202 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 
pastoral people. When first visited by the Spanish explorers in 1540, they 
were already agriculturalists. During the seventeenth, eighteenth and 
early part of the nineteenth century, the Navajo were given to raiding their 
Mexican neighbors much after the manner of the Apache. It is probable 
that at first the mules, burros, cattle and sheep procured on these raids 
were killed and consumed immediately, but that later they were retained 
and allowed to breed. The combination of a pastoral and an agricultural 
life in a semi-arid region requires not only a vast acreage but much travel- 
ling. The corn is grown along the stream beds, the crop being matured, 
if the gods are good, by showers in late summer. The sheep must be 
moved from range to range as the seasons change. The herding of the 
flocks usually falls to the children who are assisted in times of difficulty 
by the older members of the family. Only during the winter is a house 
really necessary; at other seasons, the family lives under the shelter of a 
tree or rock. The Navajo have become a wealthy people with their half 
million of sheep, doubly so since much of the wool, by the skill, industry 
and unlimited patience of the women, is woven into blankets. 
Blanket-making is now the chief art of the Navajo. It seems probable 
that formerly they made a variety of baskets and that methods of dyeing 
and the designs were transferred to the blankets as the art of basket-making 
declined. Many of the men are expert silversmiths showing not only skill 
but excellent taste. The Navajo are not the unpoetic, unimaginative 
people they appear, for they have a great wealth of ceremony with songs, 
prayers, and complicated graphic art. 
BEGINNINGS IN Navaso WEAVING 
The history of the Navajo shows the adaptability of a race to meet and 
take advantage of new conditions and to imitate and develop the customs 
of neighboring races. It is especially interesting to look at this history in 
connection with weaving, since the beginning of the manufacture of cloth 
by any race is always a milestone in development, clothes giving a more 
emphatic impression of the status of a people than any other one item in 
their culture. There was considerable weaving done in North America 
before 1492, the date of the landing of Columbus. From the cliff-dwelling 
Pueblo area of New Mexico and Arizona southward to Peru, cotton was 
cultivated, spun and woven into cloth. Specimens recovered from the 
extremes of this territory indicate that a high state of perfection had been 
reached. Also in another area, the Northwest, the Chileat and other tribes 
made blankets from the hair of the mountain goat, where, however, the 
