APACHE BASKETRY

Mrs. Eubanks, teacher at day school at Navajo Mountain community, has been successful in her post. She serves the Navajo families in vicinity in many ways. Community participation in school program results in a full program from which children and their parents realize most.

community school will justify to a greater extent its existence. But with all the trend toward the modern, gadget-minded era the Diné at Navajo Mountain will continue to remain faithful to the gods who watch over and protect them. For under the purple shadow of “Naatsis-aan” only the most exemplary conduct is accepted. In the presence of this sacred mountain it is entirely fitting that the Indian Service use the utmost of talent in the architectural lines of the buildings and the landscaping of the campus. All the buildings at the community school are hogan-shaped, fashioned of native rock topped with the typical dome type ceiling of peeled logs. All the floors are flagstone, and stoves are given the dominant place in the center of each room. Once a teacher has taught in a circular classroom no other shaped room will ever appease. The circle immediately draws everyone together various sections of diversified interest are still included within the circle range. Even the living quarters of the staff are hogan-shaped so that the whole plant is in harmony. The winters are cold and the snow is deep. There are many days when one cannot get off the campus. For the past three years the children have been living at the school, twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week. The parents have furnished a sheep skin and blanket for each child and keep the school supplied with fresh meat. It is the usual procedure for a fond parent to visit the school and open the ice-box door. If there is little or no meat on hand, immediately it is forthcoming, for they, too, appreciate the benefits of adequate diet. Soon there will be a new dormitory for the children to reside in during the school term-not so elaborate as to reek of institutionalized living, yet cozy and warm, graced by the occasional visit of family and relatives. The dormitory is to be simply furnished with homemade, bunk style beds dressed with woolen comforters. The wool was given in payment for shoes and clothes by the parents. It is washed and carded and quilted by both parents and pupils. Since the school started this project there have been many similar comforts made at the homes. Once the ball starts there is much interest to keep it rolling. The pupils adhere to the Navajo way of dressing. Velvet blouses and Navajo type skirts are warmer in this cold climate, and a brightlystriped blanket is a thing of beauty as well as warmth. Social as well as intellectual progress is affected by cultural inheritance. A child whose pace has been set by the progress of a herd cannot be expected to be geared to function at the all high speed of a city-bred child in public school. First there is the language handicap which calls for special techniques on the part of both the teacher and the child. The experience background of the child must be supplemented to an extent that will make his school curriculum meaningful. All students who come to the school are non-English speaking. Most of them have been sheepherders. This is then a common ground on which the teacher may safely take her first step. For the familiar feel of the fleece, the monotonous “baa-baa” of the sheep may well serve as a source of material for such units of study as My Home, Sheep, Animals, Food, Clothing, The Store. Needless to say the counting of sheep involves arithmetic separation of the sheep from the goats invites subtraction, and the advent of the spring lamb crop graphically depicts multiplication. Reading charts result from classroom conversations, while writing and other manual skills demand more intensified training of the native ability. Great need for more health education has shown itself, and this phase teamed with sanitation and proper living in theory as well as practice, while the great value of art, music and drama are not entirely forgotten for they play an all important part in Navajo culture. In one way or another the community school program is so designed as to take all these phases into consideration. Only by complete community participation can all this result in success. The local medicine man or “hatathlai,” properly plied with coffee and compliments, can be prevailed upon to render a chant whose rhythmic cadences are as true in meter as Tennyson’s poems to tell a legend of the Diné that is as truly dramatic as any ancient tragedy of Æschylus, and by a mere manipulation of the thumb and forefinger dipped in colored sands the “hatathlai” can fashion the most elaborate sand painting. Just as well versed along the practical side is the medicine man. In their native medicines the Navajo make use of herbal concoctions, inhalants, ointments, poultices, emetics and cathartics, and in so doing have been able to produce many native remedies. The school uses this knowledge as a basis for the introduction of the visits of the doctor and his medications. Navajo Mountain Community is approximately 150 square miles in extent. It is bounded on the east by Paiute canyon, on the west and south by vast Navajo canyon and on the north by “Naa-tsis-aan,” Navajo Mountain itself. These definite geographical features are to a certain extent barriers as well as boundaries. To be sure there is movement across them, but movement is not so frequent or casual as in a more open section. Before Navajo Mountain was taken over by the Navajos it was occupied by the Paiutes and the territory was known as the “Paiute Strip.” Navajo settlement took place about fifty years ago when Whiteman Killer and his wife, three daughters and one son-in-law used this area for winter quarters. The three daughters are still living at Navajo Mountain. One of these sisters is the grandmother of every child in school. Never a day goes by without warning some “sha-don-i” of his mother-in-law’s presence about the school plant in order to prevent an embarrassing situation and possible blindness. Father teaches son and nephew old-time Navajo games like “forty-stones” “moccasin betting game” or universal Indian shinny and competes with him as well. At any time of the day or night the people of this community feel free to call upon the teacher for help. Anything from advising as to the fairness of the bridal price as proposed by the bridegroom’s family, placating irate “in-laws,” finding a wet-nurse for a motherless baby, giving first aid for a snake bite, riding along the line to find the break in the telephone wire, giving chase to a vitamin-minded burro who just had to have his carrots, writing a letter to the “Na-taan-i” at “Washingtone” in protest of the sugar rationing, being matron-of honor at a wedding, helping Hosteen Yazza learn that one builds the fire in the fire-box of his newly acquired stove and not the oven as he supposed to hanging the dead baby’s cradleboard in the tree all of this is in a day’s work for the teacher at the community school. Sun-drenched crags overlooking rainbowhued canyons topped by the purple majesty of ever sacred Navajo Mountain lend strength and beauty and peace to the people so securely nestled therein. What pity that this Utopia cannot be shared by the thousands of Navajo children who are at present cannot attend school. From this group of people whose culture is self-contained, complete and remarkably stable, from this group of people whose offspring are so quick to give and learn, to accept the new ways yet be ever mindful of the old ways which anchor them and lend security to form a diversified yet stable personality from these let us draw our blueprint for happiness and allow the warp threads of individual personality to be interwoven with the woof of social pressures so that pattern of human nature is woven to its full beauty-a thing of beauty as is the blanket of the Navajo.

