1
Framework
There is strength in the transformation over time; from hard times to plentiful times, having new experiences and influences. It is a fantastic story, a journey that is continuous throughout the years. We jump forward and backward in the timeline, do what our grandmothers and their grandmothers, and their grandmothers did, and the teachings stay the same for their grandchildren and ours.
—Chief Janice George, Squamish
The study of Salish textile traditions requires the intertwining of information from many different sources. Library research brings together the limited number of published articles and archival documents. Elders offer cultural teachings; spinners, weavers, and knitters share knowledge gained through the practice of their craft. Ethnologists, ethnobotanists, historians, and archaeologists examine the geography, climate, and natural resources of the area. Museum curators analyze the tangible and intangible records of human experience captured in Salish material culture. This chapter brings together these threads of knowledge to help frame our understanding of Salish weaving.
Salish Knowledge
Every aspect of Salish textile production is bound by an awareness of the spirit world and a respect for the Ancestral gifts of knowledge. Traditional teachings highlight the power of woven garments, particularly their importance in spiritual protection. They also emphasize the responsibilities of the weaver and the obligations of the wearer.
2. A Woman Weaving a Blanket, ca. 1848. Songhees/Saanich (Central Coast Salish). Artist: Paul Kane, 1848–56. Oil on Board. 912.2.93 Royal Ontario Museum. With permission of the Royal Ontario Museum © ROM.
Salish cosmology maintains that the realm of human experience exists alongside spiritual or supernatural worlds. The teachings emphasize acceptance of different ways of being and an awareness that the inhabitants of these supernatural worlds can offer support or bring harm to individuals. The sky, mountains, bodies of water—oceans, lakes, rivers—and other geographic and physical manifestations are viewed as living beings. A tree is treated with the respect given to a human and thanked for the use of its wood, bark, and roots. Ancestral Spirits, the deceased members of a family or community, are said to exist in a supernatural realm not far from the villages of their living descendants. They are remembered, fed, and honored in prayers and rituals. Animals, birds, and fish are said to live in their own villages in remote areas of the mountains, in a sky world, or under the ocean in houses that are architecturally similar to those of Salish construction. Once inside their own homes, these supernatural beings remove their furs, scales, or skins and appear as people. Occasionally they take husbands or wives from the human world. The resulting children share traits of both domains.
Humans may travel into these other worlds in their dreams or experience encounters with supernatural beings when traveling through sacred areas in their traditional territories. Hunters, fishermen, and craftspeople in particular are said to have supernatural helpers or a guardian spirit to assist them in completing their tasks. Among the Interior Salish adolescent boys were sent into the mountains for a period of time to discover their personal supernatural helper. Ceremonies celebrating a new stage in a person’s life cycle are often a time and place when individuals move in and out of the spirit world. During these events the family’s Ancestors are acknowledged and people are said to be particularly aware of the proximity between the worlds of the living and the dead. In such ceremonies, the individual may wear a specially woven robe and stand on newly woven blankets. The power of the prayers and the strength of the songs and dances performed during a ritual may shift an individual into another dimension, where he or she feels surrounded, supported, or “held up” by the Ancestors.
The Salish worldview understands that robes and blankets already exist in the spirit world and it is the weaver who brings them into the human realm. She is directed by an Ancestral Spirit that the weaver has called on for guidance. Many people have spoken of feeling their grandmothers or great-grandmothers near them and of having their hands guided during the creation of the work. The robes themselves are considered to be objects of power and are talked about as being alive with a heartbeat of their own. The touch, sweat, breath, and voice of the maker become woven into the textile, animating it, shaping it, and giving it memory. The artists’ states of mind, along with their emotions and physical well-being, can also be transferred into the weaving. These teachings and stories form an intangible framework that guides weavers through the process. Women know how to prepare themselves to begin the textile, how to create robes of protection and transformation, and how, when the weaving is done, to safely separate themselves from the finished work.
