jo blanket 387
53.--Navajo blanket 387
54.--Part of Navajo blanket 388
55.--Part of Navajo blanket 388
56.--Diagram showing formation of warp of sash 388
57.--Section of Navajo belt 389
58.--Wooden heald of the Zunis 389
59.--Girl weaving (from an Aztec picture) 391

NAVAJO WEAVERS.

BY DR. WASHINGTON MATTHEWS.

Sec. I. The art of weaving, as it exists among the Navajo Indians of New
Mexico and Arizona, possesses points of great interest to the student
of ethnography. It is of aboriginal origin; and while European art has
undoubtedly modified it, the extent and nature of the foreign
influence is easily traced. It is by no means certain, still there are
many reasons for supposing, that the Navajos learned their craft from
the Pueblo Indians, and that, too, since the advent of the Spaniards;
yet the pupils, if such they be, far excel their masters to-day in the
beauty and quality of their work. It may be safely stated that with no
native tribe in America, north of the Mexican boundary, has the art of
weaving been carried to greater perfection than among the Navajos,
while with none in the entire continent is it less Europeanized. As in
language, habits, and opinions, so in arts, the Navajos have been less
influenced than their sedentary neighbors of the pueblos by the
civilization of the Old World.

The superiority of the Navajo to the Pueblo work results not only from
a constant advance of the weaver's art among the former, but from a
constant deterioration of it among the latter. The chief cause of this
deterioration is that the Pueblos find it more remunerative to buy, at
least the finer _serapes_, from the Navajos, and give their time to
other pursuits, than to manufacture for themselves; they are nearer
the white settlements and can get better prices for their produce;
they give more attention to agriculture; they have within their
country, mines of turquoise which the Navajos prize, and they have no
trouble in procuring whisky, which some of the Navajos prize even more
than gems. Consequently, while the wilder Indian has incentives to
improve his art, the more advanced has many temptations to abandon it
altogether. In some pueblos the skill of the loom has been almo