25. Sweat-houses.—The sweat-house or sudatory is a diminutive form of the ordinary hogán or hut as described in [par. 20], except that it has no smoke-hole (for fire is never kindled in it), neither has it a storm-door. It is sometimes sunk partly underground and is always thickly covered with earth. Stones are heated in a fire outside and carried, with an extemporized tongs of sticks, into the sudatory. [Fig. 15] poorly represents one of these structures. When ceremonially used, the frame is constructed of different materials for different ceremonies, and the house is sometimes decorated with dry-paintings.[82]
Fig. 15. Sudatory.
26. Modern Houses.—During the past ten years, a few of the more progressive Navahoes have built themselves rectangular stone houses, with flat roofs, glazed windows, wooden doors, and regular chimneys, such as their neighbors, the Mexicans and Pueblo Indians, build. They have had before them, for centuries, examples of such houses, and they are an imitative and docile people. The reason they have not copied at an earlier date is probably a superstitious reason. They believe a house haunted or accursed in which a human being dies.[91] They abandon it, never enter it again, and usually destroy it. With such a superstition prevailing, they hesitate to build permanent dwellings. Perhaps of late years the superstition is becoming weakened, or they have found some mystic way of averting the supposed evil.
ARTS.
27. The arts of the Navahoes are not numerous. They make a very rude and inartistic pottery,—vastly inferior to that of the neighboring Pueblo tribes,—and they make but little of it. Their bows and arrows are not equal to those of the northern Indians, and, since they have both money and opportunity to purchase modern firearms, bows and arrows are falling into disuse. They do not consider themselves very expert dressers of deerskin, and purchase their best buckskins from other tribes. The women do very little embroidery, either with beads or porcupine-quills, and this little is unskilfully done. The legends indicate that in former days they stole or purchased embroideries from the Utes.
Fig. 16. Sacred basket.
28. Basketry.—They make excellent baskets, but very few of them, and have a very limited range of forms and patterns. In developing their blanket-making to the highest point of Indian art, the women of this tribe have neglected other labors. The much ruder but allied Apaches, who know nothing of weaving woollen fabrics, make more baskets than the Navahoes, and make them in much greater variety of form, color, and quality. The Navahoes buy most of their baskets and wicker water-jars from other tribes. They would possibly lose the art of basketry altogether if they did not require certain kinds to be used in the rites, and only women of the tribe understand the special requirements of the rites. [Figs. 16] and [17] show the patterns of baskets almost exclusively made. These are used in ceremonies, and are called by the author sacred baskets. A further description of them is given in a note.[5]