Ethnography
At the end of the nineteenth century anthropologists began to classify Indigenous communities in Canada and the United States into “culture areas.” Distinctions were made according to language family, aspects of material culture, occupation of village sites, and other unique traits. In the United States, Salish-speaking communities occupied—and continue to live on—traditional tribal lands in the states of Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. In Canada, Salish First Nations live on the eastern coast of central and southern Vancouver Island, on the southern mainland, and along the Fraser and Thompson River watersheds. Ethnologists have further divided these communities into the Northern Coast Salish, Central Coast Salish, and Interior Salish.1 The blankets and weavings of particular interest to this study were collected from the historical villages of Vancouver Island, southern British Columbia, and Washington State. This group of traditional communities covers a large geographical area that was classified into two ethnographic culture areas, the Northwest Coast, home to the Coast Salish, and the Plateau, site of the Interior Salish communities.
The Northwest Coast culture area encompasses the geographical region of the Pacific shoreline and the western watersheds from southern Alaska to the southern Oregon border.2 The topography is one of snow-topped mountain ranges that enclose secluded valleys and sharply descend to narrow beaches at the shorelines. Ocean currents and prevailing winds maintain a moderate temperature with heavy rainfall reaching, in some areas, an annual precipitation of 250 cm. The environment is classified as a cool rainforest. Ethnobotanists have identified three distinct biogeoclimatic zones differentiated by altitude and location. In British Columbia they are named the Coastal Western Hemlock, the Mountain Hemlock, and the Coastal Douglas Fir zones.3
Archaeological research in this area indicates human occupation of at least ten thousand years. Changes in climate along the northern Pacific coast started around 4400 BC. A corresponding increase in the availability of food resources, particularly salmon, is reflected in settlement patterns and the modification of tools used in food gathering.4 Excavations show established villages along riverbanks and on oceanfront inlets that provided shelter from winter storms. These communities were primarily maritime based. People were dependent on the spring and fall return of salmon to the rivers but also ventured out onto the ocean for deep-sea fishing of herring, black cod, and halibut. They hunted sea mammals along the coast and some groups, such as the Nuu-chah-nulth, were whalers.5 Shellfish were gathered during the winter months to supplement depleting food stocks. In the spring and summer people left their winter villages and moved inland or along the coast to family-owned fishing, hunting, and berry-picking sites. Tall, straight cedar trees were a major source of building material for houses and canoes and for the manufacture of bowls, boxes, and other household utensils. Roots and bark from various grasses, trees, and bushes provided fibers for basketry, clothing, and cordage.
Typically, Northwest Coast social organization was stratified into three groups: nobles, commoners, and slaves. Noble or chiefly families controlled access to food-gathering sites as well as the intangible, but inheritable, property of names, songs, and dance performances. Slaves were individuals or descendants of individuals taken as prisoners in raids or during warfare.
The Plateau culture area, situated behind the Cascade Mountain range, extends to the Rockies and encompasses the Fraser and Columbia River systems. This large region incorporates several mountain ranges and a mixture of plateaus and valleys that vary from one hundred meters to twenty-five-hundred meters above sea level. Seven habitat zones have been identified for the Plateau, including steppe grasslands, woodlands, forests, and meadows. The area of particular interest for this study is the Thompson Plateau and Fraser River valley. Here the climate is one of hot summers and cold winters with an annual precipitation of 25–40 cm.6
Archaeological evidence suggests human occupation in this area of about nine thousand years. Winter villages, usually built along a riverbank or lakeshore, consisted of several circular semi-subterranean houses. Summer dwellings constructed near hunting, fishing, and gathering sites were shelters of poles, often conical in shape, covered with woven mats. Freshwater lakes held a variety of fish and, in the spring and fall, spawning salmon were taken from local rivers. Deer and small game were important sources of meat, fur, or hides for clothing. Their bone, teeth, and antlers were used for making tools. Roots and berries were gathered for food, and plants such as nettle, willow, and cedar supplied resources for weaving and basketry.
Social organization in Plateau cultures was less stratified than on the coast. Decisions were made using a communal process, though leadership roles were often assigned to individuals with particular skills in organizing a hunting party or conducting a raid on a neighboring village. Slaves were taken during warfare or raiding. Among the Northern Thompsons (Nlaka’pamux), children or women of this class were occasionally integrated into the general population.7
Resources for Weaving
Salish weavers in these culture areas harvested and prepared local plant and animal fibers from the spring to the fall as they became available for gathering. The fibers were usually spun and woven during the winter months. Mountain goat hair, sometimes supplemented with dog hair and plant fiber, was primarily used for ceremonial items.8 Cedar roots, withes, and bark supplied materials for baskets, tumplines, and clothing on the coast.9 In the interior, willow was used for capes, headdresses, aprons, and leggings.10 Examples of clothing made from sagebrush and black tree lichen are found in several museum collections.11 The binding thread for such garments was usually a finely spun Indian hemp, nettle, or bark fiber. Other animal fibers, such as bear and raccoon, along with bird down and feathers, were incorporated into the threads or weavings to add a decorative element or to increase the warmth or softness of the textile.
