Dyeing & Coloring

This Diné woman’s wearing manta was crafted during the myriad of catastrophic events in the mid-nineteenth century that include the targeting of Diné weavers for slavery, Kit Carson’s scorched earth campaign, and the forced march to Bosque Redondo—all heinous crimes against my people. The checkered diamonds suggest that it may have been woven by a weaver who escaped slavery and hid among other southwest tribal people or with her family. Whatever the circumstances, the weaver wove a beautiful manta, an art of resistance.

While many collectors and museums consider Chiefs blankets to be the most valuable weavings, today’s Diné weavers advocate for a paradigm shift. Diné Asdzą́ą́ bi bééldléé (women’s wear) should be more valuable, more sought after for collections, and viewed as non-secular. In Diné traditional protocols, mantas such as this are fine art, our Diné haute couture. When worn, the movement of the blanket makes the geometric diamonds look like they are dancing.

—Lynda Teller Pete (Diné), fifth-generation textile artist

In the mid-nineteenth century, Diné (Navajo) weavers began to make one-piece garments modeled on the earlier Pueblo mantas. While most of these were used as shawls, some were sewn along the side into dresses and others were made for collectors.¹ Most mantas (called biil by the Diné) have a black center with red panels along the upper and lower edges, and feature decorative motifs in contrasting colors such as stripes, terraced triangles, or, as in this case, open diamonds formed by opposing terraced zigzags. This manta shows striking variations of natural brown and black wool that create earth-like striations along the center (for more information on this topic, see Ecology ). The red panels were often made with yarn from a cochineal-dyed “raveled” trade cloth (bayeta) that arrived from Mexico through the Santa Fe Trail (also known as El Camino Real).² Cochineal, a domesticated sap-sucking insect that infests a variety of cacti, has been cultivated since precontact times in both Central and South America.³ Although the American Southwest hosts a wild type of cochineal, its dye is considerably less potent than the Mexican domesticated type.⁴

The Diné started unraveling government-supplied trade cloth for their weavings when natural materials were scarce, during their enforced imprisonment by the United States Army at Bosque Redondo, New Mexico, between 1864 and 1868. Weavers performed the laborious process of unraveling thread and often re-spinning it (now referred to as “raveled red”). The fact that they did so under circumstances of scarcity and deprivation demonstrates notable creativity and innovation. After their return to the Diné homeland, they continued to use the yarn of cochineal-dyed, unraveled trade cloth because, according to contemporary Diné weavers Lynda Teller Pete and Barbara Teller Ornelas, they wanted to avoid processing a dead insect.

—Juliana Fagua Arias

Serapes have been woven since the colonial period in the mining territories of northern Mexico. Although the origin of the serape is still debated, it is generally accepted that it is not indigenous to Mexico but represents a combination of Native and Spanish elements.¹ Since serapes were created on narrow, Spanish-style, horizontal frame looms—unlike Navajo and Pueblo textiles—they were woven in two separate panels that were sewn together with their patterns perfectly matching, a demonstration of the weavers’ skills.

A half circle dotted with a red-and-turquoise checkered pattern protrudes from an imaginary vanishing point and toward the edge of the bidimensional textile surface. Behind, above, and below, bands with electrifying diamond patterning are distorted by overlapping jagged and geometric lines, resembling a glitch on a TV screen. Aniline reds, acid yellows, blues, blacks, and laser greens vibrantly color the large composition, a piece that is emblematic of Melissa Cody’s Germantown Revival style.

The name of this style refers to the commercially manufactured Germantown yarn, produced in the late nineteenth century by an eastern mill in Germantown, Pennsylvania. In the early 1860s the United States government supplied this material to the Navajo people, whom the government had forcibly removed from their ancestral homeland in present-day Arizona and New Mexico to Bosque Redondo, a reservation in eastern New Mexico. The violent displacement from their territory and forced migration, a collective trauma known as the Long Walk, imposed economic pressures and scarcity on the Navajo people, as the US military obstructed their access to natural resources. To ensure the continuation and resilience of Navajo weaving traditions—which had previously depended on plant, mineral, and insect-based dyes like indigo and cochineal—weavers incorporated Euro-American materials such as Germantown yarn into their practice. Most of this yarn was provided in the form of woolen blankets, which weavers unraveled to obtain single threads and often re-spun for use in weaving. This process resembled the way in which they attained cochineal-dyed yarn during the Spanish colonial period.

A machine-spun, three or four-ply wool yarn, Germantown yarn is characterized by its synthetic, bright colors, which contrasted sharply with the muted tones of naturally dyed indigo and red as well as brown, white, and black yarns that weavers previously used. Until then, customary designs included simple horizontal bands that were enhanced by diamonds, squares, or crosses to produce a sense of balance and stability. The straightforward designs acutely contrasted with the complicated making process, which included the time-consuming activities of plant collecting, dyeing, and spinning, an ecological embodied knowledge built and sustained throughout generations. 

Incorporating Germantown yarn enabled weavers to create a more complex design vocabulary that matched the vibrancy of this new color palette, including stacked geometric forms and serrated chevrons. The resulting “eye-dazzler” style was characterized by movement—chromatic patterns and compositions that suited the tastes of Euro-American dealers and collectors. The assimilation and skilled use of new materials coincided with a shift from subsistence production and intertribal trade to nationwide manufacture, mainly oriented towards a growing tourist market.

Inspired by street art and pop culture, Cody reinterprets historical Germantown designs by reflecting the contemporary visual culture of a Navajo weaver born in the 1980s. Maintaining the vibrancy of aniline dyes, Cody experiments by combining customary motifs—such as the Whirling Log or Spider Woman’s cross—with video game pixilation and Op art references. Cody’s innovative work appeals to a younger generation of Diné weavers, demonstrating that traditional art forms can be transformed to reflect contemporary experiences. 

—Juliana Fagua Arias