APACHE

Story by Clara Lee Tanner Basketry is often the craft of a nomadic or semi-nomadic people. It is light in weight, easily carried, and is unbreakable. These are musts for the permanent equipment of a group on the move. History points to a life for the Apache which was more wandering for some years, less so for others, but always on the nomadic side. Basketry was seemingly made through all these periods. Today the Apache lives in more permanent camps, but he still has the urge to move if, for no other purpose than to go a few miles to a ceremonial. Basketry remains the Arizona Apache's chief art expression to this day.

The Apaches who live in Arizona, or the Western Apaches as they are called, have been placed on a large reservation in the east central part of the state. The southern portion of the reservation is more desert land. The northern part is high altitude country characterized by a great variety of plant life. Here grow in abundance sumac, cottonwood, willow, mulberry, and martynia (commonly called devil's claw). These are the chief materials in Apache basketry.

An Apache basket weaver gathers the young shoots of the particular plant she desires when each is in season. These she stores until she is ready to use them. To make them pliable again, she buries them in wet earth or soaks them in a pan of water when she is ready to weave.

The full round shoot is used for the basket foundation. However, the shoot must be split three ways to serve as sewing or weft material. Finger nails and teeth are the usual "tools" used for this splitting, although a knife purchased at the trading post may be employed for this purpose.

Today the Western Apaches continue to use two basketry techniques which are centuries old in the Southwest, coiling and twining. The coiling method serves for the making of shallow tray or bowl baskets of all sizes, for jars, and for whatever curio or trinket pieces as may be produced. Water bottles and carrying baskets are woven in the twined technique.

In any basketry, art manifests itself in both form and decorations. Apache work is no exception in this matter, for these Indians express great refinement of form and a keen adaption of decorative styles.

As noted above, the twined weave produces two main forms, the water bottle and the burden or carrying basket. The water bottle is always constricted at the neck, obviously to keep the liquid from splashing out too readily. The body of the bottle may be globular, or it may be more angular because of a flattened shoulder. Sometimes the vessel is hour-glass shaped.

Practically no decoration appears on water bottles, save for an occasional heavy black line on the shoulder. Artistry is confined almost exclusively to the pleasing flow of line in the form of the vessel. An attractive reddish tone is imparted to the entire surface of the water bottle or "tus" as an ochreous material is rubbed over it before it is covered with melted pinon pitch.

The carrying basket has simple lines. From a very wide mouth the sides diminish gently to the base. The center bottom of the basket is concave or rounded.

Far more decoration appears on the burden basket than on the water bottle. Variation in weave, for example a combination of twill and plain twining, may be employed to produce simple bands which encircle the basket. Colored wefts are often introduced to form plain bands or for rows of small geometric patterns. In the latter case, design is usually in natural red and black. The Western Apaches do not use aniline dyes; their brothers in New Mexico, the Jicarilla Apaches, commonly employ brilliant artificial colors.

Often the burden basket carries another form of decoration rather typically Apache. Long strips of buckskin are effectively attached to the top or sides of the basket, hanging in graceful fringes all the way around. These fringes may be plain, or to their free ends may be fastened cone shaped tin tinklers. Occasionally in the past commercial beads were used in place of the cones.

Commonly used on the reservation today. both the burden basket and the water bottle are "worn" by the women. Loops of leather or horsehair appear on both basketry forms. Heavy cords or lines through these loops are attached to broad tump bands. The band is supported across the chest and the basket hangs down the back.

The coiled basket of the Apache is by far their most artistic product. The flaring bowl form ranges from four to thirty inches in diameter and is rather shallow. This form presents an inviting and a spacious area for design.

Jar shapes restrict design styles, as in the case of the water bottle. Two coiled jar forms predominate. One has a high and fairly constricted neck and flat or sloping shoulders which run out to the widest point of the