3. Marcella Baker showing her spindle whorl tattoo. Photographer: L. H. Tepper, 2007, Canadian Museum of History Img2016-0011-0001-Dm.
Bedding or mattress material in the form of large mats was made from sewn or twined reeds and bulrushes. Sleeping blankets of animal or plant fiber were sometimes thickened and given extra warmth by including the fluff or seed material from fireweed and milkweed. Myron Eells describes a typical blanket in the Puget Sound area as being made of “dog’s hair, geese or duck down, and the cotton from the fire-weed. These were twisted into strings and woven together.”12 A small blanket in the Canadian Museum of History is composed of grouse feathers twisted in sagebrush bark, and a similar blanket or robe made of waterfowl down is found in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution.13
The preparation of thread from plants such as nettle and hemp for use in weaving and cordage or to make fish and deer nets is well documented.14 Weavers collected plant stems or tree bark that offered long, straight fibers. To separate the outer layer from the inner bark or usable core, the gathered material could be either dried or soaked, and the resulting strands were often hackled or splintered to soften the fibers for spinning. Among the Nlaka’pamux, for example, Indian hemp (Apocynum cannabinum), or “specn,” is gathered in the fall. The stalks are cut near the ground, then stripped of leaves and small branches. They are soaked to help remove the outer bark, and the softened stems are split down the center to form a flat strip. The inner pith or core of fibers is cleaned and separated by being pulled over the edge of a wooden board. The resulting filaments are spun by rolling them downward between the hand and the thigh or over the knee. Additional length is added by splicing new fibers into the end of the spun thread. This form of hand spinning, which may also require the plying of two or more spun threads to create a stronger yarn, is a slow process. For example, a recently made hemp weft, prepared for an adult-sized willow bark cape, required about two weeks of work.15 Wool spinning is equally time consuming. A contemporary Haida weaver who “thigh spins” her warp and weft from fine merino wool roving estimates six months of work to prepare yardage for an adult Raven’s Tail or Chilkat (naaxiin) robe.16
Of particular interest to this volume are the Salish blankets and clothing that were woven of mountain goat fiber. The animal was and is held “in high esteem” by members of the Salish community. Its wool was generally chosen for use on objects and in clothing required for ritual occasions. The white color is considered a symbol of purity and is emblematic of the “new beginnings” that occur in a person’s life cycle—receiving a new name, celebrating a marriage, or holding a memorial for a loved one. The remoteness of the mountain goat’s habitat and relatively rare sightings of it also evoke associations of Ancestral encounters with supernatural beings in isolated places. And though all hunters receive teachings about the taking of animal life for food and sustenance, mountain goat hunters receive special training to build the required physical endurance, develop tracking skills for rugged terrain, and learn about the mountain goat’s behavior and spirit.17
Mountain goats (Oreamnos americanus) have a double-layer coat consisting of a thick wool undercoat covered by hair with a hollow core, a combination that provides excellent insulation. They shed their winter fleece in the spring, often by rubbing against bushes and rocks. People sometimes made special trips to mountain goat habitats to collect the sloughed hair or gathered it while berry picking, hunting, or traveling through the mountains to neighboring villages. The animal was also hunted for its meat, horns, and hide. Fiber could be removed from the skinned hide by soaking it for a period of time and pulling off the hair or by shaving it using a sharp-edged shell or stone knives.18
In Canada the mountain goat’s habitat is limited to the Cascade and Rocky Mountain ranges of British Columbia, the southern Yukon, and Alberta. Salish communities living on Vancouver Island could obtain goat hair only through trade with the mainland or by taking advantage of access to hunting and gathering territories acquired through marriage, family inheritance, or trade alliances. Communities on southern Vancouver Island and in northern Washington State used dog hair to supplement mountain goat fiber. Vanderburg offers ethnographic references to the use of dog hair by the Twanas, Chemakum Klallas, Lumis, and Quinaults.19 Teit notes that weaving blankets was an important industry, particularly among the Lower Thompson (Nlaka’pamux) Indians: “The Coast Salish utilized both dog-hair and goat-hair in their manufacture, but the Thompson Indians seem to have used the latter only.”20
European explorers noted in their journals the presence of dogs that were shorn twice a year and whose hair was used for weaving. George Vancouver, Simon Fraser, and sailors on Spanish ships all recorded the presence of dogs with long hair and of people wearing dog hair blankets.21 They also observed that wool dogs were carefully looked after, fed fish and other human dietary staples, and kept isolated on islands to prevent interbreeding with other village dogs.
