Santa Fe Indian Market

This past weekend Jay and I drove into Santa Fe for the annual Indian Market – this year was apparently its 90^th year of existence! The weather was perfect - well, there was a downpour at one point that lasted only about ten minutes, it IS monsoon season here now after all! But for the most part it was very comfortable, and the Plaza was packed with attendees, artists, and performers. Here are some pictures of tribal dancers of the Mt. St. Elias group from Alaska:

There were several young children performing their native dances - this little guy got a lot of attention:

People-watching was great! Most of the New Mexicans, and a lot of the tourists, were decked out in their finest New Mexican turquoise jewelry along with long broomstick skirts, braids or pony-tails, and western boots. The performers were dressed beautifully in their elaborate native costumes.

 

We didn’t buy any food, although I suspect it would have been heavenly. Indian Fry Bread is just not what I need to be eating right now, I keep struggling to get somewhere under these last eight pounds that I’ve gained since moving to New Mexico. But that’s a whole other topic!

We did sit on the balcony at the Coyote Café Cantina for some shared soup and shrimp ceviche.

Although we found many, many beautiful objects to admire, we did not buy anything – but there were gorgeous rugs, pottery, jewelry, sculpture, paintings, sunshades, metalwork and much more. The prices were pretty much triple what we see in the shops we normally go to (Old Town Albuquerque, Bien Mur, etc.), but the artists appeared to be doing good business, so there must have been a lot of wealthy people in attendance! 

We enjoyed several different performances – most notably, the dancers from Alaska, and the final entertainer of the day, Tony Duncan. Tony writes his own music and plays the Indian flute beautifully; in addition, he just happens to be the World Champion Indian Hoop-dancer – so fun to watch!

Here Tony is performing a beautiful piece written for his wife, Violet.

This is one of four tribal members who sang and chanted during Tony's hoop dance. I had to chuckle at his Superman emblem!

This segment of the dance represented riding a horse and using a lasso.

This started out as a bird flying and ended up as a ball that Tony held over his head as though he held up the earth.