Prehistoric Indians of the Southwest

by H. M. Wormington

Diagram showing the method of making a fur-cloth blanket. The upper figure shows the construction of a fur strip; the lower shows the manner in which the strips were held together.

The major item in the limited Basketmaker wardrobe was sandals. Anyone who has walked much in the canyon country of the Southwest can readily see how vital such equipment would be, and apparently the Basketmakers devoted much time and energy to keeping themselves shod. Sandals were woven of cord made from the fibers of yucca and [apocynum], a plant related to the milkweed. They were double-soled, were somewhat cupped at the heel, and had a square toe which was sometimes thickened, but was usually ornamented with a fringe of buckskin or shredded juniper bark. To attach them to the foot there were heel and toe loops with a cord passing between them. These cords were often made of human hair. Hair was also sometimes used to provide the secondary warps in the sandals themselves. A few pairs of large coarse sandals have been found coated with mud and it is thought that they may have served as overshoes for wear in bad weather.

Fig. 8—a. Basketmaker sandal. b. Modified-Basketmaker sandal.

Whatever the Basketmakers may have lacked in clothing, they compensated for with jewelry and ornaments. Our information is derived not only from mortuary finds but also from pictures painted on cliff faces by the Basketmakers themselves. Hair ornaments were widely used. Most of them consisted of bone points tied together to form comblike objects and topped with feathers. Feathers have also been found made into little loops and worn as pendants. Beads of all sorts were among the favorite means of decoration. They were used in making necklaces and as ear pendants. Some were of stone, carefully ground and polished, some of bone, sometimes engraved. Seeds and acorn cups were also used to make necklaces. Shells were very widely used, and it is interesting to note that many of them were olivella or abalone which can have come only from the Pacific coast.

It seems unlikely that either the Basketmakers or their contemporaries along the coast were much given to transcontinental tours when their only means of transportation was their own sandal-shod feet, but the shells prove some sort of contact. Probably it was a contact by trade carried on through the peoples who inhabited the country between the two locales.

This preoccupation with ornamentation might suggest some degree of vanity, and it is probably true that Basketmaker men gave a good bit of time and thought to their personal appearance. Basketmaker women, however, seem to have been a practical lot, far more concerned with material for their weaving than with their own appearance. The hair of female mummies is hacked off to a length of two or three inches. Of course cutting with a stone knife could hardly be expected to provide a particularly glamorous hair-do, and the fact that strands of hair seem to have been cut off at different times, presumably as the need for weaving material arose, added nothing to the general effect. While Basketmaker women would hardly furnish “pin up” material according to our standards, they presumably seemed attractive to Basketmaker men which, after all, was far more to the point.

Basketmaker men usually wore their hair long and formed into three bobs tied with a string, one on either side of the head and one in the back. In some cases the hair was clipped away to form an exaggerated part and tonsure, and from the hair at the top of the head was formed a queue about the thickness of a pencil, which was wound with cord for the entire length. The reason for this variation in hair dressing is not known. Perhaps the rare form with the clipping and the queue had some ceremonial significance, or was a mark of rank. Brushes made of yucca fibers have been found, which we know were used for the hair. Human hair is found clinging to them and they are a form still used by some modern Indians.

Having determined how these people looked we may now turn to the consideration of how they lived. For a great many years lack of evidence of house construction, coupled with the fact that most Basketmaker caves do not contain any great amount of ash and refuse, led to an acceptance of the belief that the Basketmakers either had no dwellings, or perhaps erected flimsy brush shelters which had since disappeared. Recent excavations near Durango, Colorado, however, have yielded evidence of well developed Basketmaker houses. Dates, tentatively assigned, fall in the early part of the fourth century. Doubtless, in other parts of the Anasazi province there were many other Basketmaker houses which have been destroyed by erosion, root, and frost action. Some of those found in the Durango area were in a cave and others on a terrace which had been made by cutting into the talus and removing the earth until a level surface large enough to accommodate the intended dwelling was produced.

“The house floors ranged in diameter from eight to thirty feet. They were saucer-shaped, formed of adobe mud not too smoothly spread over the surface of the excavation. The rim of the saucer was plastered against a series of short horizontal foot logs, laid to conform to the arc of the circle. These served as the foundation of the wall, the construction of which may be characterized as wood-and-mud masonry. Sticks and small timbers were laid around horizontally, and the interstices were crammed full of adobe to produce a strong, tough shell. The wall leaned somewhat inward as it rose to a convenient head height. Roofs were cribbed. Since the roof rested directly on the wall there was no necessity for stout vertical supporting timbers such as have been found in dwellings of the succeeding period.