Indian Blankets

It seems reasonable to assume that blanketry was an outcome of basketry. The latter approximates more nearly to natural processes, as in the weaving of twigs together to form the birds' nests, or the simple interlacing and intertwining of vines, etc., in their wild state.

Indian Blankets

This art once commenced, and pliable and flexible twigs once used for the weaving of baskets, it could scarcely be called another art that the making of textile fabrics followed. It was simply the merging of the use of the less flexible and coarse into the more flexible and fine.

The Navahos have a legend which claims divine origin for the art of weaving. It is related as follows in their ‘‘„Moving Upward„’’ chant:

The Spider Man drew some cotton from his side and instructed the Navaho to make a loom. The cotton-warp was made of spider-web. The upper cross-pole was called the sky-cord, the lower cross-pole the earth-cord.

The warp-sticks were made of sun rays; the upper strings, fastening the warp to the pole, of lightning; the lower strings of sun-halo; the heald was a rock-crystal; the cord-heald stick was made of sheet-lightning, and was secured to the warp strands by means of rain-ray-cords.

The batten-stick was also made of sun-halo, while the comb was of white shell. Four spindles or distaffs were added to this, the disks of which were of cannel-coal, turquoise, abalone, and white bead, respectively, and the spindle-sticks of zigzag lightning, flash lightning, sheet lightning, and rain-ray, respectively.

The dark blue, yellow, and white winds quickened the spindles according to their color, and enabled them to travel around the world.

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