Southwestern Indian Hair-Dos

Three Styles SOUTHWESTERN Indian Hair-dos

THE girl took the scissors-she didn't hesitate; it was done impulsively. Before she was conscious of her action, her shorn locks were in her hands. She wasn't looking in the mirror now, as she had done for a long while before reaching a decision. No, she looked at her locks, so light, so small, now in her open palms like a dead bird, when its wings are closed forever-an absolute feeling of disappearance. She remembered the compliments on her flowing mane, and the many different ways she could dress her hair. Now it was gone. She wondered why. She shook her head; it felt free, and light, but she glanced in the mirror and realized how conventional and cold it was around her face. So she cried.

She walked toward the window. It was such a beautiful day in Sedona-the piñons against the red cliffs, and the dramatic clouds making faces at her down from the turquoise sky. What was the matter with her? Why had she been so intrigued to be one more slave of the dictates of fashion? It was too late to wonder. It had taken her years of patience and care to grow such hair and only a moment to sacrifice it alland sacrifice to what? She felt miserable. The sun was setting. The purple shadow molded every detail in the cliffs. The redness was intensified, as if the Arizona earth were blushing for her mistake. She didn't feel Arizonan any more, for some reason with her blue jeans, her boots, she felt like a queer combination that no longer belonged in this Nature where everything was male or female, a balanced rhythm-the equilibrium of life. The words of the Navajo Sing came to her suddenly: reason with her blue jeans, her boots, she felt like a queer combination that no longer belonged in this Nature where everything was male or female, a balanced rhythm-the equilibrium of life. The words of the Navajo Sing came to her suddenly: "House made of dark cloud. House made of male rain. House made of dark mist, House made of female rain. I have made you an offering."

In the distance, toward the San Francisco Peaks, where rain was pouring out of a summer thunderhead, she saw the long dark hair of Nature blessing Mother Earth with its fructifying caress. Standing in the last rays of the sunset, like a Hopi in prayer, she made the vow to let her hair grow long again.

Fifteen hundred years ago, in a cave, a little farther north, another girl sat watching another sunset. Carefully, she was tying a belt around her. She liked the design; it matched perfectly the raven tones of her hair, matched it so well, indeed, that one could think that it was made out of it. Looking at the young Indian maiden, one wondered... half of her head was cropped short, uneven, butchered. The other side was long and loose. In fact, the belt was woven out ofher hair, for she was of the Basketmaker people and, so far as we know, their material for textile was grown right on the women's heads!

Among the earliest types of humans whose remains have been found in Arizona ruins or burials are the Basketmakers. Mummies have been discovered desiccated by the air and not embalmed as in Egypt. The men were found wearing three long queues-and quite often a central part, leaving a shaven path of about one to two inches. In some cases, the end of the lock was doubled up and tied with strings. We don't know whether this style indicated rank. Could it have been the result of a vow, an initiation, a treatment, the mark of a clan or of priesthood?

Perhaps it was just the pride of the warrior or the hunter. With an almost general belief among Indians that magic power is related to the hair, we could presume that long hair, among the men, was more than a symbol of strength, a pre-Columbian version of Samson.

Strangely enough, mummies of women seem to indicate that they wore, even then, the "two-inch bob." There is no evidence, however, that the hair was not cut after death. It is sometimes done in other tribes, in recent times-as at Acoma, when the dead man receives a "Dutch cut" to make him look like Iyatiku, the great Mother of the Underworld. It is certain that hair was used for practical reasons, as the best supply for making cords to be woven into belts, for example. We shouldn't imagine, though, a Basketmaker settlement, about 450 A.D., with all the women going about practically undraped and with no hair. The hair used for weaving had to be of a suitable length. Women were ever letting it grow, and cutting it when needed. If their pattern of life was, in any way, similar to that of the more progressive Indian groups of today, we might well imagine a "cutting ceremony." Notice should be taken that more contemporary groups weaving human hair, like the Seris, do not cut their hair.

W. J. McGee wrote: "Women and men give frequent attention to brushing their own long and luxurious locks and cultivating the hair and scalps of their children, the process being regarded as not only directly useful, but in some measure sacramental. Ordinarily, the hair is parted in the middle and brushed straight, the tresses being permitted to wander at will and never braided or bound or restrained by fillets though in certain ceremonies, the pelage is gathered in a lofty knot on the top-head. The finest of these (hair-cords) are made from human hair; and for this purpose the combings are carefully kept, twisted into strands, and wound on thorns or sticks, in slender bobbins. The religiously-guarded hair-combings are twisted in the fingers and wound on stick bobbins, without aid of mechanical appliances."

