es one warp giving the surface a twilled effect. It is
interesting that the small blocks of design are woven separately
something as a tapestry, and later the blocks are sewed together with
a thread of sinew from the caribou or whale.

[Illustration: FIGURE 8.--A THIRD TYPE OF LOOM.]

[Illustration: FIGURE 9.--NAVAJO LOOM.]

The weaving from this region which most nearly approaches machine work
in process of making is the dog-hair and goat's wool blanket. It is
woven upon a loom of two revolving cylindrical beams, supported by
upright posts at either end (Figure 8). The end of the warp thread is
attached to a staying cord stretched from post to post about midway
between the revolving beams. The warp then encircles the loom, catches
under the staying cord, then turns and travels back to its starting
point, there to catch under the staying cord and repeat the operation.
The weft moves across the warps as in twilled cloth, over two, under
two, with an advance of one warp at each line of weft. Dog's hair,
duck down and goat's wool are the materials used, especially the
latter. These materials are spun in two-ply thread twisted partly upon
the thigh of the weaver and finished on a spindle.

Leaving this weaving area in western British Columbia we pass to the
other locality of note in North America where primitive weaving is
practised,--in southwestern United States and northern Mexico. Here
the loom work is at a more advanced stage of development than that of
the northern area, the weavers making use of a loom frame, sheds,
healds, batten and an improvised shuttle. The Navajo Indians are the
most skilled weavers north of Mexico and a description of their
weaving is fairly typical of this area. As the warps are of soft
pliable threads they must of necessity be stretched between two beams.
These are suspended vertically if the weaving is to be of any great
size, the distance between them being that of the proposed length of
the blanket (Figure 9). The warp threads are not stretched across the
beams with an oval movement but are laced over them, forming two
sheds, the upper of which is held intact by means of the shed-rod, and
the lower by a set of healds passing over a heald-rod. A wooden fork
serves as a reed and a slender twig as a shuttle. Upon this twig is
loosely wound from end to end the weft thread. The shuttle at one move
crosses less than half of the warps as the batten--a flat stick of
hard oak--is too sh