230 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 1 33 



bright and lets them fade less easily. Darker shades of any color are 

 produced by boiling the yarn a long time ; the longer the yarn is boiled 

 in the dye, the deeper the color will be." 



Another Alepue woman, using native plants, made the dye first and 

 then boiled the yarn in it. At the time she was dyeing yarn for a 

 poncho, using chips of olivillo bark and pieces of roots of nalca. She 

 removed the bark and roots from the kettle and dropped the skeins 

 into the boiling decoction. In about lo minutes she squeezed the liquid 

 out of a handful of yarn to examine the color. "It is too light," she 

 remarked, and let it boil several more minutes. 



Silver-gray and black are obtained from earth. An Alepue woman, 

 who was dyeing with earth at the time, gave directions for finding 

 earth to dye silver-gray. "Look for a spot of deep purplish color on 

 the surface of the earth, along the shores of the Pacific. When you 

 find it, dig down about so deep [3 feet], and take out the earth you 

 find there; it will dye a silver-gray color — Chileans call the color 

 plomo." A Cofiaripe woman was dyeing black with earth that she had 

 brought "from a place near here where a spring from the Cordillera 

 empties into the Llancahue River. I know of no other place where 

 it can be found," she noted. 



Commercial dyes were used by informants to color red, green, 

 purple, wine color, and also black. "The Chilean stores at which we 

 trade for clothing, sugar, etc., will accept lama and choapino from us 

 in exchange for things we want, if they are in bright colors ; articles 

 in darker colors are difficult to sell, the storekeepers say. Since we have 

 no plants that dye bright colors, we buy aniill, a dye imported from 

 Germany, and aniline dyes at the stores. The yarn dyed with aniill 

 retains its color ; in fact the color dies with the cloth ; aniline dyes fade 

 out in time. Aniill dyes are very expensive — I paid 10 pesos [30 cents 

 in U. S. money] for less than this [a teaspoonful] last year [1946], 

 and I had to buy three such portions to dye a kgpam. None can be 

 gotten any longer ; they say the war is preventing trade with Ger- 

 many." 



Native dyes are set in two traditional ways : either putrid human 

 urine is added to the kettle of boiling dye from which the dyed skeins 

 have been removed, and when this mixture is boiling the skeins are 

 returned to it and again boiled ; or, as in the case of dark colors such 

 as are favored for ponchos, earth of a specific quality and urine are 

 mixed and added to the dye and the skeins boiled in it. The woman 

 who dyed yarn for a poncho in olivillo bark and nalca roots made a 

 solution of the second kind. With her hand she mixed well urine and 

 earth that she and her teen-age daughter had dug at the Pacific that 



