Belt

Unknown artist

674-5\nWoven belt; cotton, wool; Enin-tsi-napa Ots'aíu, or Cuiu-tsi-napa Ots'siu (TK); l. 240/280 cm. (/with fringe), w. 8 cm.; ca. 1880.\nWarp-faced belts were woven in two styles: the Navajo style with red and green wool warps, and white cotton warps and wefts such as this example, and the Hopi style with red, black and green wool warps and black cotton wefts. The former were woven among Navajos and Puebloans alike, while the manufacture of the latter was restricted to Pueblo weavers. The patterns are made visible by floating the warps over the wefts. Zuni and other Pueblo women fastened their blankets or dress with such belts around their waist, securing it on their left hip, with the long fringes hanging down, accentuating movement (Kent 1983:85-89; Fane 1991:130-1). Ten Kate called this specimen a man's belt.\n362-155, 674-3,4,5,6 Zuni weaving Zuni Pueblo is exceptional in that in historic times women rather than men sat at the loom, although the latter were not excluded from weaving. The major textile made at Zuni was the woman's blanket or shawl with embroidered borders, woven from native cotton. Men's dance kilts follow the same pattern. Wool was used for a great variety of daily, festive and ceremonial dress items. Traditional dyes for yarn included a yellow from thistles (Circium sp.) or rabbit-weed (Bigelovia), a brownish red from tickseed (Coreopsis) flowers, and black from the bark of sumac (Rhus). For mordant alum was locally available.\Many black blankets were woven for men and worn wile participating in and observing ceremonies. Used as shrouds for people to be buried in, they disappeared in the 1880s. Striped blankets, often with a white foundation, were the other main type. These tend to be less elongated and a bit more square that those of other Pueblos, as well as a bit more coarse, thick, and fuzzy (Douglas 1940). Zuni textiles are a subject deserving more scholarly attention.（Hovens, Rodee and Vogelsang-Eastwood 2008-09） Pueblo textiles. Textile weaving has a long pre-history in the Southwest. The weaving of textiles has a long history in the Southwest. The threads spun from it were woven by hand (finger-weave). Around 800 AD, the vertical loom was adopted, after which larger pieces of textile could be produced. Since 1100 fabrics were provided with embroidery. In the sixteenth century, Pueblo weavers and Zuni weavers produced cotton shirts, shawls, loincloths, kilts and belts. The cotton garments were often dyed in a bath of mineral or vegetable dye. Embellishments were also applied by embroidery.‖ In the seventeenth century, the Spanish introduced sheep, wool spinning, western looms, and new natural dyes, including indigo and cochineal. Blankets and Òser-apesÓ (shawls) were new products brought by the whites and served as examples for Indian weavers to emulate. Among the Pueblos, it was the men who worked at the loom, with the exception of the Zunis where the women did so. Both cotton and wool textiles were woven.‖ Sheep farming, wool spinning, and blanket weaving by Navajos date back to the seventeenth century and were learned both through intertribal trade contacts and through the incorporation of Pueblo slaves and refugees. By the eighteenth century, the distinction between Navajo and Pueblo weaving was blurred. In addition to blankets, serapes (shouldered cloaks based on the Spanish model) and mantas (traditional wide shawls or shrugs), shirts, loincloths and belts were also woven.With the introduction of Western trade goods, the Pueblo weaving tradition fell into decline. Production was limited to a few pieces of ceremonial clothing and accessories. The Hopis continued to weave on a modest scale, trading their products with their Pueblo neighbors to the east and south.\Some of the distinctive Pueblo textiles are:\Òthe plain manta; this is a rectangular dark-colored cloth worn as a shawl or shawl, but sewn together also serves as outerwear and undergarments (shirt and skirt); other mantas were predominantly white and featured a red, dark blue, or black border at the top and bottom;Ó the bridal manta; also a rectangular but white shawl offered by the groom to the bride, wrapped in a reed mat; later, the top and bottom edges were embroidered;‖ serapes or blankets, usually provided with colored bands, a Spanish introduction, and used as clothing and bedding;‖ kilts; sashes; their characteristic is that they are woven on such a surface as to make the surface appear embroidered; in fact, this is a weaving technique called "Hopi brocade"; the pattern predominating therein is possibly a stylized Breedge-face kachina in which the two diamonds represent the eyes and the row of toothed figures below the mouth the teeth; these were usually worn by the men suspended from a belt along the right hip; sometimes they were worn across the torso as a sash; in other cases as hip cloth;-belts worn around the hip or around the knees.