Much esteemed, Part 2

The last post left off with Champlain, Le Clercq, and Denys each describing brilliant red “flame-colored” quills among the Native communities of New France in the 1600s. The red dye was also described as presumably coming from a skinny, thread-like root, which Le Clercq named Tissaouhianne. But what plant, really, is this?

A good clue to its identity comes in 1748, from the travel journels of Peter Kalm (or Pehr, in the original Swedish). Kalm studied at Uppsala University in 1740, under the scientist Linnaeus. Linnaeus was interested in the orderly classification of plants and animals; today’s system of naming by genus and species is a based on his research. Students of Linnaeus would collect specimens during their travels, sending them back for classification, and in 1747, Kalm was selected to travel to North America to collect plant materials that could be promising for agricultural development.

A year later, Kalm arrived in Pennsylvania. From his base in the Swedish communities of southern New Jersey, Kalm traveled as far as Niagara Falls and Quebec before returning to Sweden in 1751. On one of his many journeys, Kalm not only observed the bright red quills seen a century or more earlier by Champlain & Co., but–as a good student of Linnaeus–he provided the source of the dye with a systematic name:

The Galium tinctorium is called Tisavojaune rouge by the French throughout Canada…The roots of this plant are employed by the Indians in dying [sic] the quills of the American porcupines red, which they put into several pieces of their work; and air, sun, or water seldom change this colour.

It’s a pretty reasonable assumption that Le Clercq’s Tissaouhianne and Kalm’s Tisavojaune are the same material, and just different spellings of the word. If correct, then, it would seem that G. tinctorium, or stiff marsh bedstraw, would be responsible for that brilliant, flame-colored red. In the analysis stage of this project, it will be interesting to see if this dye is, indeed, found on red quillwork matching these 17th century descriptions!

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