Mary Weahkee makes a turkey feather blanket

hello my name is Mary we Aki I am an archaeologist for the state of New Mexico and what I am going to present today is actually how to manufacture a turkey feather blanket when you're talking about turkeys in the southwest they weren't indigenous to North America they're coming all the way from Mexico and they're bringing brought up by the Aztec and traded here around eleven and twelve hundreds prior to that rabbit fur was the preferred material so the turkey comes in and the pueblos are taught basically how to take care of the turkey and it becomes their main herd animal and these birds were not eaten the bird was quite sacred to the Aztec and they didn't even eat their birds when the birds are living in South America they have a completely different color than they do here in the southwest they're almost more golden and you can see some of that golden color still left in these birds here in the Americas and air decent colors there's some magnificent beautiful bird and I can see why some of the presidents wanted to use them as our American icon rather than the eagle one bird yields about 600 feathers so you're looking at a cloak that is three foot by four foot that cloak alone uses over fifteen to sixteen thousand plumes so here I have the tail feather or the fan of the of the turkey that's used for other things a lot of it is for dance regalia goes on the back of a headdress of a buffalo dancer and then we have of course the whole wing and you're looking at Plains Indians using it for fans you're using it also for weaponry you've got the smaller lesser feathers which were decorative and have that iridescent look on them and they're being used for again regalia and on prayer sticks and other things but the prize of what you want from the turkey is of course these wonderful plumes you know the turkey is the only bird that allows feathers to be taken and it won't bleed it has a defensive mechanism to where if a predator grabs the feather the skin will literally open up and release this feather at will and then automatically another plume will come out or another fletching will come out of that bird it's the only bird that does that other bird species of course if plucked like parrots or any other bird will bleed to death they're known to commit suicide by plucking their feathers so you can literally harvest these feathers off of these birds they molt twice a year the reason why you want to work feathers wet in the first place is this quill is very stiff and not very flexible so if you look at this wet feather you can see how nice and easy that quill it's going to become easy for me to wine this around that cordage aside from gathering the turkey plumes that you need for your blanket one of the other processes of course is the yucca cordage itself this is the northern narrow leaf it is one of the only plants that can be harvested year-round and as you can see this has been harvested I saved the root because we use this for shampoo we use it for soap we use it for other things religious and you know everyday uses so what I need to do is literally take each single leaf off of this stock a yucca I want to remove the flat base because I don't need that part unless I'm making a basket and I'm gonna disarm it I call taking the tips off of it disarming it and I take these and I boil them and once I have them boiled they become very pliable and inside of each one of these leaves is that beautiful cordage so what I have here is a PVC cylinder that's smooth and round and a tray that holds water so what I'm doing is I'm taking a deer antler that's already in a tool that I need that's round and smooth and it's not going to tear my cordage and what I'm doing is I'm removing this silicon like outer skin from the yucca and I'm exposing the cordage inside of here now I'm gonna flip this over and I don't need any of the silicate so if I can just peel it that's even better so this is what I want to remove because this rib on the outside is going to inhibit my spinning when I go to work on my cordage again what I'm trying to capture is the the fiber inside of here so that I can create the cords that I need to spin to create the fibers I'm pushing out all of the pulp that's inside here so when you put it back in water you can actually see these wonderful threads in this this is what I'm after so once I have all my leaves boiled and clean it pretty much looks like this so this is actually one plant and look how much fiber this yielded you see all the tools that we're using here again the prehistoric woman sewing kit comes in handy we've got all's for putting holes in things we've got a case for holding all these wonderful needles that I probably will use to sew fibers with I've got a thimble that be removed and placed back in and it acts as a lock that I can push the needles through with and my tool of choice when I'm working with this particular yucca is this all and on a lot of prehistoric assemblages you'll get these all's that have a flat square end on it but what this is is what I call my third hand because when I'm going to apply my feathers this becomes a very important tool because I want to open the cordage I'm going to insert my bone tool and I can pull it out and this doesn't hurt my teeth so if I were to use a round tool like this my teeth would probably eventually round in but this is nice and flat so this becomes my third hand I've taken the plant I boiled it I cleaned it and I've got this nice wet amount of cordage here and you want to take a good portion of your cordage and you're going to do what's called drafting so when you look at a leaf it has a wide base and a narrow base you always want to pull from the wide base away when I clean and I separate I can tell that all this edge here are all the wide ends and up here are the narrow bases wide end here and then the narrow end so in the plant itself here's that wide base and here's that narrow end and look how much just the boiling of this how plump the fibers get once you soak them this leaf will grow twice its size I'm drafting so I want to take my cordage so I've got the wide end and the narrow end and I'm just gonna foolish so you can see how it's just nice and pulling apart and what I'm doing is I'm getting the right width to work with before I start spinning it on my thigh and you're just gonna take your leg and the palm of my hand and I'm gonna pinch this end and I'm gonna roll both of these at the same time and when I feel it's tight enough I'm gonna let it go and you can see it start to do a two ply spin on it this is called an S spin and you can see because I drafted it so even I'm gonna get the same width out of this leaf every time this is exactly thirty feet of cordage I need about 300 feet I'm going to take a whole handful of yucca and I draft it because I need to work at least 30 feet a day and I'm trying to keep everybody as even as possible and I want two rows and you're gonna look at this and you're saying well that's