Pictographs of the North American Indians. A preliminary paper: Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1882-83, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1886, pages 3-256Mallery, Garrick
History
Pictographs of the North American Indians. A preliminary paper: Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1882-83, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1886, pages 3-256
Mallery, Garrick
Haida Indians; Picture-writing, Indian; Tattooing
Faroah is the deep red pulp around the seed of a shrub (_Bixa
orellana_), which grows wild on the banks of some of the rivers, and
is cultivated by the Indians in their clearings. Mixed with a large
quantity of oil, it is then either dried and so kept in lumps which
can be made soft again by the addition of more oil, or is stored in
a liquid condition in tubes made of hollow bamboo-stems. When it is
to be used, either a mass of it is taken in the palm of the hand and
rubbed over the skin or other surface to be painted, or a pattern of
fine lines is drawn with it by means of a stick used as a pencil. The
True Caribs also use faroah largely to stain their hammocks.
Caraweera is a somewhat similar dye, of a more purplish red, and by
no means so commonly used. It is prepared from the leaves of a yellow
flowered bignonia (_B. chicka_), together with some other unimportant
ingredients. The dried leaves are boiled for a few minutes over a
fire, and then some fresh-cut pieces of the bark of a certain tree
and a bundle of twigs and fresh leaves of another tree are added to
the mixture. The whole is then boiled for about twenty minutes, care
being taken to keep the bark and leaves under water. The pot is then
taken from the fire, and the contents, being poured into bowls, are
allowed to subside. The clear water left at the top is poured away,
and the sediment, of a beautiful purple colour, is put into a cloth,
on which it is allowed to dry; after this it is scraped off and
packed in tiny baskets woven of the leaves of the cokerite palm. The
pigment is used for body-painting, with oil, just as is faroah.
Lana is the juice of the fruit of a small tree (_Genipa americana_),
with which, without further preparation, blue-black lines are drawn
in patterns, or large surfaces are stained on the skin. The dye thus
applied is for about a week indelible.
One or more of the three body paints already mentioned is used by
most Indians and in large quantities. But the white, and still more
the yellow, pigments are used only rarely, in lines or dots, and very
sparingly, by some of the Savannah Indians. The white substance is
simply a very semi-liquid felspathic clay, which occurs in pockets
in one or two places on the savannah; this is collected and dried in
lumps, which are then pierced, threaded, and so put aside for future
use. The nature of the yellow dye I was never able to trace; all that
the Indians could or would say was that they received it in small
quantities from a tribe living beyond the Wapianas, who extracted it
from a tree which only grows in that neighborhood.
Paul Marcoy, in Travels in South America: N. Y., 1875, Vol. II, p.
353, says the Passés, Yuris, Barrés, and Chumanas, of Brazil, employ a
decoction of indigo or genipa in tattooing.
SIGNIFICANCE OF COLORS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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