Like other Northwest Coast groups, the Coast Salish spent part of every year in villages of substantial plank houses often built close to river mouths where anadromous fish species could be harvested; they then moved to temporary outlier camps away from the coast to harvest other key resources during the year such as wood bark, plants and mammalian species. In a society with relatively complex social structures, wealth and status were emphasized through family names, ritual knowledge and songs, as well as by the accumulation of canoes, clothing, ornaments and woven blankets. The famous potlatch was a ritual process of wealth sharing and prestige accumulation in which woven blankets were key items of value.

Relative to other First Nations in North America, particularly along Canada’s eastern seaboard, contact with Europeans began quite late on the West Coast, beginning with the arrival of Captain James Cook’s ships at Nootka Sound in 1778. Manuel Quimper was in the Coast Salish region in 1790; Francisco de Eliza and José Maria Narvaez were in the Strait of Juan de Fuca in 1791; other Spanish ships were there in 1792 at the same time as Captain George Vancouver made direct contact with the Coast Salish near Puget Sound. Vancouver observed, among other things, the “extremely well-wrought” woven garments. In the same year, Spanish naval captains Dionisio Galiano and Cayetano Valdés y Flores circumnavigated Vancouver Island. By 1825, more than 330 recorded sailing vessels had visited the Northwest Coast, all intent on exploiting the resources of the region, from sea otter furs and salmon to timber (Gustafson 1980: 30; Suttles and Lane 1990: 49; Olsen 1998: 20; Black, personal communication, February 18, 2009; Virtual Museum Canada 2009).

By the late 19th century, traditional settlement, economy and social organization of the Coast Salish had been severely disrupted by the varied pressures of European settlement. Depopulation also contributed significantly to change. The first smallpox epidemic may have come in the 1770s, with waves of epidemics taking increasing tolls in the early 19th century (Suttles 1990: 471; Harris 1994). [3] All Coast Salish communities were situated in important resource regions, locations that European arrivals also favoured (such as today’s cities of Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle). Traditional territory was thus lost early in the colonizing process, followed by Coast Salish resettlement onto reserves, loss of traditional knowledge, loss of local language diversity, and especially loss of access to resource areas (Turner, Davidson-Hunt and O’Flaherty 2003; Oliver 2007). [4] In this context of extreme change, it is not possible to show an unbroken evolution from traditional wool-working to its application in the late 19th century, but elements of continuity are apparent in that the same general area produced both ancient and recent wool-working techniques not found elsewhere in North America (Smith 1955). Several aspects of traditional life have been carefully maintained and inform today’s resurgence of Coast Salish culture and diverse arts that are grounded in ancestral knowledge (Gustafson 1980; Johnson and Bernick 1986; Suttles 1987).

The sweater production of the Coast Salish knitters finds part of its lineage in an ancient tradition of transforming plant and animal fibres into woven textiles. Mountain goat hair, the hair of a special dog bred for its hair [5] and plant varieties were collected, processed and spun or woven into clothing, blankets and matting for tent material and bedding. Although we do not know when weaving began in the Pacific Northwest, the archaeological record shows that it was perfected by at least 1500 (Gustafson 1980: 15; Lutz 2006: 223).

Coast Salish motifs, form and style were also expressed in basketry and woodworking. Examples of the earliest Coast Salish basketry have been recovered from archaeological contexts that date back 5,500 years and incorporate materials and techniques still observable in the historic period (Carlson 1983: 203). Examples of carved wooden Coast Salish artifacts dating from 3,000 to 4,000 years ago also bear stylistic resemblance to much later carvings (Blanchard, Davenport and Brown 2005: 9). The oldest evidence of wool-working comes from the archaeological site of Ozette, Washington, in Makah (Nuu-chah-nulth) territory. The ancient village of Ozette yielded nearly intact cultural deposits buried under a mudslide that occurred sometime between 300 and 500 years ago. Among the objects found were six roller looms, several spindle whorls of carved wood, one spindle whorl of whalebone and, most remarkably, a folded twill-weave blanket of mountain goat hair. The weaving technique of this blanket is almost identical to that of Coast Salish mountain goat hair blankets from the 19th century (Gustafson 1980: 16-17, 20-21). Although both knitting and the sweater style of clothing were European introductions, the preparation of fibre and its processing into yarn to produce items of function, beauty and symbolic meaning appear to predate the contact period by many centuries.

