Navajo Clothing and Hair Styles, 1900
The Navajo men wear a sort of turban; a piece of red cloth or a bandana twisted around the brow, the hair being done up in a kind of Greek…
From: Unknown To: 1901 C.E.
From The North-Americans of Yesterday by Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh, 1901.
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
The Navajo men wear a sort of turban; a piece of red cloth or a bandana twisted around the brow, the hair being done up in a kind of Greek knot behind.
Their clothes consist of a shirt or jacket of cotton goods, and trousers of the same stuff reaching to just below the knee and slashed up on the outside for about eight inches. They sometimes wear close-fitting breeches with leggings. This garment is generally held at the waist by a belt, which is often richly decorated by discs of silver about two by four inches elaborately engraved in their native style. The trousers are sometimes bound inside the leggings.
Their leggings are of buckskin, red or black, frequently fastened on the outside by a row of silver half-globe buttons of their own make and woven garters, some three feet long, twisted around above the calf. The leggings are also applied without any buttons when they are held by the garters. The moccasin is one finely made, red or black, or the natural tan colour, with a rawhide sole turned up all round, and, like the leggings, often fastened by several silver buttons. The Navajos are extremely fond of black.
The hair of the women is parted and tied in a knot behind very much the same as that of the men. Their dress is now very like that of Moki women, that is, a garment that is attached over the right shoulder, under the left, and falls about half way between the knees and the ground, usually caught in at the waist by a sash or belt. Also like the Moki women they wear a kind of combined moccasin and legging, on certain occasions. This is a rawhide-soled moccasin with a long narrow top-piece which is wound round and round the leg after the moccasin is put on, and gives an almost straight line from the knee down, almost exactly the same as the Moki custom.
In fact, so far as garments are concerned, it might often be difficult to tell Navajo and Moki women apart. The Moki women wear their hair differently; the married ones making two cues of it which hang down on each side of the face, usually in front of the shoulders, while the unmarried ones have theirs done up in two extraordinary wheels or discs standing parallel with the side of the face or head, and attached to it by a sort of axle wound round with string. This effect is obtained by first dividing the hair into two equal parts, drawing each part to its side of the head and winding it with string just above the ear, and a little behind it. Each division is then again divided, horizontally, into two equal parts, and these parts are carefully brushed around a curved stick, like a letter U, held with the opening sidewise, the upper one down and around and the lower one up and around, till they are completely wound over the U and spread out as much as possible at the same time. Then they are tied in the middle with a string, that is, between the arms of the U, and finally, before withdrawing the U, the two portions are fully spread, till when the U is taken out, and they are further arranged, they almost meet and form a perfect wheel or circle. In ordinary practice they do not meet, but resemble a well tied bow-knot of broad ribbon; but when a girl has a fine head of hair that has been well cared for, and her mother takes a pride in dressing her hair for any ceremony or feast day, the wheel is almost perfect.
This peculiar method of hair-dressing is now found nowhere else in the world, except among the unmarried women of the Coyotero Apaches, who are said to wear a coil something like it.
Some of the Pueblo women tie their hair in a knot behind like the Navajo women; in fact, both Navajo women and men closely resemble the Pueblo in their dress, the reason in my opinion being that advanced before: namely, the incorporation of Pueblo stock. The Moki men also sometimes wear their hair like Navajos, but full-blood Navajos have taken up their residence with the Moki, so it may be confined to these and their children. The regular Moki method of dressing a man’s hair is to "bang" it across the eyebrows, cut the side locks straight back on the lower line of the ear, and gather the remainder into a knot behind.
The brush used is composed of a bunch of stiff grass tied round the middle with a string. Both Navajo and Moki men as well as those of other tribes now wear white men’s trousers when obtainable. The costumes worn in the various ceremonials of the Navajos, Pueblos, Iroquois, and other Amerinds are so numerous and so varied that there is no space in a chapter like this for a description of them.
Dellenbaugh, Frederick S. The North-Americans of Yesterday, The Knickerbocker Press, 1901.
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