The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1897-06-24

The most common FORM consists of a
conical frame, made by setting up
number of sticks at an angle of forty
five degrees. An opening is left in one
side to answer as doorway. The
frame is covered with weed, bark or
grass and earth, except at the apex,
where the smoke from the fire in the
center of the floor escapes. Some
lodges are built of logs in polygonal
form. Again, they are occasionally
built of stone Adjacent to the hut is
a rude shelter Of branches, where, in
fair weather, the family often cook
and spend most of the day.
In summer they build much SIM
pier houses with a framework of
forked sticks, with wind-break on
one side of slanting poles covered with
grass and leaves and earth. Their
medicine lodges are usually built in
the form of the ordinary hogan or hut.
They also have sweat houses or suda-
tories, diminutive hOgans, except that
they have no smoke holes, as fire is
never kindled in them. They are
sc metimes sunk partly underground
and are always thickly covered with
EARTH Stones are heated in fire out
side and carried with improvised twigs
OF sticks into the sudatory.
OF late years few Of the progressive
Navahoes have built rectangular stone
houses with fiat roofs, wooden doors
and glazed windows, like those of their
reighbors, the Mexlcans and Pueblo
Indians. When a human being dies
they believe the house is haunted or
accursed They abandon it, never en-
ter it again, and usually destroy it,
probable reason that they have been
so late in adopting the form of houses,
of which they have had examples be-
fore them for centuries.
They have very few arts. They make
a rude and inartistic pottery. Their
| of the northern Indians, and since
they have both money and opportunity
| to purchase modern firearms, are fall
| ing into disuse. They do not consider
| themselves very expert dressers of
| deerskin and purchase their best buck
skin from other tribes. Their basket
! nv. however, is excellent, but of a linn
tied range of forms and patterns. But
they buy most of their baskets from
neighboring tribes, and would lose
the art altogether if they did not re-
quire certain kinds to be used in their
rites, for which only the women of the
tribe understand the special require
ments. They work silver on rude
forge, but the art is probably of recent
requirement
| It is in weaving that they excel all
other Indians within the borders of the
United States. In durability, ineness
Of finish, beauty of design and variety
of pattern the Navajo blanket has nc
equal among the arts of our aborigines
An important new invention has beer
made or introduced within few years
"a way of weaving blankets with diff.
terent designs on both sides. But a.
the same time the art has detorioratet
through the substitution of fugitive
anilline dies for the permanent native
dies formerly used, and. in the white
blankets, yarns obtained from white
traders have been substituted for thu
yarns laboriously twilled on the ole
distaff. They weave diagonal clotl
and acknowledged diagonals, belt'
Or sashes, carriers and saddle girths. I
is not only for gain that Navajo
woman weaves her blanket Having
worn 1t until it has lost it's novelty sh
may sell it for price that scarcel,
pays for the yarn. The work is don
to no small extent for artistic recrea
ton, and the pOssessor of large herd
will weave as assiduously as her poor
e. neighbour. The women knit stock
ings, using four needles. AS the latte
are made of wire and obtained from tn
whites it might be thought that tn
art of knitting was also learned from
them, but knitted leggings made o
human hair and wooden knitting nee
dies have been found in Navajo land
in cliff dwellings, which there is rea
son to believe were abandoned befor
the arri1a al of the Spaniards. Speci
mems of these knitted leggings may b
seen in the Cliff Dweller collection
in the Museum of the University O
Pennsylvania.
DR.. Matthews gives a good reputa
ton for industry to the Navajo me,
and states that begging is little prac
ticed by them.
He prefaces his description of thei