  The Gutierrez Family - Tigua Indian ArtistsSammy Gutierrez and his wife Angie, are Tigua Indian artists from the Ysleta Del Sur Pueblo. The family shares a love for their culture and works together on traditional Native handcrafts.
Sammy loves to work with leather, fashioning beautiful decorative bows and arrows with leather quivers as well as antler dance sticks and prayer sticks. He also creates beautiful traditional trail markers, dream catchers and medicine wheels. See Sammy's work in our Native American rattle section. Angie, loves to make jewelry and do bead work. From her small desk and collection of beads and stones, she creates beautiful jewelry. Necklaces, bracelets and earrings are among her specialties. See Angie's work in our Native American Indian jewelry section. Their girls, Samantha and Annika help with dream catcher weaving, bead stringing and leather wrapping. They work together with their parents and have a hands on perspective of Tigua culture.
Sammy and Angie are very active in the Tribe. As a member of the Tribal Council, Sammy is busy exercising traditional leadership responsibilities and also oversees the daily operation of the Pueblo's cultural center. With Angie at his side, they are leading a new generation through the development of cultural awareness and traditional skills.
Who Are the Tigua Indians? The Tigua Indians are one of the Puebloan tribes and the only one located in Texas. The Pueblo Indians are made up of 22 tribes still in existence in the southwest, twenty in New Mexico and one in Arizona as well as the Tigua or Ysleta Del Sur located just east of El Paso, TX. About 50 earlier Pueblo tribes are now extinct. All the Puebloan tribes had similar ways of life but different languages and so were grouped under the title of Pueblo Indians. Their name, Pueblo, coming from the Spanish meaning village is a reference to how they lived in Pueblos, an image now synonymous with southwest decor. Acoma pueblo is the oldest continually inhabited village in the southwest. One of the largest of the original pueblos was Gran Quivera, started about 800 AD, located south of present day Albuquerque. From here the Isleta tribe, who spoke Tiwa migrated south to their present El Paso location as a result of 1680 Pueblo revolt. They named their new pueblo Ysleta Del Sur where they speak Tigua. As such the Tigua Indians are a part of a rich culture who still survive and preserve their National heritage through traditional ceremonies and handcrafts.
The Tigua Indians were thought by some to be extinct in the 1930’s. But tribal leaders began to rally the people and to express themselves as a people, laying claim to the land they had lost as a result of their land grant from Spain not being honored. As late as 1968 the State of Texas finally officially recognized the Tigua as a tribe and President Lyndon Johnson also recognized the Tigua as a Nation by signing an act of congress which made their remaining land a reservation. Today, the Tigua still live on their land.
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