Nampeyo
Hopi-Tewa potter (1859–1942)
Nampeyo (1859 – 1942) was a Hopi-Tewa potter who lived on the Hopi Reservation in Arizona. Her Tewa name was also spelled Num-pa-yu, meaning "snake that does not bite". Her name is also cited as "Nung-beh-yong," Tewa for Sand Snake.
She used ancient techniques for making and firing pottery. She used designs from "Old Hopi" pottery and shards found at 15th-century Sikyátki ruins on First Mesa. Her artwork is in collections in the United States and Europe, including many museums like the National Museum of American Art, Museum of Northern Arizona, Spurlock Museum, and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University.
A world record for Southwest American Indian pottery was declared at Bonhams Auction House in San Francisco on December 6, 2010, when one of Nampeyo's art works, a decorated ceramic pot, sold for $350,000.
Early life
Nampeyo was born on First Mesa in the village of Hano, also known as Tewa Village which is primarily made up of descendants of the Tewa people from Northern New Mexico who fled west to Hopi lands about 1702 for protection from the Spanish after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. Her mother, White Corn was Tewa; her father Quootsva, from nearby Walpi, was a member of the Snake clan of the Hopi Nation. According to tradition, Nampeyo was born into her mother's Tewa Corn clan.
The public source identifies “Nampeyo” as hopi-Tewa potter (1859–1942). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Nampeyo, Hopi-Tewa and potter.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2060870. VIAF identifies the subject as 6437526. The Library of Congress control number is n86868625. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1859, 1942, 2010 and 1702.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nampeyo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.