228 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I33 



is kept in upright position by holding its lower end between two toes. 

 Children were seen winding yarn on balls in this manner. 



The informant then demonstrated twirling yarn used in weaving a 

 k9pam, for which only a single strand is twirled. She unwound 

 several feet of yarn, then rolled the upper end of the spindle between 

 her hands, caught the end of the yarn, held it, suspended the spindle 

 in midair, and let it twirl there. She kept an eye on the yarn and 

 when she thought it sufficiently twirled, she stopped it by letting the 

 lower end of the spindle touch the ground. She examined the yarn 

 closely now, and found it sufficiently twirled. After a strand was 

 twirled, she rolled it onto another spindle, and secured it in the groove 

 with a slipknot. 



Yarn, not wool, is dyed by being boiled in a decoction made, as 

 formerly, of native plants or of earth (pi. 58, i) ; in recent years 

 commercial dyes bought in Chilean stores have also been used. Either 

 the yarn and the dye-producing substance are boiled together, or the 

 dye is first made and the yarn then boiled in it. Women do the dyeing. 

 (PI. 58, 2, 5.) Yarn to be dyed is formed into skeins, a single arm's 

 stretch in length, the number of strands in a skein depending on the 

 amount of yarn needed for the article to be woven and also on the 

 size of the kettle in which they are to be dyed. (The informant 

 thought that there are never more than 100 strands in a skein.) Near 

 her lay five skeins, each of 70 to 100 double-twirled strands. 



Dyeing was formerly done only in pottery-made ollas ; several in- 

 formants still dyed black in ollas, "for black dyed in a kettle fades the 

 next day. A woman who does not have an olla usually weaves her 

 kapam from the wool of black sheep. A kapam must be black; no 

 woman would wear one of any other color." Iron kettles used in 

 cooking are the ones used in dyeing. Table 6 lists native plants from 

 which colors were extracted by informants. 



An Alepue woman spent a forenoon in the woods chopping bark off 

 ulmo. "Since I want to dye yarn a dark, dark brown, I had to search 

 for old trees. Out here in the open space, I found only young trees ; 

 their bark gives a light-brown color. But deep in the woods I found 

 the old trees I needed." She then proceeded with the dyeing. She 

 broke the bark into chips, put a layer of them on the bottom of the 

 kettle, two skeins of dry yarn on the top of the chips, another layer of 

 bark, two more skeins on top of these, and then another layer of bark. 

 The amount of bark used is of no account; the length of boiling is 

 significant. She filled the kettle with cold water and suspended it from 

 the fire raft so low that it rested directly on the fire. As it boiled, she 

 occasionally pulled several strands forward with a stick to examine 



