Tribal Textiles

[Photo: Judith's tribal rugs from Africa]

I've just come back from a wonderful 4 day workshop on Tribal Textiles taught by Judith McKenzie. Judith taught me spinning 25 years ago, so it was a wonderful way to reconnect up with her. So much to spin, so much to tell. It will take me a few postings to even begin to convey what was covered and the sense of adventure that went along with it.
It was held in the dead centre of vampire country apparently. One needs to be a female teenager or a vampire devotee to understand that the small town of Forks, Washington is the setting for the Twilight Series of books and movies about vampires, werewolves and teenage angst.

[Photo: Amy and Judith at the treaty line
(between the werewolves and the vampires)]

Vampires aside, we spent the four days learning from First Nations (Makah, Quileute, Salish), touring the Makah Museum at Neah Bay and behind the scenes at their storage facility, hiking to Cape Flattery, walking the beaches at La Push,working with cedar, Salish weaving and coiling, spinning, spinning and spinning, and, on one occasion howling at the moon.
Here's a list of fibres we spun or wove:
Texas mohair/wool - thigh spinning, Hemp, Hemp and feathers, hemp and down, Dog hair, Dog hair and feathers, dog hair and down, Wolf/wool, Bison/silk, Bison/wool, Cotton, and Cedar.
I'll try to do each one justice in later postings.

Alpaca - are calling

The Alpaca stars are lining up and calling me. First, I heard a fascinating modern-day story  about the olden days in Peru and it centres on the Alpaca. Twenty years ago, Jane Wheeler, an archaezoologist (read about her and the history of the organization she started--Conopa) was asked to investigate some mummified alpacas who had been buried with reverence and honour. Why? What was special about these alpacas? I believe that at the time of her study, alapacas were raised for primarily for meat and wool was a bit of a by-product, useful of course but not so much for the value of the wool compared to what their meat provided. Their fibre, was somewhat coarse, and according to one article, was only suitable for rugs. But the mummified alpaca had the finest, softest hair, much finer than the modern day alpaca.  
It appears that in history, alpacas were treasured and bred for their fine fibre, elevating alpaca as the backbone of the economy.  The Spaniards, when they arrived, destroyed alpacas and hence the economy.  When the alpacas lost their worth, they lost their breeding programs and the fibres lost their fineness.  Along comes Jane, her discovery, and her resolve to bring back the economy, the fine fibre, and all of a sudden after hundreds of years, an alpaca revival begins. A fascinating story. Read more of it here: http://discovermagazine.com/2001/apr/featalpaca/?searchterm=alpaca
Next, I read about an indigenous weaving conference to be held in Peru. A Gathering of the Weavers (it also included other textile arts) of the Americas/Tinkuy de Tejedores de las Americas held in Cusco Peru in November 2010. This event was spearheaded by Nilda Callanoupo Alvarez, a leader in supporting traditional textiles in the Andes. More information on the hosting organization can be found here http://andeantextilearts.org What an opportunity to see people from all over the America's, mostly indigenous weavers, gathered in one place sharing their knowledge. In hindsight, I realized I should have just quit work and gone. Alas, I was foolish and stayed. But here is an interesting account of one woman's trip, blogger, author, inspirer-er, student and teacher of indigenous weaving techniques, Laverne Waddington on her blog Backstrap Weaving.
Another coincidence. At the Duncan Distaff Day, I met a woman who volunteered for a month helping organize the hanging of the textiles which would be on display at the conference. She had met Nilda years ago at a weaving convention and Nilda had asked her to come and help. She shared her photo album with me and the colours in every photo was spectacular!
And even more coincidences. A very good friend returned from a holiday in Peru, and by coincidence was in Cusco, the town the conference was in. She is not a fibre nut but kindly bought me an Andean drop spindle in the market and some Alpaca to spin. And another whose graduate student was in the very same area, working with a weavers co-op also brought me a gift of Andean weaving done with superfine Alpaca yarns.

[Photos by Laverne Waddington from her blog at
http://backstrapweaving.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/
backstrap-weaving-tinkuy-de-tejedores-2010/]

Recently, SpinOff magazine created an interactive magazine called SpinKnit. The magazine contains articles, interviews, and a ton of multimedia: slideshows, photos, and videos. Their first issue has a great section on Spinning and Knitting in the Andes and another section on Alpacas and Vicunas. The 'e-mag' can be purchased for just under $15 but be aware of the humongous file size, weighing in around 500 meg! This is fine if you have a high speed connection but don't even try if you are on dial-up. The video below shows one of the videos from that issue: Andean women spinning.


