How To Date A Hudson Bay Blanket
The Hudson's Bay Betoken Blanket is a wool blanket with a series of stripes and points (markers on material) outset made for the Hudson's Bay Visitor (HBC) in 1779. The most iconic design is that which is white with light-green, scarlet, yellow and indigo stripes; these colours are now used equally an keepsake for the HBC. While the HBC was non the first to create the point blanket, the company did popularize information technology amongst Indigenous and settler communities in Canada. Today, the design from the blanket is used on a diversity of clothing, accessories and household items sold by the HBC.
The Hudson's Bay Betoken Blanket is a wool coating with a series of stripes and points (markers on cloth) first made for the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) in 1779. The about iconic blueprint is that which is white with green, cherry, yellow and indigo stripes; these colours are at present used every bit an emblem for the HBC. While the HBC was not the kickoff to create the point blanket, the visitor did popularize it among Ethnic and settler communities in Canada. Today, the pattern from the coating is used on a variety of vesture, accessories and household items sold by the HBC.
Origin
The first point blankets were created by French weavers who developed a "point system" — a style to specify the finished size of a blanket — quondam in the 17th century. (See tooWeaving.) The term "betoken," in this case, originates from the French word empointer, which ways "to make threaded stitches on cloth." The points were simply a series of thin black lines on one of the corners of the blanket, which were used to identify the size of the blanket. Though the points on the blankets did not have an inherent value, merchants during the fur trade often priced betoken blankets according to the number of points on the blanket, with one point assigned for small blankets and four points designated for very large blankets.
History
The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) had been trading blankets since the company incorporated in 1670. Past 1700, blankets comprised more than 60 per cent of appurtenances exchanged in the fur trade. The HBC did not commission its very own point blanket until 1779. During a task interview with the Hudson Bay House in London, England, that year, Germain Maugenest, an independent and experienced fur trader, offered suggestions to better the company as part of his service to the HBC. Ane of his recommendations included regular stock and merchandise of "pointed" blankets. A month later, the HBC commissioned the Witney mills — a collective name for textile mills in Witney, Oxfordshire in Britain — to produce "30 pair[s] of iii points to be striped with four colors (red, blue, dark-green, yellow) according to your judgement." (Run into tooWoven Textiles.)
During the fur trade, the value of trade goods, including blankets, was compared to "made beaver" pelts (finished and processed pelts), not to blankets. Notwithstanding, the point system made information technology easy to sell the blankets through fur trading, as the points became a reliable pricing convention. At start, a one-point blanket was worth one beaver pelt. Withal, as the HBC moved out into the Pacific Northwest in the early 19th century, at that place were less beavers around, and therefore beaver pelts started to lose their value as the staple fur. The point blankets then became the standard for measuring every item the HBC was trading. In fact, the blanket had become and so synonymous with the standard measure for trade that in the HBC records, the term "blanket" was used to convey a collection of smaller trade goods.
The Bay Blanket. These warm blankets are as iconic every bit Mariah Carey's lip-syncing, but some people believe they were used to spread smallpox and decimate unabridged Ethnic communities. This Secret Life of Canada episode dives into the history of The Hudson'south Bay Company and unpacks the very complicated story of the iconic striped blanket.
Notation: The Secret Life of Canada is hosted and written past Falen Johnson and Leah Simone Bowen and is a CBC original podcast independent of The Canadian Encyclopedia.
Uses
Point blankets were bought past Ethnic and settler communities alike to use equally bedding, wearable, room dividers and fabric for other items. Prior to the European blanket trade, many Indigenous nations wore hand-woven blankets made of animal hides and furs. Blankets played an important role in many Indigenous communities every bit all-purpose apparel and household items, as well as status symbols. (Encounter alsoChilkat Coating.)
Point blankets were likewise sometimes used in the potlatch, a gift-giving feast skillful by various First Nations communities in the Pacific Northwest, including the Haida, Tlingit, Nuu-chah-nulth, Kwakwaka'wakw and Declension Salish. To prove their wealth during potlatches, participants cut blankets into many small pieces then that anybody at the potlatch would receive a gift. Often these small pieces were collected past weavers, unraveled and then woven into a new blanket. Occasionally, therefore, the wool used in the Hudson's Bay Point Blanket mixed with traditionally-sourced wool to grade a new creation. Earlier the point blankets arrived in Northward America, Indigenous blankets were used in such ceremonies. For many Declension Salish nations, the signal blankets led to the decline of traditional weaving skills as HBC blankets became more plentiful and accessible.
In central and eastern Canada, many Métis and French settlers and traders wore their Hudson'southward Bay Point Blankets as outerwear robes, and later turned them into capotes — handmade wrap-way coats. Capotes became so pop that, in 1706, the HBC hired a tailor to construct the blankets into these coats. The capote was particularly popular with trappers as the wrap style made information technology piece of cake to motion and chase in, while keeping them warm.
In 1811, a new way of coat was created using the point coating: the Mackinaw, a shorter coat with a double-breasted style. The Mackinaw was created after British Helm Sir Charles Roberts found the winter in a fort near Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, likewise cold, and commissioned settler and Métis women to create 40 coats for his men out of 3.5 bespeak blankets.
