172 NAVAJO SILVERSMITHS. 



Fig. 6, are made by only three or four men in the tribe, and the design 

 is of very recent origin. 



Their tools and materials are few and simple ; and rude as the results 

 of their labor may appear, it is surprising that they do so well with such 

 imperfect appliances, which usually consist of the following articles : A 

 forge, a bellows, an anvil, crucibles, molds, tongs, scissors, pliers, files, 

 awls, cold-chisels, matrix and die for molding buttons, wooden imple- 

 ment used in grinding buttons, wooden stake, basin, charcoal, tools and 

 materials for soldering (blow-pipe, braid of cotton rags soaked in grease, 

 wire, and borax), materials for polishing (sandpaper, emery-paper, 

 powdered sandstone, sand, ashes, and solid stone), and materials for 

 whitening (a native mineral substance — almogen — saltand water). Fig. 

 1, taken from a photograph, represents the complete shop of a silver- 

 smith, which was set up temporarily in a summer lodge or Jiogan, near 

 Fort Wingate. Fragments of boards, picked up around the fort, were 

 used, in part, in the construction of the hogan, an old raisin-box was 

 made to serve as the curb or frame of the forge, and these things de- 

 tracted somewhat from the aboriginal aspect of the place. 



A forge built in an outhouse on my own premises by an Indian silver- 

 smith, whom I em[)loyed to work where I could constantly observe him, 

 was twenty-three inches long, sixteen inches broad, five inches in height 

 to the edge of the fire-place, and the latter, which was bowl-shaped, was 

 eight inches in diameter and three inches deep. No other Navajo forge 

 that I have seen differed materially in size or shape from this. The In- 

 dian thus constructed it : In the first place, he obtained a few straight 



sticks four would have sufficed — and laid them on the ground to form 



a frame or curb ; then he prepared some mud, with which he tilled the 

 frame, and which he piled up two inches above the latter, leaving the 

 depression for the fire-place. Before the structure of mud was com- 

 pleted he laid in it the wooden nozzle of the bellows, where it was 

 to remain, with one end about six inches from the fire-place, and the 

 other end projecting about the same distance beyond the frame ; then 

 he stj^ into the nozzle a round piece of wood, which reached from the 

 noz^e to the fire-place, and when the mud work was finished the stick 

 was withdrawn, leaving an uninflammable tweer. When the structure 

 of mud was completed a flat rock about four inches thick was laid on 

 at the head of the forge — the end next to the bellows — to form a back 

 to the fire, and lastly the bellows was tied on to the nozzle, which, as 

 mentioned above, was built into the forge, with a portion projecting to 

 receive the bellows. The task of constructing this forge did not occupy 

 more than an hour. 



A bellows, of the kind most commonly used, consists of a tube or 

 bag of goatskin, about twelve inches in length and about ten inches in 

 diameter, tied at one end to its nozzle and nailed at the other to a cir- 

 cular disk of wood, in which is the valve. This disk has two arms : 

 one above for a handle and the other below for a support. Two or more 



