4 Color and Motif

Blanket patterns are reminiscent of each other over time, but they shift, like the rest of the world. Everyone has their growth to add in. That is really what Coast Salish people always talk about—being really, really good at adapting to the changing world around us.

—Chief Janice George, Squamish

Salish women create visually complex textiles using a limited number of shapes and colors. Squares, triangles, and lines are imaginatively stretched, sized, and joined to form vibrant patterns or a calming space. The primary colors found in Salish baskets—red, black, and white—are melded or contrasted with green, gold, purple, and brown to create bold or muted hues in woolen blankets. Through their choices of design and color, weavers offer robes that heighten an individual’s and a community’s ceremonial and social experiences.

The Color Palette

Before the arrival of European traders on the Northwest Coast, a variety of colors were available to Salish artists through local resources and exchanges with neighboring groups. Subtle shades of brown, gray, and black could be found in the natural variations of dog hair and bird down. Plant stems, roots, and barks provided hues of white, brown, and green. When these fibers were carefully separated, spun, and arranged as warp and weft threads, a solid color, plaid, or striped pattern could be woven. Stronger tones could be made by immersing the fibers in dye baths. They would have been made from a range of fungus, tree barks, flowers, and fruit and from colored ochers, copper sulphates, charcoal, and animal bones. These raw materials were subjected to boiling, drying, rubbing, smoking, and burning to extract their tint as dyes, paints, and stains. Plant dyes and minerals were sometimes combined to strengthen or better preserve the desired hue. The resulting colors included a range of greens, reds, blues, and yellows plus black and white. “All of these colors could be given subtle variations in hue and sparkle. Paints could be applied fresh, as a viscous mixture, or dried and applied as a powder to a wet or greased surface. They could be combined with water, spittle, grease, or oil, each mixture resulting in variations of dull or bright, light or dark hues. The addition of crushed mica (micaeceous hematite) gave paint a shiny, shimmering appearance and was used especially in face and body painting.”1

27. Krista Point with blankets she wove for community use and for the welcome figure carved by Brent Sparrow. Musqueam Community Centre. Photographer: L. H. Tepper, 2012. Canadian Museum of History Img2016-0014-0001-Dp1.jpg.

Color had many uses in Salish culture. Fibers were immersed in dye baths in preparation for making baskets or textiles. Paints were used to draw vision imagery as pictographs on rock surfaces and to draw decorative patterns on tanned hides or woven fibers used for clothing and storage bags. Face and body paint were applied daily as cosmetics, and special designs were drawn on ceremonial occasions. Teit notes that everyone in the Nlaka’pamux community used paint. Some people bathed and then applied fresh paint every day; others used it only for ceremony or during warfare.2 Designs occasionally replaced items of clothing. A pattern painted on the forehead was a substitute for an actual headband. A painted bear claw design around the neck was used instead of a real necklace. The visual iconography of the face paint, particularly images symbolizing the land, mountains, stars, and clouds, was similar to designs in pictographs and on decorated clothing.

Despite the relative range of available hues, Salish basketry uses primarily red, black, and white. These colors are often applied as a single red or black motif against the basket’s white background. When red and black are both present in a single design, they are usually separated by areas of white. Laforet notes “the principle of alternation of color, so that red and black are always alternated within and between motifs and never juxtaposed directly with one another, but always are buffered with white. In historic Nlaka’pamux basket design there are some baskets that are decorated only in black and red, without white (though the alternation between red and black is maintained) but more frequently red and black are buffered and are dominant colors. This can also be seen on Coast Salish basketry with blocks of imbrications as the foundation of the design.”3

28. Basket showing pattern repetition. CMH VII-G-396. Photographer: Steven Darby, 2016. Canadian Museum of History Img2016-0018-0001-Dm.jpg.

The balancing of these colors is also apparent in other aspects of Salish culture. Teit writes that colors were balanced not only for aesthetic purposes but also for their symbolic values. Red was considered a positive, life-affirming color, while black signified darkness or death. Objects used in warfare or designs used as face paint for raiding had these colors applied equally on opposing surfaces. Teit notes, for example, a woman who painted one black line and one red line down from each eye, “like placing joy to counteract sorrow.”4

29. Blanket showing pattern repetition. Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Museum Collection, X-763.

Red and black are usually applied sparingly to the surface of baskets, with only two or three areas of design against a predominantly white background. However, several baskets in museum collections suggest an “eye-dazzling” effect similar to that found on patterned blankets. On these objects the rhythmic repetition of the key motif, created through the consistent application of repeated blocks of color, carries the viewer’s eye around the contour of the basket or across the textile surface.

