While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
Blankets. In the popular mind the North
American Indian is everywhere associated with the robe or the blanket. The
former was the whole hide of a large mammal made soft and pliable by much
dressing; or pelts of foxes, wolves, and such creatures were sewed together; or
bird, rabbit, or other tender skins were cut into ribbons, which were twisted or
woven. The latter were manufactured by basketry processes from wool, hair, fur,
feathers, down, bark, cotton, etc., and had many and various functions. They
were worn like a toga as protection from the weather, and, in the best examples,
were conspicuous in wedding and other ceremonies; in the night they were both
bed and covering; for the "home they served for hangings, partitions, doors,
awnings, or sunshades; the women dried fruit on them, made vehicles and cradles
of them for their babies, and receptacles for a thousand things and burdens;
they even then exhausted their patience and skill upon them, producing their
finest art work in weaving and embroidery; finally, the blanket became a
standard of value and a primitive mechanism of commerce.
In s. E. Alaska originated what is popularly called the Chilkat blanket a marvel
of spinning, weaving, fringing, and mythic designs. The apparatus for this seems
inadequate. The woman hangs her warp of mountain goat's wool mixed with shredded
cedar bast from a horizontal bar. The long ends are made into balls and covered
with membrane to keep them clean. Weft is not even wound on a stick for shuttle,
nor is there even the rudest harness or batten. The details of the great mythic
design are carefully wrought in by the woman in twined weaving at the same time
that a dainty lacework is produced on the selvage. The process ends with a long
heavy fringe from the unused warp. Farther south ward on the N. W. coast cedar
bast finely shredded served for the weaving of soft blankets, which were neatly
trimmed with fur.
The Nez Percé and other tribes in the
Fraser-Columbia area were extremely skillful in producing a heavy and tastefully
decorated blanket in twined weaving from mountain goat's hair with warp of
vegetal fiber, and among the Atlantic and Pacific coast tribes generally soft
barks, wild hemp, rabbit skins, the down of birds, and the plumes of feathers
were put to the same use. Blankets of cords wound with feathers were produced,
not only by the Pueblos and cliff-dwellers but quite extensively in the E. as
well as in the N. W. These were all woven with the simplest possible apparatus
and by purely aboriginal technical processes. They were the groundwork of great
skill and taste and much mythology, and were decorated with strips of fur,
fringes, tassels, pendants, bead-work, featherwork, and native money. After the
advent of the whites the blanket leaped into sudden prominence with tribes that
had no weaving and had previously worn robes, the preparation of which was most
exhausting. The European was not slow in observing a widespread want and in
supplying the demand. When furs became scarcer blankets were in greater demand
everywhere as articles of trade and standards of value. Indeed, in 1831 a home
plant was established in Buffalo for the manufacture of what was called the
Mackinaw blanket. The delegations visiting Washington during the 19th century
wore this article conspicuously, and in our system of educating them, those
tribes that were unwilling to adopt modern dress were called "blanket Indians."
In art the drapery and colors have had a fascination for portrait painters,
while in citizen's garments the red man ceases to be picturesque.
In the S. W. the coming of Spaniards had a still more romantic association with
the blanket. Perhaps as early as the 16th century the Navaho, in affiliation
with certain Pueblo tribes, received sheep and looms from the conquerors. These
were the promise of all that is wrapped in the words "Navaho blanket." The yarn
for the finest was procured by un raveling the Spanish bayeta, a sort of baize,
and the specimens from this material now command high prices. For coarser work
the Navaho sheared their own sheep, washed the wool, colored it with their
native dyes, and spun it on rude spindles consisting of a straight stick with a
flat disk of wood for a fly wheel. This coarse and uneven yarn was set up in
their regular but primitive loom, with harness for shifting the warp, a straight
rod for shuttle, a fork of wood for adjusting the weft, and a separate batten of
the same material for beating it home. Only the hands of the weaver managed all
the parts of the operation with phenomenal patience and skill, producing those
marvelous creations which are guarded among the most precious treasures of
aboriginal workmanship. The popularity of this work proved its worst enemy.
Through the influence of traders and greatly increased demands for blankets the
art has deteriorated. Native products were imitated by machinery. To the Indians
were brought modern dyes, cotton warp, factory yarns and worsted, and utterly
depraved pat terns, in place of native wool, bayeta, and their own designs so
full of pathos and beauty. At present a reformation in such matters is being
encouraged, both by the Government and by benevolent organizations, for the
purpose of restoring the old art. In this connection should be mentioned the
interesting variety of effects produced in the Indian blankets by simple native
contrivances. There are all the technical styles of native hand work superadded
to the machine work of the loom, including coiled, twined, and braided
technique. Two-faced fabrics are produced, having intricate patterns entirely
different on the two sides. Different Pueblos had their fancies in blankets.
Among these must not be overlooked the white cotton wedding blanket of the
Hopi,
ceremonially woven by the groom for his bride, afterward embroidered with
symbolic designs, and at death wrapped about her body in preparation for the
last rites. In the same tribe large embroidered cotton blankets are worn by
woman impersonators in several ceremonies; also a small shoulder blanket in
white, dark blue, and red, forming part of woman's "full dress" as well as a
ceremonial garment. From this list should not be omitted the great variety of
Navaho products, commencing with the cheap and ubiquitous saddle paddings,
personal wrappings, house furnishings, and ending in competitions with the world
s artistry. There were also the dark embroidered and white embroidered blanket
of Navaho legend. They also wove blankets with broad bars of white and black
called "chief s pattern," to be worn by the head-men. The
Zuñi,
too, wove a blanket for their priest-chiefs. But they, as well as the Hopi, had
plenty of the serviceable kinds, of cotton and of wool, which they made into
skirts and tunics; coarse kinds likewise for domestic use, robes of rabbit skin,
and finer work for ceremony. The Pima and Maricopa have abandoned the art
lately, but their congeners the Yaqui, Tarahumare, Mayo, and Opata weave
characteristic styles.
Consult Boas in Rep. Nat. Mus. 1895, 1897; Hodge in Am. Anthrop.,
viii, no. 3, 1895; Holmes in 13th Rep. B. A. E., 1896; Matthews (1)
in 3d Rep. B. A. E., 1884, (2) Navaho Legends, 1897; Pepper in
Everybody's Mag., Jan. 1902; Stephen in Am. Anthrop., vi, no. 4, 1893;
Voth in Am. Anthrop., n, no. 2, 1900. See Adornment, Clothing, Dyes and
Pigments, Receptacles, Wearing, (O. T. M. W. H.)
This site
includes some historical materials that may imply negative stereotypes
reflecting the culture or language of a particular period or place. These
items are presented as part of the historical record and should not be
interpreted to mean that the WebMasters in any way endorse the stereotypes
implied .
Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, Frederick Webb Hodge, 1906
