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Show :iOO THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE Photograph courtesy American "Museum of Natural History MASTERPIECES OF PREHISTORIC TEXTILE ART Aside from fur- or feather-string blankets, and narrow aprons in the case of the women, sandals were the only clothing ordinarily worn by the early inhabitants of the caves. Upon their footgear and upon their burden straps they lavished the utmost care, decorating them in colors, and in raised patterns produced by baffling, intricate manipulations of the weft threads. and basket-making, and no Southwestern people has surpassed them as workers in wood. - However, they had not learned to use the bow and arrow; to make pottery or to build walls of masonry. These so-called Basket Makers, who probably emigrated from some part of the territory that is now Mexico, occupied the Southwest unmolested for a considerable length of time. Eventually, however, there came among them a roundheaded stock, bringing with it new manners, customs, and arts. From a blending of the two, there resulted the beginnings of the Pueblo culture, which, although it had passed its zenith before 1540, still survives. The simple culture of the Basket Makers marks the beginning, and the creditable civilization which flourished in Pueblo Bonito, made familiar to the scientific world through the explorations of the National Geographic Society under the direction of Mr. Neil M. Judd, marks the culmination of aboriginal advancement in the Southwest (see pages 227 to 262). The three or more cultural periods which intervened need be only mentioned. The caves of northeastern Arizona were occupied during the entire range of the inhabitation of the region bv sedentary agricultural peoples, and after the latter had departed, after even Pueblo Bonito had been given over to prairie dogs and owls and drifting sand, the Navajo arrived and found Canon del Muerto a congenial dwelling place. To-day, in riding through it, one passes an occasional stunted peach orchard, a cornfield, a melon patch, or a squalid hut, and if one remains long enough, one becomes acquainted with the 40 or 50 Indians who now inhabit it. They are a dwindling remnant. Within a few generations their blood will be extinct, or else their life and customs will have become so changed, as a result of contact with our own civilization, that they will no longer be real Navajo. Thus, as far as aboriginal peoples are concerned, this gorge is truly a canyon of death, and the Spanish raiders struck deeper than they knew when they named it Canon del Muerto. |