The Navajo Nation: A Visitor's Guide The Navajo Nation: A Visitor's Guide
List Price: $21.95
Sale Price: $13.56
Used From: $13.27
Average Rating:

Encompassing sections of Arizona, New Mexico, and southern Utah, the Navajo Nation is the largest American Indian reservation in the United States and home to numerous sites of historical interest and breathtaking natural beauty...

Dine: A History of the Navajos Dine: A History of the Navajos
List Price: $24.95
Sale Price: $15.43
Used From: $8.70
Average Rating:

This comprehensive narrative traces the history of the Navajos from their origins to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Based on extensive archival research, traditional accounts, interviews, historic and contemporary photographs, and firsthand observation, it provides a detailed, up-to-date portrait of the Diné past and present that will be essential for scholars, students, and interested general readers, both Navajo and non-Navajo...

Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two
List Price: $7.99
Sale Price: $2.99
Used From: $1.72
Average Rating:

The United States is at war, and sixteen-year-old Ned Begay wants to join the cause—especially when he hears that Navajos are being specifically recruited by the Marine Corps. So he claims he’s old enough to enlist, breezes his way through boot camp, and suddenly finds himself involved in a top-secret task, one that’s exclusively performed by Navajos...

The Book of the Navajo The Book of the Navajo
List Price: $8.95
Sale Price: $4.96
Used From: $3.71
Average Rating:

Navajo Weaving Way: The Path from Fleece to Rug Navajo Weaving Way: The Path from Fleece to Rug
List Price: $21.95
Sale Price: $12.89
Used From: $7.85
Average Rating:

Navajo Weaving Way is a compilation of Nol Bennett's earlier, out-of-print books on Navajo rug-weaving traditions: Working with the Wool, Designing with the Wool, and The Weaver's Pathway. This book augments the information in Bennett's previous works with all-new chapters on spinning, carding, and dyeing techniques...

Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books) Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country (Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books)
List Price: $35.00
Sale Price: $21.98
Used From: $21.74
Average Rating:

Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country offers a fresh interpretation of the history of Navajo (Diné) pastoralism. A dramatic reduction of livestock on the Navajo Reservation in the 1930s - mainly sheep, goats, and horses - was an ambitious attempt by the federal government to eliminate overgrazing on an arid landscape and to better the lives of the people who lived there...

The New Oxford Picture Dictionary: English-Navajo Editon (The New Oxford Picture Dictionary (1988 ed.)) The New Oxford Picture Dictionary: English-Navajo Editon (The New Oxford Picture Dictionary (1988 ed.))
List Price: $16.95
Sale Price: $15.10
Used From: $8.32
Average Rating:

Published in 1988, this dictionary continues to be a favorite of many teachers.

Sandpaintings of the Navajo Shooting Chant Sandpaintings of the Navajo Shooting Chant
List Price: $13.95
Sale Price: $7.00
Used From: $2.40

A classic of ethnology, reproducing in full color 35 sandpaintings from this important Navajo healing ceremony and analyzing their composition and artistic devices. The rites are described and explained and the symbolism and myth they express thoroughly explored.

Dine Bahane': The Navajo Creation Story Dine Bahane': The Navajo Creation Story
List Price: $24.95
Sale Price: $15.41
Used From: $9.94
Average Rating:

This is the most complete version of the Navajo creation story to appear in English since Washington Matthews’ Navajo Legends of 1847. Zolbrod’s new translation renders the power and delicacy of the oral storytelling performance on the page through a poetic idiom appropriate to the Navajo oral tradition...

NavajoVintage.com is your premier source for Vintage Navajo Rugs, Silver, Turquoise, Baskets, Beading, Vintage Native American Hand crafts, tribal collectibles and artifacts.

