How Indians Get Their Dye
Oregon grape dyeing (image credit: Pinterest)
From a Clayoquot (Nuuchahnulth) man selling Indian handicrafts with his wife in Seattle:
A Chinuk Wawa quotation about the post-frontier persistence of Native dyeing.
“Dye, dye, halo nika cumtux dye,” said Chem. “Nika klutchman mamook conoway iktas coqua ahnkutty.” (Dye? I don’t know what dye is. My women made these articles as the Indians used to do in the old times.) — Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
— from the Omaha (NE) Daily Bee of March 26, 1916, page 6-A, columns 1-2
Close enough translation for me. Read the article at the above link, for a good little ethnobotany lesson about cedar, alder, hemlock, and more.
What does “cocqua” in the above passage mean, and how is it generally used?
I’m trying to decipher the saying “delate cocqua” as used in some settler era notes regarding what natives thought of church teachings
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Hi Jim, thanks for reading my site. “Coqua”, above, means ‘like, as’. Your “delate cocqua” would mean ‘just like that; exactly the same’, more likely than not. I’m interested in seeing what material you’re looking at, to give you the best answer. You can email me if you’d like, at the following address (put it all together with no spaces of course) —
spoka
neivy
@gmai
l.com
Dave Robertson
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