This is a classic of Navajo art! This bolo features the hand cut, traditional Bear Paw symbol shown in a Sterling Silver shadow box. The palm of the Bear Paw holds a nugget of genuine Sleeping Beauty Turquoise (the Tiffany of Turquoise). Sterling Silver, Sleeping Beauty Turquoise, the shadow box Bear Paw symbol, this is the perfect southwestern bolo! This Navajo made bolo is 1-1/8" by 1-1/4" with a 39" long leather tie.

In Indian folklore it is said that there was once a chief with turquoise colored skin. One day he was running from his enemies in the hot desert. Whenever he stopped to rest, his perspiration ran onto the ground, collected in rocks and became turquoise.

There are many legends about Turquoise; The Pima consider it to bring good fortune and strength and that it helped overcome illness. The Zuni believe that blue turquoise was male and of the sky and green turquoise was female and of the earth. Pueblo Indians thought that its color was stolen from the sky. In Hopi legend the lizard who travels between the above and the below, excretes turquoise and that the stone can hold back floods. The Apache felt that turquoise on a gun or bow made it shoot straight. The Navajo consider it as good fortune to wear and believe it could appease the Wind Spirit.

The Navajo were the first of the southwestern Indians to produce metal jewelry. Around the mid-19th Century a Navajo Medicine Man, Atsidi Sani, convinced a Mexican blacksmith to teach him the art of working with metal. When the Navajo returned to their homeland in 1868 after their imprisonment at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, traders arrived in the area bringing silver coins with them. It was with these coins that the Navajo began to make silver jewelry.

A Certificate of Authenticity has been included with this item.

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