Spider Woman

A Story of Navajo Weavers and Chanters

Gladys A. Reichard

"Spider Woman instructed the Navajo women how to weave on a loom which Spider Man told them how to make. The crosspoles were made of sky and earth cords, the warp sticks of sun rays, the healds of rock crystal and sheet lightning. The batten was a sun halo, white shell made the comb. There were four spindles; one a stick of zigzag lightning with a whorl of cannel coal; one a stick of flash lightning with a whorl of turquoise; a third had a stick of sheet lightning with a whorl of abalone; a rain streamer formed the stick of the fourth, and its whorl was white shell." (Navajo Legend)

New York : Macmillan,

[1934]

Scanned, proofed and formatted at sacred-text.com, June 2009. This text is in the public domain in the US because its copyright was not renewed in a timely fashion.