Mountain Goat

[Photo by Mark Kaarremaa]

Look what turned up on my step! A mountain goat head. Even Fergie is fascinated with the old goat. The goat had been hunted by a friends' grandfather many years ago and was destined for the dump until I mentioned I was looking for mtn. goat wool. So the old goat ended up coming for dinner and what was going to be a shaving party but before I could put razors in everyone's hands, one of the guests protested. Claiming she could find someone who would want the old goat, someone who might be able to find goat wool naturally shed from a goat or two up in the mountains. Okay, razors down for now. This old goat can remain fully bearded for awhile longer. In the meantime, if anyone has goat wool they would like to swap for this head, let me know.

[Photo Chilcat yarn - mtn goat wool around
cedar.  Photo by Mark Kaarremaa]

Mtn. goat Oreamnos americanus is actually in the antelope family, not in the goat family. First Nations such as the Chilkat Tlingit people  used the wool to make their famous Chilkat blankets. They spun mtn goat wool around thin strips of cedar.  

[Photo by Liz H-K, Chilcat Blanket
made from  mtn goat wool. CMC]

The Coast Salish used the goat wool in blankets and regalia. The goat wool is easily seen in the plain white blankets woven in a twill pattern although the wool was also used in twined or hybrid blankets.   

Wool was collected in the wild where the goats shed the fur in late spring. Alternatively, the goats were hunted and the pelts were moistened, then rolled up with the fur inside for a few days before unrolling and pulling the fur out of the hide. 

[Photo by Liz H-K, Coast Salish Blanket made from
 mtn goat wool CMC#VIG250]

Mtn goat has two types of hair/fur/wool, a kemp-like wiry hair and a very soft underdown wool.  Very fine blankets had much of the hair removed before spinning the soft down wool but a few hairs always remain and are useful for identifying the wool as coming from mtn goat.  

[Photo -Mtn goat near Banff. You can see his
wool starting to moult. Photo by Mark Kaarremaa]

Interestingly mtn goats are only found on the mainland not on Vancouver island, yet the Cowichan have an origin story that includes mtn goats on the island. In the last decade or so, mtn goat bones were found in a cave on northern Vancouver Island and carbon dated to 12,000 years old. So although now extinct on the island, they once lived here just as the origin story says.
  

A Coast Salish Blanket hidden in Alaska

While wandering the exhibits, my husband heard what he thought was an announcement about a Salish blanket and rushed over to me. I hadn't heard it so we headed to the front desk to inquire. It turned out a staff member had radioed another asking if they had seen the Salish blanket and that is what he heard. It seemed my earlier email had started a hunt for a lost Salish blanket. Apparently neither museum could find it! I said I was the one who had stared the panic. They were most helpful and apologetic for misplacing the blanket and they kindly showed me all the pictures they had on file. When we finished, somewhat disappointed but appeased by the photos and conversations, we followed the suggestion of the woman at the front desk and headed across the parking lot, into the State building up to the 8th floor where I logged into the internet. Surprisingly (and most fortuitously) an email from the curator 'Come back, we found the blanket!' So back we went and had a wonderful time looking closely at Judge Wickersham's blanket.

In a summer post, I had promised to tell you about a special find in Alaska. It is a relatively unknown Coast Salish blanket once owned by Judge Wickersham. He lived in Washington State, purchased the blanket somewhere there (more on this next year as I follow an interesting lead) and took it with him when he moved to Alaska.  And there it remains, in the Wickersham House Museum...although that isn't where I saw it and that is part of the story of fortuitous luck.
I found out about the blanket from another Salish blanket researcher, Elaine Humphrey, an expert in microscopes. Elain has been investigating the fibre contents of Salish blankets using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) - a fancy microscope for extreme close-ups (see my SEM post). She had been to see the blanket and collect some fibres from it. Most interestingly, there is a small patch of black fibres which when she put under the SEM, turned out to be human hair. There is just a little of this fibre in the blanket. Think about it. Was it the weaver's hair? The spinner's hair? The original owner's hair? Was the blanket dedicated to someone? I would love to know the hidden story behind it.