This “wooly” type of dog had disappeared from Salish villages by the mid-nineteenth century. Efforts during the twentieth century by various researchers, such as Gustafson and Lakwete, to prove the use of dog hair in Salish blankets through microscopic analysis of textile fibers were unsuccessful.22 However, new techniques in DNA sampling and the use of electron microscopy have recently provided preliminary evidence of dog hair in historical blankets. For example, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) has taken fibers from nineteenth-century pelts of sheep, mountain goat from the Coast Salish area, and a specimen in the Smithsonian Institution documented as an “Indian Dog” named “Mutton.”
Guard hairs from the goat and Mutton and unknown fibers from one of the blankets were split longitudinally and examined under polarized light microscopy (PLM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Preliminary examinations indicate a distinct structural difference in the medulla of the goat and Mutton’s guard hairs. . . . The samples from the blanket appear to consist of both dog and goat hairs. . . . PLM and SEM fiber identification will continue on samples from the goat, Mutton and the four blankets. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis will be performed on all samples to hopefully support the preliminary identification of dog hair in the one blanket. As of press time DNA analysis is not yet completed.23
Analysis of canine skeletons found in archaeological sites offers further evidence of a special breed of dog in Salish villages. Researchers have determined the presence of two types of dog: a larger variety probably used in hunting and a smaller dog that may have been bred for its long hair. It is suggested that the Salish woolly dog may have been similar to the Japanese Shiba Inu, which sheds its “dense woolly undercoat” twice a year.24
Plants used as natural dyes were another significant resource for Salish weavers. A range of techniques were required to extract color from a variety of vegetation. Some dyes or stains were used to camouflage hunting and fishing equipment, turning the white strands of nettle or hemp to a less obvious brown. Other colors provided the contrasting black and red typically employed in basketry designs and other woven surfaces.
Makes 2 medium skeins.
From Chepximiya and Tepper, Coast Salish Weaving
Vanderburg cites information from “a somewhat confused and unreliable source regarding Salish blankets” to identify four dyes: “hemlock bark, producing a rusty brown; alder bark to produce bright red”; an unnamed “slender green fungus found hanging in strings from fir and cedar branches for making dark green; and bog peat to produce black.” She also notes the recorded use of “black mud of salt marshes” and Oregon grape root.25 Turner’s extensive ethnobotanical research records approximately fifteen plant sources used by Coastal and Plateau Salish communities. Green, yellow, and brown were the most common colors. Red could be obtained from alder, and blue from larkspur flowers. Vanderburg suggests that by 1889 natural dyes were no longer in general use for Salish blankets.26
Plant and animal fibers that were not available locally could be obtained in trade or, on occasion, obtained less peacefully through raids and warfare. Generally, however, individuals came into contact with people from different villages at ceremonial gatherings or while harvesting certain food resources such as oolican or salmon.27 Salish groups from Vancouver Island crossed the Strait of Georgia (now part of the larger body of water called the Salish Sea) to fish in the Fraser River and other mainland salmon streams. Marriages among families in distant villages facilitated trade outside the immediate region.28 On the lower Columbia an annual gathering estimated to include almost eighteen thousand participants brought together Sahaptin, Salishan, Athapascan, and Chinook language groups to fish salmon and sturgeon and to trade.29 This settlement at The Dalles, an important fishing spot on the Columbia River, was so large it was laid out in sections with connecting laneways. The fur trader Alexander Ross called it “the great emporium or mart of the Columbia.”30
Table 1. Plant-based dyes
| Plant | Part | Use | Salish First Nations |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Mosses |
Whole |
Yellow dye for basketry |
Saanich |
|
Ferns |
Whole |
Black dye |
Coast Salish, not specified |
|
Grand fir |
Bark |
Brown dye for basketry; combine with red ocher for pink dye |
