Unknown artist, Diné (Navajo); Native North American

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