Navajo weaving? Credit their Rio Grande neighbors and the Spaniards.
Southwestern indigenous people had their first exposure to Europeans when, in 1540, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado invaded the Southwest, searching for the fabled seven cities of gold–Cíbola.
800 foot Spider Rock in Canyon de Chelley. >
Some call it exploration. We call it invasion, because of its size and intent. Coronado left Mexico with an army–274 mounted men and 62 foot soldiers. To save the souls of the heathens, six Franciscan padres tagged along. For support, 700 slaves were brought along. The had a ramuda of 1,000 horses and 600 pack animals. They brought along a walking larder of 5,000 animals, 1,000 cattle, 4,000 sheep.
Their object was to take possession, in the name of the Spanish Crown, of all lands they explored, and to save the souls of the inhabitants. Also, for the Spanish Treasury (and themselves), they expected to capture untold riches, as had Cortés from the Aztecs and Pizarro from the Incas.
One historian points out that, in terms of relative dollars, this was the most expensive exploration in the history of the world, until NASA's expedition to explore the moon. The Spaniards' exploration extended to the Colorado River on the West and to Central Kansas on the East.
Instead of riches, the Spaniard found a sparse land of a few pueblo communities, with adobe lodges, inhabited by a relative docile people, living in moderate "comfort." The invaders were like a swarm of locust descending upon a fragile land. They, and their animals, literally ate the natives out of house and home. The locals took exception to this force of arms and fighting broke out, never to end for the next 200 years. And it concluded only then when the locals had been totally subjugated.
To worsen the impact of Coronado's army, a resupply column was to meet the Conquistador at the end of the first year. This failed. The result was exacerbation of the hostilities, as the Spanish took everything from the natives. After two years, 1542, Coronado's legions returned to Mexico in tatters. Coronado returned broken in spirit and a financial pauper.
Did any of the horses, cattle and sheep escape? Probably. But, because of the dire straights of the Spaniards and the Indians, anything on four legs undoubtedly was eaten. However, the point is this. Until Coronado's Entrada, the Indians had known of only one four-legged domestic animal, the dog. Coronado introduced them to horses, cattle and sheep.
Permanent Spanish Settlement
After three generations, the Spanish returned to the Rio Grande Valley to establish a permanent settlement. In 1598, Juan de Oñate brought in a party of 500, to settle the Upper Rio Grande. He including 130 Spanish men, their families and their Mexican slaves. They were accompanied by a large number of horses, cattle, swine and sheep. It is from this venture that domesticated animal became available to the Indians. Of note, the sheep were Churro, a rugged breed imported from the dry, central highlands of Spain, and thus well acclimated to the desert Southwest. (By way of perspective, Capt. James Smith founded Jamestown in 1607, nine years after Oñate settled in the Rio Grande Valley. The Pilgrims stepped on Plymouth Rock in 1620.)
One important discovery, the Spanish found that the Rio Grande people had cotton, and wove it into material using vertical looms. It was only logical step to use wool from the Churros as a weaving fiber. These were the sheep that were stolen from the Spanish and eventually used by the Navajos for their woolen textiles.
The Pueblo Revolt
By the year 1680, the pueblo Indians along the Rio Grande had their fill of Spanish domination. They staged a successful revolt and chased the Spaniards out of their valley, and as far south as El Paso [now Texas]. The Spanish, under Juan de Oñate, reconquered the Indians in 1692. The Indians were never again to win against the technology of the Spanish—supply lines from Mexico, horses and firearms.
Two important and lasting effects came from the Pueblo Revolt. The Spaniards had gained a new and grudging respect for the tenacity and ferocity of the Indians. In turn, the Indians never wanted to go back to the atrocities heaped upon them during the pre-revolution era. The result, the two factions were afraid of each other, creating a precarious standoff between the two.
The Navajo Become A Recognized Group
Sometime shortly before the Spanish colonization, the Athapaskan people migrated in from the plains and went on to areas west of the Rio Grande. Spaniards called this group "Apaches." The word is generally thought to be a Spanish corruption of a Zuni word meaning enemy and/or thief. The Spanish further subdivided the Apaches by where they lived or what they did. "Apache de Navajo" was the branch that took up residency in the arid lands along the Chaco Wash and south of the San Juan (roughly the area between Mt. Taylor and the Chuska range, and between present-day Gallup and north to Farmington. Shortened to Navajo, this word again is the corruption of a Tewa word for those who lived on a flat plain, or farmer.
The anthropologists believe that the Navajos learned to weave when some of the Rio Grande Indians fled their pueblos to escape the Spanish, starting in the 1650s, when the Spanish began raiding the area for slaves to work in their Mexican silver mines. This movement accelerated during and after the 1680 Revolt. During this time, the Navajos purloined a large number of the Spanish Churro sheep, and thus began the weaving tradition among the Navajos.
It was not until some years after the Revolt that the Navajos became noticed in Spanish documents. "They make their clothes of wool and cotton, sowing the latter and obtaining the former from the flocks which they raise," Governor Cuervo y Valdez, 1706.
