Betty Manygoats Biography

This entry was taken directly from the “Museum of American Folk Art Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century American FOLK ART and ARTISTS,” by Chuck and Jan Rosenak. (Abbeville Press, NYC, 1990).

BIOGAPHICAL DATA

Born Betty Barlow to the Táchii’nii (Red Running into the Water) clan, January 30, 1945, the Shonto/Cow Springs area, the Navajo Nation, Arizona. Education unknown. Married William Manygoats August 8, 1963. One son, nine daughters (many of her children are potters). Now resides Cow Springs (between Grand Canyon and Monument Valley), the Navajo Nation, Arizona.

GENERAL BACKGROUND

On a sheep-nibbled plain, the Manygoats extended family lives in a cluster of prefabricated houses interspersed with hogans and corrals. Unemployment is high among the Navajos, and the family lives off the land and its animals—sheep and goats—as well as what is earned by making pottery.

Since the 1870s the women of the clans who live in this remote area have made utilitarian Navajo pottery for cooking and storage. However, by the 1960s the sale of cheap tin and plastic utensils at the trading posts had virtually wiped out local commerce in these items. Bill Beaver, an Indian trader who owns the Sacred Mountain Trading Post near Flagstaff, Arizona, helped to revive pottery making in this area. He started collecting Navajo pottery in the 1950s (when other traders were uninterested in it because it lacked decoration) and encouraged innovation among the potters.

ARTISTIC BACKGROUND

Betty Manygoats’s mother, Zonie Barlow, and other members of her family taught her how to pot. According to Bill Beaver, “I first saw Betty’s pots in mid-1975, but they were undistinguished. I sent her home and told her to try something different. In 1978 she brought me one encrusted with horny toads. Now I had something great!”

Manygoats soon began winning awards for her work at the annual Navajo exhibitions held at the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff, and at the Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremony in Gallup, New Mexico. She never, however, personally appears at this type of event.

Manygoats’s husband, William, also makes pots (even though it is a Navajo taboo for men to pot), but his are of a different type, usually with painted designs.

SUBJECTS AND SOURCES

Manygoats makes Navajo pottery in the traditional way, just as it has been made for more then one hundred years, but she exaggerates the shapes and modernizes the styling. Some pieces are small and some are greatly enlarged.

Although her pots are made in the Navajo Way, Manygoats disregards Navajo taboos on design (in traditional Navajo pottery, only one decorative element—a biyo’, or small beaded necklace just below the rim—is allowed). She puts one or more horned toads, for instance, on almost everything she makes, from the smallest to the largest pieces. Occasionally her pieces include a painted design—also a taboo in the Navajo pottery tradition.

Manygoats also makes small animals—buffalo, horses, sheep, and goats—that are similar to the clay toys that the Navajo used to make for their children.

MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES

Manygoats uses Navajo clay from Black Mesa, forming it into coils that wind upward. She starts her coils in various-sized bowls and pie tins, which determine the eventual circumference of the piece. Then she smoothes the coiled clay and adds the decorations. (Manygoats makes her horned toad scales with a bobby pin.)

After the piece has dried in the sun, it is placed in an open-pit kiln and covered with cow dung. Cedar is the preferred fuel for the kiln. Where the wood ash comes in contact with the clay, brownish gray discolorations called “fire clouds” appear. After firing, warm pinon pitch is applied to the piece, inside and out. Once coated with pitch, the pot is watertight.

Manygoats’s ware can be as small as 3 inches high, but some of her pots are very large—close to 3 feet. Her wedding vases, often measuring over 2 feet high, are famous.

Manygoats is a prolific worker. If the weather is good, she will make as many as thirty pots in a month.

ARTISTIC RECOGNITION

The new Navajo pottery is finding its way into the important collection of Native American art and pottery. It is featured in galleries and museums surrounding the Navajo Nation—those in Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona, and in Gallup, Farmington, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Manygoats is one of the most innovative of the Navajo potters working today. Her work was featured in a 1988 exhibition at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe and a 1990 exhibition at the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff.