Page 93 - TheHopiIndians

MESA POLK OF HOPILAND 85

resulting yarn being strong, even, and tightly twisted
with the simple spindle. Sometimes the spinner
dresses and finishes the yarn by means of a corn cob
smoothed by long use. The women, by virtue of their
skill in culinary matters, are usually the dyers, and the
dye they concoct from sunflower seeds or blue beans
is a fast blue. In old times cotton was prepared for
spinning by whipping it with slender switches on a
bed of sand, and this process is yet required for the
cotton used for the sacred sashes. Now nearly every
family is provided with wire cards purchased from
traders. These cards look quite out of place in the
hands of priests in the kiva, where they are used in
combing the cotton for the sacred cord used in tying
the feathers to the pahos.
When the kiva is not in use for a ceremony it is
common to find there a weaver busy at his rude loom
and growing web. To the great beams of the roof is
fastened the upper yarn beam of the loom, and secured
to pegs in holes in the stone slabs of the floor is the
lower yarn beam. Between these is tightly stretched
the warp. The weaver squats on the floor before the
loom, having ready by him the few simple implements
of his craft, consisting of a wooden knife or batten
highly polished from use, for beating down the yarn,
a wooden comb also for pressing home the woof, and
the bobbins which are merely sticks with the yarn
wrapped back and forward spirally upon them. He
picks out a certain number of warp threads with the