[Mark Kaarremaa Photo:
Close up detail
showing black hair fibre
next to the blue triangle]

I was already booked on a cruise to Alaska but somehow had the mistaken impression that the Wickersham House Museum was in Fairbanks and that would involve a plane trip from the Alaskan Coast to Fairbanks, not something I could fit in for this trip. I happened to be talking with Elaine the week before the trip when I mentioned this and she exclaimed " Fairbanks! No. The blanket is in Juneau." I practically ran home and phoned one of the state curators who was kind enough to start arranging with the Wickersham House a visit for me.
The day before leaving on the cruise I received an email. It seems the blanket had apparently been moved from the State museum back to the Wickersham House but we hadn't quite connected with the curator there to view it. I hoped that by the time the ship got to Juneau, we had arranged for a viewing.
Internet connectivity is on cruise ships is terrible! It should be inexpensive and a decent speed. It isn't. If you can send emails for free from 30,000 feet above the earth, then surely you can send from sea level??? To make a long story short, we arrived in Juneau and no word from the curator. I assumed that I just hadn't given them enough time. None-the-less, we decided to visit both Museums.

[Photo: Judge Wickersham's
blanket hanging on the wall.]

Cruise ships do not advertise things like local museums. It is a shame. The State Museum in Alaska (see earlier post) is well worth a visit! We entered, paid a minimal fee and the woman at the desk gave us some good hints on where to go next ( cross the road, through the parking lot, into the State Building, take the elevator,get off at the 8th floor for a good view, stop by the library where there is internet service, go out the far door from the 8th floor out to the upper street and then head for Wickersham Museum). We hoped we could remember all that but in the meantime looked around the incredible exhibits. 

Judge Wickersham was bigger than life. Statesman, author, Judge, pioneer, keeper of the peace in the gold rush. He was on the first team of white men to climb Mt McKinley. And wrote 43 diaries in which he recorded life. It is heart wrenching to read his entry about loosing his son. His diaries from 1900 until his death 1939 can be found here.

[Photo: Judge Wickersham]  

The picture at the top is the blanket as of 2013. Note the hole. There is another hole a bit smaller in the lower right just out of the photo. The Judge apparently liked to sit on the blanket on his chair, so the holes line up when folded and also lined up with his tush. Note the picture at the bottom of the blanket on the wall taken before 1940. It is hard to see if this size photo but click the link to see the full image and you will notice it has been folded. The stripe in the middle is really the right edge of the blanket but has been folded in to, I suspect, hide the two holes. Interestingly the blanket also hides the full story of the black hair.

Coast Salish Blankets - a Mass Spec Update

[Photo: Salish robe, 1838-1842, Wilkes Expedition,
from the Smithsonian collection, #E2124-0]

Big news in the Coast Salish weaving world. Researchers from York University analyzed nine Salish textiles (blankets, trump lines) at the Smithsonian to try to determine what fibres were used. They used a mass spectometry technique (a way to identify molecules by their mass) to solve the question 'is there dog hair in the blankets?'  
This question has been nagging at those interested in these blankets for a long time. It is a weird question. We have Coast Salish oral history telling us this is so. We have written logs/diaries by early explorers like Capt. Vancouver, also saying dog wool was used. We have artists who wrote and even painted what was probably a wool dog (Paul Kane). But we still want 'proof'. Interesting that 'proof' has a hierarchy, which I suspect goes something like this: artwork somewhere at the bottom, then oral history, written diaries and logs, official documents, and then there is scientific 'proof' at the top. And even scientific proof has hierarchies depending on what is trying to be proven.  'Proof' has layers. One layer of proof builds upon another until you have the full story of the 'ultimate truth'. Different layers take a weak proof like a myth and builds onto it. Each layer builds more certainty in the proof. Add more layers, and the myth solidifies until you have an irrefutable fact. More proof makes it more solid, like a textile.

