Navajo mythology recounts a legend whereby Spider Woman taught Navajo women to weave. Scholars, however, have not been able to pinpoint the exact date of the beginnings of Navajo loom weaving. Most evidence points to a time after the tribe migrated into the Southwest from the North, and most likely in the mid-17th century. Additional evidence in the form of loom and design similarities suggest a Pueblo derivation.

Since A.D. 1100 Puebloan peoples have been raising cotton and weaving it into clothing on simple upright looms. Sheep, with their warm woolen fleece, did not enter the Southwest until more than four centuries later with the arrival of Spanish explorers.

Oppressive Spanish rule over the years caused Puebloen peoples to revolt and then seek asylum among Navajo groups. Such close contact gave the Navajo an opportunity to learn the techniques of loom weaving.

Over the years the flexible and innovative nature of the Navajo people has enabled them to adapt to ever-changing circumstances. When introduced to cultures and ideas different from their own, the Navajo have usually selected and adapted parts of each to their best advantage.

In the three centuries that the Navajo have been weaving their lives have been profoundly changed, and these changes are directly mirrored in their weavings. Unlike their Pueblo teachers, who wove textiles primarily for their own ceremonial use and thus maintained conservative patterning, Navajo weavers produced for a very different, secular market.

They began weaving textiles patterned with simple horizontal stripes, progressed through elegant Classic-period serapes and chief-style blankets, dynamic Germantown eyedazzlers, whimsical pictorials, somber turn-of-the-century rugs, to the spectacular technical refinement of their present work.

These remarkable changes can be loosely organized into three categories: Classic period, 1650-1868; Transitional period, 1868-90; and Rug period, 1890-present.

These early years were a time of devalopment. The Navajo wove utilitarian items of clothing such as blankets, which they wore as outer garments for protection from the elements, dresses, and belts for their own use as well as for trade to other Indian groups. Although blankets were generally woven on the loom in a longer than wide shape, they were actually worn in exactly the opposite orientation – with the width across the shouders and joining the ends in front.

While the first textiles bore striped designs, by the early 19th century the spectacular serape style was emerging. The designs of elaborately terraced zizzags and diamond motifs in a red, white and blue color scheme demonstrated the weaver's incredibly high degree of technical excellence. Indeed, so impressed was Lieutenant James H. Sampson, U. S. Army, that he remarked in his diary kept while on an exploring expedition through Navajo country in 1848, that the Navajos made, "the best blankets in the world."

During this period weavers augmented the natural white and brown colors of the shorn sheep with navy blue and vivid reds obtained from the Spanish. The blue came from the indigo plant dye, and they took the red from commercially woven bolts of bayeta (baize) cloth. Unable to obtain bright red colors from local plants, the Navajo avidly sought to procure this bayeta and then tediously unraveled it, thread by solitary thread! The yarn was then plied to produce a thickness equal to the weight of the other yarns to be used in the blanket and rewoven into the new textile. Contrary to popular stories thisraveled yarn was not obtained from the jackets of dead U. S. soldiers. Reds with a blue or purple tinge generally were obtained from imported cloth. Later orange-red shades were often unraveled from bolts of American flannel.

One of the most widely recognized blankets to develop during the Classic period was the so-called chief style. Like the Pueblo wearing blanket from which it no doubt evolved, the Navajo chief blanket was woven broader than it was long with wide horizontal stripe elements dominating the design. Over the course of the 19th century the design of this type of blanket evolved in very rigid and easily identifiable patterning phases. The name "chief blanket" is really a misnomer, for the Navajos did not have tribal chiefs. These particular blankets were considered rare and valuable trade goods, however, and as such, were carried to distant tribes over lengthy trade routes. Ownership of such a valuable item would no doubt have been limited to persons of some wealth and achievementand thus perhaps the origin of the name. (For further information on the chief-style blanket, see Kathleen Whitaker's article in this issue.)

From the simple horizontal stripes to spectacular serapes the Navajo weaver achieved a level of excellence in the Classic period seldom equaled until recently. Not only did the weaver produce a functional blanket but also a premier work of art. The years from 1863 to 1868, however, were to change Navajo textiles and Navajo life forever.

Repeated skirmishes between U. S. Government troops and Navajos caused the Army to mount an all-out effort to subjugate the Navajos once and for all. Under the leadership of Colonel Kit Carson, soldiers literally hereded the Navajo from all over Arizona and New Mexico to Bosque Redondo in eastern New Mexico with onl the possessions they could carry on their backs. This Long Walk to Bosque Redondo near Fort Sumner was the beginning of five years of captivity for the Navajo.