that's a little bit thinner than this one well that's not a worry because you can come here draft till I feel like okay now I've got about the same and I can add this into it the yucca will grab itself so I'm gonna take the cordage that I've already completed and I'm going to add these pieces here to this length again when you're adding cordage you want to come back so I've locked it and so I'm gonna take this one and I'm gonna also lock that and I'm gonna start spinning the cordage when it's a longer piece you want to just take your time even if it's like inch at a time it's already grown about three feet sitting here just with the length that I'm added to it so now we're gonna come back to our feathers as you look over here on the Cape I've separated these feathers into different categories the first little pile here being like the primary feathers that I would want to create my feather blanket because of the length of the feather first of all the second batch would be okay I've used these all up so this is my second choice of feather this smaller feather even though lessor can be used this work but it just takes a little bit longer because they're so short so what I did is I created this small sample and what I want to show is the very first feather that goes in here you don't want the fledge to protrude out of this area so again here's the third hand I'm gonna take this and I'm gonna open the cordage and I'm gonna hold the cordage here and my feather in my hand and while the hole is still open stick that plume in between the cordage I'm gonna Bend this quill and I'm gonna turn this feather I'm gonna start winding it around and what I'm doing is I have completely hidden that quill so it won't poke me when I have the cloak on and so if you look at this Fletch or this feather I wind it only up to where the fluffs end so what is exposed is this part here but it's so wet it's hard to make out what you want to do is hide this so again you want to open the yucca cordage you're gonna stick your all in here and this is the second feather so the first feather went in this direction so it went in this way this next fluff is going to go in this way and it will continue that way throughout the manufacturing of this blanket you're going to turn this and you're going to whine it so that it now is covering that Fletch end that part that we don't want on our skin we want the nice downy feathers and look how hard I'm pulling this these feathers are really really resilient when you first start it's kind of scary I don't want to tear the feather I don't want to just keep continuing with your awl and your third hand and just keep winding this will also give you a respectful look at how tedious things were for your ancestors small finger muscles that you didn't know you had you'll find out about when you need to rest or you need to take a timeout or you need to do other things a simple clothespin on the edge here that'll hold it all together until you're ready and don't worry about it doesn't look fluffy how come it's not robust like it should be it will dry out and it will start to fluff up the more this gets handled the fluffier it's gonna get because you can see the difference between one you just started and one you've been working and we'll continue this until we complete the whole turkey feather blanket assemblage cordage first and then once all the cordage is complete then you start your feathers so now I have the all in place I have my feather I'm gonna pull it we're gonna bend that quill and we're gonna hide and you can see what I'm hiding I'm hiding this quill here and it's gonna be underneath in cordage is spun so well that you know you have to open it because it will lock on whatever's in there so we're hiding neck well and the rest of these flesh ends so they're not poking us this is the tedious part in this link it is putting on every single feather but in the end product is so cool and see how we've hidden everything see there's that not quilt peeking out right there and then you're gonna cover that and you can start to see the other flesh start to disappear this loom is 3 feet by 3 feet and the blanket itself is going to be 2 feet by 3 feet this is the warp and this is the weft so the warp is covered by 17,000 turkey feathers and there's a hundred feet of yucca cordage that was used for the warp the weft cordage is going to come down every two inches the weft cordage this is 120 or 130 feet of weft cordage and as you can see it's a lot smaller or thinner than the warp cordage which was a quarter of an inch thick and I have two sticks that I'm going to use to go in and out of the warp so I'm going to take my first rod and these are made of a patchy plume and I'm going to run this through here now take my first rod and I'm going to go in out in out so this first one I want to go underneath and over the second one on top make sure I catch the one underneath and then over and under and over and under and over and under and this one is gonna do the opposite so under one under over under over so now I just start the process again so I'm going to go two inches here I'm going to take this outside warp and I'm going to take my cordage and I'm going to go around one more and that's about two inches up from where I left off so I'll go ahead and pull this to what I feel it's it's tight then I'm gonna come back again under over under over I'm gonna take this out and I'm gonna go with my passing stick on over under and I'm feeling my way through this sea of fluff because it really is quite amazing meandering through these warps so I'm gonna go through all the way to the end and then go two inches from that side up so I'm gonna pull that baton out I'm gonna push and I'm pushing pretty hard I'm not I'm not babying it tightening it just a little bit it feels good it's not causing the sides to go in and out it's staying pretty level or even here so I'm gonna go up again two inches I've made my contact point here so I'm going to take this around again and go two inches around this outside warp so I'm gonna take this that's on and I'm gonna put it back in here so I'm going to pull this out and I'm gonna start to weave again under over under over under over all this beautiful down it's it's really neat to feel it in my hands so you can see it tighten right here so I'm gonna take my baton out I'm gonna push down here feel where my cord is here and I'm gonna take this and run it through the top of the stick again and then I'm going to turn it to its side again it's gonna allow me to travel through the blanket with the Westcourt so I'm going to remove my stick and I will start the weave over again [Music]

Channel: Museum of Indian Arts and Culture

Views: 152,722

Rating: 4.9508243 out of 5

Keywords: Mary Weahkee, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, MIAC, turkey feather blanket, Native American art, Native American craft, John Sadd

Id: 6L4qRn3RIDc

Length: 21min 15sec (1275 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 14 2020