Next, Mariana wets out the skeins in plain water.
In this region of abundant limestone deposits, that water is always alkaline and may have
a pH ranging anywhere from 7.6 to 9.2 depending on how concentrated the mineral salts have
become through evaporation.
She will dye the skeins in navy blue using a synthetic store bought powdered dye that
is boiled in water along with fiber following a procedure not unlike how we would use a
RIT packaged dye. Navy blue is a long-standing favorite of the weavers in this region. It
is a color that they were obtaining from plants throughout the 19th century long before the
introduction of synthetic dye stuff in the 1930s.
I first became aware of their having used a natural plant dye to obtain a dark blue color
in 1976 when Doña Luz casually mentioned it to me. She told me then that the weavers
of old had used the leaves of a shrub called el tinto to obtain that color. My ears perked
up as she went on to recount the following old wives tale about using el tinto.
The uncrushed leaves were immersed in plain water in an earthenware pot that had to be
new, never used, she told me. The leaves had to rot in the pot, undisturbed in a dark place,
so as to protect them from the rays of light. When the leaves were rotten, the fermented
liquid could dye a white cotton blue as well as a green color, she said. She had no idea
how long it took for the leaves to ferment.
While I suspected then that I just might have stumbled on to a local indigenous way of dying
with fresh leaf indigo, I needed to see the plant and learn more about the process of
preparing the dye bath. Doña Luz knew nothing more, but in response
to my obvious excitement, she sent me and her daughter Trinidad, then a teenager, down
to her mother's house, who lived across the valley in the village of Resbalón.
Perhaps my mother might know something more, Doña Luz said, pointing out, however, that
while her mother had never died with the leaves of El Tinto either, she could have observed
others doing so. Doña Luz's mother, one of many spinners
and weavers from that settlement, led me to a low-lying pasture near her house, where
she identified a shrub that resembled El Tinto. While this unidentified shrub had a leaf
structure identical to images of the Native American indigo sufructicosa species, its
seed pods seemed way too large to be the real McCoy. However, seeing its resemblance was
sufficient evidence for me to believe that the El Tinto of old was very probably a dye-yielding
indigo-fera. Doña Luz's mother then stated, now that
El Tinto is no longer used for dying, it has become a nuisance weed and is regularly chopped
down with a machete. But this plant had previously enjoyed a sacred status.
She told me that El Tinto had a personality of its own. It was a jealous guardian of
its secrets. The leaves would not release their color to just anybody, but only to the
woman who demonstrated respect for it. By that she meant that if she were menstruating,
pregnant, or had had sexual intercourse the night before, she was prohibited from picking
the leaves. In addition, it was believed that a menstruating
woman could ruin another weaver's dye pot just by glancing at the leaves. And even if
the dyeor carefully followed these rules, a successful outcome was still not guaranteed.
Clearly then, the process of harvesting and preparing the indigo dye bath was surrounded
by ritual, mystery, and spiritual overtones, as it is in many traditional cultures worldwide
where the outcome is uncertain. Indigo dyeing must have been the province of wise post-menopausal
grandmothers, the keepers of ancient and sometimes secret knowledge.
But many pieces of the puzzle were missing. Wine was a new, never used, earthenware pot
required. How many days were needed for the leaves to ferment? Did they add anything to
speed up the process? At what point did they add the fiber? Did they heat up the dye bath
or prepare it at room temperature? But crucially important, how did they obtain
the necessary alkalinity of the dye bath so that the endoxyl released from the fresh leaves
would be soluble in plain water? Could they have been adding lime made from
heart ash, as they did when dying with hardwoods? Or maybe they added urine, the ammonia from
which would provide a strong alkali, as well as introduced bacteria to promote fermentation?
I had no answers, but I was determined to find out.
By 2009, I could find no examples of a plant that even resembled El Tinto, which had once
grown wild along the banks of the Rio Chico throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries.
In fact, during the first half of the 19th century, the nearby town of Rio Chico had
been known as Los Tintales for this plant so utilized by the women to dye their cotton
skeins blue. But today, the use of the herbicide sprays
has replaced the machete as the dominant method of weed control.
Since I could find no dye-bearing indigo ferrous growing in Manabee province, I decided to
travel to the Central American country of El Salvador, currently enjoying a revival
of its indigo production. I went to see if I could obtain some seeds.
Indeed, I did secure some indigo seeds and planted them on land cultivated by Dona Luz's
son, who live nearby. That way, I was assured of having lots of El Tinto plants close by
for my experiments.
While in the country of El Salvador, I witnessed how indigo dye is commercially prepared. A
process where the endoxyl released from the leaves into the water is oxygenated by beating
or pouring the water back and forth in order to form the indigo blue. The blue liquid is
then drawn off, allowed to settle, and dried into chunks that are then pulverized and sold
as a powder.
This technology is so very different from the household-based process of the Manabee
dyers of old, who did not initially prepare a precipitated indigo with which to dye, but
rather used a direct dye method, going from the fresh leaves in the water to the dyeing
of the fiber in one single step.
