Sep 24, 2026 · 44 min · 9 segments
A Two-Spirit Zuni weaver charmed 1886 Washington, met the President, and walked forty miles home. She was six feet tall, wove blankets on the lawn of the Smithsonian, and shook the President's hand…
Imagine, if you will, the year eighteen seventy-nine.
You are standing at the edge of Zuni Pueblo in the territory of New Mexico before it is a state.
The sun is going down behind you, and the light on the walls has turned the color of honey.
The rooms of the village rise one on top of another, and wooden ladders lean against them.
And on the highest rooftops, women are pulling in the day's drying corn before the cold comes.
Somewhere below you, water is being poured from a jar.
A dog is settling.
Smoke is rising in thin blue threads from a dozen chimneys and folding itself into the dusk.
And crossing the plaza toward you, taller than anyone else in sight, comes a person in a woman's black dress with a woven belt at the waist and turquoise at the throat, carrying a basket of laundry on one hip.
Her stride is long.
Children run to her as she passes, and she slows for them.
This is WeWha.
She is about thirty years old, and she is, by the account of nearly everyone who ever met her, the most remarkable person in the Pueblo.
Let's step back about thirty years to the beginning.
Her mother belongs to the Badger Clan.
Her father belongs to the Dogwood Clan.
These clans will shape her whole life.
One gives her a home, the other gives her ceremonies to carry.
She is only about four years old when smallpox comes through the villages of the Southwest.
Both of her parents die in that epidemic.
She and her brother are taken in by their father's sister into a household that is one of the wealthiest and most respected in Zuni.
So the orphan grows up not at the edge of things, but at the center.
And very early, when WeWha is still small, the people around her notice something.
Imagine, if you will, the year eighteen seventy-nine.
You are standing at the edge of Zuni Pueblo in the territory of New Mexico before it is a state.
The sun is going down behind you, and the light on the walls has turned the color of honey.
The rooms of the village rise one on top of another, and wooden ladders lean against them.
And on the highest rooftops, women are pulling in the day's drying corn before the cold comes.
Somewhere below you, water is being poured from a jar.
A dog is settling.
Smoke is rising in thin blue threads from a dozen chimneys and folding itself into the dusk.
And crossing the plaza toward you, taller than anyone else in sight, comes a person in a woman's black dress with a woven belt at the waist and turquoise at the throat, carrying a basket of laundry on one hip.
Her stride is long.
Children run to her as she passes, and she slows for them.
This is WeWha.
She is about thirty years old, and she is, by the account of nearly everyone who ever met her, the most remarkable person in the Pueblo.
Let's step back about thirty years to the beginning.
Her mother belongs to the Badger Clan.
Her father belongs to the Dogwood Clan.
These clans will shape her whole life.
One gives her a home, the other gives her ceremonies to carry.
She is only about four years old when smallpox comes through the villages of the Southwest.
Both of her parents die in that epidemic.
She and her brother are taken in by their father's sister into a household that is one of the wealthiest and most respected in Zuni.
So the orphan grows up not at the edge of things, but at the center.
And very early, when WeWha is still small, the people around her notice something.
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