Maricopa Pottery (Connell Collection)

Pueblo Grande Museum has a collection of over 600 pieces of pottery produced by Native American artists from the Maricopa tribe (Xalychidom Piipaash/PeePosh).

The Connell Collection of historic Maricopa Pottery forms the core of Pueblo Grande Museum’s Maricopa pottery collection. The vessels were made by Maricopa potters and collected in the Phoenix area by Eliza Ann Connell and her daughter Caroline Connell Smurthwaite, between 1885 and 1907.

According to Caroline Smurthwaite, the vessels were originally acquired either as gifts or purchases from potters who included [sic] “Lena Miskeer, ---- Bird, Lulu Howard, Mary Bread, Maggie Sun (Colt), Mary French Loring.”

In 1938, the collection was purchased by the Arizona State Museum from Caroline Connell Smurthwaite with funds donated by Burridge D. Butler. At the request of the donor, about half of the collection was transferred to Pueblo Grande Museum “where it will be near the home of the present Maricopas.”

This online collection contains photographs of select vessels in the Connell Collection at Pueblo Grande Museum. Another collection titled “Watercolor Paintings of Maricopa Pottery from the Arizona State Museum” viewable on the Arizona Memory Project, documents additional objects from the same pottery collection, that are curated at the Arizona State Museum.