Collecting Navajo Rugs, Native American Art, April 2017

Collecting Navajo Rugs by Mark SubletteFeatured in Native American Art magazine, April, 2017 By Dr. Mark SubletteThe Navajo (Diné) are Athabascan-speaking people who migrated to the Southwest from Canada in about the 15th century. Navajo women learned weaving in the mid-1600s from their Pueblo Indian neighbors who had been growing and weaving cotton since about A.D. 800. Spanish settlers had brought their churro sheep to the region in the early 1600s and introduced the Navajo to wool. By the early 1800s, Navajo weavers used wool exclusively, and became well known among both their Indian and Spanish neighbors for finely woven, nearly weatherproof...