Fibre production held an integral place in Coast Salish spirituality, and it is presumed that Salishian textiles have always been both functional items and held symbolic meaning. Unspun mountain goat hair held a place in Coast Salish ritual and was associated with purification. The handling of mountain goat hair during the process of converting it into yarn was also tied to the spiritual. The action of spinning the wool into yarn is presumed to have held transformational elements activated by the pulsating movement of the decorated spindle whorl, bringing the spinner into a trance state that imbued textiles with spiritual qualities (Suttles 1987: 130). Goat hair and goat hair blankets were central to spirit quest dances. Certain animistic spirits called up by female dancers—such as Wolf, Mole, Sandhill Crane, Loon and Snake—bestowed skills for weaving, spinning and basketry. Spirit dancing ceremonies held during the winter months were a setting for the redistribution of woven blankets, which were given as tokens of esteem to dance participants. Dance costumes were donned behind a screen made of mountain goat hair, dancers wore headdresses made of long strands of mountain goat hair, and during the initiation ritual of the dance, when a dancer was finding his or her “spirit song,” he or she would be constrained by a woven belt of mountain goat hair (Gustafson 1980: 34, 36).

Coast Salish woven blankets also held a central economic place in the potlatch ceremony observed by Europeans in the 19th century (Suttles 1960; Bracken 1997). Many of the items distributed during the potlatch were blankets, originally those made of mountain goat hair and later the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) “Point” blankets. The market value of unspun mountain goat wool and woven blankets was considerable, signifying the economic importance of women’s work. Indeed, dog and mountain goat wool appear to be the fibres with currency value, as no similar accounts exist for yarns of stinging nettle filaments or for Indian hemp. In the early 1900s, the photographer Edward S. Curtis noted that “five blankets, a deerskin skirt, and a fathom of shells would purchase ... one ocean-going canoe” (Gustafson 1980: 70-71). When HBC blankets became available, they were valued at 1/20th the cost of a goat hair blanket—an ocean-going canoe cost one hundred HBC blankets, a deerskin shirt and a fathom of dentalium shells (approximately 40).

Members of Captain James Cook’s expedition to the Pacific in 1778 collected plain and pat- terned woven blankets and clothing that resemble the Coast Salish blankets we know today, many of which eventually entered European museums. As a result, some of the earliest and best-preserved examples of Pacific Northwest textiles are found in Europe. The general lack of interest in Coast Salish territory for another fifty years protected the culture to a degree from overt European influence. The last of the traditional patterned goat hair blankets may have been made near the end of the 19th century and the last of the plain ceremonial blankets in the early 1900s. European blankets began to replace traditional ones at the same time as colonial encroachment led to the destruction of mountain goat habitat. The further impacts of cultural change and disease ended ancient trade links to wool and broke the continuity needed to pass necessary skills and technical knowledge to younger generations. By the 1850s, fibre production had nearly become a forgotten art, but since the 1960s Salish blanket weaving has re-emerged and acquired renewed status and value (Gustafson 1980; Black, personal communication, February 18, 2008).

Even before European arrival, wool was relatively challenging to acquire. Mountain goat hair and quality yarn might be saved over several years until enough was on hand for weaving important ceremonial blankets. Gustafson observes that mountain goat hair was obtained through both harvesting and trade (1980: 70). Wool harvesting took place in late spring while men went hunting at higher elevations. Salish women, children and the elderly would climb into the coastal mountains and seek out the shed winter coats of the mountain goat, or their birthing beds, which were made of hair pulled and shed from the female goat. Hair from two mountain goats was needed to weave an average-sized simple blanket of approximately 150 cm by 115 cm. Olsen further notes that it was Coast Salish women who controlled trade links to acquire mountain goat wool, which women from the mainland traded for the dog hair of the southern Vancouver Island groups (1998:19). Both yellow cedar, used for woven matting and clothing, and mountain goat hair were collected at higher elevations in the Coast Mountains or obtained through trade with First Nations groups on the mainland. The highlands and the coast (where many plant fibres were obtained) were part of necessary and integrated seasonal resource areas for the production of a wide range of items of material culture. These resource areas gave meaning to social life at a variety of levels before First Nations’ displacement by colonial settlement.

Sheep wool replaced mountain goat hair and plant fibres in the mid-1800s. Sheep were imported to Puget Sound from England and California between 1838 and 1840, and it is likely that they were introduced farther north at about the same time (Lane 1951: 16). By 1852, HBC posts kept herds of cattle and sheep, and by the 1870s Coast Salish in southeastern Vancouver Island bred horses and cattle and served as shepherds for settlers. Sheep wool came to replace mountain goat hair and plant fibres. There is evidence to suggest that the Coast Salish maintained their own sheep herds for several decades. Livestock counts collected by the DIA through its Cowichan Agency in 1886 record 292 sheep owned by Coast Salish. Over time, the DIA recorded gradual increases in flock sizes (with some fluctuations): 622 sheep and 265 lambs in 1897; 1,094 sheep and 416 lambs in 1902; and 1,125 sheep and 325 lambs in 1906. In 1916, the final year of the DIA’s livestock count, 1,100 sheep and 660 lambs were recorded (Department of Indian Affairs 2004).

