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Third-grade class learns traditional skills

In January 1973, the students in Virginia Pill's third-grade class at Hood Canal School, who had recently studied early Indians and pioneers, had a visit from two women who demonstrated how the early natives and pioneers made baskets and clothing.

"Grandma" Louisa Pulsifer, a 91-year-old Skokomish basket-weaver, brought a basket full of cattails, sweet grass and bear grass. The children gathered around as she showed them how to split the cattails, then roll them on their knees so they would become tightly twisted cords that could be woven into baskets. As she worked, she explained how cattails were gathered in July and August, with care being taken to cut only the inside leaves of the female cattail, which doesn't send up the brown bloom. The tops of the cattails were cut off and the leaves laid out to dry and bleach in the sun.

Louisa told the children that when she was 9 years old, she had watched an old Skokomish lady weaving baskets and decided to try to make one herself. While tending her sheep, she gathered cattails and secretly laid them on the roof of a shed to dry. A week later, she made her first basket, which was about the size of a small tea cup. Keeping her work to herself, she made a second basket, slightly bigger than the first one and much more tightly woven, and then a third basket a little larger than the second.

When a traveling man came by to purchase baskets from the old Skokomish lady and wool socks from Louisa's mother, Louisa retrieved her baskets from the shed where they were hidden and offered to sell them to him. She was very excited when, after looking them over carefully, he offered her 25 cents for the tiny basket and 50 cents each for the other two. Louisa didn't really know the value of her $1.25, but she did know that her mother had been paid 50 cents for each pair of wool socks she had worked hard to make.

After that, the old Skokomish lady worked with Louisa, teaching her the intricacies of basketmaking, and it wasn't long before she learned how to use sweet grass and bear grass in her weaving.

In the second demonstration, Geneva Fisher, from Union, passed around a piece of raw wool that had been washed three times but had a bit of animal fat remaining. She showed the children how to card the wool in preparation for spinning, and the third-graders were soon stretching the wool and spinning it into yarn.

The next process was to color the wool yarn with natural dyes, using a hot plate for heating. The yarn was first simmered in one pan containing alum and another containing vinegar, which acted as a "mordant" so the wool would hold the dye. Bits of the wool were then placed in pans that contained natural organic materials. Mrs. Fisher put a little water in each pan and as the water grew warm, colors started to appear in the yarns.

The children were fascinated by the variation of colors provided by the natural dyes. Oregon grape made a chartreuse green color, Saint-John's-wort and onion skin created gold, alder bark made a reddish-brown dye, and a true brown color was achieved from butternut hulls.

At the end of her demonstration, Mrs. Fisher modeled a wool coat she had made from raw bulk wool that she had washed, carded, spun, and made into material her loom.

Jan Parker is a researcher for the Mason County Historical Museum. She can be reached at [email protected]. Membership in the Mason County Historical Society is $25 per year. For a limited time, new members will receive a free copy of the book "Shelton, the First Century Plus Ten."

 

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