And to round all this up, it has culminated in an Alpaca Spinning workshop I just took, but this blog is getting far too long, so I will save the workshop for another blog.

Boats and ropes

I recently went to the Victoria Classic Wooden Boat Festival and snapped a few pictures of ropes, lines and cordage and how they are used on boats. It made me wonder what rope was, and what cordage was. Were they the same or was there a distinction? If you just look at twisted (spun) rope and forget plaited or braided rope (we need to keep sane here), is there any difference in spinning technique other than having a humongous spinning wheel? And what is the history of rope?

So here is my understanding... Oh, and by the way, rope isn't made with humongus spinning wheels, it is laid out in a long length and twisted from one end... First you have fibre. You spin fibre and you get yarn. If you spin the fibre to the right or clockwise, it has what is called a Z-twist or, in rope language if you look down a length of rope and the twist is to the right (Z), it is known as having a right hand lay; if the twist is to the left (S) it is a left hand lay. If you twist two (or more) Z-spun or right hand laid yarns together in the opposite direction, and spin/twist them S then you have a strand which is left hand laid. Take strands and twist them together (opposite twist than the strand) and you have rope. Got that? One more time:

• Fibre spun Z = yarn
• Yarns spun S = strands
• Strands spun Z = rope

Now here is where we get all salty and nautical. A 3 strand rope is known as a hawser-laid rope.  A four-strand laid rope is called shroud-laid. And now if you take 3 or more ropes and twist them you get a cable.  A 3 strand rope is very flexible, easy to handle and good for making knots.  A 4 strand rope is firmer, rounder and hence good when you need more surface to grip, say going through a pulley.
Cordage is the term used for less than 3/8"diameter and rope for more than 3/8" diameter.  I suppose you can argue about the thickness but the idea is this: fibre, string, cord, rope, cable.
I came across an interesting video showing some recent history of rope making but for something about older technology check out the Native American Cordage web page.

Kent Monkman - The Triumph of Mischief

Detail of Artist and Model

I am writing this away from the prying eyes of Priscilla-the-fleeceless-sheep-that-rules-the-guestroom-and-Lords-over-my-wool-stash. I am not sure she would appreciate the explicit language and pictures of this particular post. She is a bit of a prude. So I will be quick to get it up before she has an inkling of the sexually explicit (and I won't even show you all the details, but use a magnifying glass on the picture to the left) work of this artist and his alter ego.

Monkman's Cher-inspired seance outfit.

I went to a thought-provoking art exhibit by Cree artist Kent Monkman at the Victoria Art Gallery. Monkman has, a wicked sense of humour and of injustice, a subversive wit and his work playing on role reversals, forces us to re-think, re-image, some of our underlying assumptions, stereotypes and visions of reality about the imaginary indian, painted by the noble whiteman.  


They say a picture is worth 1,000 words. In Monkman's paintings a picture is worth 10,0000 words, layers of meanings on top of layers. He is also a performance artist, check out his seance held at the ROM calling on the spirits of explorer-artists Paul Kane, George Caitlin and French romantic painter Delacroix, while dressed in a, reportedly, Cher-inspired drag queen attire, also in the exhibit. Click here to listen to the dance music of MissChief. The seance was in response to one of his paintings being censored from the First People's Gallery at the ROM. As Monday Magazine explains it:

“They gave us the opportunity to go into the museum, look at the collections and then create work as a response. I went straight to the First People’s Gallery and there you have all these paintings by Paul Kane, this voice of authority. It’s like, ‘What are his paintings doing in the First People’s Gallery?’ Yes, the first people were his subjects, but . . . I thought, ‘I’ll do a painting in response to one of his paintings,’” says Monkman. “I wanted to draw attention to that and hang my painting in there with his painting. So the curator of the First People’s Gallery said, ‘No, we can not allow Kent to show in the First People’s Gallery. We can not allow him to challenge the work of Paul Kane.’”

