Origin of Weaving Among the Indians

Origin of Weaving Among

OVER and under, in and out, the deft, brown fingers carry red, black and gray yarns; with a dull thump, thump, a wooden paddle pushes thread against thread, making compact the whole. Slowly a black triangle appears on a gray ground, then a zigzag of red on the same pleasing gray. No drawn plan, no descriptive words guide the noiseless motions of the slender hands,. The young Navajo squaw carries tribal history and tradition in her head; she weaves in her blanket the only permanent record known to her people. It tells of the lightning, the rain, or of the Fire Dancers, or of the Great Life Giving God symbolized in the corn stalk. Whence came the tradition of weaving among the natives of the Southwest? How much of the art belongs to the Red Man? What materials, designs, colors, belong to him? What part of the art has been borrowed from the white man? Our story must carry us back several thousand years at least for the first crude beginnings of this industry, and, as unobtrusively as bags and baskets for use in the winter. How did it all begin? What suggested to man that he could weave? He tore his rude skin garment and his wife had practically to tie it together. She had no more skin in the cave home, so she utilized a bit of bark or perhaps a strip of green and pliable twig. Ideas followed this adaptation through necessity, and the woman experimented. Yes, she could produce small objects without using any skin at all thus, perchance, weaving began.

The environment of a people influenced early weaving as much as any other factor. In India, tree cotton was used. In Egypt linen of a splendid quality clothed the pharoahs and queens. Peru supported the llama, which supplied material for the exquisite textiles of the Incas. Europe, too, early learned to cultivate flax, and the barbaric peoples there made beautiful embroideries. In America, the natural vegetable products were quite different; hence the weaving industry differed accordingly. she moves her fin gers in her crea tive pattern, the art developed through the ages.

Among the earliest indications of man's existence in the Southwest are woven textiles. Man utilized barks and fibres in weaving before he made pottery; he made sandals and belts of materials other than skin before he built a home. With his first knowledge of agriculture man seems to have realized the possibilities of plants for weaving, as well as for foods. In pre-agricultural stage he stored wild fruits, nuts and berries in crudely woven storage in the cave, or earliest, period of the Southwest, the weaver worked with yucca fibre or leaf, with bark or with cotton wood, or willow shoots and grasses. The basket maker played a leading part in the first act of this drama. Narrow or broad leaves of yucca were woven into simple baskets. Some ingenious person began to use the same materials in making square-toed and square-heeled sandals. Sometimes the yucca leaf was pounded, the hard inner fibre extracted and twisted into a coarser or finer string or thread. This was then woven onto a sandal of the same shape squaretoed and squareheeled, but, of course, these were usually softer than the whole leaf sandal or the sandal of bark.

Using "tooth and nail" in the true sense of the word, the basket maker shredded young cottonwood or willow twigs into fine sewing splints. With a bundle of grass for a foundation she sewed these splints about the grass, thus producing smooth surfaced and well formed baskets. The earlier baskets were wide and shallow, or, at best, with a very small bit of an upright edge, of several inches only. The "bags", deeper in form, were often made of plaited bark.

NOVEMBER, 1934. ARIZONA HIGHWAYS the Indians The Young Navajo Squaw Carries Tribal Tradition in Her Head and Transmits to Cloth the Only Permanent Record of Her People

Vegetable fibre were sometimes combined with or replaced by animal or human hair. "Fur robes" were the latest style to the cave man. These were made by cutting rabbit skins into narrow strips and weaving and tying them to form large and small blankets and robes. Warm indeed they must have been, and the prized possession of some more fortunate individual in cave society. So highly prized were these fur pieces that they became the burial shrouds of the chieftains at death.

Not alone was the textile industry significant for its own products, but also it influenced another expressionceramic decoration. Linear and geometric patterns which are expressed from beginning to end in prehistoric Southwestern pottery find their prototypes in the raised and colored designs of sandals and color designs of baskets of the Cave Period.

Advancement in weaving is discernible in the early Pueblo phase of development. This advancement was expressed in quality of material, method of weaving and variety and form of objects. No important new material was introduced until the late phases of this stage or period, when cotton is brought in from the south, either through newcomers or trade. However, weaves became finer, sandals were woven so as to better fit the foot, and a greater variety of articles was made. The sandal became "crescent-toed" in shape; the heels were rounded and sometimes drawn up so as to fit the back of the foot. Narrow warp strands sometimes as many as thirty-two to a sandal width! were made of a fine yucca string. In addition to the splendid weave and excellent form, decoration also appears on some of the sandals. By inserting additional pieces of yucca here and there as desired in the warp, a raised design could be obtained. They were, of course, in simple geometric patterns. The raised pattern was added to the bottom of the sandal and served more than a decorative purpose. No doubt it often kept the cave dweller from slipping on the slick surface of rock which marked his path up into and down out of his cliff home. Painted rather than raised designs sometimes decorated the bottom of a sandal, or gave life and color to a head band or belt. The same dull reds, browns and black were used here as in the baskets, and all other woven designs; geometric patterns prevailed.

As a "novelty goods" of these people, mention might be made of their turkey feather cord. This they produced as follows: the turkey feather was so stripped as to preserve the soft downy portion on a thin section of the vein. This was twisted onto a yucca cord foundation in such a way as to make a soft, feathery and rather bulky cord. This cord was then woven or tied (Continued on Page 18)