The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1902-06-08
THE NAVAJO WOMAN.

me Children IeI0ng to the Mother
and When n Woman Married She
surrenders Neither Property Nor
independence 10 Her Husband.
The Navajo woman. who has made
her tribe the most famous of all living
indian races, by means of her great
and excellent invention, the Navajo
blanket, occupies a social position of
great independence. Her property
rights are carefully respected. She owns
much of the wealth of the tribe, and
her children belong to her alone. A
woman may have hundreds of sheep
when she marries, and not one be-
comes the property of her husband
Descent is traced through the female
line. 1t is a survival of the primitive
matriarchate.
The Navajo woman has no perma-
nent home. The progress of the tribe
has been greatly impeded by its dark
superstition that every death is caused
directly by Chinde, the devil and that
evil spirits linger about the dead body.
The house is never occupied again.
The corpse is buried in the floor, and the
house pulled down over it; and a Nav
aJo would freeze before he would make
a flre from the logs of one of those de-
serted heaps. So the Navajo hogan
is poor, temporary affair, a mree cir
cular hut of logs and stones, with a
hole in the roof for the smoke and a
blanket for the doro. In the summer
the Navajo woman loves to move into
brush "wickyup," made of grease
wood boughs. There she sets UP her
loom in the shadow of the rocks and
lives in the open air all summer.
Her Work.
The Navajo woman can make very
good baskets, but she does not care ia
do it often, preferring to buy them
from her Apache cousin. She makes
TENN herself only when they are want
ed for some sacred purpose; for medi-
clne' marriage, or other ceremonies
She tans puckskin, and makes her
own footwear, both moccasins and
high bottines. She knits stockings
without any toes or heels. She makes
but little pottery and that is coarse
and poor, and she does very little OF
that bead embroidery which seems the
distinguishing art of all Indian wo-
men. In fact, the Navajo woman has
found her artistic development in the
famous banker, which seems to be the
passion of her life. She made it first OF
SAiO bebJ Ctel CiONIis WHICH Sne got IRON
the Spaniards. This she unravelled. and
twisted two or three of its strands
into one. making a very strong
fibre. Then she wove it into
fabric almost waterproof, and prac-
tically indestructible. The bayeta cloth
supplied the distinctive red of the bIan-
ket. For the other Colors, she dyed her
wool with dyes made by herself from
herbs of the country. OF late years.
the blanket has degenerated. She has
put cotton in it, she has used the CON-
mon German yarn ond dyes furnished
by the traders. Furthermore. she is
as initiative as a Japanese; and when
she first beheld the hamboyant adver-
tisement of Blanks baking powder, the
printed calico of Pawtucket, or the
tomato blushing upon it's can, she
straightway wove them into her blan-
ket, with unique and startling effect.
Bat when she sought to sell these pro-
gressive products to the white man, she
found he would not buy, which puzzled
her very much, they being his own pat
terms. The Hyde exploring expedition.
Which is conducted in connection with
the American Museum of Natural His
tory In New York. is doing great deal
10 restore the blankets to the Old stand
ards Dr. George H. Pepper, who is
connected with this expedition, has one
blanket for which he would not take a