Sam Tilden — Navajo (Diné) Silversmith
Sam Tilden was a Navajo silversmith whose own account of the craft's early years survives. Arthur Woodward's A Brief History of Navajo Silversmithing prints the "STATEMENT OF SAM TILDEN, BORN 1869" among the field notes Richard Van Valkenburgh gathered from Navajo informants (Woodward 1946, pp. 64–65). He speaks of his people's history in the first person: "I speak of before we were taken to Hwelte (Bosque Redondo)" (Woodward 1946, p. 66).
He names two teachers. "I, Sam Tilden learned to work silver from Bee-daq-ee-nez (Long Mustache) 40 years ago, and he learned from 'Old Smith'," he says; a few lines later he calls Big Whiskers "My teacher," and credits him as "the first Navajo known to me to set turquoise into silver" (Woodward 1946, pp. 66–67). He describes the first settings: stones cut crudely and set flush with the bezel, square or lozenge-shaped or left natural, with raised stones arriving "about 1900 when I had been smithing ten years" (Woodward 1946, p. 67). His two dates for his own start do not quite agree.
John Adair's The Navajo and Pueblo Silversmiths names him with Long Moustache as the best known of the older silversmiths who had also become singers (Adair 1944, p. 104).
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References
- Woodward, Arthur. A Brief History of Navajo Silversmithing. With field notes by Richard Van Valkenburgh. Museum of Northern Arizona Bulletin 14, 2d ed. Flagstaff: Northern Arizona Society of Science and Art, December 1946 (first edition 1938).
- Adair, John. The Navajo and Pueblo Silversmiths. The Civilization of the American Indian Series. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1944.
This profile is maintained in support of Native American silversmiths and compiled from published references. See something inaccurate, or want to add to it? Contact us.