Scientists Who Have Given The
Question Careful Study, Hold That The Cotton Of These Blankets Was Grown By
These Arizona Indians From Time Immemorial, And They Also Used The Tough
Fibres Of The Yucca And Agave Leaves And The Hairs Of Various Wild Animals,
Either Separately Or With The Cotton.
Their processes of weaving were
exactly the same then as they are today, there being but slight difference
between
The methods followed before the advent of the whites and afterward.
Hence, in a study of the Indian blanket, as it is made today, we are
approximately nearly to the pure aboriginal method of pre-Columbian times.
Archeologists and ethnologists generally assume that the art of weaving on
the loom was learned by the Navahos from their Pueblo neighbors. All the
facts in the case seem to bear out this supposition. Yet, as is well known,
the Navahos are a part of the great Athabascan family, which has scattered,
by separate migrations, from Alaska into California, Arizona and New
Mexico. Many of the Alaskans are good weavers, and according to Navaho
traditions, their ancestors, when they came into the country, wore blankets
that were made of cedar bark and yucca fibre. Even in the Alaska (Thlinket)
blankets, made today of the wool of the white mountain goat, cedar bark is
twisted in with the wool of the warp. Why, then, should not the Navaho
woman have brought the art of weaving, possibly in a very primitive stage,
from her original Alaskan home?
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