Dorothy Trujillo

Cochiti Pueblo

Born to a Laguna mother (Carrie Reid Loretto) and a Jemez father (Louis Lorreto) in 1932, Dorothy Trujillo attended the San Diego Mission School when she wasn't home on the pueblo learning to make pottery from her mother and grandmother. She made her first figures around the age of 10. When she married Onofre Trujillo, she moved to his home at Cochiti and earned permission to use Cochiti clay.

Through that marriage, Dorothy became a cousin of Martha and Josephine Arquero and Marie Laweka, all of them having learned to make Cochiti pottery from Damacia Cordero (Dorothy's mother-in-law).

Dorothy was making storytellers in the late 1960s and started making nativities around 1972. She was generous with her knowledge and taught several people the whole process to making traditional pottery, incuding two of her own daughters.

One of Dorothy's storyteller figures is on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. She passed on in 1999.