Notwithstanding the anthropologists, the Navajos, themselves, believe that the weaving tradition was taught to them by Spider Woman (who lives in Spider Rock in Canyon de Chelley).
Spider Woman instructed the Navajo women how to weave on a loom which Spider Man told them how to make. The crosspoles were made of sky and earth cords, the warp sticks of sun rays, the heddles of rock crystals and sheet lightning. The batten was a sun halo, white shell made the comb. There were four spindles—one a stick of zigzag lightning with a whorl of coal, the second a stick of flash lightning with a whorl of turquoise, a third a stick of sheet lightning with a whorl of abalone, the fourth a rain streamer with a whorl formed of white shell. —Locke.
Through the past 300 years, the Navajo rugs have gone through a number of ups and downs as far as design and texture. However, they have always been prized possessions. To put this regard into perspective, it is interesting to consider the price equivalents existing at the turn of the century. One trader/writer recently drew the following parallels:
Before the 1880s, Navajo textiles were used mostly as robes or blankets. They were traded frequently with the plains Indians, and became what we now call "Chiefs Blankets," because only the richer Indians could afford them. Cowboys prized Navajo blankets because they could roll up in them and stay warm in the winter. They wore them as serapes, and the lanolin in the wool made them nearly water-proof.
In 1902 a blanket cost the equivalent of a month's pay for a cowboy. A blanket could trade for a 'good' horse, or six sheep. And today, they are not cheap, but they are still a bargain. –The Indian Trader
The Transition From Blanket To Rug
1880-1910
In 1882 and 1883, the Santa Fe Railroad laid track across New Mexico and Arizona, connecting Indian Country to Chicago and Los Angeles. This forever changed the Southwestern Native American life-way. Traders came in. Archaeologists came in. Photographers came in. Americans became enamored with the newly discovered "Wild West." The Colombian Exposition, was staged in Chicago in 1892, celebrating the 400th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of the new world. In the next few years "Worlds Fairs" were held in St. Louis, Chicago and San Francisco, all included large exhibitions of Southwest Indian artifacts. Buffalo Bill traveled America and Europe with his "Wild West Show." Fred Harvey opened the El Tovar Hotel on the brink of the Grand Canyon in 1904. At the same time, the Santa Fe Railroad mounted a massive advertising campaign to change their image and to attract tourists to the Southwest.
Transitional Navajo Rugs, ca. 1890.
As with pottery, Navajo weavings became part of white America's fascination with the Southwestern Indian. Important to the Indian rug market, Fred Harvey began to work with reservation traders to develop a product and a market for Navajo Indian textiles, not blankets, but rugs. The Navajo women shifted from making textiles for their own use to making rugs for tourists. The railroads brought tradegoods into the reservation, including a wonderful new aniline dye from Germantown, Pennsylvania; also commercial yarn. Traders, like Lorenzo Hubbell and J. B. Moore, encouraged the weavers to use these dyes and make brilliant reds and yellows and to use patterns that the traders provided.
During the next 50 years, the market drifted back and forth between classic styles and colors, and regional styles (those suggested by the local trader) and new colors, but all designed to be rugs. As such, the threads tend to be quite thick, made to be walked upon. This is frequently termed the "Rug Period."
Sometime in the era of the late 1950s and early 1960s, a change came over the weavers. They became more exposed to the outside world. They discovered that better designs and better colors, as defined by market tastes, meant better prices. And so we have the improved area/trading post classifications, but with significantly improved balance and detail. Pastel colors have been fraught into a number of area designs. More weavings are classified as "tapestries," made for hanging upon the wall, not to be walked upon. Transportation is readily available, and with more fluid movement, an area style, e.g., Crystal, Ganado, etc., can come from a weaver working anywhere in the Reservation. But Navajo weaving is still a home-based, cottage industry, using traditional, vertical looms, just as they have for 350 years. It is still a craft that is slow and tedious, and takes tremendous patience.
Here at Canyon Country Originals, we try to bring you the best of the contemporary styles. Look through our pages and you will gain an insight into what we think are the best of today's work, commensurate with price.
For an expansion of the Navajo weaving tradition, click below:
,For a short
article on Navajo Sandpaintings
and Sandpainting Textiles, click here.
- Recommended reading - You may find most of these on Amazon.com
- American Indian Textiles, 2,000 Artists, by Gregory Schaaf, CIAC Press, $110.00 (hard back);
- Navajo Weaving, Three Centuries of Change, by Kate Peck Kent, School of American Research Press, $18.95 (paper);
- Treasures of the Navajo, by Theda Bassman and Gene Balzer, Northland Publishing, $12.95 (paper);
- A Guide To Navajo Weaving, by Kent McManis and Robert Jeffries, Treasure Chest Books, $9.95 (paper);
- Navajo Rugs, How to Find, Evaluate, Buy and Care for Them, by Don Dedera, Northland Publishing, $14.95 (paper);