Straits Salish of Vancouver Island |
|
Ponderosa pine |
Pollen |
Yellow dye to color clothing |
Secwepemc |
|
Douglas fir |
Needles |
Yellow tint to cedar roots |
Okanagan |
|
Douglas fir |
Bark |
Brown dye for fishnets |
Swinomish of Washington State |
|
Oregon grape |
Inner bark, roots |
Yellow pigment |
Cowichan, Straits Salish, Chehalis, Skagit, Snohomish, Nlaka’pamux Okanagan (tall grape) |
|
Alder |
Wood bark |
Dye, colors black to dark brown to russet to bright orange-red |
Used for mountain goat wool and other fibers in many areas |
|
Black twinberry |
Fruit |
Purple dye |
Secwepemc |
|
Dogwood |
Bark |
Brown dye, mixed with grand fir bark to make black dye for basketry |
Nlaka’pamux |
|
Hazelnut |
Roots, inner bark |
Blue dye |
Nlaka’pamux, roots; Sanpoil-Nespelem Okanagan of Washington, inner bark |
|
Strawberry blite |
Fruit |
Red stain |
Nlaka’pamux |
|
Montana larkspur |
Flowers |
Blue dye |
Nlaka’pamux |
|
Cascara |
Bark |
Green dye for mountain goat wool |
Skagit |
Source: Compiled from Turner, Plant Technology.
Tools and Techniques
The tools used for preparing and spinning the thread and weaving the textile were simple in construction but often beautifully decorated. Early records noted that the wool was cleaned and whitened by beating baked diatomaceous earth into the fibers.31 The beaters or “swords” used to clean the wool were long sticks of wood, sometimes gently curved along the blade and carved at the handle. Once teased and fluffed out, the wool was rolled into loose roving ready for spinning.32
The Salish had a style of spinning that produced a thick yarn with a fairly loose twist. This thread is most commonly found in the heavier white ceremonial blankets woven in a twill pattern. The spinning technique is well documented in a mid-nineteenth-century painting by Paul Kane, in early twentieth-century photographs, and in a film by Harlan Smith showing Harriet Johnnie spinning wool using a spindle whorl.33 Kane’s painting of a woman weaving a blanket shows a second woman in the background who is sitting or squatting with a long spindle shaft pointed upward, spinning yarn (see figure 2). A strand of roving extends from a pile of wool on the ground up to a stone or wooden ring suspended above the woman and then down to the spindle tip. Spinners twist the wool by rotating the spindle with an upward toss.
Two other techniques of producing thread on the Northwest Coast are the use of a drop spindle and thigh spinning. These tend to produce a finer thread with a tighter twist. Examples of these strands can be seen in some of the older blankets, such as a plaid blanket collected in 1819 in Puget Sound.34 The use of a drop spindle is not well documented by Salish ethnography but is indicated by the presence of small rounded stones with a central hole at archaeological sites. These may have been used as spindle whorls or as net sinkers for fishing. Among the Interior Salish, thigh spinning was still remembered in the late twentieth century. The Nlaka’pamux Elder Mary Anderson of Spences Bridge recalled the technique and said it was used to make string from Indian hemp and other vegetable fibers.
4. Carved wool beater, ca. 1930. CMH VII-G-327. Photographer: Steven Darby. Canadian Museum of History Img2016-0018-0005-Dm.
The traditional Salish loom is a simple rectangular frame with an upper and lower beam supported on each side by long planks set into the dirt floor of the Salish house. The side supports are often carved with decorative patterns or animal figures. Variation in size may reflect a weaver’s preference, available materials, or space allocated to weaving in the home. Looms from the pre-European-contact period were uncovered during the archaeological excavation of Ozette, a village buried in a mudslide around 1500 AD. This unique site near Cape Flattery, sometimes called America’s Pompeii, preserved the entire contents of the houses, including textiles and wooden weaving equipment.35 The sizes of these looms averaged 150 cm high × 120 cm wide.36 A late nineteenth-century frame loom in the CMH collection is shorter and wider (134 cm high × 184 cm wide). Today many weavers use smaller looms (about 61cm high × 40.5 cm wide) that can be set up on a tabletop. These frame looms are easy to transport to workshops and appropriate for making smaller weavings like headbands, trying new color combinations, or practicing different techniques. Full-size looms are also used to weave robes, blankets, or wall hangings (about 190 cm × 210 cm).