European Threads

In the period following European contact, access to manufactured yarns offered wool weavers new hues and tones for their textile designs. Trade blankets, which were available in the brilliant colors of red, blue, and green as well as the more familiar white, could be unraveled and the threads reused. White yarn was sometimes dyed by soaking it in warm water with a brightly colored trade blanket.

30. Woolen belt, ca. 1840, color detail. E2123-1 Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution. Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution.

Early and mid-nineteenth-century Salish textiles illustrate how weavers took advantage of these new materials. Though the designs continued to draw on the traditional geometric vocabulary, wool weavings took on new color combinations and greater visual complexity. Finely spun threads in bright colors provided an opportunity to incorporate contrast within a small motif or to highlight elements of the design.

It is clear that historical weavers understood the techniques of producing and using thinner threads. A number of the earliest blankets in museum collections, for example the textiles from the Peabody Museum at Harvard collected around 1819, are woven from finely spun yarn.5 By the mid-nineteenth century, blankets had geometric shapes outlined in one color and filled in with another. Weavers also created a third color tone by alternating weft throws of threads of similar value, such as red and orange. This type of color combination, particularly when used in short columns of analogous hues, would make the colors appear distinctive when the textile was seen close up but blended when it was viewed from a distance, or perhaps when observed by firelight in a ceremonial setting.

An effective use of this subtle color application is found on two long, narrow belts collected between 1838 and 1842 during the Charles Wilkes U.S. Exploring Expedition (figure 30). As in most Salish designs, the weaver has played with colors on a white background. Sections of red and blue triangles alternate with segments of triangles woven in yellow and green. The overall effect is to break up the pattern line into blocks while keeping a single narrow zigzag line as a connecting white background. Many of the yellow triangles are outlined in red, a technique also found on some blankets.

31. Blanket, ca. 1838. E2124 Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution. Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution.

The weaver of the 1838 blanket in the Smithsonian collections also played with color relationships in sophisticated ways (figure 31). The solidity of the red and black zigzag lines near the blanket’s upper edge is fragmented by the addition of white yarn. Even the thin borders that separate the different bands of pattern are visually broken by the use of black and red lines. The vertical stripes to the right and left of the textile’s central section are muted colors of browns, white, and black. The shift to a brighter red at the top of several stripes carries the viewer’s eye to the red diagonal lines in pattern block above.

32. Blanket border, color detail. E221408-0 Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution. Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution.

This blanket and other patterned blankets often show changes in hue or tone in different sections of the textile. It is not always clear if the shift in color is the result of a shortage of yarn from the same dye lot or if the weaver intended a particular visual effect. The techniques of alternating or incorporating new yarns, or more use of white or off-white threads, may be a reflection of the shortage of dyed material in the early years of the fur trade as much as a cultural or aesthetic decision. The authors have generally assumed that if such shifts in color occur at opposite ends of the textile, they are probably the consequences of insufficient material, fading from exposure to light, or some other event beyond the control or original intention of the artist.

Fading or lack of dyed materials does not explain variations within color sequencing on other textiles analyzed in this study. The weaver of the 1838 Smithsonian robe discussed above (figure 31) was consistent in the presentation of the vertical lines in the central section. The four colors of gold, red, white, and black are repeated three times in identical order. However, a weaving in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History has little consistency in a similar repetition of parallel lines woven along the side borders (figure 32). Staying within a small range of tones—dark brown, dark green, light green, tan, and cream—the artist shifted dark and light lines to bind the simple geometric forms into a lively decorative border. It is also interesting to note that only on one side of the textile are the triangles outlined in red. There also are other inconsistencies in color application. The triangles that frame the five parallel lines generally alternate as white-green-white and face the opposing points of green-white-green. One of the panels, however, has five white triangles and one green. Is this a mistake? Could it be a weaver’s signature, as found on Chilkat blankets?6 Is it an example of a master weaver teaching an apprentice, or is it two artists working together? The blanket is in every other respect a beautifully woven textile, with reversed twill lines forming a diamond pattern, even tension in the designs, straight selvages, and attention to details that include brown and white stitching along the edge.

