Reality check

 

Reality check

It is said that in ancient times the goddess Spider Woman taught the Navajo to weave.  Well, maybe.  Certainly, among the various peoples of the southwest weaving is a very ancient acquisition.  By the time the Europeans arrived in the sixteenth century it was an established craft, and several different types of loom had been invented.  All were simple frameworks for stretching and holding yarn, without the mechanisms for creating different pathways through the warp that characterize European looms. 

But although the Navajo wove early in their history, they did not weave the rugs and blankets that now characterize “Navajo weaving.”  They had neither the wool nor the dyes to produce large, colorful woolen pieces.  It takes an effort of imagination to think of the North American southwest with no sheep, no cattle, no horses, but this was the reality before the arrival of the Spanish conquerors and colonists, who introduced the animals. 

Although a few earlier ones have been found, on the whole the tradition dates from the late eighteenth century and became popular in the nineteenth.  Like Irish crochet, Estonian and Shetland lace knitting, and European lace, Navajo textiles were a craft produced by poor women for the luxury trade.  Nor was it entirely indigenous.  The federal government helped breed the sheep that provide the wool, and when the work was most popular insufficient supply meant that the wool had to be imported from Philadelphia.  Although they were (and are) produced on primitive looms, the production of Navajo textiles was definitely a part of a dynamic capitalist system.