But, to the knowing, there is still a higher grade of blanket. This is not, as one expert (sic) would have it, an attempted copying of ancient blankets, but a continuation of an art which he declares to be lost. There are several old weavers who preserve in themselves all the old and good of the best days of blanket weaving. They use native dyes, native wool,—with bayeta when they can get it,—and they spin their wool to a tension that makes it as durable as fine steel. They weave with care, and after the old fashions, following the ancient shapes and designs, and produce blankets that are as good as any that were ever made in the palmiest days of the art. Such blankets take long in weaving, and are both rare and expensive. I have just had one of these fine blankets made (January, 1903), and in every sense of the word it is equal to any old blanket I ever saw.
The common blankets and the extra common are sold by the pound, the price, of course, varying, and of late years steadily increasing. Half-fancy blankets are generally sold by the piece, and vary in price according to the harmony of the colors, the fineness of the weave, and the striking characteristics of the design. This is also true of native wool fancy, the price being determined by the Indian according to her notions of the length of the purchaser's purse. On the other hand, Germantown yarn having a fixed purchasable price, the blankets made from it are to be bought by the pound.
These remarks, necessarily, refer to the original purchases from the Indian. There are no general rules of purchase price followed by traders, dealers, or retail salesmen.
In the original colors, as I have already shown, there are white, brown, gray, and black, the last rather a grayish-black, or, better still, as Matthews describes it, rusty. He also says: "They still employ to a great extent their native dyes of yellow, reddish, and black. There is good evidence that they formerly had a blue dye; but indigo, originally introduced, I think, by the Mexicans, has susperseded this. If they, in former days, had a native blue and a native yellow, they must also, of course, have had a green, and they now make green of their native yellow and indigo, the latter being the only imported dye-stuff I have ever seen in use among them.... The brilliant red figures in their finer blankets were, a few years ago, made entirely of bayeta, and this material is still (1881) largely used. Bayeta is a bright scarlet cloth with a long nap, much finer in appearance than the scarlet strouding which forms such an important article in the Indian trade of the North."
This bayeta or baize was unravelled, and the Indian often retwisted the warp to make it firmer than originally, and then rewove it into his incomparable blankets.
From information mainly gained by Mr. G. H. Pepper, of the American Museum of Natural History, during his three years' sojourn with the Navahoes as head of the Hyde Exploring Expedition, I present the following accounts of their native dyes. From the earliest days the Navahoes have been expert dyers, their colors being black, brick-red, russet, blue, yellow, and a greenish-yellow akin to the shade known as old gold. To make the black dye three ingredients are used; viz., yellow ochre, pinion gum, and the leaves and twigs of the aromatic sumac (Rhus aromatica). The ochre is pulverized and roasted until it becomes a light brown, when it is removed from the fire and mixed with an equal amount of pinion gum. This mixture is then placed on the fire, and as the roasting continues it first becomes mushy, then drier and darker, until nothing but a fine black powder is left. In the meantime the sumac leaves and twigs are being boiled, five or six hours being required to fully extract the juices. When both are somewhat cooled they are mixed, and almost immediately a rich bluish-black fluid is formed.
For yellow dye the tops of a flowering weed (Bigelovia graveolens) are boiled for several hours until the liquid assumes a deep yellow color. As soon as the dyer deems the extraction of the color juices nearly complete, she takes some native alum (almogen) and heats it over the fire, and, when it becomes pasty, gradually adds it to the boiling decoction, which slowly becomes of the required yellow color.
The brick-red dye is extracted from the bark and roots of the sumac, and ground black alder bark, with the ashes of the juniper as a mordant. She now immerses the wool and allows it to remain in the dye from half an hour to an hour.
Whence come the designs incorporated by these simple weavers into their blankets, sashes, and dresses? In this, as in basketry and pottery, the answer is found in nature. Indeed, many of their textile designs suggest a derivation from basketry ornamentation (which originally came from nature), "as the angular, curveless figures of interlaying plaits predominate, and the principal subjects are the same—conventional devices representing clouds, stars, lightning, the rainbow, and emblems of the deities. But these simple forms are produced in endless combination and often in brilliant, kaleidoscopic grouping, presenting broad effects of scarlet and black, of green, yellow, and blue upon scarlet, and wide ranges of color skilfully blended upon a ground of white. The centre of the fabric is frequently occupied with tessellated or lozenge patterns of multi-colored sides, or divided into panels of contrasting colors in which different designs appear; some display symmetric zigzags, converging and spreading throughout their length; in others, bands of high color are defined by zones of neutral tints, or parted by thin, bright lines into a checkered mosaic, and in many only the most subdued shades appear. Fine effects are obtained by using a soft, gray wool in its natural state, to form the body of the fabric in solid color, upon which figures in orange and scarlet are introduced; also in those woven in narrow stripes of black and deep blue, having the borders relieved in bright tinted meanders along the sides and ends, or with a central colored figure in the dark body, with the design repeated in a diagonal panel at each corner.
"The greatest charm, however, of these primitive fabrics, is the unrestrained freedom shown by the weaver in her treatment of primitive conventions. To the checkered emblem of the rainbow she adds sweeping rays of color, typifying sunbeams; below the many-angled cloud group, she inserts random pencil lines of rain; or she softens the rigid meander, signifying lightning, with graceful interlacing, and shaded tints. Not confining herself alone to these traditional devices, she invents her own methods to introduce curious, realistic figures of common objects,—her grass brush, wooden weaving fork, a stalk of corn, a bow, an arrow, or a plume of feathers from a dancer's mask. Thus, although the same characteristic styles of weaving and decoration are general, yet none of the larger designs are ever reproduced with mechanical exactness; each fabric carries some distinct variation, some suggestion of the occasion of its making, woven into form as the fancy arose."