Blankets woven after the middle of the nineteenth century tend to use a simpler palette with designs woven as solid blocks of color.7 The palette choices are usually red, dark blue or black, white and off-white, and green or yellow, shades not significantly different from those used in the earlier part of the century. However, these blankets, particularly those reputedly purchased by Joseph McKay from Yale, British Columbia, keep each colored shape distinct. Few motifs begin with one shade and end with another, and forms are not outlined with thin red thread. There is also a remarkable absence of columns, stripes, or diagonal lines requiring alternating weft shots of two threads of different colors. The visual impact of these blankets is achieved by the overall impression of clearly demarcated patterns, an effect assisted by the strong color contrasts (figure 33).

Our understanding of Salish blanket history and design would benefit from further research into the commercial sources of the colored yarns. Several museum conservation departments have focused on the fiber content of the white yarn to determine whether it is mountain goat or dog hair. However, the authors have found little discussion on the chronology of dye usage by Salish weavers or the arrival of specific trade materials into Salish territories. In comparison, the study of blankets from the American Southwest, particularly Navajo textiles, is helping to provide a valuable tool for material culture research. One curator in particular, Joe Ben Wheat, has undertaken extensive analysis of dyes, weaves, and patterns. The recognition of “Saxony” yarn or of the use of aniline dyes from the mills in Germantown, Pennsylvania, and other industrial centers has helped classify Navajo and southwestern blankets according to location and historical period.8 In Canada, additional scholarly research, such as Willmott’s analysis of woolen cloth, stroud, broadcloth, and other fabrics imported by fur trading companies, might provide a similar classification for Salish textiles.9

33. Blanket, ca. 1860, showing color palette from second half of the nineteenth century. 144864 National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution. Courtesy of National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution.

Patterns

Weavers employ similar geometric designs on different functional objects. Square, triangle, and zigzag motifs appear on the circular containers of basketry, the flat surfaces of bags, the long, narrow bands of tumplines, and the large open space provided by Nobility Robes. The relationship between basket and textile patterns is particularly noticeable, and some contemporary weavers say they study basket patterns to develop design ideas for their blankets.10

Tumpline Patterns

Tumpline patterns bear a close resemblance to certain basketry patterns, particularly in the choice of motif and in the organization of the design on the band. Though the weaving materials, available color choices, and structural requirements of the decorated basket and decorated pack strap are different, the basket weaver had an extensive repertoire of basketry designs to apply to the associated pack strap. This interchange of pattern motifs may have also moved from the pack strap to a basket design. For example, the Nlaka’pamux basketry design named tsuptsupEnä’ist is from the word tsu’pin, (packing strap).11

Research on tumpline designs is facilitated by books on coiled basketry designs published in 1900 and 1930. These studies provide a comprehensive documentation of patterns used on Plateau baskets and bags. As noted earlier, James Teit interviewed basket makers from Interior Salish communities to identify the names of different designs (see chapter 2). Haeberlin’s and Farrand’s analyses of pattern types, based on Teit’s work, classify the major styles. The patterns considered to be traditionally Salish are derived from geometric shapes. They are classified as horizontal, oblique, and vertical lines; meanders, chevrons, and zigzags; and the various shapes of the triangle, square, rectangle, rhomboid, trapezoid, diamond, hexagon, and octagon.

34. Basket showing vertical stripe pattern. CMH VII-G-599ab. Photographer: Steven Darby, 2016. Canadian Museum of History Img2016-oo18-0003-Dm.jpg.

From the extraordinary variety of Salish designs, a number of motifs appear frequently on tumplines. These seem to have been chosen from a group of basketry designs woven as horizontal bands on the sides of baskets. As described in Coiled Basketry in British Columbia and Surrounding Region, “The vertical stripe is a comparatively narrow space enclosed by vertical lines usually extending from base to rim, but occasionally running down from the rim for about two-thirds of the way. It is executed in a color contrasting with the background of the basket and set off by perfectly straight edges. Within the boundaries of the wider stripes there are many possible arrangements of small designs.”12

The narrow patterns used for basketry stripes appear to be a natural adaptation for tumpline and belt designs. Common motifs are triangular shapes such as an arrow or broken arrow, zigzags called lightning or snake tracks, and straight lines, which are also woven as broken or shifting lines. Some vertical designs are worked in a larger scale. The basket shown in figure 34 uses the boundary lines to help separate and strengthen the larger individual motifs of arrowheads or nested Vs. On other baskets the stripe pattern is not set within two lines but uses a central spine of color to attach the design elements to either side.13 This format or arrangement is also found as a tumpline decoration.

