Jim Maddox

Jim Maddox was a professor of English at the George Washington University and at Middlebury College's summer graduate school, the Bread Loaf School of English, where I taught and then became director for almost 25 years. One fine day around 1985, I came upon a beautiful Acoma pot at an antiques show in Washington and bought it. I still remember taking it home and setting it atop a bookcase and noticing how beautiful its orange, black, and white design appeared against the blue wall behind it. My path from this initial interest to serious collecting was steep and passionate. I visited the land of the pueblos in New Mexico and Arizona many, many times, visited the great museums, especially in Santa Fe, and became familiar with many dealers in Indian pottery, again especially in Santa Fe, which is ground zero for pottery collectors. I also became deeply interested in the history of the pueblo peoples, a history strongly shadowed by the Indians' contact with the descendants of Europeans, first the Spanish, then the Americans. Like it or not, Indian pottery simply cannot be discussed without considering the history of the Indians and the whites. We will gain some relief from learning (or at least so I will argue) how the appearance of the Spanish and the Americans had, arguably, fewer negative effects upon the pueblo Indians than upon any other tribes. But, in truth, that will be scant relief.