RUG WEAVER HOME CULTURAL BACKGROUND 1. Navajo Weavers 2. How to Weave a Rug 3. Coordinates and Symmetry SOFTWARE TEACHING MATERIALS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS CSDT HOME

Navajo Rug Weaver

Cultural Background

It is impossible to talk about Navajo weaving as simply one part of Navajo culture. Weaving has always been integral to Navajo society, daily life, and cosmology. Parts of the Navajo Creation Story tell of Spider Woman weaving beautiful rugs on her loom, and it was through Spider Woman's teachings that Navajo weavers learned their craft.

"Spider Woman instructed the Navajo women how to weave on a loom which Spider Man told them how to make. The crosspoles were made of sky and earth cords, the warp sticks of sun rays, the healds of rock crystal and sheet lightning. The batten was a sun halo, white shell made the comb. There were four spindles: one a stick of zigzag lightning with a whorl of cannel coal; one a stick of flash lightning with a whorl of turquoise; a third had a stick of sheet lightning with a whorl of abalone; a rain streamer formed the stick of the fourth spindle, and its whorl was white shell."

-- Epigraph to Spider Woman: A Story of Navajo Weavers and Chanters, by Gladys A. Reichard, first published 1934, republished by Rio Grande Press, Inc., Glorieta, NM, 1968