Charles A. Amsden, in "Prehistoric Southwesterners from Basketmaker to Pueblo," mentions "contrasting the Basketmaker woman's love of jewelry with her indifference to hair-dressing." while Earl Morris "has found many caches of hair, carefully saved for future use entire queues and bobs from opposite sides of the same head, indicating that the cutting was done at one time, the women using their heads as cordage farms, with no thought of appearance."

During the same period in Europe (about the beginning of the Christian era), among the Franks, one had to be a king to wear a long flowing mane. But as the Middle Age reached its climax, European ladies were extremely proud of their long tresses. They wore braids, elongated many times with false hair. Then, with their crusader husbands bringing back strange fashions from the Orient, they adapted turbans into hennins and fancy styles.

About the same time, our Pueblo civilization was flourishing too, in its own way. By now, the Basketmakers had crystalized into Pueblos; they had emerged from caves and cists (as if they actually had come out of the Sipapuni, the Place of Emergence), spreading over the mesas, first building hogan-like shelters, then real habitations of stone. Soon, for protection, they went down into the caves again, developing large apartment houses.

Too long a span of time elapses to establish any relation-ship between 500 A.D. and the arrival of the Spaniards in the 16th Century. Yet the similarity of men's hair-styles is amazingly striking. Perhaps the fashion changed only once in a millenium! Men's clothes today, as we know, have been practically at a standstill for more than fifty years! Artifacts a thousand years old have changed little: shape of kiva, bowl or pipe, drilling implements, or rabbit-stick. The com-plete change in feminine style is not a challenge for this thought. We can imagine a transition as the cult of cotton and corn is developed. Weaving is perfected. Ceremonial life takes on a greater importance (as we can judge by the various kivas so similar to these still in use), and women's hair is part of this new pattern. Pre-Columbian artifacts are so similar to these of historical times, that we could almost assume that men wore their hair in bangs in front, with a queue in the back. We shall keep in mind, however, that the early Pueblo style was actually very close to Basketmaker fashion: the hair in three sections, the queue, with yarn wound around it, and the long bangs on each side. Not until later does the classical Pueblo "bun" appear (called "chongo" in New Mexico), in use from Taos to the Hopi villages. The Preliminary Glossary of New Mexico Spanish (University of New Mexico publication, 1934) lists "chongo" as Indian origin, meaning "knot of hair." Here we should mention the "scalp lock." referring to the top part of the head, the size of a half dollar, being ceremonially braided once, seldom unbraided later, even when the rest of the hair was cleansed or dressed. This is a Plains Indian tradition. The fact that some Basketmaker mummies wore a lock from the top of the head does not necessarily imply that it is the scalp lock with all its elaborated and sacred significance. Hair in nearly all civilizations has had its symbolism, and almost everywhere is associated with Mana or magic power; the symbol of Power in the Bible; in Egypt where Queens had to wear false beards; offerings in times of puberty or mourning in Greece; purification among the Hebrews, or the Lama shaving his head; sign of welcome among the Tibetan women, opening their tresses to greet visitors; or punishment for adultery by cutting the hair, as among some Hindus and old Teutonic tribes; the tonsure of the Catholic priest; the crown of the monk in remembrance of Christ's crown of thorns. We discover in hair a long symbolism, carried down in some respects to our modern Indians. Elsie Clews Parsons tells us: "That long hair is a secret of success and potency was a belief, I surmise, once held at Isleta and still held at Taos. A woman put her husband's hair cuttings in her belt to keep him home. He would go deer hunting all the time . . . after she did this, they got very poor." Among the Tewa of New Mexico, facial and pubic hair is removed, and burned secretly or thrown away, to keep it out of the hands of evil shamans. At Acoma, according to Parsons, "boys do not let their hair grow long until after Kachina initiation" "the part between the bangs and the long hair is identified with the Galaxy-therefore, in ritual, it may not be covered with a hat." The Zui women loosen their long bangs to cover their faces in corn-grinding and other ceremonies, and the Hopi girls, having none, wear false ones at the Buffalo dance and for impersonating Chatumaka at the Marau celebration. During the last hundred years, men's styles among the Southwestern Indians have greatly varied. The most primitive and sometimes earlier styles are the long, loose hair, often tied doubled up at the end, somewhat in the Basketmaker fashion, and occasionally with a tighter knot. Strangely enough, this was also the mode worn by the invading Spaniards. Several Arizona tribes, like the Mohave, took pride in the length and smoothness of their locks; they wore it in plaits, as rope-like strings half an inch wide, coated with mesquite gum, as did the Maricopa and many of the Yuman stock. All of them plastered their heads with clay, washing it off after a few days, not only having destroyed all vermin, but also leaving the hair lustrous and clean. The Pima and Papago painted or stained the strands of hair bleached by the sun. Referring to the Arizona ancestors of the Zui, Cushing, in "Outline of Zui Creation Myths," writes: "The hair was bobbed to the level of the eyebrows in front, but left long and hanging at the back, gathered into a bunch or switch with a colored cord by the men, into which cord, or into a fillet of plaited fiber, gorgeous long tail feathers of the macaw, roadrunner, or eagle were thrust and worn upright."

