Handed Down - Nevada Arts Council

1991–1992
Shoshone Beadwork:
Angie McGarva and Tamea Knight
Beadwork is a relatively recent art form among
Native Americans—since the introductions of
glass beads by Europeans—but they have made it their
own, incorporating traditional patterns, meanings and
uses, and elevating it to extraordinary levels of skill and
beauty. Anyone who has ever stopped at a roadside
smoke shop in Nevada has seen beaded earrings, belt
buckles, saltshakers and other modern adaptations of
bead working skills made for tourists; fewer know of
the traditional uses of beadwork for dance costumes,
cradleboards, medicine pouches and the like.
Tamea Knight is also a Western Shoshone from
Elko, but she spent much of her childhood in other
places. When she returned home, got married and had
children, she rekindled an interest in her heritage and
began learning about buckskin and beadwork, mostly
working on a loom. She jumped at the chance to learn
Angie’s technique, and the two spent every Saturday
afternoon at Angie’s house during the apprenticeship.
They also used some of their grant to take a trip to the
Ft. Hall Shoshone-Bannock Reservation near Pocatello,
Idaho—a major bead-working center—to buy beads,
needles, thread, buckskin and other supplies. Tamea
says it took her three weeks to make her first barrette
(while Angie finished two in the first afternoon) but the
results were worth it, and it got easier each time.
Tamea Knight and Angie McGarva working
at Angie’s house.
Angie McGarva, a Western Shoshone from Lee in
Elko County, is a master bead worker who has been
learning the craft since she was a little girl watching her
mother. Now in her mid-30’s, she specializes in what she
calls “flat work,” beads sewn on a stiffened cloth backing
to make items for traditional costumes such as medallions,
wrist cuffs, hair ties and leggings, as well as picture
frames, barrettes, and checkbook covers. Angie developed
her own technique of stringing beads on one thread,
laying it on the surface to be beaded, and using a second
needle and thread to sew it down with a stitch every few
beads; she says she taught herself by taking apart other
pieces, reading books and experimenting. Angie likes to
do designs in what she calls “fire colors”—yellow, orange,
red—against any color background, but especially black,
and she rarely plans out a design beforehand. “You figure
out the design as you go, that’s what I do, I don’t know
how other people do it,” she explains. “Because it’s your
design you’re putting into your work, it’s your creation,
so do it the way you feel.”
Angie McGarva and her daughter Canika
wearing an outfit Angie made.
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