Unknown Maker, Diné (Navajo)

Before Diné gained access to wool in the 1500s, clothing was made from woven plant materials and animal hides. The Diné Bahaneʼ (Navajo creation story; de-NEH ba-HA-neh) describes how Na’ashjéii Asdzáá (Spider Woman; nah-AHSH-jay-EE ahs-DZAH) brought the gift of wool and weaving to the Diné.

The design repeated six times on this textile is Spider Woman’s cross. This motif came into fashion around 1864, perhaps in reference to the six sacred mountains of the Diné homelands. The thick stripes of white and black suggest this was created for a male wearer. Women’s wearing blankets typically feature thin stripes.

By the mid-19th century, the date of the earliest blanket in the Museum’s collection, Navajo artists had come to dominate the weaving trade among tribes of the American West. Woven by Navajo women, “chief” blankets were widely traded as garments for men of status (not necessarily chiefs) in many Western and Plains Indian tribes. Worn as a shoulder blanket, the pattern runs vertically down the center back and front, where it is held together by the wearer. The Navajo unraveled red yarns from commercially woven trade blankets and respun them to make threads for weaving during this period, before their internment from 1864 to 1868 at Bosque Redondo, near Fort Sumner, New Mexico, some 200 miles from their ancestral lands.

Gift of Mrs. Murray S. Danforth 45.083

Blankets became a valuable commodity for barter at the trading posts established by the European Americans and as the blanket's fame spread throughout the US, traders began to introduce new designs, yarns, and types of textiles to the Indians to please this new market. On this rug, an example of a style favored by the trader Lorenzo Hubbel in the 1890s, crosses are placed against a striped blue and white background. It was woven with Germantown yarns introduced by the traders so that stronger blankets more appropriate as floor covering could be made.