The configuration of these pieces which had survived provided her with a clue to the shape of the original pots, and they were quickly reproduced. Giving the finished pots the odd black sheen of the ancient fragments was another matter. The shards held no clues here, but through patient experimentation Maria and her husband, Julian finally contrived a solution. After each pot had been shaped and dried, Maria polished its surface with a smooth stone, a tedious and time-consuming job that produced a finish of remarkable clarity. The pots were then placed together in a pile, shielded with pieces together in a pile, shielded with pieces of sheet metal so as to form a kind of ventilated oven, and layered over with—of all things—dry cow dung. The manure was put to the torch, and once the fire had taken hold, the whole pile was smothered in ash and additional manure so that the heat and smoke from the organically rich fuel could carbonize the surface of the pots. When they were finally pried out of the pile with sticks, the finished pots glowed with a black intensity that suggested Milton’s description of the fires of hell: “…dark with exceeding bright.”

Over the next several years, Maria and her husband refined the process, ultimately adding to it painted designs taken from the traditions of their tribe, the Tewas. The pots became famous—and expensive—and are now displayed proudly in museums and private collections all over the world. Maria and Julian, too, became famous. They found themselves and their work in demand at galleries, museums, fairs, and exhibitions; Maria herself laid the corner-stone for New York’s Rockefeller Center in 1933. Yet in spite of more fame and fortune than had ever come to any member of the Tewa tribe, they lived as they always had lived at San Ildefonso, producing pots and children.

Julian died in 1943, but Maria continues to practice their art. Even more importantly, she has given her knowledge to her chidren, her grandchildren, and most recently her great-grandchildren. She hopes that when the time comes it will also be given to some of her great-great-grandchidren, thirty-two of whom have now been born. In any case, the art she rediscovered seventy years ago seems likely to survive. Maria herself believes it. “When I am gone” she once told her great-granchildren (as quoted in Susan Peterson’s recent book, The Living Tradition of Maria Martinez ), “other people have my pots. But to you I leave my greatest achievement, which is the ability to do it.” That is a legacy worth the treasuring: the hands of Maria Martinez have reached back across more than seven hundred years of history.

It has been nearly four generations now that these hands have been doing their work, bringing a special genius to an art form last seen on this planet two centuries before Coronado’s expedition straggled into the American Southwest in 1542. The hands belong to Maria Martinez.

Maria lives in