A concho or concha is a typically oval silver ornament found in

Native American art The visual arts of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas encompasses the visual artistic practices of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas from ancient times to the present. These include works from South America and North America, which in ...

. Conchos are most closely associated with the

Navajo The Navajo or Diné are an Indigenous people of the Southwestern United States. Their traditional language is Diné bizaad, a Southern Athabascan language. The states with the largest Diné populations are Arizona (140,263) and New Mexico (1 ...

people, with one of the best known forms being the concho belt. Conchos were first made by eastern tribes such as the

Delaware Delaware ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic and South Atlantic states, South Atlantic regions of the United States. It borders Maryland to its south and west, Pennsylvania to its north, New Jersey ...

and

Shawnee The Shawnee ( ) are a Native American people of the Northeastern Woodlands. Their language, Shawnee, is an Algonquian language. Their precontact homeland was likely centered in southern Ohio. In the 17th century, they dispersed through Ohi ...

, whose craftsmen learned their trade from European artisans. Following their resettlement in Oklahoma in the 1830s, they passed the art form on to

Plains tribes Plains Indians or Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies are the Native American tribes and First Nations peoples who have historically lived on the Interior Plains (the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies) of North ...

including the

Comanche The Comanche (), or Nʉmʉnʉʉ (, 'the people'), are a Tribe (Native American), Native American tribe from the Great Plains, Southern Plains of the present-day United States. Comanche people today belong to the List of federally recognized tri ...

Kiowa Kiowa ( ) or Cáuigú () people are a Native Americans in the United States, Native American tribe and an Indigenous people of the Great Plains of the United States. They migrated southward from western Montana into the Rocky Mountains in Colora ...

and

Ute Ute or UTE may refer to: * Ute people, a Native American people of the Great Basin * Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, Utah * Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah * Southern Ute Indian Tribe of the Southern ...

, who in turn introduced it to the Navajo of the Southwest. The Navajo later began making conchos around the 1870s to 1880s, after they had learned the craft of silversmithing from Rio Grande Mexican peoples. The name ''concho'' comes from ''concha'', the Spanish word for 'seashell'.

References

{{reflist Native American jewelry Navajo culture Silver objects