|
A.5141.42-165 - Blanket, Serape |
|
|
Catalog Number: A.5141.42-165
|
| Object Name/Descriptor |
Blanket, Serape |
| Provenience |
North America, USA, Southwest |
| Culture/People/Style |
Navajo (Dine) |
| Period |
c. 1850 - 1860 |
| Date Accessioned |
March, 1942 |
| Material Type(s) |
Cloth - Wool
|
| Length (cm) |
175.600 |
| Width (cm) |
134.400 |
| Other Information |
Associated Text from the Native American Hall (1992-2006):
Classic Serape Style
Early nineteenth-century Spanish traders brought bolts of commercially woven wool cloth, called bayeta, to the Southwest. Navajo weavers, who prized the cloth for its vivid red color, painstakingly unraveled it for reweaving into their own blankets. This blanket, with its tight weave, longer-than-wide format, horizontal design layout, and use of zig-zags and narrow stripes, is typical of early Classic Navajo blankets.
Blankets for Trade
"Blankets of rare beauty and excellence."
- Josiah Gregg, 1844
In the first half of the 1800s the Navajo became known throughout the Southwest and across the Plains for their boldly patterned weavings. Contact with the Spanish provided Navajo weavers with new yarns and dyes, which they used to develop a series of complex designs expressing their Navajo aesthetic.
Until the mid-1800s, the Navajo lived in mobile family groups, supporting themselves through a mixture of hunting, gathering, herding, farming, trading, and raiding for horses and sheep. In 1863, United States troops rounded up the entire tribe, burned their peach trees and corn fields, and killed their sheep and horses. Families were forced to walk hundreds of miles to Bosque Redondo, near Fort Sumner, New Mexico. They spent the next four years as government prisoners of war. |
| Multimedia |
|
|
|