The same author reports, op. cit. p. 86, “The coloration of wooden articles with native pigments is of ancient origin, but all the more elaborate instances that have come to my knowledge bore marks of comparatively recent origin. The pigments used were blue carbonates of iron and copper; the green fungus, or peziza, found in decayed birch and alder wood; hæmatite and red chalk; white infusorial or chalky earth; black charcoal, graphite, and micaceous ore of iron. A species of red was sometimes derived from pine bark or the cambium of the ground willow.”
Stephen Powers states in Contributions to N. A. Ethnology, III, 244, that the Shastika women “smear their faces all over daily with chokecherry juice, which gives them a bloody, corsair aspect.”
Mr. A. S. Gatschet reports that the Klamaths of southwestern Oregon employ a black color, lgú, made of burnt plum seeds and bulrushes, which is applied to the cheeks in the form of small round spots. This is used during dances. Red paint, for the face and body, is prepared from a resin exuding from the spruce tree, pánam. A yellow mineral paint is also employed, consisting probably of ocher or ferruginous clay. Mr. Gatschet says the Klamath spál, yellow mineral paint, is of light yellow color, but turns red when burned, after which it is applied in making small round dots upon the face. The white infusorial earth (?), termed chalk by Mr. Gatschet, is applied in the form of stripes or streaks over the body. The Klamaths use charcoal, lgúm, in tattooing.
The various colors required by a tribe were formerly obtained from plants as by the Dakota, while some of the earthy compounds consisted of red and yellow ocher—oxides of iron—and black micaceous ore of iron and graphite. Some of the California Indians in the vicinity of Tulare River also used a white color, obtained at that locality, and consisted of infusorial earth—diatomaceous. The tribes at and near the geysers, north of San Francisco Bay, obtained their vermilion from croppings of sulphuret of mercury—cinnabar. The same is said to have been the case at the present site of the New Almaden mines, where tribes of the Mutsun formerly lived. Black colors were also prepared by mixing finely powdered charcoal and clay, this being practiced by some of the Pueblos for painting upon pottery. Some of the black color obtained from pictographs in Santa Barbara County, California, proved to be a hydrous oxide of manganese.
For black color in tattooing the Yuki, of California, use soot. The juice of certain plants is also used by the Karok, of California, to color the face.
The Yokuts, of Tule River Agency, California, employ the roots of the cedar (red) and willow (white) split and rendered uniform in caliber. During work the materials are kept moistened, so as to permit of easy manipulation and to prevent fracture of the vegetal fibers.
Rev. J. Owen Dorsey, of the Bureau of Ethnology, reports regarding the Osages that one mode of obtaining black color for the face consists in burning a quantity of small willows. When these are charred they are broken in small pieces and placed in pans, with a little water in each. The hands are then dipped into the pan and rubbed together, and finally rubbed over the parts to be colored.
Formerly tattooing was more frequently practiced among the Hidatsa than at present, the marks being caused by pricking the skin with a sharp splinter of bone and the application of a paste consisting of finely-powdered charcoal and water.
The Hualpais, living on the western border of the Colorado Plateau, Arizona Territory, were found by Dr. Hoffman, in 1871, to decorate their persons by a disgusting process. Various individuals were observed who appeared as if their persons had been tattooed in vertical bands from the forehead to the waist, but upon closer examination it was found that dark and light bands of the natural skin are produced in the following manner: When a deer or an antelope has been killed, the blood is rubbed over the face and breast, after which the spread and curved fingers—to resemble claws—are scratched downward from the forehead over the face and over the breast, thus removing some of the blood; that remaining soon dries, and gives the appearance of black stripes. The exposed portion of the skin retains the natural dark-tanned color, while that under the coating of coagulated blood naturally becomes paler by being protected against the light and air. These individuals do not wash off such marks of success in the chase, and after a while the blood begins to drop off by desquamation, leaving lighter spots and lines, which for a short period of a week or two appear like tattoo marks.
The Mojave pigments are ocher, clay, and probably charcoal, mingled with oil. See Pac. R. R. Exped., Vol. III, Pt. III, p. 33.
The colors, at present used by the Indians and obtained from the traders, consist generally of the following compounds, viz.: vermilion, red lead, chromate of lead (yellow), Prussian blue, chrome green, ivory black and lamp black, Chinese white, and oxide of zinc. All of these are in the form of powder or in crude masses, and are subsequently prepared for use as required.
In British Guiana
Everard F. im Thurn, op. cit., p. 316, gives the following details:
The dyes used by the Indians to paint their own bodies, and occasionally to draw patterns on their implements, are red faroah, purple caraweera, blue-black lana, white felspathic clay, and, though very rarely, a yellow vegetable dye of unknown origin.
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