The Academy

which brought on the seance performance and brought about the ROMs re-thinking of just what should be allowed in the First Nation's Gallery.
In this exhibit, the star of this show is Monkman's alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testicle -- say this fast enough and you have Mischief Egotistical Did I say that Monkman is a master of punning? In the painting titled "The Artist and Model" above, Monkman has painted his alter ego right into the painting. Miss Chief Eagle Testicle (aka Mischief), wearing six-inch heels, a scanty breech, a Chiefs head dress and little else, is the artist painting the naked (penis erect) cowboy. However, Mischief's easel holds a pictograph of her idea of what the white man looks like. See what I mean about layers upon layers of words and meanings.
The picture "The Academy" reminded me of Paul Kane's picture "Clallum Woman Weaving a Blanket". I am not sure that Monkman's Academy was meant to be a reVisionist view of Kane's painting, but there are some similarities, the wool dog in the foreground (see my earlier blog on this painting), the scene in the long house, the viewing of artists creating their works.
In any event, Monkman's imagery will remain with me for a long time.

This post seems to be very popular, so I have edited to add a book if you like Kent Monkman's sense of humour as well as his art, then you would probably enjoy this book. It is written by one of my favorite authors, Thomas King who also has a wicked sense of humour and of injustice. Okay, you need to know it is written for children, but hey, read it for your inner child.

"A Woman Weaving a Blanket," Songhees/Saanich (Central Coast Salish)

Investigating the use of goat and dog wool in Coast Salish blankets

First, a little summary background on the Coast Salish Wool Dog. There are many Coast Salish blankets in museums around the world. These are said to be made of Mountain Goat wool. Someone, somewhere (I'll have to find a good reference and check this out in more detail) analyzed the fibre from one blanket to figure out what the animal producing the fibre ate (carbon isotope analysis) and found that their diet consisted of 50-70% marine in origin. It is unlikly that Mountain Goat ate that much, if any, fish, so they are ruled out. So if these blankets aren't necessarily all Mtn Goat, what are they made of? 

In addition, there are many Coast Salish territories (Vancouver Island and Puget Sound for example) where Moutain Goat are not found, and from these areas we have Salish Oral history which establishes the existance of specially bred dogs used for their hair as wool in blankets.  

We also have records from some of the early explorers of the area mentionaing these dogs Capt. Vancouver wrote in 1792 while at Bainbridge Island: "...the dogs belonging to this tribe of Indians were numerous, and much resembled those of Pomerania, though in general somewhat larger. They were all shorn as close to the skin as sheep in England..." and the Spaniards while anchored off Nanaimo mention that the dogs "of moderate size, resembling those of the English breed, with very thick coats, and usually white."  

Paul Kane (see the blog posting below) sketched and painted what could be a Salish wool dog. And George Gibbs, surveyor, collector and interpretor/translater in the mid 1800's donated his pet wool dog 'Mutton' to the Smithsonian on its death (see the posting further down).  

So we have oral history, the written word, some possible visuals referring to the dog, and perhaps a preserved dog. And you would think there has to be some dog blankets in existance somewhere but how does one identify dog wool from goat wool? Perhaps some of these goat wool blankets were really dog wool or a combination.

In 2006, 'Mutton' the supposedly Salish wool dog, was found and dusted off and the USA National Museum of Natural History provided Anne Murray, a  Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Textile Conservation, with the hair of 'Mutton', some of goat, along with some fibres from Coast Salish blankets. The idea was to try and identify what a Salish dog hair fibre looks like and how it can be distinguished from goat fibre. This was done for visual identification using microscopy (scanning and polarized light) and then DNA analysis (mitochondrial). Both the structure of the hairs and the DNA anaylsis support that the blankets did have both Moutain Goat and dog wool. The picture on he left is from a poster overviewing the research done and shows Goat hair on the top and Mutton's dog hair on the bottom.

Salish Spindle Whorl

It has been a busy Christmas season, hence a lack of blogging. However, we purchased a special item this year, a drum made by Richard Aiscaican who makes superb drums. His attention to detail marks him as a master drum maker. Check out the photo of the sides and back of the drum where you can see the patterns created from the even application and pressure between the sinew and the drum skin.