[Photo: Salish robe, from the
 Smithsonian collection,E1891-A]

With the wool dog fibre, the proof story goes something like this:

1. Oral history tells of the wool dog and it's wool being used in blankets and robes..
2. Early explorers (Capt. Vancouver) records the use of dog wool in textiles.
3. Early artists (Paul Kane) painted a dog that could be a wool dog and wrote of wool dogs, but artists license means this in not 'proof that the dog existed or looked like what Paul Kane sketched or painted'.
4. Eye-balling the fibre in Salish blankets show at least two different fibres, but many animals, like the Mtn Goat have an outer coat and a downy coat. So even if there are two different types of fibre, it doesn't prove that they belong to two different animals.
5. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) was used to look at fibre magnified to see differences, but it wasn't reliable for fibres that are very old as fibres can wear. A new fibre will easily show the scales on the outside but old fibres rub and wear down those scales, so it isn't conclusive when looking at the outside of the fibre. And even if the old fibre was in really good shape, we need a wool dog fibre as the baseline to compare with. How can we identify a wool dog fibre if we don't know what one looked like in the first place? No wool dog, no proof.
6. Carbon isotope analysis - This research showed that some fibres came from an animal that ate a diet of marine food. Wool dogs were fed salmon, but carbon isotope analysis can only prove that the animal did eat marine food but can not 'prove' that the marine food was salmon, nor that animal eating the marine food is a dog. See this blog for more info.
7. 1997, Osteometry (analyzing the bones) showed that there were two species of dog in the Pacific Northwest coast. This helped prove that there was intentional breeding to keep the two species apart. Why would they want to? There must have been a benefit in keeping the breeds pure, but what that reason was we can only surmise it was for the wool of one of the species. A forensic artist used the bones to sketch out what the dog could look like and there is a resemblance to the Paul Kane sketch and painting. But that doesn't prove it.
8. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) analysis - split hairs. Someone came up with the idea that if SEM wasn't reliable for old worn fibres, then what about the inside of the fibre? Split the hair and then magnify it. Lo and behold, it turns out that the inner hair tells a lot and is very useful for telling fibres apart. But, you still need to know what a wool dog fibre looks like in the first place.
9. Then, in 2006 in a dusty drawer somewhere in the Smithsonian, someone finds Mutton, a wool dog' or at least what is left of Mutton -- his pelt, which had been donated to the museum sometime. We now have a wool dog fibre! We have the baseline to compare old robes and blankets with.
10. Back to SEM and now we can compare a Mtn Goat fibre with a wool dog fibre. Check out the picture in this blog posting.
11. DNA analysis has been used to identify DNA in a Salish Blanket as being from a dog. Other blankets showed DNA from a Mtn. Goat. So DNA can be used to identify fibres in textiles. We are still waiting to hear more about this ongoing research at the Smithsonian.
12. Mass spectometry - identifies dog hair in the textiles and this is the research that was recently announced.

Yes, there now seems to be 'scientific proof that dog hair was used in some Salish blankets. Or put another way, there is now 'scientific proof' that what people said, saw and wrote about did indeed exist. And, we now have a host of techniques that can be used to help identify dog hair being used in blankets.

Click here to see all my posts on the wool dog and Salish blankets.

Here are a couple of books you might be interested in: 
Working with Wool, a Coast Salish Legacy . Although it looks at the history of the Cowichan Sweaters, it covers the history of the wool too.

And Paula Gustafson's Salish Weaving . Although it is out-of-print, it is currently the best book available on the history of Coast Salish weaving. I am awaiting eagerly Leslie Tupper's book which I believe should be close to being available.

The Perth Coast Salish Blanket

[Photo: Perth Coast Salish Blanket, photo from the Perth
 Museum web site]

As part of my research into Coast Salish spinning techniques I arranged for access to view what is known as the Perth blanket, as it is in the Perth, Scotland Museum and Art Gallery. There is a bit of a mystery surrounding the blanket. We are not sure who collected it, from where, when, or from who. Colin Robertson a Hudson Bay employee in the 1830's, had the blanket collected for him but it is not clear who collected it.   Robertson himself never visited the Fraser River area. The packing slips for Robertson's whole collection were filled out by James Tait ???? We do know it was shipped in 1833, so we know it is probably older than that. We also know it came from the Fraser River from near what was Ft. Langley and the Snuneymuxw summer camp was  the closest village to Fort Langley

Canadian Museum of Civilization

[Photo: Canadian Museum of Civilization] 

[Photo: Salish blanket at SFU Museum
of Archaeology & Ethnology] 

Last week I was lucky enough to meet with one of the Curators of Ethnology at the Canadian Museum of Ethnology who gave me a tour of the back rooms where the Coast Salish Textiles are stored.