35. Blanket detail, square motif. Detail of woolen blanket E1891 A-0 Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution. Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution.

Blanket Patterns

The larger surface areas offered by robes and mats allow the weaver greater freedom in composition and placement.14 To analyze pattern compositions, the authors have focused on the geometric motifs of the square, triangle, and zigzag as the basic building blocks in Salish weaving design.

Squares

Squares are a remarkably versatile shape and are perhaps the easiest motif to construct. The weaver decides the width of the block using a selected number of neighboring warp threads. The weft is passed back and forth, over and under the same block of warp threads until a square of desired height is obtained. If the height is longer than the base then a rectangle, another common design element, is created. When the square is very narrow and long it appears as a straight line that can stand alone or act as a border for another design element. A row of lines becomes a set of columns. Small squares of alternating colors form a checkerboard design. If a new square is woven above and to the side of the original square, it will form a diagonal step design. A diagonal line of squares can turn in different directions to become a zigzag or be stacked to form a triangle.

36. Blanket detail, triangle motif. E1891 A-0 Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution. Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution.

Triangles

Triangles are a more difficult shape to weave. Consistent, even shifting onto a new warp thread with each twill or twine weft wrap or tabby shot requires some expertise. The weft thread forming the triangle must also link to the neighboring strand in order to create a solid fabric. Careful counting of warps and good tension are needed to create a smooth line. Rows of triangles are frequently found as border decorations at the rim or base of a basket, at the selvages of a tumpline, or as an important design component in a blanket. They are particularly useful as an edging for zigzag designs, their pointed tops complementing each turn of the zigzag line.

37. Illustration of triangles woven as hourglass, diamond, and extended diamond.

38. Illustration of diagonal lines forming zigzag.

Diagonal Lines

Like triangular shapes, diagonal lines are difficult motifs to weave, requiring a consistent shifting of weft threads over neighboring warps. These narrow blocks of color can be placed in a parallel row, all pointing in one direction, or as a set of linked blocks angled alternatively left and right to create a zigzag pattern. Such designs can be “read” two ways, as a zigzag line moving from edge to edge or as a row of opposing triangles (figure 38).

The NMNH blanket analyzed earlier for its color techniques also provides a good illustration of the variety of diagonal line motifs (figures 31, 39). Starting at the top, a row of parallel lines placed at an angle are followed by a line of diagonal white lines rounded to make softened zigzags. The broad band of nested zigzags below is woven as alternating blocks of black and white, and then red and white lines.

Combinations and Variations

Particular combinations of squares, triangles, and lines are used repeatedly on textiles and baskets. They are recognizable as conventional pattern blocks on various Salish blankets. Weavers appear to have experimented with color and minor design variations within these smaller modules of organized motifs.

39. Blanket detail, diagonal lines. E2124 Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution. Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution.

40. Blanket, ca. 1803, pattern-block detail. 177710 Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution. Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution.

Among the earliest of such pattern blocks is the one found on a blanket collected during the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1803–04 (figure 40). Primarily woven in white, the blanket has a recurring combination of triangles and straight lines, with large and miniature zigzag forms near the textile’s edge. This arrangement is similar to Plains Indian designs usually executed in beadwork.16 The weaver of this blanket has arranged a line of four narrow triangles as a border on both sides of a block of nine vertical lines. The thin lines are woven in sets of three red and three green (in different combinations across the band) to create nine. This pattern block—four triangles framing a set of vertical lines—is also found on a textile in the Smithsonian’s Museum of the American Indian that was collected more than a century later but probably had been woven many years before it was collected. The colors on this blanket have been expanded to include black and yellow, and the zigzag is a softer, broader line. It is divided into patterned bands, and the Plains-like motif is framed by a compressed presentation of the zigzag form above and a more open version below (figure 44).

Perhaps the most remarkable use of the “Plains” design is on the Pitt Rivers blanket (figure 49). Here are five vertical stripes of white-black-white-red-white. The block is framed by four colored triangles on each side. It is presented only in the row at the lower edge on this blanket, where it is repeated in two places. However, an innovative variation of the “Plains” pattern is found throughout the blanket. Here the weaver has maintained the border with four triangles on each side but has transformed the vertical lines into a checkerboard pattern. The resulting visual impact breaks the textile surface from rigidly confined blocks of vertical bars into a field of small visual riffs.