A small number of Cowichan elders can still recall a time when some families raised sheep for both meat and wool. [6] Accounts suggest that since at least the 1930s, knitters relied chiefly on non-Salish sheep farmers for their wool. When ethnologist Barbara Lane undertook one of the first studies of Coast Salish wool-working in 1949, she recorded that “a few Indians own[ed] sheep,” but “even these families [were] largely dependent on additional supplies” (Lane 1951: 16; Welsh 2000). The majority of knitters for many decades purchased wool from three sources: directly from (non-Salish) sheep farmers, which gave the knitter control over the quality of the finished yarn, but was more time-consuming because the wool had to be processed; from wool carding and spinning operations, which allowed more time for knitting by eliminating time spent preparing yarn, but with some sacrifice in quality and colour tone; and from middlemen buyers as partial payment for finished sweaters, which represented income loss but allowed more time for sweater knitting. Rose Sparrow, a Salish (Musqueam) knitter, recalled that she purchased all her wool in the 1930s, for 20 cents per pound (per 0.45 kg) (Sparrow 1976: 138; Welsh 2000).

The first documented instance of Coast Salish knitting took place at the Sisters of St. Anne Roman Catholic mission in Duncan, in the Tzouhalem district, which opened in 1864. Until 1904, when the school became a boys’ school, the Sisters taught local women and girls to knit items such as socks, hats and mittens using the technique of circular knitting with multiple needles (Olsen 1998: n24). Circular knitting of socks, sweaters and mittens was once widespread in Europe and has recently made a resurgence, but by 1800 had been replaced with flat knitting (using two needles) for sweaters in all but the northern islands of Scotland, such as Shetland, Orkney and Fair Isle (Gibson-Roberts and Robson 2004: 161). The Annual Reports of the DIA for the 1890s regularly note that young girls were taught knitting in schools. In Tzouhalem, for example, their output was used to raise church funds, was displayed at local fairs and even reached the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair (Department of Indian Affairs 2004).

Knitting was also taught at other institutions such as the Anglican mission at Metlakatla, which established a number of cottage industries as early as the 1870s (Knight 1978: 97). Before the missions, it may have been Orkneymen at HBC posts as early as 1827 who brought a knowledge of knitting and married local women well versed in the techniques of processing fleece and spinning yarn. Mrs. Jeremina Colvin, a Shetland Islander who settled in Cowichan Station in 1885, is generally attributed with introducing patterned sweater knitting in the Fair Isle style around that time (Meikle 1987: 4; Lambert 2002: 62). A Jeremina Colvin sweater dating to 1929, in the collection of the Cowichan Historical Museum, bears several hallmarks of what became known as the Cowichan sweater while retaining indisputable Shetland roots (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2 Jeremina Colvin sweater with Fair Isle elements and some later Cowichan traits, ca. 1929. (Meikle 1987: 5, catalogue no. 983.2.1, Cowichan Historical Museum, Duncan, BC.)

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The adoption of knitting by the Coast Salish represented a shift in textile work. But this took place without the loss of several traditional elements such as the association between women and fibre, women’s production of textiles of high quality that had marketable value, and ancient techniques of fibre washing, carding and spinning. Sweater knitting in effect provided continuity with textile traditions of Coast Salish women. Knitting itself also had much in common with Coast Salish weaving, which was done with the fingers by twisting, or twining, spun strands into one another, a process much like knitting (Olsen 1998: 44-49). Wool-working and knitting skills passed on to one’s daughters represented a deeply rooted generational transfer of knowledge that predated European arrival and contributed to a sense of cultural maintenance. Knitting, like weaving before it, reinforced female identity within Coast Salish society and continues to link knitters to ancestral lines of fibre workers.