[Photo: Coast Salish blanket at SFU
 Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology]

It was amazing to see so many in one place. I was allowed to photograph them but copyright of the objects only allows me to use the photos for educational/research use not for posting on my blog, hence I found a few others which I can post. The one on the top right shows the more Interior Salish style blanket, very close woven, with many colours. To me, this style rivals the famous Navajo blanket. These should be just as highly valued as the Navajo blanket is. I suspect the only reasons these blankets are not, is because they are not as well known.
The one below it shows the Coast Salish style - mostly white, often with a red stripe woven into it. In this case the red strip is actually a strip of commercially woven fabric.

 

[Photo: Chief George and his daughter 1902
wearing Salish woven coats]

The Coast Salish blanket is typically woven in a twill pattern and sometimes, the added stripes or plaids are done in a plain weave. The Interior Salish usually use a twined weave where the weft yarn completely covers the warp yarn.  I am using the terms Coast Salish and Interior Salish very loosely.  Where does one group end and one begin? Even within one group, there are different First Nations.  They may share a similar language but they each may have their own unique culture, history and protocols. With weaving, the techniques will cross these artificial boundaries, so it is difficult to say that a particular style blanket would only be made by one group.  Chief Joe Capilano's blanket (click this link to view it) is interesting because it contains both techniques, the bulky Coast Salish twill style, bordered by the finely twined Interior Salish style.

[Photo: The Perth Blanket] 

The blanket next on my list to see is one of the oldest and rarest it is known as the Perth blanket, as it is in the Perth Museum in Scotland.  More on this one in July when I plan on seeing this blanket in person. 

Questions I have about these blankets and spinning - 

• what techniques are used to spin the yarn?  The yarn in the Coast Salish style is quite different than that of the Interior Salish style.  
• Did they use different methods?  Thigh, spindle, toss or roll?
• Different fibres? 
• Different size whorls? 
• S or Z twist?

By the way, the Canadian Museum of Civilization is a work of art in itself. The building was designed by architect Douglas Cardinal, a Canadian. Check out his website for some inspiring photographs of his work: http://www.djcarchitect.com/

The Coast Salish Spindle

[Photo: Coast Salish whorls at the
Royal BC Museum]

I have been spending some time investigating the Coast Salish Spindle with the idea of having a friend make me one and thought I would share some of what I have found. 


The Coast Salish spindle was used mainly by the Coast Salish of Vancouver Island (e.g. Snuneymuxw , Quwutsun, Tsartlip) and the mainland Coast Salish (e.g. Musqueam, Yale, Spuzzum). The Coast Salish Spindle is distinguished from other spindles, not only due to its size: the spindle shaft usually measures 90-120 cms (35-48”) and the whorl is commonly 18-20 cms (7-8”), but also due to its method of use –tossing into the air (more on this in a later blog...once I have had a chance to figure out how that worked).

The whorl, often made from Maple wood (have you ever seen those beautiful Maple trees in Cowichan Bay?), is placed either midway up the shaft or between half-way and two thirds down the shaft. The shaft is tapered with the larger end at the bottom. The whorl is often decorated by incised carving on one side of the whorl, the side facing down towards the spinner. The upper side of the whorl is sometimes flat or slightly concave. On many whorls the center shaft hole is thicker than the surrounding wood, tapering down to a thinner outer edge of the whorl.

[Photo: Salish spindle on display at
the Royal BC Museum]

The Salish spindle was used for spinning goat wool mixed with dog hair from the Salish Wool Dog. The yarn created was a thick yarn used for blankets. Later the spindle was used for yarns used in the Cowichan sweater industry.


