The Point of the Matter
Many visitors have at least some awarness that when you're looking at First Nations adornment and decoration, you'll see a lot of really spectacular beadwork. But what many people don't realize is that glass beads weren't readily avaliable in North America until the mid-1800s, when trade networks with the Europeans were firmly established. Before that, you may find beads of bone or shell or stone, but probably the oldest kind of embroidery found in the Plains and Great Lakes regions is porcupine quillwork.
Porcupines are the fourth-largest rodent in the world, and are widespread across North America. They are perhaps most famous for their quills -- a remarkable adaptation that turns their fur into a formidable defense. Though they can't, as legend has it, throw their quills, they are quite capable of delivering a formidable whack with their prickly tails, which can leave dozens of pointy quills behind in whatever animal was foolish enough to bother them, and the backward pointing barbs make them difficult to pull out.
To embroider with the quills, they are first cleaned and dyed. There were a number of natural materials available for dyeing, including sunflower, choke cherry, walnuts, wild grapes, or evergreen. These would give colours ranging from yellow, to blue, to red, to brown, to black, to purple, to green.
Before working with the quills, they would be moistened to make them more pliable (for the curious, that's how mother porcupines give birth without getting hurt!). Since oversoaking makes them brittle, a common way to moisten them is to hold them in the mouth, barbed end pointing out, until they're needed.
Traditional quillworkers also wouldn't use a needle -- they'd poke a hole halfway through the leather with an awl (you worked beneath the surface of the leather so you didn't have to keep turning the hide over) and the sinew thread held its own point, so a needle wasn't needed.
The designs created by quillwork can be quite stunning. Through a variety of stitching techniques, including zig-zag, parallel/band, single-quill/line, and plaiting, a quiller can create almost any design he or she can imagine. It can be used to decorate anything from clothing, to knife sheaths, to bridles, to wrap rawhide, to decorate birch bark, or to make many kinds of jewellery.
Native Tech is a great resource for anyone who wants to know how the First Nations people created things, and they also have a wonderful Lakota story that tells of the end of the world:
Somewhere at a place where the prairie and the Maka Sicha, the Badlands, meet, there is a hidden cave. Not for a long, long time has anyone been able to find it. Even now, with so many highways, cars and tourists, no one has discovered this cave. In it lives a woman so old that her face looks like a shriveled-up walnut. She is dressed in rawhide, the way people used to before the white man came. She has been sitting there for a thousand years or more, working on a blanket strip for her buffalo robe. She is making the strip out of dyed porcupine quills, the way ancestors did before the white traders brought glass beads to this turtle continent. Resting beside her, licking his paws, watching her all the time is Shunka Sapa, a huge black dog. His eyes never wander from the old woman, whose teeth are worn flat, worn down to little stumps, she has used them to flatten so many porcupine quills.
A few steps from where the old woman sits working on her blanket strip, a huge fire is kept going. She lit this fire a thousand or more years ago and has kept it alive ever since. Over the fire hangs a big earthen pot, the kind some Indian peoples used to make before the white man came with his kettles of iron. Inside the pot, wojapi is boiling and bubbling. Wojapi is berry soup, good and sweet and red. That soup has been boiling in the pot for a long time, ever since the fire was lit.
Every now and then the old woman gets up to stir the wojapi in the huge earthen pot. She is so old and feeble that it takes a while to get up and hobble over to the fire. The moment her back is turned, Shunka Sapa, the huge black dog starts pulling the porcupine quills out of her blanket strip. This way she never makes any progress, and her quillwork remains forever unfinished. The Sioux people used to say that if the old woman ever finishes her blanket strip, then at the very moment that she threads the last porcupine quill to complete the design, the world will come to an end.
Come to the ROM and check out the First Nations Gallery. And keep this story in mind when you do. :o)
Porcupines are the fourth-largest rodent in the world, and are widespread across North America. They are perhaps most famous for their quills -- a remarkable adaptation that turns their fur into a formidable defense. Though they can't, as legend has it, throw their quills, they are quite capable of delivering a formidable whack with their prickly tails, which can leave dozens of pointy quills behind in whatever animal was foolish enough to bother them, and the backward pointing barbs make them difficult to pull out.
To embroider with the quills, they are first cleaned and dyed. There were a number of natural materials available for dyeing, including sunflower, choke cherry, walnuts, wild grapes, or evergreen. These would give colours ranging from yellow, to blue, to red, to brown, to black, to purple, to green.
Before working with the quills, they would be moistened to make them more pliable (for the curious, that's how mother porcupines give birth without getting hurt!). Since oversoaking makes them brittle, a common way to moisten them is to hold them in the mouth, barbed end pointing out, until they're needed.
Traditional quillworkers also wouldn't use a needle -- they'd poke a hole halfway through the leather with an awl (you worked beneath the surface of the leather so you didn't have to keep turning the hide over) and the sinew thread held its own point, so a needle wasn't needed.
The designs created by quillwork can be quite stunning. Through a variety of stitching techniques, including zig-zag, parallel/band, single-quill/line, and plaiting, a quiller can create almost any design he or she can imagine. It can be used to decorate anything from clothing, to knife sheaths, to bridles, to wrap rawhide, to decorate birch bark, or to make many kinds of jewellery.
Native Tech is a great resource for anyone who wants to know how the First Nations people created things, and they also have a wonderful Lakota story that tells of the end of the world:
Somewhere at a place where the prairie and the Maka Sicha, the Badlands, meet, there is a hidden cave. Not for a long, long time has anyone been able to find it. Even now, with so many highways, cars and tourists, no one has discovered this cave. In it lives a woman so old that her face looks like a shriveled-up walnut. She is dressed in rawhide, the way people used to before the white man came. She has been sitting there for a thousand years or more, working on a blanket strip for her buffalo robe. She is making the strip out of dyed porcupine quills, the way ancestors did before the white traders brought glass beads to this turtle continent. Resting beside her, licking his paws, watching her all the time is Shunka Sapa, a huge black dog. His eyes never wander from the old woman, whose teeth are worn flat, worn down to little stumps, she has used them to flatten so many porcupine quills.
A few steps from where the old woman sits working on her blanket strip, a huge fire is kept going. She lit this fire a thousand or more years ago and has kept it alive ever since. Over the fire hangs a big earthen pot, the kind some Indian peoples used to make before the white man came with his kettles of iron. Inside the pot, wojapi is boiling and bubbling. Wojapi is berry soup, good and sweet and red. That soup has been boiling in the pot for a long time, ever since the fire was lit.
Every now and then the old woman gets up to stir the wojapi in the huge earthen pot. She is so old and feeble that it takes a while to get up and hobble over to the fire. The moment her back is turned, Shunka Sapa, the huge black dog starts pulling the porcupine quills out of her blanket strip. This way she never makes any progress, and her quillwork remains forever unfinished. The Sioux people used to say that if the old woman ever finishes her blanket strip, then at the very moment that she threads the last porcupine quill to complete the design, the world will come to an end.
Come to the ROM and check out the First Nations Gallery. And keep this story in mind when you do. :o)