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

Native American art Visual arts by 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 includes ...

. Conchos are most closely associated with the Navajo 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 state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. The state takes its name from the adjacent Del ...

and

Shawnee The Shawnee are an Algonquian-speaking indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands. In the 17th century they lived in Pennsylvania, and in the 18th century they were in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, with some bands in Kentucky a ...

, 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 Nation band governments who have historically lived on the Interior Plains (the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies) ...

including the Comanche,

Kiowa Kiowa () people are a 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 Colorado in the 17th and 18th centuries,Pritzker 326 and e ...

and Ute, 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