NADINE LUCAS, smiling so prettily on the opposite page, is a six-year-old Hopi girl, who, with two sisters, lives with her par-ents, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Lucas, at Oraibi, Arizona. The photograph was taken by JUNE FAUBELL, Rolleiflex, Ansco Color film, blue flashbulb, 1/25 second at f11. "When Nadine forgot to wear her own necklace," Mrs. Faubell writes, "I placed my own around her neck and her sweet smile was the result." The portrait on the following page is by J. H. MC-GIBBENY. Note the becoming hairdo of this Hopi miss and how proudly and attractively she wears her best jewelry.

Northern Pueblos and Jicarilla Apaches felt the influences of the Comanches, Kiowas and Utes. They still braid the hair, decorating it with different wrappings of fur, yarn or beads. Today, men of the southern pueblos wear the chongo which, curiously enough, is referred to in the Southwest as "He wears his hair Navajo way," when the fact is that the Navajos copied the Pueblos.

Most Hopi men wear their hair banged terrace style, with the chongo at the back, which is undone for most ceremonies. The cut varies slightly from one mesa pueblo to another, Oraibi having it straighter and fuller; on the Second Mesa, more tapered. Even though there is prehistoric evidence of woven head-straps, sometimes of yucca fiber, the use of the bandana (under Spanish influence) was frowned upon by conservative old men in the 19th Century. Naturally, there is great variety of hair styles as one goes more deeply into ceremonial life. In the Butterfly Dance, for example, there is a combination of headband and chongo wrapping, done out of red and green hair cord; at Hotevilla, it goes around the head; at Second Mesa, it is tied, commencing from over each ear and going backward.

The Kachina rites present interesting variety, including black or red beards.

The koshares or clowns, of the Rio Grande pueblos, wear their hair tied up with corn-husks in the form of a horn. Curtis believes that this was created under the influence of Pawnee visitors who wore their hair in a tuft. standing up on the head. The tribal name, as we know, comes from pariki, "horn." White settlers in New Mexico, Curtis writes, met Pawnees in the early 17th Century. The Coronado expedition was led, in 1541, by a Pawnee slave, taken from Pecos.

The Pueblo III period (900-1300 A.D.) is the beginning of the elaborated hair-dos for women. M. R. Harrington told me that, in 1925, he unearthed a Pueblo II mummy, at Pueblo Grande de Nevada (the "Lost City"), near Overton, On the Muddy River. She was clothed much in the Pueblo style, with a purplish cotton dress, the left shoulder bare, wearing the classic sash and sandals. What was left of the hair was tied in rolls behind each ear, in a way somewhat resembling the Hopi whorls. Fewkes has illustrated a design in pottery of a maiden's hair-do, going back as far as A.D. 1332. There are other indications of similar styles in pictographs, even as far south as the Rio Mimbres, also such related artifacts as the yard-long string made of human hair, found at Awatobi (1332-1602) and similar to the Hopi girl's hair cord. The most intriguing hair-do of early Americans is that of the Hopi maiden. Today, it is seldom seen, except in certain ceremonies, and the modern young Hopi girl does not realize how much more was added to her beauty by the traditional slick fashion, than by the fuzziness of "home permanents" and short bobs.