During fieldwork in 1949, Lane noted that

Indian women have knitted as far back as the oldest informants can remember. These informants, all women over eighty years old, learned to knit from their mothers. At that time, however, the women knitted only socks and informants believe that the technique [of sweater knitting] was relatively recent in their parents’ generation. (1951: 15)

Her timeline places the introduction of knitting among the Coast Salish in the mid-1800s, with the further, pertinent information that the production of sweaters began sometime around 1900. The DIA records, moreover, corroborate the beginnings of sock knitting in the 1890s along with basketry and needlework (Department of Indian Affairs 2004). From the start, the “Cowichan sweater,” or “Indian sweater” as the knitters called the garment (Olsen 1998: 46), became recognized for its warmth, weatherproof quality and its durability for outdoor pursuits. The two-bar fixed-warp frame (a form of loom) and the special finger-weaving technique of the Coast Salish are not found elsewhere in early North American fibre traditions (Wells 1969; Gustafson 1980).

The appropriation of knitting by Coast Salish women as a means of livelihood coincided with the loss of land-use areas and the end of the traditional exchange economy, one example of which was the outlawing of the potlatch in 1885. Many men and women began to find work at seasonal jobs away from home and women began to earn extra income on a year-round basis by making and selling basketry and knitted garments. In 1933, a loaf of bread cost six cents, butter was twenty-five cents a pound, and a work shirt cost one dollar and fifty cents. A Cowichan sweater in those years sold for only a few dollars, but represented much-needed cash for a knitter’s household (Knight 1978; Gustafson 1980).

Susan Olsen’s (1998, 2010) expansive study of Coast Salish knitting has opened a window to understanding the industry. Women were introduced to wool-working by the time they were seven or eight years old. This practice was borne partly out of economic necessity, but it also aligned with traditional Coast Salish practices of training young girls to become skilled textile producers and to live productive lives. One Salish woman who grew up near Sardis, BC, recalled that she learned to knit and make baskets when she was about seven years old, in 1907 (Sparrow 1976: 18, 23, 138-39, 205). Olsen captured an essential leitmotif from another knitter, who explained the broader significance of wool in the teachings she received from her grandmother about industriousness and productivity:

I ... was raised traditional ... my grandmother told me that I had to work. I had to keep busy from the time I got up in the morning until I went to bed. First thing I went down to the beach for a cold bath. Then when I came home I used to tease and card the wool until it was time to go to school. Same thing when I got home. If I wasn’t cooking, I was working with the wool.... My grandmother said it was important for women to learn to keep their hands busy. It is part of who we are as a people. It is important to us. (1998: 145)

From approximately 1930 onward, when the demand for Cowichan sweaters began to increase exponentially, entire families became involved. Knitting was an enterprise to which everyone in a family could contribute. Many men learned as boys to knit but were particularly involved in the time-consuming process of wool preparation. Wool spinning and sweater design, knitting and finishing were largely the domain of women. A knitter from southern Vancouver Island recalled that in the early 1930s, her “dad went fishing once in a while but it was seasonal. [Her] dad used to card the wool, [her] mom would spin and knit” (Lutz 2006: 235). Children were taught to work with wool at an early age, starting with wool washing and preparation, then learning to knit simple toques and sleeves, graduating in time to sweaters. Carding and spinning were left to the older, experienced women, whose daughters would often not perfect these techniques until their mothers had passed away. Cecilia Smith, born in 1923, began knitting with her mother when she was eight years old. Her family bought wool from farmers and processed it in spring and summer in readiness for winter knitting. As with most Coast Salish women, knitting became much more than a pastime for Cecilia Smith: “I got left with eight kids when my first husband died. I was knitting about five sweaters a week at that time. I stayed up most of the night. I would pack wood up from the beach for the fire. Then I would knit all night” (Olsen 1998: 83).

Finding her inspiration in Sylvia Olsen’s work, Christine Welsh, producer and director of The Story of the Coast Salish Knitters (2000), highlighted the essential disjunction between the Cowichan sweater’s renown and the low rate of return received by the knitters, emphasizing that women were “knitting for their lives.” This was true in all possible meanings of the phrase since most knitters, like their mothers before them, gave their lifetime to knitting, from age eight to eighty. They also knit continually and as fast as possible in order to meet demands; and they knit to put food on the table, to stay alive.

When viewed as high output for low return in a context of necessity, Coast Salish sweater production fits into the broader economic history of knitting, which was always a source of income for the poor. Knitted items made by impoverished Icelandic settlers in 1600, for instance, were exchanged for necessary staples from Scandinavian traders, with 72,000 pairs of socks and 12,000 pairs of mittens traded annually, and sweaters being reported by the 1700s. In 17th-century Sweden, knitting was a key source of trade and revenue for the poor, while in the Shetland Islands family incomes had been supplemented by a stocking industry since the 16th century, with sweaters appearing after the 18th century once machines began to produce hosiery. Knitting cottage industries abounded throughout northern Europe in these centuries. Between 1850 and the early 1900s many of today’s recognized traditional sweater types emerged in poor northern outposts; types such as the Fair Isle sweater took form in northeast Scotland, alongside Irish Aran sweaters, Scottish Argyle knits and Swedish Bohus knits, among others, and each had its beginnings in mitten and stocking production (Lambert 2002: 16, 19, 26).

