de Laguna] ARCHEOLOGY, YAKUTAT BAY AREA, ALASKA 197 



of evidence of early weaving in the Tsimshian area, I would assume 

 that the mythology refers to the elaborate "totemic" or heraldic 

 designing of the so-called Chilkat blanket. A total lack of information 

 on Tsimshian weaving and the very dubious provenience of the great 

 majority of blankets that are tentatively labeled Tsimshian makes 

 further discussion of this origin mythology fruitless. 



Of the development of the historic Chilkat blanket, the following 

 items are outstanding: 



There are no blankets with styhzed naturalistic designs (unless the 

 fragment in the National Museum of Canada is an exception) which 

 do not have the cedar bark and mountain goat wool wrapped warp. 

 There are no blankets with the stylized naturalistic designs which 

 are dated before the beginning of the 19th century, and the oldest 

 with known date of collection appears to be about 1830 (Willoughb}'-, 

 1910, p. 10). Emmons (1907, p. 390) says that his earUest blanket 

 was supposedly the first woven by the Chilkat and was copied from 

 an old Tsimshian blanket; it was said to be several generations old. 

 The introduction of the elaborate designs brought new weaving tech- 

 niques unknown to basketry and necessary to develop the patterns 

 of a multipUcity of small bodies of color. All of the Chilkat blankets 

 have the rounded lower edge, the so-called five-sided shape. None 

 of the Chilkat blankets is as finely woven as are the geometric pat- 

 terned; none is as flexible. The addition of cedar bark made for 

 greater rigidity; it also, of course, supplemented a probably limited 

 supply of mountain goat wool. It permitted an expansion of the quan- 

 tity of production which agreed with the need for wealth-display items. 



There are only a few blankets which fill the technologic and decora- 

 tive gap between the geometric Yakutat, Swift, Copenhagen, and 

 British Museum specimens and the historic Chilkat (and/or Tsimshian) 

 blankets. 



A cut-up blanket, incorporated into a dancing shirt, in the former 

 Museum of the Geological Survey of Canada (now the National 

 Museum of Canada) is illustrated in part by Kissell (1928, fig. 3: 

 n.b. that the description of this fragment on page 117 wronglj^ refers 

 to fig. 2) ; by Emmons (1907, fig. 58, p. 388) and by Willoughby (1910, 

 pi. 2). None of the authors states whether the fragment is of pure 

 mountain goat wool or mountain goat wool and cedar bark mixed. 

 This fragment shares the zigzag and bar design with the geometric- 

 designed blankets and has a form of concentric triangle designs. The 

 selvage-to-selvage wefts in the geometric pattern are interrupted by 

 a styhzed naturahstic design in which short lengths of yarn are 

 mserted to make the pattern in typical Chilkat techniques. There 

 are a few tassels added to the naturalistic design, though the geometric- 



