these new appliqués because the pitch didn’t just smear the paint, it also puddled in nooks and crannies and obscured the details.
The Claws dug their clay from a deposit near their home, albeit a different deposit than that used by most Cow Springs-area potters. For temper they used ground up prehistoric pottery sherds that they would find near Tuba City. The sherds were ground up on a metate (flat piece of stone used for grinding corn and grains into flour) and added to their processed clay. Bertha would coil and form the vessels, then wrap them in plastic bags to keep them moist until Silas could make and apply the appliqués. Then they would put the vessels on top of their wood-burning stove until they were dry. At that point they would fire the pieces by putting them inside the burning stove for 30 minutes to an hour. Larger pieces they’d fire in a pit outdoors.
From the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, the appliqués expanded into new forms of decoration. Silas said he first started with acorns and leaves, later adding pine cones, ears of corn, horned toads, yucca and saguaro cactus and animal heads, all in that order. Most of the figurative pottery they made after about 1985 included the use of bright acrylic paint. The appliqués prior to then were all left unpainted, though on occasion Silas would use a translucent tint to highlight features. The acrylic painting was done after firing and either before or after varnishing. They couldn’t use acrylic paint on pitched vessels either as the pitch would cause the acrylic to run and smear. It was also during this time that the Claws made some pieces with both etched and painted scenes. Many of Silas’ features were shaped in high relief and often in full round.
During the 1980s, their nieces, Ella Shortman and Daisy Tate, began helping them with their pottery. For the most part, Daisy and Ella seem to have done most of the acrylic painting. Around 1985 Silas stopped signing his work. Bertha had never signed any of hers and their collaborations had previously been signed with either “Silas B. Claw” or “S.B. Claw” inscribed in the base.
Silas passed on in 2002. As of early 2021, there’s no record of Bertha having passed on yet. Some folks think Silas and Bertha may have produced more than 4,000 pieces in their thirty-plus years of making pottery.