A Hopi woman went through quite a few changes of hair-do during her life. First, as a young girl, she had her hair cut. The hair was then allowed to grow to a "page boy" style, with the front cut into bangs. In his Hopi Journal, A. M. Stephen refers to "a pre-adolescent girl, whose hair is at the side of her head, but not yet in whorls."

Among the Apaches, Curtis describes a "low knot at the back of the head, to which is fastened a decorated deerskin ornament denoting maidenhood." All Jicarilla females traditionally wear a double knot behind the ears, as was done in Taos. Famous Maria Martinez, of San Ildefonso Pueblo. being shown a sketch of that particular knot, exclaimed, amazed, "But that's the way the other girls and I wore our hair, a long time ago, when I was a little girl!" This seems to be an old custom north of Santa Fe.

The fact that one often reads about the Hopi maidens' elaborate whorls appearing in other pueblos, does not necessarily mean that these were the true "butterfly" form. The early Taos style was similar to that of the Jicarilla Apaches; It is, in fact, the same: the two rolls, close to the skull, used in most Basket Dances-San Juan, San Ildefonso, Hopi, etc. -by both married and unmarried women. It is also related to the Zuñi Summer Rain Ceremony, when men impersonate the female forces their hair is rolled around a flat wooden piece and wrapped around with yarn, low behind each ear. The Hopi girl, to come back to her, when she becomes eligible for marriage, wears the two famous whorls over her ears. Many people have called this style the “squash blossom,” but as is obvious by its name, it is the “butterfly.” Boli or poli: Butterfly, Boli Inta: whorl or disk of maiden's head-dress; Boli innaiya: girl with hair in whorls. But earlier, when she is ten or twelve, she wears two rolls, over the ears, very much in the style just described. This is the “nasompi” proper. It is done as soon as she feels inclined, after her hair has grown long enough. It is worn close to the head and straight. The illustrations show the details of the procedure. The wooden bow or U-shape varies in size, according to the girl's hair-length. I have one ten inches across. This would mean that the hair was more than three feet long, which is not unusual for a sedate Indian lady. Some younger girls today can make it with only a below-shoulder length of about fourteen inches. Occasionally, the girls will stuff it with hair-combings, as a “rat,” and sometimes stiffen it with an oil pressed from squash seed. Though Hough mentions that, in the old days, the use of a six-inch cornhusk was used as a base for the arrangement, some Hopis claim that was used only by men impersonating female kachinas, when their hair was too thin.

The climax of the elaborate hair-do comes naturally at the time of the wedding ceremony, preceded by all the courtship ceremonial. Ed Nequatewa, in “Hopi Courtship and Marriage,” Museum of Northern Arizona, Notes, Vol. 5, No. 9, says: “If the bride is a maiden, her hair will be done up in butterfly-wing whorls, poli-ine, when she is taken to the house of the boy. If there has been an irregularity, and the girl is not a maiden, she must wear her hair parted in the middle and made into twists on either side of the face, somewhat like that of a matron, except that the hair loop at the end of the twist is turned forward and up and the whole twist bound with string. The loop on the end stands edgewise with the body, instead of lying flat and turned from the face, as with the matron. This mode of hair-dressing is known as hom-mukni.” A. M. Stephen gives, as a symbol of femininity. “A small square on the head, marked across with diagonal lines of black from each corner, which is a conventional design, frequently displayed in their pottery decorations, and represents a Maltese cross, which is the conventional emblem of virginity.” When, for the last time, the maiden wears her “whorls,” having for days been grinding corn as finely as she can, to prove her ability as a housewife-to-be, she goes through the ordeal and excitement of the famous mud fight. Mud means water, rain means crops-therefore, security and happiness. Marriage, in this way, is associated with the same symbolism-the girl is covered with dirt and mud; attacked by a group of women; she is called names; in the fight, her hair is torn down It will be washed ceremoniously in the most sacred part of the wedding ceremony, while she and the groom are sitting in front of the same bowl of yucca suds.The hair of the two lovers is untied, brought together in the symbolic and actual purification of the lather, and twisted in one strand.-symbolic of the magical pre-union of their whole beings, of their souls, of the magic power inherent in their tresses. Thus, the act is consummated-they are married. The young matron once more changes her hair-style into the double queues of the married woman. She will use the hair-cord given her by her in-laws. When that is worn out, or when her hair has just been washed, or in the manner of white people, she may be “in a rush,” she might wind her hair around her finger and tie it in a twist the “lazy style.”