st
forgotten. A growing fondness for European clothing has also had its
influence, no doubt.

Sec. II. Cotton, which grows well in New Mexico and Arizona, the tough
fibers of yucca leaves and the fibers of other plants, the hair of
different quadrupeds, and the down of birds furnished in prehistoric
days the materials of textile fabrics in this country. While some of
the Pueblos still weave their native cotton to a slight extent, the
Navajos grow no cotton and spin nothing but the wool of the domestic
sheep, which animal is, of course, of Spanish introduction, and of
which the Navajos have vast herds.

The wool is not washed until it is sheared. At the present time it is
combed with hand cards purchased from the Americans. In spinning, the
simplest form of the spindle--a slender stick thrust through the
center of a round wooden disk--is used. The Mexicans on the Rio Grande
use spinning-wheels, and although the Navajos have often seen these
wheels, have had abundant opportunities for buying and stealing them,
and possess, I think, sufficient ingenuity to make them, they have
never abandoned the rude implement of their ancestors. Plate XXXIV
illustrates the Navajo method of handling the spindle, a method
different from that of the people of Zuni.

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has superseded this.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. Besides
the hues above indicated, this people have had, ever since the
introduction of sheep, wool of three different natural colors--white,
rusty black, and gray--so they had always a fair range of tints with
which to execute their artistic designs. The brilliant red figures in
their finer blankets were, a few years ago, made entirely of _bayeta_,
and this material is still 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. It was originally brought to the Navajo country from
Mexico, but is now supplied to the trade from our eastern cities. The
Indians ravel it and use the