5. Carved spindle whorl, ca. 1884. CMH VII-G-6. Photographer: Steven Darby, 2016. Canadian Museum of History ImgCD1994-0659-021-Dp1.jpg.
6. Skwetsiya (Mrs. Harriet Johnnie) weaving a tumpline on a Salish loom, ca. 1925. Screen capture from film The Coast Salish Indians of British Columbia 16-400-0008, H. I. Smith. Canadian Museum of History Img2016-00-20-001-Dm.
Fabric is created by the interlacing of threads: typically a vertical component, called the warp, and a horizontal or crossing thread, called the weft. Salish textiles are woven “under tension.”37 The warp, made from a single, long thread, is wrapped over the loom’s top bar, down around the bottom bar, and back up over the top bar again multiple times. Some weavers use a third bar to extend the length of the warp, producing a textile twice the length of the loom.38 The weaver must wind the thread evenly, so that each string has the same tautness, or tension, as the one next to it. Warping a loom with equal tension across the width of the textile is a skill acquired with practice. Sections where the strings become stretched or loosened can create sagging areas in the fabric. The warp tension must be maintained from the start of the project until the textile is finished and cut free from the loom.
Salish weaving uses three methods to interlace the weft threads with the warp: tabby (also called plaiting), twill, and twining. Tabby is the simplest form of interlacing. The crossing weft thread passes over and under each warp thread in sequence. Every subsequent row, or “shot,” alternates so that the weft thread that went under in one row passes over the warp in the next row. Twill is often a more open weave and is created by going over and under different numbers of warp threads, sometimes two warps at a time, or over one and under three. A pattern of diagonal lines can be created if each row begins one warp thread over. Reversing the twill direction creates V and diamond shapes. Twine weave is a technique of wrapping each warp thread by using two wefts simultaneously. The thread behind the warp is pulled to the front and then twisted over the weft thread moving to the back. The resulting fabric can completely hide the warp threads, making it especially useful in creating strong geometric patterns. These three weaving techniques, also used in basketry, offer craftspeople the ability to add surface texture and pattern to the object.
Woven Objects
While much of the framework for the study of Salish textiles is determined by compiling available written and oral information, a central element in understanding the history and contemporary importance of weaving is based on an analysis of the objects themselves. Material culture studies include inquiries about resources, techniques, aesthetics, and social change. In order to explore some of these themes, the authors expanded the focus on woven blankets taken by previous researchers to include Salish band weavings—used as tumplines (i.e., pack straps), belts, and sashes—found in museum collections. Comparing the pattern and color use on narrow bands and large blankets provided improved documentation on the history of styles and motifs. For example, a square-block pattern on a white background seen on a belt collected around the 1840s, now in the Danish National Museum, is very similar to that on an 1860s blanket in the Pitt Rivers Museum. The same arrangement of color blocks on white is found as a repeated motif on a long “rug” circa 1907 in the Royal British Columbia Museum (RBCM) collections.39 Our study also suggests that these small textiles may have inspired the colored designs on the borders of patterned blankets and perhaps influenced or served as a design template for the earliest of the fully patterned blankets. Blankets and woven bands therefore appear to be intertwined media for women’s artistic expression and thus analogous sources for weaving research.
7. Weaving technique, tabby weave. Drawing by Romi Caron, 2016. Courtesy of Leslie H. Tepper.
8. Weaving technique, twill weave. Drawing by Romi Caron, 2016. Courtesy of Leslie H. Tepper.
Interest by researchers in the large twill and patterned blankets has provided published information on the techniques, use, and history of these textiles. Photographs and references in exhibit catalogs and the appendix in Gustafson’s study link important blankets to their museum catalog numbers. The following discussion therefore gives only a brief overview of the blankets used in our study. The chapter concludes with a more detailed discussion of the less familiar woven bands used in traditional Salish culture.
