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?
That her art, however, has been improved by
her contact with the Pueblo and other Indians, there can be no question,
and, if she had a crude loom, it was speedily replaced by the one so long
used by the Pueblo. Where the Pueblo weaver gained her loom we do not know,
whether from the tribes of the South or by her own invention. But in all
practical ways the primitive loom was as complete and perfect at the time
of the Spanish conquest as it is today.
Any loom, to be complete, must possess certain qualifications. As Dr. Mason
has well said: "In any style of mechanical weaving, however simple or
complex, even in darning, the following operations are performed: First,
raising and lowering alternately different sets of warp filaments to form
the 'sheds'; second, throwing the shuttle, or performing some operation
that amounts to the same thing; third, after inserting the weft thread,
driving it home, and adjusting it by means of the batten, be it the needle,
the finger, the shuttle or a separate device."
Indian looms are made of four poles cut from trees that line the nearest
stream or grow in the mountain forests. Two of these poles are forked for
uprights, and the cross beams are lashed to them above and below. Sometimes
the lower beam is dispensed with and wooden pegs driven into the earth
instead. The warp is then arranged on beams lashed to the top and bottom of
the frame by means of a rawhide or horse-hair riata. Our Western word
lariat is merely a corruption of lariata. Thus the warp is made tight and
is ready for the nimble fingers of the weaver. Her shuttles are pieces of
smooth, round sticks upon the ends of which she winds yarn. Small balls of
yarn are frequently made to serve this purpose. By her side is a crude
wooden comb with which she strikes a few stitches into place. When she
wishes to wedge the yarn for a complete row - from side to side - she uses a
flat broad stick, one edge of which is sharpened almost to knife-like
keenness. This is called the "batten." With the design in her brain her
busy and skilful fingers produce the pattern as she desires it, there being
no sketch from which she may copy. In weaving a blanket of intricate
pattern and many colors the weaver finds it easier to open the few warp
threads needed with her fingers and then thrust between them the small
balls of yarn, rather than bother with a shuttle, no matter how simple.
Before blankets can be made the wool must be cut from the sheep, cleaned,
carded, spun and dyed.
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