Similarly, the Cowichan sweater style emerged out of an early stocking and mitten industry as a distinctive type of folk knit produced under economically challenging conditions and with consistently low earnings; Cowichan sweater prices paid to knitters in 1991, for instance, were unchanged from those of 1978 although the price of wool and the price of living had significantly gone up (Olsen 1998: 2).

The 1920s saw the beginnings of the sweater industry (Norcross 1959: 79). Knitting supplemented seasonal incomes because it could be done at home, in the evenings, and out of season. Knitters both traded and sold their goods, but always for low remuneration. Rose Sparrow recalled that at the turn of the 20th century, women and girls were trading (not selling) socks and baskets to European residents door-to-door for clothing and shoes (Sparrow 1976: 18, 23, 138-39, 205). Murial Jarvis Ackinclose, a non-Salish historian in Duncan, BC, recorded a visit by knitters to her home in the 1920s that illustrates the central role of women in this trading economy as well as the currency of sweaters—they could be traded for used clothing and a little money:

One of my earliest recollections in [our] home was of the local Indians visiting with their baskets and sweaters for trade or sale. Mother would tot out all our outgrown or surplus clothing, etc. for appraisal, and the bargaining would begin. The whole family of Indians were involved: Grandma, daughters, granddaughters, children and babies, even the odd male member.... Grandma sat on our front steps ... thoughtfully smoking her pipe ... she was the ultimate authority on any deals.... Eventually the transactions would be completed and they would trail off to the next house, enriched by some new bits and pieces as well as money. (2000: 15)

The first evidence of formal sweater buyers may date to 1909 when peddler Jim Warnock was recorded as trading whiskey for sweaters on Kuper Island. The earliest reports of local shops carrying Cowichan knitting date to 1916 and by the 1920s merchants in Duncan, Victoria, Vancouver and Nanaimo set up special departments for Cowichan knitting and advertising billboards (Olsen 1998: 71, 74). First sold in sporting goods stores as hunting and fishing wear, the sweaters came to be sold in West Coast souvenir shops, in department stores across Canada, by mail order, and abroad as fashionable and utilitarian wear.

The 1930s saw severe deprivation as a result of the Great Depression. First World War industry for a time provided some employment but the post-war call for technically educated labourers as well as growing class consciousness and racism excluded many First Nations in British Columbia from the work force. Knitting took on far greater importance between the wars and was one of the few means of earning money. The number of knitters increased and more families became involved. Sweaters were traded for groceries, to the point where storeowners had too many sweaters in stock. One contemporary observer in the 1930s thought that Coast Salish women on southern Vancouver Island produced about 500 sweaters a year (Knight 1978: 15; Olsen 1998: 80; Lutz 2006: 235, 239).

The Second World War once again drew many Coast Salish out of home production and into the workforce. Women and elderly people as well as older children worked in canneries and on farms in British Columbia and Washington, and men fished, all in aid of supplying the war effort. Conditions were good, work was plentiful, and wages were relatively high. It may have been in these years that the flocks of sheep recorded by the Cowichan Agency went into decline. By the 1950s, however, the Salish economy underwent another shift. The large Empire Cannery closed and local food production in general declined in the post-war period. An influx of Japanese fishermen replaced Salish men, and with the extension of Old Age Security allowances to First Nations in 1954, the importance of the wage economy fell. Women returned to knitting to support families, many knitting full-time for many years to come. Mrs. Rose Sparrow earned five dollars for her sweaters in the 1940s, selling them to local sporting goods stores. As with all Coast Salish knitters, the earnings supplemented her husband’s wages from seasonal work and went mainly toward school clothes for her children and to buy food. When she gave her interviews, in the early 1970s, she was still spinning and knitting full-time but had stopped selling to stores. Like many knitters, she took orders, selling a sweater for $50 to $60 (Sparrow 1976; Olsen 1998: 80).

