Although it is difficult to determine exactly when American rug hooking began, we know that its origins started in North America in Canada’s Maritime Provinces and in the New England area. The technique then spread rapidly along the Atlantic coast, through the St. Lawrence Valley, Acadia, and inland to Ontario and Pennsylvania. Several clues lead us to believe that it first started in the mid-19th century. For example, rugs are most often hooked on burlap, which did not become commercially available in North America until the 1850s, precisely the period when hooking became popular.
Hooked rugs are made by pulling loops of yarn or fabric through a stiff woven base such as burlap, linen, or rug warp. Antique hooked rugs were created on burlap after 1850 because burlap was free as long as one used old grain and feed bags. The custom of using an embroidery hoop, which had been around for several centuries, facilitated the development of hooking. Because of their isolation and lack of means of communication, home-based rug hookers developed techniques and decorative elements characteristic of their regions.
Since rug hooking was a craft of poverty, rug makers put to use whatever materials were available. Every scrap of fiber that was no longer usable as clothing was put into rugs. In the United States, yarn was not a fiber of choice if one did not have access to thrums, pieces of yarn that ran 9 inches (23 cm) long. Instead the tradition of using scraps of fabric evolved. Yarns and other creatively used materials have always been used for hooked rugs. Everything from cotton t-shirts to nylon stockings were cut and used.
American rug hooking is both an art and a craft forming some of the most desirable decorative pieces made in North America. Designs for American hooked rugs can be as complex as flowers, animals, and landscapes or as simple as geometrics.

History of Navajo Rugs
In the late 16th century the Spanish arrived and conquered the Pueblo Indians in what is now the American Southwest. The Navajos lived north of the Pueblos in the plains. The Navajos took on many cultures and are similar to the plains hunters and raiders of the Plains Indians. The Pueblos grew cotton and wove blankets and garments on the looms hundreds of years before the Spanish arrived. It is thought that the weaving skills were passed on to the Pueblos from the Indians of Mexico and Central America. The Spanish introduced sheep to the Indians of the Southwest. The sheep had long, silky, smooth wool, prefect for weaving. The Spanish destroyed the Pueblo culture. Most of the Pueblos that did not get killed by the Spanish were relocated with the Navajos in the early 1700s. At this time, the Pueblos bought sheep and taught the Navajos weaving and blanket making. The earliest examples of Navajo rugs and blankets are fragments dating from the massacre of 1805 by Spanish slave traders. The fragments are simple designs in natural sheep tones - white, grey, tan, brown, black, and indigo blue. The dyes for the blue are believed to have been traded for by Mexicans traveling from Mexico City.
The oldest Navajo rugs on the market today are dated from the 1860s. Present day rugs use style, dyes, natural wool, and weaving styles just like the early weavings. The most collectable ones are the chief’s blankets from around this time. There were three phases of chief’s blankets: pre-1850s, 1850s -1860s and 1860s - 1868s. Thirty years later the Santa Fe Railroad and trading posts began to sell Navajo rugs to people coming west and to clientele in the east. When rug making reached its peak in the 1920s, the Navajos were getting dyes packs and wool from the east. The Navajos still make rugs and blankets today but not on the scale they were hundreds of years ago.