Clothing
I’ll be telling you about what men and women wore, the materials and tools and the decorations and designs of the southwest. The tribes Hopi, Pueblo, Apache, Zuni and Navajo loved in the southwest in the area around New Mexico and Arizona. The climate in a temperate desert is very hot. The time period was a long time ago, around the fifteen hundreds, before the Europeans arrived.
What men and women wore
In the southwest men and women mostly wore the same clothing. Girls and boys mostly wore kilts/skirts, similar fringed aprons, leggings, sandals, and belts. The elders wore the same as either the girls or boys, of course in their own size. The men sometimes wore gentlemen clothing which is a garment that hangs down from the man’s waist. The women sometimes wore a manta, which is made of two blankets. One of the blankets is wrapped around and tied on the shoulder, then the other blanket is wrapped around and tied on the waist. In the southwest you can see that the men and women usually wore similar clothing, but sometimes they also wore different clothing.
Materials and tools
In the southwest the materials and tools made it much easier to make the clothing. One of the tools used for making the clothing was wooden frames or looms or spindles. For weaving you would also use a comb to make the blankets weave close together and flat. Some other materials were buckskin, wool, turkey feathers and plant fibers. Some more tools would, of course, be their hands, and they used slender branches to make smooth hard knitting needles. Pinion trees and rabbit weed were dyes. In the southwest you can see that most of the tools were mostly used for weaving and the materials were very different.
Decorations and designs
In the southwest decorations and designs were inspired by ancestors so they were very important to the women who made the decorations and designs. They were very pretty once they were made. They used bold diamonds and zigzag patterns. They also used plants such as pinion trees and rabbit weed to make dyes of different shades and colors. Some materials like animal skin, plant fibers and turkey feathers were put on blankets or clothing as decorations or designs. The way the baskets and necklaces were decorated and designed was passed down to the girls from their mother’s ancestral tradition. For necklace making stones were used for beads. Bones were made into ornaments. Turquoise was added to make it pretty. In the southwest you can see that there are many interesting and different ways to make decorations and designs.
Conclusion
I found researching and typing to you interesting, really fun and exciting but also a challenge because I want my paper about Native Americans clothing good enough for you to read. The most interesting thing was writing my first draft!!!!! I was really nervous. Would you be nervous? I got the southwest and I was so happy about that!!! Would you have wanted the southwest, southeast, northwest or northeast? I couldn’t wait for you to read this paper!! I had so much fun in the prosess!! I am so glad I got to do this amazing project for you!!