9. Weaving technique, twine weave. Drawing by Romi Caron, 2016. Courtesy of Leslie H. Tepper.
Blankets
The evenness of the spun wool and the artistry of the weavings, along with the presence of basketry, and cordage in archaeological excavations, suggest a lengthy history of making and using textiles in the Salish cultural areas.40 Unfortunately there are few precontact blankets available for study. Perhaps the oldest example, woven sometime around or before 1500, was recovered from the Ozette archaeological site. Other early blankets from the general area include textiles collected during the 1778 Cook voyages to Nootka Sound and fragments from the 1804 Lewis and Clark expedition. The remaining historical Salish blankets in museum collections were acquired later in the nineteenth century and through the early years of the twentieth.
Table 2. Blankets by date
| Time period | Number |
|---|---|
|
No date |
13 |
|
Pre-1778 |
1 |
|
Pre-1819–1830 |
4 |
|
1833–1838 |
3 |
|
1860–1879 |
10 |
|
1890–1900 |
9 |
|
1901–1920 |
13 |
|
1921–1930 |
9 |
|
1931–1950 |
13 |
|
1951–1960 |
6 |
|
1961–1997 |
12 |
Analysis of blankets according to location is often problematic. Documentation giving the place of purchase and an original maker or owner is frequently missing. Even when such information is available, it may not be useful for analysis. Blankets can be woven in one community and traded, gifted, or moved with the owner to an area with a different tradition in textile materials, techniques, or design.
Woven Bands
Long strips of woven material served many purposes in Salish culture, including tumplines (used as pack straps), sashes, and belts. Based on their prevalence in museum collections, tumplines appear to have been the main purpose for weaving bands. Archival photographs show tumplines being used to carry a wide variety of materials, including cradles, bundles of firewood, boxes, and baskets of food. These straps were important in the transportation of boxes and skin packs weighting one hundred to two hundred pounds along the mountainous trade routes, called grease trails, of northern British Columbia.41
Table 3. Blankets by location
| Location | Number |
|---|---|
|
Saanich area |
9 |
|
Cowichan/Duncan |
6 |
|
Esquimalt |
1 |
|
Musqueam |
2 |
|
Squamish |
3 |
|
Chilliwack/Stó:lō/Sardis |
4 |
|
Hope/Yale/Spuzzum |
10 |
|
Puget Sound/Neah Bay |
3 |
Tumplines were made by most Northwest Coast communities from regionally available materials. Among the Tlingits, a band of caribou or elk skin was used with long strips of skin attached to the sides. Cedar bark and other plant fibers, such as rushes and nettle, were woven, plaited, or braided by other groups. Industrially manufactured wool and cotton threads became increasingly available with the establishment of European trade.
Woven tumplines were constructed from strands of warp (300–450 cm in length) with only the center section woven with a decorative pattern, usually in a tabby or twine technique. This middle portion (averaging 45 cm long × 6 cm wide) was positioned across the chest or over the forehead. The remaining warp (often 190 cm or more on each side) was braided or bound into several strands and passed through loops in a basket or wound around a box or object. Different materials were used for warp and weft threads. The stronger and larger rope-like threads served as the longitudinal foundation that carried the weight of the pack or filled basket. The crossing threads were thinner, more colorful, and softer in texture. Usually these wefts were beaten or pushed tightly together to completely cover the dull brown or tan warp threads. The extra thickness of the finished portion offered a cushioning effect on the forehead or chest. Unfortunately, almost half of the objects in the study collection have no documentation on the materials used. Those with some cataloging information provide only a vague identification of thread type. “Nettle?,” vegetable fiber, string, cord, and twine are often listed for the warp; yarn and wool are generic terms often recorded for the weft threads.
