CHILKAT WEAVING

narrowly, the robes, or blankets, woven by the Chilkat, northernmost of the Pacific Coast Indians of North America. The Chilkat comprise a family within the Tlingit language group and make their home on the Alaskan coast between Cape Fox and Yakutat Bay. More generally, the term "Chilkat weaving" applies to any garment woven by these Indians. Although the Chilkat are not the only Indians who make this type of robe, they are the ones who have woven the majority of robes in the period since the original contact with European cultures and have created the finest quality and design. The Chilkat robe, when laid out flat, is approximately rectangular in shape, except for its long bottom side, which is V-shaped; fringe decorates the bottom and sides. Twine made from cedar bark forms the warp (vertical threads), and mountain goat or mountain sheep wool forms the weft (horizontal interlacing threads), a weave probably borrowed from the Tsimshian Indians. The colours-usually white, yellow, black, and blue or green-come from natural dyes. The designs on the earliest Chilkat robes were painted, but for the last two centuries they have been woven into the fabric by women of the tribes, following designs painted on boards by the men. As in many Indian tribes, only men are permitted to create designs depicting living creatures, while women may develop abstract geometric patterns. But the seemingly abstract designs with which these robes are decorated are actually highly conventionalized depictions of real animals or spirits symbolically associated with the tribe to which the owner of the robe belongs. As in almost all of their art, the Indians of the Northwest Coast attempt to portray a three-dimensional object on a two-dimensional surface by presenting all of the different perspectives of the object. For example, progressing from left to right on a Chilkat robe would be a panel depicting the left profile of a whale, then a panel containing a head-on view, and finally a panel showing the right profile. Above this tripartite representation there might be an X-ray depiction of the inside of the whale. The artist clearly indicates which animal he has woven into the robe by using certain key features, such as a long snout for a wolf or a short snout for a bear. The Chilkat also weave knee-length shirts that are similar in design to the robe. Leggings and dance aprons are also made, sometimes by employing commercial yarns and fringing them with fur.