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Jennifer Levin I For The New Mexican'* ■VSSf'.*iycV-/' '£ * ' .•■iT:Spider Rock, Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, 1940. In Dine legend, Spider Rock is the home of Spider Woman, who taught the Dine to weave. Photo by Ralph H. Anderson; images from Spider Woman is Gift, courtesy Museum of New Mexico Press.n Navajo legend, Spider Woman gave the Navajo people, or Dine, the V gift of weaving. But in most museum exhibitions of Navajo weaving, Spider Woman’s influence is left out of the story. In 2006, the Museum of Indian Arts Culture rectified that oversight with Spider Woman’s Gift:kNineteenth-Century Dine Textiles, which was co-curated by the museum’sdirector, Shelby J. Tisdale, and the director of the museum’s LivingTraditions Education Program, Joyce Begay-Foss. Museum of New Mexico Press has recently issued the exhibition catalog, which includes an essay by Begay-Foss that gives a Navajo weaver’s perspective and an essay by Marian E. Rodee that offers an anthropological point of view.Spider Woman provided the Dine with a skill that resulted in much-sought-after, functional, and beautiful goods, Begay-Foss said in an interview with Pasatiempo. The tapestries in Spider Woman’s Gift are from 1840 to 1880, spanning the “classic” and “transition” periods of 19th-century Navajo weaving. Many of the textiles were made for trade.Weavers are highly regarded in the tribe for this skill and the discipline it requires, said Begay-Foss, who grew up watching her aunts and great-aunts weave, learning by observation. “They didn’t have time to formally teach me because they had to finish and get the pieces to the trading post,” she said.Navajo oral history often differs significantly from academic speculation. In her essay, Begay-Foss writes: “The Dine do not believe that the Pueblo Indians taught them to weave, as proposed in the scholarly literature. Instead, they believe they were taught by Spider Woman. ... Dine oral history does not credit the Spanish with introducing sheep to the Southwest in the late 1500s, as scholars propose. Instead, the Dine believe that sheep were also a gift from Spider Woman, and from Changing Woman (Asdzaa Nadleehe). Changing Woman was responsible for forming and molding all the animals, including the first sheep.”One way Begay-Foss shows the perspective of the Dine on their traditional textiles is by correcting the language commonly used to refer to them. For instance, she said, a “serape” is more accurately called a shoulder blanket, and a “manta” is really a woman’s dress. The Spanish words for such textiles were embraced by some tribes, but not by the Dine. “Spanish was a very common trade language,” she explained. “Among the tribes, with the Pueblos and the Plains and the Spanish that were here — even non-Native Anglo people spoke Spanish — and the names just stuck.”Basket weaving was included in the exhibition to show the direct visual evidence of Spider Woman, who appears as stylized crosses incorporating eight squares at the points. Though often mistaken for Christian symbols, these crosses are recognized by the Navajo as representative of a spider’s legs. When she was a child, Begay-Foss’ family would drive to Spider Rock in Canyon de Chelly, which is considered a sacred site by the Navajo and the home of Spider Woman. Begay-Foss’ family told enough stories for her to form a physical impression of Spider Woman. “I don’t exacdy know what she looked like; she’s not exactly a woman and not exactly a spider,” she said. “But she was very real to me.”The colors of the earliest weavings in Spider Woman’s Gift were limited to the hues of sheep’s wool — variations of off-white, brown, and gray Brownscontinued on Page 7876 August 19-25, 2011
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Santa Fe New Mexican
Santa Fe, New Mexico, US
Fri, Aug 19, 2011
Page 50
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MD, USA 04 Sep 2020
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