10. Songhees woman with tumpline, ca. 1910. Image AA-00255 courtesy of the Royal BC Museum and Archives.
Patterned belts cinching a tunic or jacket around a man’s waist or sashes across the chest are occasionally seen in archival photographs. An image of Salish chiefs gathered on a formal occasion in 1906 shows men dressed with belts or sash-like adornments (see figure 18). One man on the left edge of the picture wears a belt and crossed sashes. The man standing in the center, Sa7plek (Chief Capilano), has a belt with a diagonal pattern made up of sequential squares. This object is similar to a fringeless strip in the collection of the Museum of Vancouver. It is approximately forty-five inches long—a comfortable size to fit a waist.42 However, without documentation and only a black-and-white archival image for comparison, the pairing is speculative. A few objects in the study collection are documented as belts; others, given the presence of buttons, buttonholes, or sewn edges, may have been used as belts or decorative sashes. These pieces vary in length from a short form that may have simply encircled the wearer’s waist to a longer measurement that would have decoratively hung down the leg or in front of a coat. Two bands collected around 1838–1842, during the Charles Wilkes expedition, are documented as woolen belts. Broader and longer than the average tumpline examples (147.5 cm long × 7 cm wide and 164 cm long × 7.5 cm wide), the warp ends are left as long fringes (fringe lengths 41 cm and 38 cm, respectively). Though not intended to support heavy loads, sashes and belts also generally have heavier threads for the warp and finer wool yarns for the weft.
11. Kwimelut (Lisa Lewis) and Siyaltemaat (Joy Joseph-McCullough) at band-weaving workshop. Photographer: L. H. Tepper, 2009. Canadian Museum of History Img2016-0012-0001-Dp1.jpg.
The study collection for this book consists of over a hundred examples of long, relatively narrow bands woven between 1830 and 1930 that appear to be tumplines, belts, or sashes.43 Museum standard cataloging information requires a brief description of the object, its dimensions, the place collected, the collector, and the date of acquisition. However, the information available on these textiles is surprisingly limited, with many of the data fields left empty. Baskets and weavings in museum collections were often originally acquired as tourist items or souvenirs. Information about the maker and the place made or purchased was not obtained or had been lost by the time the object was given to the museum. Unlike textiles in today’s art market, where knowing the maker’s name and reputation may bring higher prices, the humble pack strap or decorative sash was considered a minor item of interest. This attitude may remain even today. Several of the online catalog sites used to compile our working database provided dimensions and descriptions of baskets but failed to include any data on the attached tumpline visible in the artifact photograph.
Table 4. Woven bands by date
| Time period | Number |
|---|---|
|
No information |
13 |
|
1838–1842 |
4 |
|
1876 |
6 |
|
1880–1900 |
18 |
|
1901–1920 |
18 |
|
1921–1940 |
17 |
|
1941–1960 |
12 |
|
1961–2000 |
20 |
Dates of Collection
Because few of the woven bands are associated with a specific date of manufacture the main source of information available on the catalog card is the year the museum acquired the object. Donations are often made many years after their original purchase and are usually offered to museums at the end of the owner’s life. A collection of bands dated 1940 may include some woven in 1940 and others possibly woven many years earlier. Therefore the dates associated with the bands allow only broad categories for analysis. Despite these limitations, the study collection still provides an interesting sample of tumplines, sashes, and belts during a 160-year period.
Locations
Almost half of the study bands lacked catalog information on the place of purchase or manufacture. However, they have been included as Salish textile material because of their similarity to established Salish weaving techniques and patterns. Table 5 shows a good sampling of weaving available from the Fraser River and Puget Sound areas. The Fraser River material was collected primarily by James Teit at the beginning of the twentieth century for the Canadian Museum of History. Other Fraser River pieces are in the Museum of the American Indian and the Royal British Columbia Museum. The Puget Sound objects are from the 1880–1900 collections of the Burke Museum at the University of Washington and one in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University.
Table 5. Woven bands by location
| Location | Number |
|---|---|
|
No location or general Northwest Coast |
51 |
|
Clallam |
7 |
|
Cowichan |
1 |
|
Cowlitz |
3 |
|
Fraser, Lower (Stalo, Yale, Spuzzum) |
14 |
|
Fraser, Upper (Douglas Lake, Lytton) |
5 |
|
Klikitat |
1 |
|
Lillooet |
5 |
|
Bella Coola (Nuxalk) |
1 |
|
Puget Sound |
9 |
|
Saanich |
2 |
|
Skokomish |
1 |
|
Vancouver Island |
1 |
|
Vancouver |
1 |
This study of Salish weaving has been reorganized and revised many times during our years of research and writing. Some elements have remained constant, while others have been added with the realization that important information is missing or as new data became available. Traditional knowledge keepers and academics have shared their understanding of an ancient culture. An equally valuable source of information has been found in the belts and sashes, tumplines and blankets located in public and private collections. These objects store within their threads and patterns the traditional skills of craftswomen and the creativity of Salish artists.