The image on the drum is painted by Joel Good a Snuneymuxw member. It is based on a Salish spindle whorl, a crouching naked figure (needing warm fabic?) with two sea serpents wolves facing each other at the top (edited to reflect Joel's correction -thanks Joel). This is from the Snuneymuxw creation story. Apparently sea serpents are more common in the Nanaimo area than elsewhere. The mouth of the human would be where the spindle shaft would be inserted.
Below is a picture of a similar whorl design from the Canadian Museum of Nature. The Snuneymuxw First Nations Band Council uses the spindle design as a logo as can be seen in the photo of the Band Office window on the web page describing spindles.

Coast Salish Wool Dog - What did it look like?

As promised, I am adding answers, or at least more information, about the Salish wool dog as I find it. So what did it look like? In Paul Kane's painting "A Woman Weaving a Blanket" now at the Royal Ontario Museum, he paints a small white dog, almost poodle like. However, the painting is based on some sketches and his sketches of dogs look different.

Susan Crockford, an expert in archaeological analysis of bones, has done extensive research on the indigenous dogs of the Pacific Northwest Coast, has a sketch on that accompanies her monograph on 'Osteometry of Makah and Coast Salish Dogs' that, knowing her expertise, is probably a good likeness (the dogs on the right).


On a side note, on the Snuneymuwx First Nations web site, the Salish Spindle is discussed, and they mention that Cameron Island was one of the islands used to keep the Salish Wool dog breed separated from other dogs. This makes sense as Cameron Island (which is no longer an island) is very close to where the Solexwel village was, allowing easy access to care and feed for the dogs. There is also on that page, a close up of a diorama that shows two dogs, that may be more accurate than the Paul Kane painting. These dogs also look like the sketch on the right.

Totem Raising and unveiling

A Totem pole was raised this week at VIU in the library. I am not sure how they got it into the library and then raised once in the building. An amazing feat of engineering. Apparently there will soon be a video showing how they did it on youtube. I'll link it when I find it.

Gary Mason performed a ceremony and Jimmy Johnny the master carver told the story of Thunderbird and Killer Whale.

S'abadeb - The Gifts

The Legend of Octopus Point by John Marston Chemainus, 2007

Cedar, cedar bark, paint, abalone shell and operculum shell
Private Collection

Photo from the Royal BC Museum web site advertising the S'abadeb exhibit..

Barbara Brotherton, curator at the Seattle Museum of Art, and the curator of S'abadeb exhibit at the Royal BC Museum gave an interesting talk today. It was a very informative introduction to the exhibit. If you have a chance to see it, do.  
S'abadeb is a Lushootseed term for gifts and conveys the theme of reciprocity of giving and receiving gifts. Gifts both tangible and intangible such as songs and names.
I was lucky enough to have a few minutes chatting with her about Salish spinning, weaving spindle whorls and the wool dogs. She said that George Gibbs, a surveyor and a witness for the signing of the Point Elliot Treaty 1855 in Washington State, was given a wool dog 'Mutton' (he, that dog that is, liked to chase sheep) whose pelt was given to science and currently is in the Smithsonian Museum. She also mentioned a man who claimed he had a dog that was genetically very similar, a Japanese breed.  
My mother mentioned that when she worked with the BC Lands Title Office, where she often had to refer to surveyors records (organized diaries) she thinks she read that an island/s off Gabriola (Flat Top Islands?) was used to keep the dogs separate from non-wool dogs. 
So there are a few tips to follow up on. 
Googling, I came across an article,  'Wolly Dogs' by Elizabeth Flower Anderson Miller who has obviously researched this topic in detail. She suggests that the wool dog is the result of the recessive gene which causes the soft down hair (wool) to grow longer than the guard hair -- the Malamute factor, a lethal flaw for dogs that need to survive in very cold climates where guard hairs are needed to shed water, sleet, snow and ice. However, for the Gulf Islands/Salish Sea area, where snow rarely lasts two weeks of the year, this factor wouldn't be so lethal, rather it would provide much valued thick, long spinnable fibre. I'll do up a blog entry just for questions and answers about the Coast Salish wool dog.

