The concho belt is a ceremonial and everyday ornament composed of a series of stamped, cast, or repoussé silver discs — known individually as conchos — linked by leather strapping or silver bars and fastened with a matching buckle or tie. Emerging as a distinct Navajo form in the 1870s, the concho belt has evolved over roughly a century and a half from austere hammered coin-silver medallions into some of the most technically accomplished and visually complex objects in the entire canon of Native American metalwork. Fine antique examples are actively collected by major institutions and private buyers alike, and the form remains central to contemporary Southwestern dress and cultural identity.

Etymology and Terminology

The word concho — also spelled concha — derives from the Spanish for shell, a reference to the shell-like oval or round profile of the individual disc. The term passed into English through the Spanish-speaking Southwest, where it was applied broadly to decorative silver roundels used on horse tack, clothing, and personal ornament. In the context of Navajo jewellery, concho has come to denote specifically the silver disc elements of the belt, and the compound term concho belt is now standard in both the trade and museum literature. The spelling concha belt appears in some academic and curatorial sources and is equally correct.

Historical Origins

The precise origins of the concho belt are a matter of ongoing scholarly discussion, but the broad outlines are well established. Navajo men first encountered silver ornament through contact with Spanish colonial and later Mexican culture, where silver-decorated horse gear — saddles, bridles, and martingales set with stamped roundels — was a mark of status and horsemanship. The Navajo, who had no indigenous tradition of metalworking before the mid-nineteenth century, began learning silversmithing in the 1860s, most accounts crediting a Navajo man named Atsidi Sani (also recorded as Herrero, meaning blacksmith) as among the first to work silver, having learned from a Mexican smith.

The earliest concho belts, dating to approximately the 1870s, were fashioned from American silver coins — chiefly Liberty Seated half-dollars and later Morgan dollars — which were hammered flat, annealed, and worked into oval or round discs. These early pieces are characterised by a central slot or aperture through which the leather belt passed directly, a construction detail that distinguishes the oldest examples from later work. Decoration was achieved primarily through stamping with steel dies to produce geometric patterns: stepped terraces, triangles, and repeated linear motifs drawn from the broader vocabulary of Navajo weaving and sandpainting.

The United States government's prohibition on the melting of coinage, enforced more strictly from the 1890s onward, encouraged Navajo smiths to transition to commercially available sheet silver and, later, to fine silver and sterling. This shift coincided with a broadening of technical repertoire: repoussé work — in which the metal is pushed outward from behind to create raised relief — became more prevalent, and the forms of individual conchos grew more elaborate.

Structure and Construction

A complete concho belt typically comprises between seven and thirteen individual concho elements, though the number varies with the wearer's size and the maker's design intent. The conchos are most commonly oval, ranging from roughly 5 to 12 centimetres along the long axis, though circular, butterfly-shaped, and more complex silhouettes exist. Each disc is worked from a single piece of silver — hammered, stamped, and sometimes set with stones — and finished on the reverse with either a fixed leather loop or a silver butterfly mount: a small, separately fabricated bar with two loops through which the belt leather threads. The butterfly mount, which allows the concho to slide slightly and lie flat against the body, is itself considered a diagnostic feature in dating and attributing pieces.

The belt leather connecting the conchos is traditionally plain or lightly tooled, and the overall length is adjusted by the number of conchos and the spacing between them. A matching buckle, often of the same decorative vocabulary as the conchos themselves, completes the assembly. In some traditions, a single large keeper or slide concho is positioned at the centre front, larger than the flanking elements and sometimes more heavily ornamented.

Turquoise and Stone Setting

The integration of turquoise into concho belts developed gradually through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Early conchos were purely silver; the introduction of stone setting reflected both the increasing availability of turquoise from mines in the American Southwest — notably those at Cerrillos, New Mexico, and later at Bisbee, Arizona, and the Sleeping Beauty mine in Globe, Arizona — and the growing demand from Anglo-American and tourist markets that prized the blue-and-silver colour combination. By the early twentieth century, turquoise cabochons set in simple silver bezels had become a standard decorative element, positioned at the centre of each concho or arranged in clusters around a central boss.

The turquoise used in historic concho belts varies considerably in quality and origin. Cerrillos turquoise, among the oldest mined in North America, appears in many pre-1920 pieces; its colour ranges from pale blue-green to a deeper sky blue, often with a distinctive brown or black matrix. Bisbee turquoise, prized for its intense blue and characteristic chocolate-brown matrix, became fashionable in mid-twentieth-century work. Sleeping Beauty turquoise, noted for its clean, robin's-egg blue with minimal matrix, has been widely used since the mine's commercial development in the 1970s. Collectors and curators pay close attention to turquoise provenance when assessing historic belts, as mine-specific material can be a significant factor in valuation.