There are a few things about this spindle that I find intriguing: its size; the way it is held; the method of tossing and turning; the use of a tension ring to add the tension to the drafting process. Intriguing enough to try to recreate one and to try it out. I will let you know how it works.
Edited to suggest a great book on the history of Salish Wool and sweaters:

Working with Wool, a Coast Salish Legacy . Although it looks at the history of the Cowichan Sweaters, it covers the history of the wool too.

Salish Style Indian Head Spinner

[Photo: Annie's spinner from the 70's
from when she lived on a farm in the
Cowichan Valley]

I recently dug out an old spinning wheel? head? I had stored in the laundry room and am going to oil it, replace the scotch tension brake and recondition the belt on my Singer treadle, the engine for this wheel? head?  I bought it in the late 70's early 80's. At the time I lived in a 600 sq ft house with only two power outlets which explains why I had a Singer treadle machine and a need for small items. The Indian Head spinner could be easily put away when not in use and the sewing machine could be lifted out of the treadle case and the Indian Head spinner would fit in its place.
This spinning wheel has a variety of names: Indian Head Spinner, Country Spinner, Salish Spinner, and Cowichan Spinner. They were popular with the Vancouver Island Coast Salish spinners especially in the 60's and 70's, and were instrumental for spinning the yarn for Cowichan Sweaters.  

[Photo: My spinner attached to the
Singer treadle.  The Singer has been taken
off and can be seen on the floor]

Some consisted of just the 'head' like mine (on the right) which mounted onto a Singer treadle sewing machine. Others were permanently mounted onto the Singer or Singer-like treadle, others were crafted as one unit (like Annie's on the left) and in the 70's Ashford took this one step further and started producing the Ashford Country Spinner as did Clemes and Clemes.
This is not a machine for spinning fine yarns. Forget the Scottish ring shawl yarns- those shawls that are spun so fine they can be slipped through a wedding ring. This is for thick yarns. Not necessarily dense but bulky. Everything is oversized: the bobbin, the hooks and even the orifice. This makes it perfect for spinning art yarns, thick yarns, rug yarns and for plying. It's currently having a revitalization as modern spinners are looking for exactly this type of wheel to add 'things' to the yarn. Crazy weird 'things' like miniature skull heads, beads, buttons, feathers, eye balls, etc.
Traditionally, fibre was pre-drafted into a rough roving, or, in more modern times, roving was bought. But in either case you pre-drafted a pile in preparation for the spinning.
These spinners are fast. They whip the fibre onto the bobbin. There is a Scottish tension but be prepared to have the yarn drawn in quickly. I heard a story of a Coast Salish woman who was producing yarn very, very quickly, so quickly dust and bits of farmland were causing a cloud of dirt, dust and debris around the spinner and she had to wear a mask to avoid the cloud and flying bits.

Since this is such a polpular post, I have edited to add some resources.
Here are a couple of books you might be interested in: 
Working with Wool, a Coast Salish Legacy . Although it looks at the history of the Cowichan Sweaters, it covers the history of the wool too.

And for children,Yetsa's Sweater a child learn's how a Cowichan Sweater is made.

Fur, hair and wool - what's it all about?

A human hair
Photo done by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM)
© 2010 University of Minnesota Duluth

What's the difference between fur, wool and hair? This is a question that has been bugging me for a long time, so I tried to find out the answer. Let me tell you right up front that I didn't find a simple answer. The following is what I have gleamed but please post a comment if you can add any clarity to this question.
Some of this confusion seems to be a matter of word usage, as they are all the same protein (keratin), so technically they are all hair. However, some features that help distinguish the usage of terms: The thickness for example. Hair has lower density with 500 follicles/sq inch although not all are active at the same time, so let's say @100-200 follicles per sq inch should define hair. Sheep wool on the other hand, have up to 60,000 follicles/sq inch (Merino) and if the density is high, like a sea otter which has one of the highest densities at 800,000 per sq inch, the hair is referred to as fur. 
Another characteristic that some use to distinguish between terms is the growth pattern. Fur grows to a certain length then stops, while wool and hair keeps on growing. Although, this all depends on species and genetics, but generally this seems a good separator. Fur tends to have a major shedding time annually. Only the primitive sheep (eg. Soay, Orkney, Hebridean) and the so called 'hair' sheep breeds (eg.Saint Croix, West African, Wiltshire Horn) shed annually. 