By the 1940s, government agents across Canada decried the depressed state of the reserves and advocated First Nations arts and crafts revival as part of a welfare movement and a way of entering the “mainstream” economy. The Canadian Indian Art and Handicraft Association was the government vehicle for this push. There were many examples across the country of groups actively participating in the “revival” movement. The Canadian Handicrafts Guild, a Montréal non-profit organization created under a special Act of Parliament many years earlier, was a particularly influential representative of such groups. The Vancouver Folk Song and Dance Festival, as well as the Knights of Columbus in British Columbia, had fundamental goals of advancing economic conditions by engineering “Indian” arts and crafts to suit the market. At this time, the Cowichan sweater was the only viable craft product that the Cowichan Agency could promote. Recognizing the poor sums earned by knitters, government officials lobbied for better prices and market conditions, “but knitters continued to receive little more than steady work for starvation wages” (Olsen 1998: 97-100). Advertising provided by government about the sweaters directly benefited the merchants and buyers, but did little to improve the situation of the knitters.

By the 1950s, city merchants greatly expanded the sweater trade and most knitters marketed in one of two ways: dealers sent buyers or middlemen to reserves as many as three times per week, prearranging with knitters what sizes and designs they were buying; or, less commonly due to transportation difficulties, knitters brought their sweaters directly to urban shops for sale.

Olsen records accounts that showed that selling was a constant source of anxiety and sometimes even confrontation for knitters, whose long hours of labour on a product they knew to be marketable were rewarded by poor returns:

The buyers always say they are having a hard time selling the sweaters so they pay you less. Sometimes we would argue with them about the price but we never won. Every time you brought in your sweaters they would say they were overloaded with sweaters or that they were having trouble selling.... They always said they were not doing too well, but I noticed that they were going away on holidays. They looked like they were doing alright to me. Buyers always gave such a sob story. (1998: 88-89)

In order to sell their wares, knitters were forced to adapt to a range of buying practices, as another account illustrates:

The buyers were ... good sometimes. Hindeman used to come around every Wednesday and buy sweaters and sell wool. He would give us cash and some wool, but we didn’t have to buy wool if we didn’t need it. Mrs. Hill wanted us to trade half for groceries and wool with just a little cash. Sometimes I needed the cash. Bruce wouldn’t take your sweaters unless you used his wool so we only got half money and the rest wool even if we didn’t want wool. He didn’t let us use our own wool. (Olsen 1998: 88)

Olsen also recorded how some knitters travelled considerable distances to get their sweaters to market for a better price. One knitter recalled, “My mother and I used to row to Ladysmith [3 hours].... We sold our sweaters to Ladysmith Trading. We’d get all our household stuff from them” (1998: 89-92). Another recalled her mother rowing from southern Vancouver Island eastward, across the Haro Strait, to Anacortes, Washington, in the 1940s in order to earn $7.00 for a sweater. Knitters would also try to sell their sweaters as each one was completed, in order to ensure a regular flow of income for household needs.

By the 1960s, the demand for sweaters increased beyond the capacity of individual knitters—sweaters were being sold throughout Canada, the United States, Japan, England and elsewhere. Most knitters had enlisted the help of all available family members, working day and night to prepare wool, carding, spinning and knitting. One popular article from 1965 exulted that earnings for knitters reached $100.00 per week, upon initial consideration a reasonable sum. It neglected, however, to clarify that this sum represented the combined earnings of several full-time family members. The common profile of a family of knitters in the 1960s included a mother and father, participating children and elderly grandparents, aunts or uncles. Children were often kept at home or quit school early in order to contribute. If a family worked ten- or twelve-hour days and was able to produce seven or eight sweaters per week, they might earn $315.00 to $350.00 per week after the cost of wool—again, however, this would be the total earnings for the full-time work of many people. Just prior to 1970, knitters’ earnings rose from $15.00 per sweater to $45.00-$50.00 (after the cost of wool) and remained that into the 1990s. The only way a knitter could raise her earnings was to increase production—that is, to knit faster and longer. Knitters received wool and very little money in exchange for sweaters that might sell for $300 retail (Brothers 1965: 44; Olsen 1998: 133).

It is difficult, however, to identify the precise economics of the sweater trade because sweaters were often bartered for food, buyers issued no receipts and dealer records are unavailable—for the most part cash and wool payments sealed an exchange. No Revenue Canada records exist because income generated on reserves is tax exempt, and knitters did not keep records of how many sweaters they made or sold, except in memory. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the number of knitters grew from 70 to 100 in 1936, producing approximately 1,000 sweaters, increasing to approximately 10,000 sweaters sold in 1965 by some 600 knitters. The wool that buyers offered knitters represented half of their payment for each sweater. Exchanging wool for sweaters gave buyers the opportunity to profit twice from every deal. Indian agents were concerned about this but instead of eradicating the practice it became entrenched in the sweater trade (Brothers 1965: 43; Olsen 1998: 103-106).

