The women
generally bang their hair across, about the center of the forehead, and
then allow the rest of the hair to hang loose. It is a great insult to a
Havasupai woman to ask her to throw back her hair from her cheeks, and to
do it oneself is a serious offense.
Language. In language, these people are as different one from another as
are the Turks, the Esquimaux and the French. Even in the simplest words
these differences are marked. Take a few comparisons. For good the Hopi
says lolomai, the Navaho yatehay and the Havasupai harnegie. Bad in Hopi is
ka-lolomai (not good), Navaho da shonda (of the evil one), Havasupai
han-a-to-opo-gi.
CHAPTER XVII. The Navaho And Hopi Blanket Weavers
What a marvelous art is that of weaving, and how much the human race of
today owes to the patient endeavors of the "little brown woman" of the
past for the perfection to which she brought this, - one of the most
primitive of the arts.
Blanketry was a necessary outcome of basketry. The use of flexible twigs
for baskets readily suggested the use of pliable fibres for textiles; and
there is little question that almost simultaneously with the first rude
baskets the first textile fabrics made their appearance.
Whence the art had its origin we do not know. But it is a matter of record
that in this country, three hundred and fifty years ago, when the Spanish
first came into what is now United States territory, they found the art of
weaving in a well advanced stage among the domestic and sedentary Pueblo
Indians, and the wild and nomadic Navahos. 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.
