American Highway allows KNLS listeners to travel America's back roads, highways, and byways.  You'll find some of this nation's most interesting people, places and events in these stories.

Travel interstate forty through northern New Mexico and Arizona and you are passing through the tribal lands of the Navajo Indians.

There are more than 550 distinct Native American Indian tribes that call the United States home. Many are struggling to keep their unique history and traditions from being swamped by the tidal wave of American pop culture. But the Navajo people are thriving. The Navajo language, featured recently in the Hollywood blockbuster film, Windtalkers, remains vibrant and widely spoken. A growing population of nearly a quarter million Navajos continue to live a largely traditional lifestyle on tribal lands.

Navajo artistic tradition also continues to thrive. Holding forth from under a basketball goal at one end of small elementary school gymnasium, an auctioneer works a crowd of about sixty bidders. This is the Navajo rug auction held on the third Friday of each month in the reservation town of Crown Point, New Mexico, about sixty kilometers northeast of Gallup. Bidders are seated in folding chairs on the gym floor. Lining the walls and crowding the back door, the Navajo weavers who created the rugs follow the auction intently. Many Navajos lead a subsistence lifestyle and what they earn here tonight may have to support them for some time.

"They held their first auction I guess back in 1968. At that time they used to hold the auction maybe once a year," says auction manager Christina Ellsworth as she helps the Navajo weavers register their rugs for sale at the gymnasium’s back door. "Over the years I guess with people just spreading the news about the rug auction it just grew and we get people from all over the United States – from Europe and from Canada. It expanded so much that we have the auction now once a month and we have anywhere from two-hundred and fifty to sometimes three hundred and fifty rugs to auction off."

The rugs are rectangular in shape and range in size from just under a meter in length to more than four meters. The weave is extremely tight and the colors are generally earth tones; brown, red, yellow and orange – along with sky blue, white, black and gray. There are just over a dozen distinct styles of Navajo Rug. Most are associated with particular regions of the Navajo reservation, an area larger than Belgium and straddling four western American states.

"They’re a real fine weaving like a doily," explains Christina Ellsworth, describing a rug style that takes its name from the Two Grey Hills region due north of Crown Point. "When they’re spinning the wool they double spin it so that it’s really fine like a thread. That’s the kind of weaving they have, because everything is natural. They have their black their white their grays and their browns and that’s all natural. That comes directly from the sheep after they’ve spinned it and card it."

The rugs are created almost exclusively as artwork now, but traditionally were a staple of Navajo life. Bed blankets, floor coverings, robes in cold weather, or two sewn together made a dress. Navajo rug art tends toward geometric patterns; squares, triangles, diamonds or alternating bands of color. These shapes also tend to correspond to certain regions of the reservation. But there are some themes any Navajo weaver might visit.

Joe is a collector from Santa Fe and as he examines the rugs prior to the auction he explains, "This is a pictorial style here which is not specific to any region. This can happen virtually anywhere on the reservation. They would include everyday scenes that the Navajo are familiar with. And of course, this one shows hogans and sheep and corrals."

The patterns found in traditional Navajo rugs are usually quite simple, but a few steps away Joe pulls out a rug that’s noticeably more complex. "Some people would argue that this has been influenced by oriental rugs that have been shown to the weavers. And of course now with television and magazines weavers have an even wider range of visual motivators to look to," Joe says.

Joe occasionally holds a rug up to his nose to sniff at the wool. He says if the weaving actually smells like sheep it’s a good bet the wool really did come from the weaver’s own flock. "Sometimes you can actually smell the lanolin content in it. I’m not to sure this one…(sniffs) This one does smell like that. Little bit like a barn yard smell. Which can indicate that the lanolin content has not been removed from the wool as it would be in a commercial process," Joe says.

Just a few blocks from the school where the auction is held, Navajo weaver Bernice Largo-Crowe is hard at work on a new rug in her Crown Point home. She’s sitting on the floor with legs crossed in front of the loom. The new rug will eventually measure one meter by two. She keeps the weave tight by tapping down each new strand of wool with a tool that looks very much like a hair pick or comb.

"I started off with the small, small rugs since when I was nine years old, uh, from my mom," Bernice remembers. "I guess I enjoy weaving. So that’s why I just went on and on. Still weaving."

Bernice works a full time job in the local office of the Navajo Nation tribal government and weaves in her free time. She’s an experienced artist, and so can accurately predict how long the current one by two-meter rug will take to complete.

"If I weave every day, evenings, and then if I weave every day on the weekend all day, it probably take me about two weeks. If it’s just every other day or once or twice a week it’ll probably take more than two weeks," Bernice says.

Bernice can expect to be paid anything from one hundred to two hundred dollars a square meter for her work, depending on the quality of the weaving and the theme. Room size rugs can auction for several thousand dollars. Ms. Largo-Crowe’s daughter has learned how to weave, but so far has shown very little enthusiasm for the craft.

Back at the school, auction manager Christina Ellsworth says the future looks bright. She says other Navajo families are having much better luck generating interest in weaving among the tribe’s young people.

"We’re getting a lot of young children, or young kids that are weaving – teenagers – and we’re even getting a lot of men weavers now. So I don’t think, you know, that it’s declining. I think it’s going to continue on," she concludes.

If you’d like to learn more about the Crown Point Navajo rug auction, you can visit their website at crownpointrugauction.com. Learning more about the culture and traditional art of the Navajo nation…just another stop along the American Highway.

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