After two and a half months, the indigo plants were at their peak and just beginning to flower.
The moment of truth that I had been so patiently waiting for was soon approaching, so I went
to the nearby village of Sosote and bought a couple of new earthenware pots just as the
dyeing lore had stipulated.
Before a new earthenware pot can be used, it must be seasoned so that it will hold water.
Throughout coastal Ecuador, new earthenware pots are seasoned by heating them up over
the open flame and rubbing them inside and out with the ripened plantain. The oils from
the plantain seal the pores of the pot, making it impermeable.
Now that the dye pots had been properly seasoned, I went with Dona Luz's daughter-in-law, Olaya,
in the cool of the early morning of July 15, 2011, to harvest El Tinto.
Olaya adhered strictly to the taboos on picking the leaves, taboos indicating that strong female
fertility, as well as barrenness when menstruating, had been viewed as direct threats to the outcome
of the dye vat itself. For me, at my age and status, the taboos were of no concern.
After sending some prayers to the spirit of the plant, asking it to share its secrets
with me and guide me in my steps, I also cut some stalks.
I stripped the leaves, packed them quickly into earthenware pots, and filled them with
water taken from Mariana's small reservoir pond. That water had a pH of 8.5.
I let the leaves sit covered and undisturbed for ten hours. At six o'clock that evening,
I peaked at the vats and saw that the water was turning a pale blue-green. I decided that
the time had come to put in the mini skeins of cotton after wetting them out in water,
having a pH of 9.
By seven a.m., the following morning, both vats were beginning to form a bluish-purple
iridescent scum on top. After obtaining the pH and temperature readings from the dye vats,
I ate breakfast and waited for Trinidad to finish hers so that she could serve as videographer,
recording this important moment, the moment of removing a skein from an indigo dye vat
for the first time in perhaps some 80 years.
I was astounded. I hadn't expected the skein to develop such a strong blue in the dye bath
by itself, without any deliberate human intervention in the form of repeated submersions and removals
to expose it to the oxygen in the air. As I carried it outside to hang on the line, I
observed it darkening even more.
My results fully supported the notion that the dyers of old didn't have to purposefully
do much of anything, short of buying a new earthenware pot and seasoning it well with
ripe plantains.
No conscious decisions had to be made about manipulating the dye vat in order to produce
successful results. No lye or urine had to be added. The latter very fortunate for my
experiments, since Doña Luz was not about to allow a smelly urine dye vat in her kitchen.
After that afternoon, I took out the second mini skein from the smaller vat. It too developed
a good strong blue upon exposure to the air.
But what must have been going on in the dye vats to explain these surprising results?
The sugars from the ripe plantains used in seasoning the earthenware pots were evidently
the key to jump-starting a potent and rapid fermentation. The ripe plantain acted as a
reduction agent, leading to the formation of the yellowish-green luco-indigo solution
that all indigo-dyres worldwide seek to obtain.
But these results would not have been possible at all were it not for the high concentration
of alkalizing minerals in the water in the first place, enabling the endoxyl released
from the fresh leaves to be in solution.
And finally, the charred plantain ash that is created as the pots are seasoned forms
potassium hydroxide lye when water is added to them. This alkaline may well play a role
in mitigating a drop in pH which occurs during the active phase of bacterial fermentation.
As I continued my experiments with the weaker dye vat, I ended up with some skeins that
Trinidad and I clearly considered a light blue, but that Doña Luz and Margarita, not
having had the benefit of formal schooling, identified with certainty as a green o verde.
I checked around and learned that other elderly women in the area identified a blue color
as a quote green. I showed them these mini skeins as well as my computer image of that
18th century coastal Peruvian woman spinning in a manner that mirrored their own technology.
Their response to the computer image was most interesting. Everything about it was familiar
and not worthy of comment except for the curious green cotton. One elderly lady unexpectedly
blurted out how strange it was to see a woman spinning a green cotton as around here we
only spin white or naturally colored reddish brown cotton. It wasn't that they were physiologically
seeing a different color, but that these elderly women were the last generation of folks who
had inherited another cultural system for dividing up the color spectrum. I was thus
able to conclude that the green color obtainable on white cotton mentioned in the indigo folklore
of the great great grandmothers was probably a light blue. I could now rest comfortably
knowing that this last piece of the indigo puzzle had been solved. While I have demonstrated
that the spinning and weaving techniques used by Manavi artisans represent a clear link to
their pre-Hispanic past, their method of dying with fresh leaf indigo probably does as well.
These indigo dying techniques circumscribe to place by a limestone geography and dependent
on coastal Ecuadorian custom regarding the use of earthenware pots stand in stark contrast
to the indigo processing technology introduced by the Spanish in Central and South America
during the 16th century. No culture remains static. The culture of the Manavi peasant
has always had to respond to external circumstances and will continue to do so. As the introduction
of synthetic dyes in the 1930s rapidly eradicated indigo dying, so too the home spun alfora
has been eliminated by plastic carry-ons of one sort or another.