 Navajo Vintage Auctions


MAGNIFICENT NATIVE AMERICAN DREAM CATCHERS BROWN EX LGE

MAGNIFICENT NATIVE AMERICAN DREAM CATCHERS BROWN EX LGE

- $27.38 19m
MAGNIFICENT NATIVE AMERICAN DREAM CATCHER BEADED PURPLE

MAGNIFICENT NATIVE AMERICAN DREAM CATCHER BEADED PURPLE

2 $22.81 20m
NATIVE AMERICAN DREAM CATCHERS BLACK WITH MIRRORS DC418

NATIVE AMERICAN DREAM CATCHERS BLACK WITH MIRRORS DC418

- $25.55 21m
NATIVE AMERICAN DREAM CATCHERS PURPLE & MIRRORS DC417

NATIVE AMERICAN DREAM CATCHERS PURPLE & MIRRORS DC417

- $18.24 22m
Leone Kuhne Native American Indian Handpainted Art Tile

Leone Kuhne Native American Indian Handpainted Art Tile

$65.00 27m
MAGNIFICENT NATIVE AMERICAN DREAM CATCHER PURPLE  DC921

MAGNIFICENT NATIVE AMERICAN DREAM CATCHER PURPLE DC921

- $22.81 29m
NATIVE AMERICAN INDIAN AX  SLAVE KILLER CHEROKEE GA

NATIVE AMERICAN INDIAN AX SLAVE KILLER CHEROKEE GA

$65.00 37m
Old Native American Indian Dolls & Children Guide

Old Native American Indian Dolls & Children Guide

$65.00 40m
MAGNIFICENT NATIVE AMERICAN DREAM CATCHER BLACK  DC921

MAGNIFICENT NATIVE AMERICAN DREAM CATCHER BLACK DC921

2 $22.81 46m
LARGE Antique NATIVE AMERICAN BASKET - Coiled

LARGE Antique NATIVE AMERICAN BASKET - Coiled

4 $80.68 50m
NATIVE AMERICAN NICKEL SILVER TURQUOISE CONCHO Belt

NATIVE AMERICAN NICKEL SILVER TURQUOISE CONCHO Belt

$399.00 1h 6m
ZUNI Native American Indian  SILVER BRACELET Bev Etsate

ZUNI Native American Indian SILVER BRACELET Bev Etsate

2
$102.50
$600.00
1h 16m
1920's Native American Beaded Trinket Basket

1920's Native American Beaded Trinket Basket

1 $49.99 1h 53m
4 Native American Indian Cactus Pony Print 1960 Arizona

4 Native American Indian Cactus Pony Print 1960 Arizona

- $3.99 2h 21m
Native American Indian Pattern Wool Rug Mexican Origin

Native American Indian Pattern Wool Rug Mexican Origin

- $14.99 2h 35m
Native American Indian Painting   Help Horses

Native American Indian Painting Help Horses

-
$25.00
$75.00
2h 41m
 FRANK SHERIDAN "PIPE WOMAN"  PURSE  NATIVE AMERICAN

FRANK SHERIDAN "PIPE WOMAN" PURSE NATIVE AMERICAN

$250.00 2h 53m
USA Native American Indian Wolf & Dreamcatcher 3x5 Flag

USA Native American Indian Wolf & Dreamcatcher 3x5 Flag

$4.69 3h
FRANK PAUL VIGIL    NATIVE AMERICAN   JICARILLA APACHE

FRANK PAUL VIGIL NATIVE AMERICAN JICARILLA APACHE

$575.00 3h 2m
Art COLOMBO Native American INDIAN Child 1910s postcard

Art COLOMBO Native American INDIAN Child 1910s postcard

$12.00 3h 2m

Navajo Arts and Crafts


Navajo rugs and blankets are textiles produced by Navajo people (Navajo: Diné) of the Four Corners area of the United States. Navajo textiles are highly regarded and have been sought after as trade items for over 150 years. Commercial production of handwoven blankets and rugs have been an important element of the Navajo economy. As one expert expresses it, "Classic Navajo serapes at their finest equal the delicacy and sophistication of any pre-mechanical loom-woven textile in the world."
Navajo textiles were originally utilitarian blankets for use as cloaks, dresses, saddle blankets, and similar purposes. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, weavers began to make rugs for tourism and export. Typical Navajo textiles have strong geometric patterns. They are a flat tapestry-woven textile produced in a fashion similar to kilims of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. Traders from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century encouraged adoption of some kilim motifs into Navajo designs.
 
Silversmithing is said to have been introduced to the Navajo while in captivity at Fort Sumner in eastern New Mexico in 1864. At that time Atsidi Saani learned the silversmithing and began teaching others the craft as well. By 1880 Navajo silversmiths were creating handmade jewelry including bracelets, tobacco flasks, necklaces, bow guards and eventually evolved into earrings, buckles, bolos, hair ornaments and pins. Turquoise had been used with jewelry by the Navajo for hundreds of years, but they did not use turquoise inlay.
 
Though some people say the Navajo learned the art of weaving from the Ute Tribe, the origins of Navajo weaving may never be known. The first Spaniards to visit the region wrote about seeing Navajo blankets. By the 18th century the Navajo had begun to import yarn with their favorite color, Bayeta red. Using an upright loom the Navajos made almost exclusively utilitarian blankets. Little patterning and few colors on almost all blankets, except for the much sought after Chief's Blanket, which evolved from the 1st Phase, few wide bands, to the 2nd phase, wide bands with squares on the corners, to the 3rd Phase, which made more and more use of patterns and colors. Around the same time the Navajo people, who had long started traded for commercial wool, often from the uniforms of soldiers, rewove these into intricate multicolored blankets called Germantown.
 
Some early European settlers moved in and set up trading posts, often buying Navajo Rugs by the pound and selling them back east by the bale. Still these traders encouraged the locals to weave blankets and rugs into distinct styles. They included "Two Gray Hills" (predominantly black and white, with traditional patterns), "Teec Nos Pos" (colorful, with very extensive patterns), "Ganado" (founded by Don Lorenzo Hubbell), red dominated patterns with black and white, "Crystal" (founded by J. B. Moore), oriental and Persian styles (almost always with natural dyes), "Wide Ruins", "Chinlee", banded geometric patterns, "Klagetoh", diamond type patterns, "Red Mesa" and bold diamond patterns. Many of these patterns exhibit a fourfold symmetry, which is thought by Gary Witherspoon to embody traditional ideas about harmony or Hozh.