Churro sheep wool. SEM
Photo by Dave Lewis and the Ohio 
 Agriculture Research and Development Center in Wooster

Wool tends to be the term for sheep fleece. Some sheep have kemp (thick hairs) in amongst the wool usually in is found in certain breeds of sheep and certain locations (eg. rear end), other sheep and Llamas have double coats with longer guard-type hairs designed to shed water and shorter insulating down fur (eg. Icelandic, Navajo Churro) for warmth.

Alpaca.
Photo by Dave Lewis and the Ohio 
 Agriculture Research and Development Center in Wooster

And then there is the more technical characteristics, like the cellular structure. The hair shaft is made of cuticle cells (keritine) that form scales, overlapping each other and pointing towards the tip. The cells form a protective coating around the cortex (inner area). In the fine merino wool, the cells are one layer thick while human hair can be 10 layers thick. This cellular structure is different for each type of hair (eg. eyelashes, whiskers, hair) from different animals. The scanning electron microscope photos here show some of the different structures. Look at the difference between human hair, churro sheep and angora rabbit in the pictures here. But, it doesn't help much in distinguishing hair from fur from wool.

Alpaca  Light microscope photo
showing the medulation (dark areas).
Photo by Dave Lewis and the Ohio 
 Agriculture Research and Development Center in Wooster

Inside the hair shaft is the cortex. This is the middle of the hair/wool/fur. If the centre of the cortex is hollow we call the core 'medulla' or a medulated hair. The inner core can be a consistently hollow core, or contain sections which are hollow. This medulation can provide insulation, hence hairs with no medulation hold heat less well than medulated hairs. Alpacas and Llamas have medulated hairs while sheep do not, hence Alpaca wool is a better insulator than wool.

Angora. Note the very interesting V-shape cell structure
SEM Photo by Dave Lewis and the Ohio
 Agriculture Research and Development Center in Wooster

So why is this interesting? For a few reasons. The structure of a fibre creates its characteristics for: heat retention; strength, elasticity, felting tendency, light reflection, etc. And also because I want to be able to analyze a fibre and have a way to figure out if it is Mountain Goat or sheep wool or from the Coast Salish wool dog.

Victoria Spindles - Signs of the Lekwungen

Spindle whorl marking
 llqemasan (Camosun)

A few years ago the City of Victoria worked with the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations, to create and place seven larger-than-life spindles and whorls marking seven important Lekwungen locations around the city.  This picture was taken at what was a Hudson's Bay Fort, Fort Camosun, later known as Fort Victoria.  It marks the two worlds meeting.

“ I remember my grandma using a spindle whorl. She didn’t speak much English, and I didn’t speak much Coast Salish, but I understood that the spindle whorl is the foundation of any family – it can weave a tapestry of information.”  Butch Dick, Songhees artist and designer of the spindle whorls

The second spindle is at the highest point in Beacon Hill Park, 'Meqen' (which means warmed by the sun) overlooking the Salish Sea, and on the far shore, the Olympic Peninsula.  On the hillside, 'Coqwialls' a game similar to field hockey was played and lower down a village once stood until about 300 years ago.  Camus, a wildflower and bulb that provided a sweet carbohydrate is found in abundance in this area.  Just off shore, fish were caught using reef-net fishing techniques.

Beacon Hill Park, just below the spindle whorl

Cedar

Cortes Island Museum

replicas done by Hillary Stewart

for the cover of her book 'Cedar'.

