Alice Begay was the first of the five sisters from the Burnham weaving area to take the leap from traditional patterns to creating a unique style that has found acceptance by collectors, museums, and other weavers.

A couple of weeks ago, a group of us from the gallery, our partners, friends, and supporters gathered near Bayfield, Colorado to harvest and split firewood for some of the weavers we work with on the Navajo Reservation.

One day, right after the Navajo Nation had been re-opened as the pandemic eased, a lovely woman walked into the gallery with her daughter. She was wearing a long, ankle-length dress, a sweater, and a mask. Wrapped in a cloth, she had what was obviously a weaving.

The Navajo people wove wearing blankets for around 200 years. They have woven floor rugs for more than 100 years. Many of these pieces are currently displayed on walls as works of art, but the original intent was for them to be used on the floor.

In a newsletter last week, I recommended an issue of Native American Art Magazine in which I wrote an article about the contemporary weaving path that a family from Burnham, New Mexico has taken.

Florence Riggs is widely recognized as one of the premier weavers of Navajo pictorial scenes. She comes from a great weaving family. Louise Nez is her mother and Linda Nez is her sister. Both are exceptional weavers.

I learned something doing research for this newsletter. I don’t know how many times I heard my father say in different talks that Klagetoh Trading Post was owned by Don Lorenzo Hubbell, the man who owned the Hubbell Trading Post in Ganado and more than a dozen other posts.

Prior to the 1880s nearly all Navajo weavings, except for saddle blankets, were made to wear. The Chief Blankets are the best known, but other styles consisting primarily of stripes of alternating colors, primarily blue and brown, were also popular. These were called Moki blankets. The origin of the word is not known.

For more than 20 years, Cowboys & Indians magazine has been one of the most popular publications for people who love and appreciate the Western and Native cultures. The magazine is so popular that people buy and sell past issues online.

The year was 1912 and conditions were critical at the Neglected Mine, high in the LaPlata Mountains of Southwest Colorado. Eighteen miners were stranded without food in freezing temperatures with ten feet of snow on the ground. The angel who came to save them was 5’4” tall and weighed about 130 pounds.

Being a judge at the Gallup Ceremonial is a special honor. And not being discriminatory, I think that the weaving category is the most exciting.If you have been to the Santa Fe Indian Market, one of the things you will notice is that there are not many booths that feature Navajo weaving. That isn’t to say that some of the best weavers don’t show there. They do, but the number is limited.

Gilbert Maxwell’s book Navajo Rugs, Past, Present and Future, which was published in 1963, was my first introduction to reading about Navajo weaving. I was 20 years old and had grown up around weaving, so I had a basic understanding of the art form.

But I really didn’t have a clue about its history.