In 1922, the HBC introduced its first commercial blanket coats, which had the doubled-breasted lapels of the Mackinaw and the longer length and hood of the capote. Past 1929, the HBC launched a full line of blanket coats for women, men and children. (Run into also Cowichan Sweater.)
Today, the distinctive design of betoken coating strips has been used as role of the HBC Drove brand on products ranging from umbrellas to smart phone cases. The point blanket has become an icon of Canadian style, often featured in Canadian habitation and style magazines and blogs. (Run across alsoFashion Design in Canada.)
DID You KNOW?
The most iconic Hudson's Bay Indicate Blanket colours — white with carmine, indigo, green and yellow stripes — have no specific meaning. The colours were pop when the blankets were first produced, and are sometimes known as Queen Anne's colours, as they were favoured during her reign (1702–14).
Blueprint
Hudson's Bay Point Blankets were traditionally made in obviously cherry-red, white, green or blue background, with a single bar (chosen "heading") of indigo on either end. Over the years of fur trading, the design of point blankets grew to accommodate the preferences of various Indigenous nations. For instance, when the HBC get-go established trading posts and forts in the Pacific Northwest, Coast Salish women — who had been weaving blankets out of mount goat and dog pilus since well before European contact — became determined to get high-quality point blankets. Master cistron for the HBC'due south Columbia Commune, John McLoughlin, informed the company in 1845 to make blankets resembling the more favourably-designed American point blankets: "The American Coating though generally inferior to ours, meets a readier sale with Indians in consequence of its gaudy color and we beg that those we take ordered may be made in respect of color and texture fully equal to the samples." Therefore, when the Coast Salish preferred a purer white colour, the HBC complied. Occasionally, Declension Salish women would sew in folds and add together borders to suit the size and class of the point blankets for ease of utilise.
In other Ethnic communities, the preferred design of point blankets differed. For example, many Inuit liked plain white blankets that provided camouflage, while the Tsimshian and Tlingit typically preferred deep blue designs. Nuu-chah-nulth nations tended to like green blankets, and in many Coast Salish communities, ruby. Though the reason for these differences is not certain, it is thought that certain patterns and colours held important spiritual meaning, as well as applied use. (See too Religion and Spirituality of Ethnic Peoples.) Merchandise blankets were so popular on the Westward Coast that British weavers altered the colours of designs to meet local demand.
Past 1929, the HBC expanded their variety of colours in order to make the blankets an essential function of home décor. Occasionally, the HBC would produce blankets for special events or anniversaries; for instance, for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, a purple purple blanket with white stripes and signal was produced. According to the HBC, the hue and colour order in the famous white and color-striped bespeak coating were not standardized until the mid- to late-19th century.
DID YOU KNOW?
In 1916, Pendleton, an Oregon-based coating company, created its Glacier Stripe pattern, which uses the same stripe and colour pattern as the Hudson'due south Bay Point Blankets. The HBC sews a label of actuality in one corner of their point blankets in order to distinguish them from like-looking blankets. The Glacier Stripe blankets continue to be produced today through Pendleton.
Controversy
For some Indigenous peoples, the point coating represents the forces of colonization. Cree artist Kent Monkman uses the betoken blankets in his serial of paintings, "Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience," equally a representation of "the royal powers that dominated and dispossessed Indigenous people of their land and livelihood." In 2011, Anishinaabe artist Rebecca Belmore created the video installation "The Blanket," which features Winnipeg dancer Ming Hong rolling down a snowfall-covered colina in a point blanket. Belmore argues that while the "blanket is an object of dazzler, a collector's item that belongs to the Hudson's Bay Company's history," it is, for many Ethnic peoples, "however viewed as a merchandise item that once contained the souvenir of disease."
Belmore is referring here to the history of Europeans intentionally giving blankets contaminated with smallpox and other infectious diseases to Indigenous peoples. The story originates in a notorious series of letters from the 1763 Pontiac Uprising in Fort Pitt, Pennsylvania, in which Jeffrey Amherst, Commander-in-Chief of British Forces in Northward America, encouraged the use of blankets infected with smallpox as a means of biological warfare: "You will Do well to try to Innoculate [sic] the Indians by means of Blankets, equally well equally try every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race." While there was an outbreak of smallpox among the Indigenous peoples around Pennsylvania that spring, the disease had already been in that expanse, and it is therefore unknown if Amherst'due south thoughts were put in action.
Some scholars, such as historian Robert Boyd and creative person and anthropologist Marianne Nicolson, believe that colonial authorities knew that smallpox would spread into Western Canada, and that it would help colonial regime claim Indigenous lands without treaties or compensation. Even if they did not intend to employ the blankets to spread smallpox, trading blankets easily allowed for the transferring of European diseases to Indigenous people.
While the HBC acknowledges that smallpox decimated Indigenous populations beyond Canada, it states that its company "had zilch to do with the apply of smallpox blankets as biological warfare." In fact, the company claims that HBC employees tried to stop the spread of disease by practicing quarantine and providing care for the infected.
Source: https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/hudson-s-bay-point-blanket
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