Recently, I was on Cortes Island and we stopped in to see the museum. Actually, we went there twice as it was so interesting. A small museum but it packs in a lot. Even the surrounding grounds are interesting, planted with heritage flowers, fruit trees and other plants from various locations on the Island. 
At one end of the room is a beautifully crafted display case with aboriginal artifacts in the case or in drawers that pull out. In these drawers were these replicas....I hesitate to use that word as it implies they are not real. They are real, just not original artifacts but these are made by Hilary Stewart, the hands-on anthropological author of the book Cedar: Tree of Life to the Northwest Coast Indians and were made for the cover shot of that book. When I look at them, I am amazed and in awe of how carefully she studied the techniques in order to replicate them and then draw so carefully detailed drawings so that others can learn from her book. And take a close look at the rope samples marked 'woven' (they are not woven) from cedar bark. They are SPUN as in spin as in twisting fibre, as in: 

From the verb spin: to make (yarn) by drawing out, twisting, and winding fibers. 

Notice how the bark has been shredded by pounding and then SPUN.


Cedar contains plicatic acid, an irritant than acts like a natural insecticide but can also cause skin irritation (and lung issues in people who constantly work with cedar sawdust). Many garments were made of spun cedar as was rope, line, and cable. Perhaps the bark does not contain the acid or perhaps it only effects a bit, as First Nations wore and worked with cedar, their tree of life constantly. Cedar provided clothing, housing and transportation. It was so important, it became part of the culture, being used to decorate people and canoes, and boughs of cedar are used to brush you in a cleansing ceremony. As Crisca Bierwert explains in the opening pages of her book Brushed by Cedar, Living by the River Coast Salish Figures of Power,:

Salish cleansing ceremonies and honorings include cedar boughs.  Long ago, people swept the packed-earth floors of their houses with long cedar branches, and today people still use them to add protection at the apertures of homes.  For clarity of mind and heart, a brushing of cedar takes away the anguish of hurtful action, or of loss, and lifts the anxieties of an uncertain future.  The painful feeling drizzles out of a person like the tingling wakening from numbness, like a minor electrical storm, like tiny quills spiralling out of the body.  I cannot explain this, but I have experienced it.  And while this brushing does not seem to have the ability to change the world, it does invite transformation.

It helped transform me. 

The Secret of Cowichan Wool - the sheep

Washing fleece in Iceland

Thirty odd years ago when I took a spinning course from Judith McKenzie McCuin I remember her telling us about the Cowichan sweater yarn and what had made it so special - a yarn that was light, bulky, yet very warm. So the traditional Cowichan sweater did not weigh very much. She mentioned that the fleece was from sheep resulting from a variety of mixed breeds that provided wool that was high in lanolin (good for repelling water), and had a good crimp which was needed for the fibres to press against each other creating lots of air pockets which provides the insulation. Ever since I have wondered what breed of sheep created those characteristics (see an earlier blog in which I was still wondering). What did the early settlers and the Coast Salish women use for those amazing, warm, lightweight, sweaters?
Today I was reading an older issue of Spin-Off and came across an article written by Judith in which she provides the answer (MacKenzie McCuin, J. (2008). On Washing Fleece. Spin-Off Magazine, 32(3), 64-68.)! A cross breed of Churro sheep which had been left on islands in the Georgia Strait (now known as the Salish Sea) to provide meat for ship wreaked sailors or future sailors in search of nourishment, and down breeds such as Dorset and Hampshire brought over later by settlers. So, after 30-odd years I stumbled across the answer.
I now have an even higher respect for Churro sheep (see and earlier post about Navajo churro). The Gulf Islands can dry out in the summer and there isn't much in the way of green grass, hence the Churro would have done just fine, as they did in the American mid-west where the Navajo raised them.
Judith's article goes on to explain how the fleeces were cleaned: they were either spread over fences or hedges, allowing the rain to clean them or placed in a fast-running creek. The water cleans out the dirt and suint (a type of sheep sweat but it is a natural detergent) but leaves in the lanolin which provides the rain-proofing for the yarn which is ideal for this wet climate.
I wonder if there are any cross-breed sheep of this type left?
Edited to suggest a great book on the history of Cowichan Wool and sweaters:

Working with Wool, a Coast Salish Legacy . Although it looks at the history of the Cowichan Sweaters, it covers the history of the wool too.

.