Coast Salish Woven Fabrics - More questions than answers

Salish Weaving

I am curious to know more about traditional Coast Salish woven fabrics, especially those collected pre 1830s. Coast Salish weavings can be incredibly complex. Techniques include twining (double, simple, three-strand), openwork, overlay, tapestry and twill. Some of the patterns were very intricate and made of fibres from dog wool/hair, nettle and mountain goat wool. There is even reference to one that included down. 
Paula Gustafson in her book Salish Weaving writes that she has examined most of the blankets in North American museums and has only seen one of dog hair. So how come so many descriptions and records of wool dogs by some of the early explorers of the area? And where are all these rugs, blankets and other fabrics made from dog hair?

Grant Keddie, from the Royal BC Museum tells me that UVic is getting an electron microscope and there is an expert there is working on analyzing the hairs to try and figure out if they are goat, dog or a mixture. He suggests it is time to re-examine some of these treasures using newer technologies to help solve some of these mysteries. Grant has been interested in the wool dogs for a long time (see Keddie, 1993, Prehistoric Dogs of B.C. Wolves in Sheep Clothing, the Midden, 25 (1)3-5, February. Grant is currently researching the history and use of Coast Salish spindle whorls. He also tells me that Susan Crockford is the local authority on doggie DNA and included archaeoloigal material from RBCM collection and Tatlan Bear dogs in her research. Check out her books and publications. And here is an article on the wool dog.

Some of my questions:

• What was the Salish wool dog? What did it look like? There is one painting by Paul Kane but is it an accurate likeness? Were wool dogs found up and down the coast of North America? Is there similar breed still in existence? What type of fibre was it? How long, how thick and how much crimp did it have?
• Many of the blankets were made from mountain goat wool. I don't think mountain goat existed on Vancouver Island, so they must have traded for it. So how common was weaving if the wool came from dogs or mountain goats. Was there enough wool to make this a common activity or a rare activity? If it was common, well, that's a lot of mountain goat and a lot of trade. Was there enough mountain goats? Or was dog wool more common? If weaving wasn't common, then that could explain why there was such value placed on blankets. But then, what was the common fabric?
• Where did the dye colours red, blue and black come from?  Yellows, tans. browns, oranges, greens come from a variety of possibilities (eg. wolf moss, oregon grape roots, alder bark) but a good black (salty mud?), blue or red (can alder bark really get the traditional reds?) is hard to come by.

Feel free to post any answers.
Speaking of the Royal BC Museum, they have a great exhibit which opens on Nov 20th. S’abadeb – The Gifts: Pacific Coast Salish Art and Artists. 

Edited to add a couple of related books.

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 .

Nanaimo River Estuary Dig

I was lucky to be able to spend a day on the Snuneymuxw archeological dig in the Nanaimo river Estuary helping to find old fishing weirs. They have found many many stakes indicating many fishing weirs. Two of the stakes have been found to be over 1000 years old. We had to work between the low tides. It was hard work as you can see from Gary's pose!

Nettles and Alpaca

Last weekend started with a conference on First Nations Traditional Foods.  Talks on Friday, then feasting and playing the bones game Friday night.  Spotted at the display was a dried plant with long stems, dried and looking like hay.  This was dried nettle. Wound onto a short stick, was line, somewhat like fishing line.    Saturday was a traditional food fair at the Snuneymuxw Long House.  Abe, who was studying First Nations root gardens, was cooking up a meal.  Potatoes done in a cedar box of water, heated by placing red hot stomes into the water.  The fire was removed from the pit to make way for ferns and salal which was quickly laid in the pit, vegetables added, more ferns and salal, a bucket of water, burlap and covered with a foot of dirt.  Abe removed the cooked potatoes with a handmade ladle, made of wood, twine made of young willow bark and nettle. 

Someone else had told me earlier that the Saanich First Nations used willow for their reef fish nets.  Judith MacKenzie McCuin (who taught me how to spin years ago) writes about indigenous use of nettles in the introduction of her new book The Intentional Spinner .

lipobibliophobia - the fear of being somewhere without a book.

Sunday, a bike trip along the old Cowichan Valley railway.



But first a stop at Pacific Sun Alpacas (by lucky co-incidence, just about on the trail) to buy some fleece. A very friendly and enthusistic owner who, of course, is a spinner, shows me how to sort a fleece.  I buy a sample--the neck fleece of Lumina, a cream-coloured alpaca-- to take home and try.  I'll bring it back and she will help me card it into rovings with her new carding machine.  Lipofibrephobia.  I buy a couple of bags of rovings to keep me spinning.