¡Colores!; Make It Beautiful; Ramona Sakiestewa

KNME-TV (Television station : Albuquerque, N.M.) · January 5, 1991

"It seems anomalous to me that a nation living in such miserably constructed mud lodges should, at the same time, be capable of making probably the best blankets in the world..." Lieutenant James H. Simpson, U.S. Army. 1849. Most anthropologists agree that Navajo women learned the art of weaving from the Hopi and/or Zuni after the Pueblo Revolt in 1680. A single blanket took between six months to a year to weave and was a very prestigious item. In the 19th century, a blanket commanded in trade at least twenty horses and fifty buffalo hides, and was affordable only by Indians of high rank. In the 1840's, as the U.S. Army moved into the Southwest, Navajo blankets were purchased for sums as high as sixty dollars. To put this amount in perspective: in 1844, sixty dollars was worth six months pay for a colonel in the U.S. Army. A buckboard with good wheels cost fifteen dollars. A quarter horse cost five dollars and an exceptional horse, ten. A night in a rooming house in Santa Fe was a dollar, and a shot of whiskey, twenty five cents. This week ¡Colores! looks at Navajo blankets from the 19th century from an artistic and cultural point of view. We will visit with museum curators and private collectors to view some of the finest examples of this art, and discuss the historical and aesthetic value of one of the Southwest's premier art forms. Guests: Marian Rodee (Maxwell Museum, University of New Mexico), Andrew Nagen (Private Collector, Corrales, New Mexico), Pearl Sunrise (Navajo Weaver). Artist Profile: Contemporary Indigenous weaver Ramona Sakiestewa.