Fig. 3 Chief and Mrs.Ed Underwood demonstrating hand-teasing and wool carding; Saanich, 1962. (Meikle 1987: 9.)

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The number of middlemen and dealers also increased in the 1960s to meet market demand. There were three major sweater dealers on southern Vancouver Island. One of these was buying 1,500 sweaters a year, and a decade later 5,000 sweaters in a single year. In 1963, Norman Lougheed, who owned the Cowichan Trading Company, a Native crafts shop in downtown Victoria, paid out $180,000.00 to knitters for roughly 7,000 sweaters, representing about $25-$30 paid per sweater (but half of this would have been paid in wool to complete further orders). Lougheed’s market included Canada, the U.S., Australia, Japan, India, Great Britain and Europe (Brothers 1965: 44). Most knitters worked closely with their buyer, filling orders designed by the dealer and customer. As the industry expanded, its control shifted from knitter to dealer: customers were no longer buying from knitters, but from stores in cities.

Some knitters sought alternative means of selling their sweaters in an effort to receive respectable remuneration. Although many more sweaters could be sold in the shops of Victoria, Vancouver, Nanaimo and Duncan, many knitters were dissatisfied selling to dealers. Some established private clientele and got better prices while maintaining greater control over their product and over the amount of time that they spent knitting. Some set up shops in their homes, stockpiling from other knitters and relying on word of mouth and a highway sign. Others travelled to Washington State or to mainland British Columbia where sweaters were rare and buyers offered a better price.

Alternative approaches were also initiated on behalf of the knitters. Lloyd and Frances Hill began selling Cowichan sweaters in 1946 from their Koksilah/Duncan general store and post office in an effort to get reasonable returns for the knitters, paying them with groceries, wool and some cash (Halliday and Chehak 2000: 18). The Cowichan band owned a store in Duncan, Cowichan Indian Arts and Crafts, which actively marketed high-quality products from the area. In 1956, Chief Richard Harry of Tsawout, on the Saanich Peninsula at the southern end of Vancouver Island, tried to break into the sweater business in a bigger way in order to benefit the knitters. Buying sweaters from knitters and providing them with wool at cost, he sold their sweaters on a wholesale basis across the continent but, lacking capital, this business lasted only a few years (Meikle 1987: 22; Olsen 1998: 92).

There is some evidence that at least one cooperative was formed in the 1960s in an attempt to achieve better remuneration for Cowichan sweater production. Little is known about the Goldstream Village Co-operative, except that it was operational in 1962 on the Saanich Peninsula and ran for two years. Managed by Chief and Mrs. Ed Underwood, this was a federal initiative, at a time when the Department of Northern Affairs and National Resources was encouraging the development of co-operatives among First Nations and Inuit peoples (Sprudzs 1975; Suttles 1990: 461). The Underwoods coordinated and sold Cowichan sweaters and other knit goods produced by the Salish (Fig. 3). The co-operative approach, however, proved less effective for individual knitters than producing and selling their own work through filling custom orders, selling to retailers or wholesalers, selling at fairs and even trading at grocery stores for food (Meikle 1987: 22; Olsen 1998: 114; University of Victoria 2012).

Increased production was stimulated in the 1970s by Sarah Modeste of the Koksilah Reserve who purchased a carding machine. She had identified a need for expediency in an industry that was time-consuming and always undervalued, but with a high market demand. After several setbacks, which involved discovering that First Nations people could not get loans because their property was not considered collateral, she managed to get a credit card loan through her local bank and purchased an industrial-grade carding machine that washed and carded wool. Modeste Wool Carding on the Koksilah Reserve had a revolutionary effect on the knitting industry, eliminating hours of processing labour and offering wool at better prices than those offered by the sweater buyers who paid for sweaters with wool. Her machine facilitated the production of thousands of sweaters by the knitters who no longer had the time to prepare and process wool (Steltzer 1976: 92; Olsen 1998: 115; Welsh 2000).