Regional Variations and Related Traditions

Although the concho belt is most closely associated with Navajo silversmithing, the form was adopted and adapted by neighbouring peoples. Zuni smiths, known for their exceptional lapidary work and cluster-setting techniques, produced concho belts in which the silver functions primarily as a framework for dense turquoise inlay or mosaic. Hopi smiths, working in the overlay technique developed in the mid-twentieth century with encouragement from the Museum of Northern Arizona, created concho belts in which two layers of silver are soldered together, the upper layer cut away to reveal oxidised designs below — a style visually distinct from Navajo stamped work. Santo Domingo Pueblo artists have also produced shell and stone versions that reference the concho belt form while working in non-metallic materials.

Outside the Pueblo and Navajo worlds, the concho belt was adopted by non-Native makers and by the broader Western fashion industry from the mid-twentieth century onward. Mass-produced versions in base metal, often sold as Western wear accessories, are entirely distinct from handmade Native American work and have no place in serious collecting. The Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 (United States federal law) makes it illegal to misrepresent non-Native-made goods as Native American handcraft, a protection that has become increasingly important as the market for authentic pieces has grown.

The Fred Harvey Era and the Tourist Market

The Fred Harvey Company, which operated hotels and restaurants along the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway from the 1870s onward, played a significant and contested role in the development of Southwestern Native American jewellery as a commercial commodity. Harvey curio shops sold Navajo and Pueblo jewellery to railway travellers, and the company employed Native artisans and, at times, non-Native workers to produce pieces calibrated to tourist taste. So-called Harvey-era jewellery — roughly 1900 to 1940 — is now itself collected, though it occupies a different category from purely traditional work. Concho belts produced during this period sometimes show simplified designs or lighter-gauge silver intended to reduce production costs, and they may bear hallmarks or paper labels associated with Harvey retail operations.

Collecting and Connoisseurship

Antique and vintage concho belts are among the most actively traded objects in the market for historic Native American jewellery. Connoisseurship centres on several intersecting criteria:

• Age and construction method: Pre-1900 coin-silver belts with direct-slot construction are the rarest and most valued. The transition to butterfly mounts and commercially sourced silver is a useful dating marker.
• Quality of silverwork: The crispness of stamped impressions, the evenness of repoussé relief, and the fineness of filing and finishing all indicate the skill of the maker. Deeply struck, well-aligned stamps suggest an experienced hand and quality dies.
• Turquoise quality and provenance: Natural, untreated turquoise from named historic mines commands a premium. Stabilised, dyed, or synthetic turquoise — common in commercial work from the 1970s onward — reduces value significantly. Gemmological testing by a recognised laboratory can confirm treatment status.
• Attribution: Signed work by named Navajo smiths — among them Kenneth Begay, Tommy Singer, and members of the Platero family — carries a premium, though the majority of historic pieces are unsigned and attributed on stylistic grounds.
• Provenance and collection history: Documented ownership histories, particularly association with early collectors, dealers such as C.G. Wallace of Zuni, or institutional deaccessions, add both scholarly and market value.

Major auction houses including Sotheby's, Christie's, and Bonhams have offered significant concho belts in their sales of American Indian art, with exceptional antique examples reaching prices in the tens of thousands of dollars. Specialist dealers and auction houses focused on the American West — among them Cowan's Auctions and Heritage Auctions — handle substantial volumes of this material and publish catalogues that serve as useful market references.

Cultural Significance and Contemporary Practice

The concho belt is not merely a collector's object; it remains a living element of Navajo and broader Southwestern Native American dress. Worn by men and women at ceremonies, powwows, rodeos, and formal occasions, the concho belt carries social meaning that transcends its material value. The weight of a fine silver belt — a substantial piece may weigh 500 grams or more — is itself a form of embodied wealth, analogous in some respects to the role of heavy gold jewellery in South Asian or Middle Eastern dress traditions.

Contemporary Navajo smiths continue to produce concho belts across a wide range of styles, from strict revivals of nineteenth-century stamped work to highly experimental pieces that incorporate non-traditional materials, mixed metals, and innovative stone-setting. Organisations including the Heard Museum in Phoenix, the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe, and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian actively collect, exhibit, and commission contemporary work, ensuring that the form continues to develop within a supported institutional framework.

The Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair and Market, held annually in Phoenix, and the Santa Fe Indian Market, organised by the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA), are the two most important venues for evaluating the current state of the art. Prize-winning concho belts at these competitions regularly demonstrate technical standards that equal or surpass the finest historic work, and they attract serious collectors from across the United States and internationally.

Care and Preservation

Silver concho belts are subject to tarnish through oxidation, accelerated by sulphur compounds in the atmosphere and by contact with leather, which may contain tanning acids. Antique pieces should be stored in acid-free tissue or anti-tarnish cloth, away from rubber and leather when not in use. Cleaning should be approached with caution: commercial silver dips can remove the intentional oxidation in recessed stamp work that gives historic pieces their visual depth. Gentle polishing with a soft cloth, or professional cleaning by a conservator familiar with Native American metalwork, is preferable. Turquoise is porous and sensitive to oils, solvents, and ultrasonic cleaning; stones should never be immersed in liquid cleaning solutions.

Further Reading

• GIA Gems & Gemology — Turquoise of the American Southwest
• GIA — Native American Jewellery Research
• AGTA — Turquoise