A weaving culture that cannot be left out of any atlas of the wool roads is that of the Dine’é of the Southwestern United States. Called the Navajo, the Dine’é followed the seasons to different lands, and found that the Churra or Churro sheep, which were brought by the Spaniards provided a means for a good life.
The Churro came to the new world with the Spanish in 1494 with Cortez and Coronado, but it is likely that these sheep were used for food for the explorers/plunderers. In 1598 when Spanish Don Juan Onate came to colonize land in what is now the southwest of the United States, he brought a flock of 2,900 sheep.
The success of the Dine tending and breeding meant that the people native to this land could be largely self-sufficient. Several times, the United States government stepped in to imprison the Navajo people and forcibly slaughter their sheep. After one of these internments, the government allowed the Navajo to leave but supplied them with only two sheep each, down from their original herds of hundreds of thousands. These sheep were not their own Churro sheep, but sheep that had been mixed with other breeds, Merino and Rambouillet. Their wool did not fit the Dine’e ways of cleaning and carding; the fiber was best for processing by machines before it could be used for weaving.
A very few of the old sheep had survived in the canyons but these were very few. Without enough sheep or room to range with the change of the seasons, the old way of life was near impossible. The life that the Dine’é had fashioned around the wealth of the Churro was destroyed. Those very few who could find away, continued to live as their grandparents had done, as best they could, to this very day. Since the 1970s, there has been a movement to rebuild the Churro sheep through a long process of selection.
Resources
Navajo Sheep Project Founded in 1977 to preserve Navajo-Churro sheep
Dr. Lyle McNeal College of Agriculture Utah State University Logan, Utah
Diné bé ‘Iiná Founded in 1991 to promote Navajo sheep and goat producers
Sheep is Life – festival http://www.navajolifeway.org
“The Real Sheep”–Living on Earth–NPR Nationwide Broadcast“All Things Considered” June 26, 2005 Daniel Kraker
Peace Fleece Navajo wool buy Maine harrisville