Maintaining exacting standards for the preparation of their wool and the design of their sweater, the Coast Salish knitters demonstrated remarkable energy, exacting standards, and dedication to their craft over many decades. The result is a garment that has been collected by thousands of people worldwide. It is included in museum collections nationally and internationally and is among the most readily recognized First Nations productions in Canada (Meikle 1987: 1). The Cowichan sweater was for many decades considered a quintessentially “Canadian look” [7] and as a result became a nationally recognized symbol of both British Columbia and of Canada. Sweaters have been presented to HRH Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip (1959), to Prime Minister and Mrs. John G. Diefenbaker (1957), and to President Truman in 1945. Most recently, a Cowichan sweater was presented to Dr. Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee in acknowledgement of this country’s hosting of the 2010 Winter Olympics (Roels 2010). The theme of the Coast Salish knitters and the Cowichan sweater has captured academic interest and holds popular appeal, as exemplified in the film The Story of the Coast Salish Knitters produced by Christine Welsh (2000) through Prairie Girl Films/National Film Board of Canada, and in interpretive exhibits at the Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia (August-December 1986); at the Royal Alberta Museum ( January-March 1988); and at the Cowichan Valley Museum and Archives, Duncan, BC. (May-October 2008).

Today, Coast Salish artists continue to perpetuate motifs and techniques associated with wool preparation. Ancient spinning and roller-bar loom techniques have re-emerged for the production of spectacular blankets and robes by a number of weavers. Striking interpretations of Coast Salish spindle whorls are the work of Susan Point, from the Musqueam band of the Halkomelem Salish. One of these is a 4.88-metre diameter sculpture in wood for the international arrival terminal of the Vancouver International Airport, which is sited on traditional Musqueam land. Another immense spindle whorl carved of wood was given as a gift to the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, by the Canadian government through the Canadian Embassy in 2004 (Brown 1998: 189; Blanchard, Davenport and Brown 2005: 38-35). Modern Salish Nez-Percé artist Stan Greene has also replicated the ancient spindle whorl in his art (Blanchard, Davenport and Brown 2005: 73). The mesmerizing effect of the spinning whorl can be viewed on the web page of Coast Salish artist Joe Jack (Jack 2010).

Fig. 4 Mrs. Helen Jimmy holding the traditional “Salish spindle,” comprising the large whorl pierced by a long spindle stick. The roving passes over the peg at Mrs. Jimmy’s left hand. Note that she is rolling the spindle rather than using the toss technique; Koksilah, 1949. (Courtesy of Dr. Barbara Lane, personal communication, March 21, 2013; also in Meikle 1987: 11.)

-> See the list of figures

A number of distinctive features that relate to both wool preparation and knitting style emerged early in the Cowichan sweater’s production history that make it unique and rank it among the world’s knitting traditions such as Scottish Fair Isle, Irish Aran type and Swedish Bohus sweaters, among others (Lane 1951; Meikle 1987; Lambert 2002). The Cowichan sweater remains the only formally recognized knitting type from North America. An authentic Cowichan sweater is remarkably warm, weatherproof and long- lasting, and many were worn for generations. The durability of the Cowichan sweater sets it apart from all competitors. Meikle (1987: 1) records one example of a man who received his Cowichan sweater in 1929. He wore the sweater while serving for five years in Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry in the Second World War, followed by many more years as a bridge builder and repairman in the Yukon, Manitoba and northern BC, and was still wearing it in 1987. The earliest Cowichan sweaters still in existence, which do not predate the 1920s, show considerable variation in construction and design detail, suggesting that they developed out of influences, trial and error, and copying over several sweater generations. Olsen (1998: 67) suggests that this may signify that the sweater had no single source of origin.

Coast Salish knitting has its roots in ancient fibre processing traditions as well as in European craft technique, and in this respect it is considered a hybrid, transcultural or acculturative art. Such products have in the past been relegated to the sidelines in scholarly approaches because of perceived lack of authenticity, failure to recognize and acknowledge the rich source of information provided about contact between cultures, intensive economic production, and especially about emerging aesthetic expression in post-contact culture. As art historian Ruth Phillips has observed, the discourse of authenticity represents a failure of real respect for the transformative cultural processes that First Nations underwent, and that colonial cultures insisted they undergo, while seeking the authentic. These objects represent the evidence of ethnicity in a new age, by taking imported baseline techniques and actively negotiating and transforming them into authentic expressions (Phillips 1998; Graburn 1968: 457). Coast Salish knitting represents many interleaved elements, among them the blending of ancient Coast Salish fibre working, itself unique among North American indigenous textile traditions, with European knitting and the persistent productivity of skilled but poor families who used knitting as a way of making ends meet. In the Cowichan sweater, knitters developed a distinctive garment type using spinning techniques and tools that were, in the context of North American fibre-working traditions, unique to the Coast Salish. The result was the creation of a distinctive sweater type of exacting design. Wool processing and knitting maintained age-old cultural standards related to women’s work and the contribution of women to wealth. In effect, the valued blankets produced by pre-contact Coast Salish women as items of wealth and prestige find their post-contact expression in the equally unique and prized Cowichan sweater.