Zigzags

Similar innovations can be seen in the application of zigzag designs. These diagonal lines woven as sharply defined points or gentle rills become a visual flow of energy across the horizontal bands of blankets or along the middle stripes of tumplines. Similar to the way that fringes seem to enliven a blanket, zigzags can appear to animate the visual field. Chaussonnet has suggested that fringes are a metaphor for spiritual transformation.17 A zigzag line may serve a similar purpose in Salish weaving.

41. Woven belt, pattern-block placement detail. E2120-0 Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution. Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution.

Weavers were also innovative in the ways they used pattern blocks to interrupt or disrupt the optical flow of the zigzag on a textile. Zigzags are particularly effective on the long narrow stretches of tumplines and sashes, and many late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century tumplines have a single or nested zigzag motif running down the center of the band. However, belts and sashes woven in the early to mid-nineteenth century are segmented by changes in design blocks.

A belt, documented as collected during the Charles Wilkes expedition to the Columbia in 1838–42, interrupts the pattern of red and white nested zigzags in the center section (figure 41). A block of alternating red and green diamonds bordered by a red line on each side is followed by the zigzag design. The center section is completed by three blocks of alternating red and green parallel lines. This offset pattern of lines is found on a number of tumplines woven at the end of the nineteenth century but is rarely found on blankets. A small slit in the center of the band suggests that it may have been attached to a coat button and worn as a sash across the chest or around the waist.

A second belt is woven with finely spun wools, possibly dyed with indigo and madder or cochineal (figure 42). The pattern blocks are large zigzag lines in red or blue that alternate with thin red double lines of reversed diagonals. The decorative triangles along the selvage of the larger zigzags are woven in various colors, including an occasional green triangle. The blocks of fine lines of red diagonals are very similar to the lines on a blanket collected by Lewis and Clark in 1803–04 (figure 40).

42. Woven belt, zigzag variations detail. E2121-0 Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution. Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution.

43. Woven belt, diagonal line variations detail. ET14189 Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution. Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution.

44. Textile fragment, zigzag pattern. 155607 National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution. Courtesy of National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution.

One beautifully woven tumpline, possibly collected by Swan around 1876, uses the traditional colors of red, white, and black (figure 43). The pattern sequence is a series of zigzag lines, columns, and solid-colored stripes. In one small section a band of vertical columns is separated by diagonal lines, followed by columns and diagonal lines. The segment offers an unusual but visually effective interrupted pattern sequence of diagonal lines rather than the usual zigzag motif. Other early tumplines collected by Swan in this period show the use of a single motif down the center of the weaving with decorative borders at each end.

45. Illustration of extended zigzag. Drawing of middle section of textile RCBM 9646. Drawing by Miriam R. Tepper, 2016. Courtesy of Leslie H. Tepper.

46. Woven and embroidered band with representational design. Gift of Mr. Lewis Hobart Farlow. © President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University. Courtesy Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University PM# 06-5-10/66474 (digital file #99030059).

The interruption of a zigzag line is also found in a number of blankets. It is most clearly represented in some textile pieces in the National Museum of the American Indian. Collected by W. A. Newcombe in 1927 from the Saanich area, their fragmentary state suggests a much earlier date of weaving. This blanket border has the Plains-like design of lines and triangles discussed earlier. Of particular interest is the weaver’s adaptation of the zigzag line into a softly flowing curve interrupted by horizontal parallel lines.

A final example of zigzag experimentation is found on the rug-like weaving documented as belonging to the Hudson’s Bay trader Roderick Finlayson but originating with McKay at Yale.18 The textile is composed of a series of large design blocks framed by a border of white and colored lines. Linking the two main sections is a narrow band of zigzag lines. Though now badly frayed, this design shows the ability of the weaver to stretch and turn the diagonal line to fit design requirements (figure 45).

Representational Weaving

This discussion of woven motif and pattern concludes with a remarkable example of Salish art.19 Realistic portrayals of human and animal anatomy can be found on two- and three-dimensional carvings. Large sculptures made as house posts or for gravesites and smaller figures for hand tools, such as the spindle whorl shown earlier (figure 5), illustrate a long tradition of accurate representation in art. Simpler motifs, drawn predominantly as stick figures and including figures of animals, birds, insects, and humans are applied in painting and basketry.20 As discussed, tumpline designs of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are predominantly zigzag variations or a line of triangular motifs down the center. However, a woven band from Puget Sound shows an unusual but effective combination of geometric motifs and representational imagery that places two hands across the wearer’s forehead or chest (figure 46).