A multitude of facts began to affect the look and the feel of the Navajo blanket. Already produced commercial yarns and bright chemical dyes were beginning to find their way onto the reservation. Eager to bypass the tedious processing required in shearing, spinning, and dyeing their own wools, Navajo women readily accepted the new yarns. Design innovations occurred in response to Navajo exposure to new stimulus at Bosque Redondo, among them strikingly patterned Mexican serapes. An aditional factor in the design change was the shift in function of the textile away from a wearing blanket toward use as a floor rug.

The arrival of the railroad in the 1880s and the consequent opening up of the West ended the relative isolation of the Navajo, and a new Navajo textile was born.

They provided new materials, new design inspiration, and a new market.

No longer primarily items of wearing apparel, Navajo textiles had evolved into thick, heavy floor rugs suitable for use in Victorian homes. New design combinations enclosed within borders were created by the traders to please the taste of the Eastern buyer. Some traders such as J. B. Moore at Crystal, New Mexico, published mail-order catalogs of available rugs in an attempt to reach an even broader market.

By the end of the century the Santa Fe Railroad was looking for ways to increase the flow of tourists to the Southwest. To this end, the Fred Harvey Company Indian Department (an off-shoot of the Harvey restaurant and hotel chain) was established in 1901 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, immediately adjacent to the railroad tracks. Tourists could easily step off the train, make purchases, and reboard quickly. Indian weavers, potters, and silversmiths were hired to demonstrate their skills. A caption on a postcard from the period describes the experience:

"In the Indian Building at Albuquerque are gathered some of the finest collections of Indian handicrafts in existence. A section of the building is devoted to a salesroom, and many of the exhibits suggest practical uses of various articles, as furnishings and decorations."

To most travelers the greatest atractions of the Indian Building are its glimpses of native industry. Patient Navajo squaws may be seen weaving blankets while their men make crude articles of silver jewelry.

All trains stop twenty-five to thirty minutes at Albuquerque. Conductors will give advance notice in the Indian Building of the departure of trains.

The Indian Department experiment was an enormously successful venture for the railroad and quickly assumed a life of its own. A very large part of its operation was the marketing of Navajo textiles – both rugs and blankets. Like many other traders of the period, the Fred Harvey Company helped to shape the Navajo textile of the time.

The 20th century has seen continued innovation in the product of the Navajo loom, and today weaving is alive and well on the reservation. Ann Lane Hedlund's work with contemporary weavers strongly confirms the vitality of this tradition.

Hearst's collection was built largely from the holdings of the Fred Harvey Indian Department. During the first portion of this century he amassed more than 200 pieces representing nearly all of the major types of Navajo textiles woven between 1800 and 1920. Existing records reveal a fairly clear picture of Hearst's patronage of the Harvey Company as well as the depth and direction of his interests.

Hearst's first contact with the Harvey Company was apparently just after the turn of the century when he viewed their small, temporary exhibit of Indian artifacts. He sought to purchase a few pieces as a gift for his mother, Phoebe Apperson Hearst, but was initially refused by Herman Schweizer, manager for the company, because the pieces in the exhibit were not for sale. Hearst pressed the matter, Schweizer relented, and a 40-year association was begun.

Although Hearst had developed a reputation in the antiquities trade as being a somewhat indiscriminate collector, his interest in Navajo textiles was fairly well directed. Surviving correspondence reveals his intention to amass a large collection with such statements as "Send me a considerable number of your best blankets" and "send me a lot of your 1st class blankets." Other letters, however, reveal more specific requests such as "chief,s blankets or all Bazetta (sic) blankets" and "ones with odd designs or figures of men or animals."

Over the 40 years that Hearst collected Navajo texttiles he clearly accomplished his stated goal of amassing a collection of "real treasures," one that included 18 serapes, 39 chief-style blankets, 42 child's/saddle blankets, and banded background blankets.

In 1942 The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (then the Los Angeles County Museum of History, Science and Art) received a donation of 222 American Indian artifacts, with the bulk being Navajo textiles, from Hearst. Careful scholarly unraveling of the combined histories of these artifacts creates yet another legacy of the eclectic and omnivorous collecting passion of William Randolph Hearst and furthermore gives testimony ro the resilient and creative skills of the Navajo weaver.