Biography of Jennie Thlunaut: Part 2

"Jennie Thlunaut” Master Chilkat Blanket Artist
by Rosita Worl and Charles Smythe
from the Exhibit book “The Artists Behind the Work”
published by the University of Alaska Museum,
Fairbanks, Alaska 1986
Reprinted here with author's permission
Jennie Thlunaut 1892-1986

Shax’saani Keek’ (Younger Sister of the Girls) was born during the spring rrun of the eulachon in 1892. Her birthplace, Laxacht’aak, was within the Jilkaat Kwaan (Chilkat Territory) of the northern Tlingit in Southeast Alaska. Her mother, Kaakwdagaan (Ester) belonged to the Eagle clan Kaagwaantaan and the Gooch Hit (Wolf House) in Angoon and is a Deisheetaan Yadi. Her father, Yaandakinyeil (Mathew Johnson) was a member of the Raven Gaanaxteidi clan and the Xooch’i Hit Frog House in Klukwan and is a Kaagwaantaan Yadi.

The all too brief years of Shax’saani Keek’s early childhood were like any other Tlingit child. She played on the beach, picked berries, gathered wild celery, and threw rocks into the river. She accompanied her parents on their cyclical subsistence round. She traveled with her family in the Tlingit war canoes to visit relatives in other communities and to attend potlatches. Shax’saani Keek’ listened to the great stories of Tlingit history told during he lavish potlatches, stories which told of clan migrations and feasts which were still held in her childhood era.

Shax’saani Keek’ also received her first box of mountain goat yarn from her mother when she was yet a child. She had no idea that she was destined to become one of the most renowned weavers in the nation of naxein, Tlingit ceremonial robes known to the world as Chilkat blankets. Neither could she have known that she, Jennie Thlunaut, as she would become known to the art world, would be one of the last traditional Tlingit Chilkat blanket weavers.

Jennie’s Childhood
Jennie’s recollections of her early childhood are happy memories. She has a smile on her face and a faraway look in her eyes as she says “my mommy” and “my daddy.” As she talks about the stories of her early life some eighty years ago, it is as if they occurred only yesterday. She recounts her early childhood events with exact detail and with the same exuberance and happiness she must have felt then.
She grew up in Klukwan in her father’s tribal house, the Frog House, which is one of the old wooden houses still standing in Klukwan. The Frog House is a shell of its former grandeur. Great and lavish potlaches were once held in this tribal house. The Frog totem pole was sold long ago and, according to Jennie was taken to Juneau.

Her parents’ love for her was demonstrated not only through their affection and care, but also through their efforts to ensure that Jennie received the best possible training for a Tlingit girl of her era. Her mother opposed to Jennie attending the Western school at Sheldon Jackson in Sitka, but she learn to read up to the “third reader” from the minister, Mr. Faulkner. A few years ago, Jennie addressed the Alaska Federation of Natives convention in Anchorage and told the audience, “ I didn’t go to school, but I think I’m all right!”

Jennie Learns Her Skills
Jennie recalls that her auntie named Saantaas’ “knew how to make things.” Her father gave the auntie fifty dollars to teach Jennie’s mother how to make Chilkat blankets. Later her mother would teach her. Jennie cites this as one of the reasons her mother was good. Jennie learned about making baskets, moccasins, beadwork, and blankets from her, as well as skin-sewing. In her words: My mama’s good mama. When I was a kid they gonna leave me alone, any place they go: you go with me: you put dress on! He carry me on his hands all the time. And they learn me how to do something inside the house. You know, that’s why I live longer, see. And here we are, we watchin’ this time: they never take care of kids: they don’t care where they go. Go to show nighttime, everyplace: get mixed up. But, I’m glad--say that I have a good mama. He never leave me behind someplace; he just carry me and tell me get married.

Her mother began teaching her to weave blankets and baskets and sew moccasins with beadwork when Jennie was about ten years old. Jennie played at weaving baskets and blankets, and her mother noticed her toy-like products and showed her how to make them properly. She tells of playing with spruce roots with her playmates when she made something “like a spider net.” After her mother learned from the children who had made the net, she began to show Jennie how to work the materials.

She gave Jennie good roots (that is, already split) to work with. “Then I learn it good.” Jennie used to finish about seven baskets in a year. Her father would take them to the store in Skagway and sell them. In springtime, about April, her father would travel to Skagway by canoe. He would make totem poles, and her mother made baskets and moccasins. At that time, moccasins sold for one dollar a pair, and baskets brought from five to seven dollars, depending on the size. That was considered a good price for the baskets. I made lots of money from the baskets.” Later on, she learned to make baskets with tops by herself. (She still makes this type of basket, which sells for three hundred to four hundred dollars to the store in Haines.)

When a German baker opened a store in Haines, Jennie used to take her baskets there to trade or sell. She traded for bread and dry goods. She laughed as she told about trading a little basket for a big sack with “everything in it.” She brought cloth to make dresses, silk, and stockings with her baskets.

Making baskets was easy to her. One does not need to spend money and “you just pick the roots yourself. You buy some dye--black, red, different colors. Then dye the grass. That’s all you do.” She learned to split roots after trying to do it with the girl next door. They tried to split the roots themselves, and when her mother found out she was playing this way she showed Jennie how it was done properly.Jennie learned to weave blankets in a similar fashion, her mother provided her with materials and instruction after Jennie was observed playing at weaving. As a young girl, she took some yarn from her mother’s supply and, using a can she used to store her dolls in, positioned a stick across the top and hung yarn on it--”all different colors.” Then they started weaving. She and her playmate’s were going to make a doll’s rug. It was halfway finished when her mama saw it and asked, “Who makes this?” When Jennie responded, her mother said, “How come you put the stick inside? How you gonna pull it out? You should use a string [referring to the methods of attaching the headings cord to the loom beam with strings].” Her mother took the children over to her loom and showed them how to do it.

Afterwards, Jennie helped her make the black and yellow border on the blanket, which is how a blanket is started. Later on, in 1902, Jennie was shown how to weave her first design. She helped her mother make a frog blanket for her father. After 1905, when she was married, her auntie Mrs. Benson (Santaas’) taught her how to count the strands for the designs: “how wide the black, how long the green and yellow.” She learned to use the “design board” to measure the dimension of design elements.

Jennie lived in Jones Point after her marriage. It was there that another auntie lived, who was married to her husband’s brother. She taught Jennie how to sew porcupine quills on skin for moccasins. “We learned it from the (Interior) Indian people; they dye it from different colors. It is just like beadwork--it’s good, the quills never come out for a long time. You twist it around the thread and sew it on.” Her sister-in-law taught her to knit. “I know how to knit, and the crochet, and the embroidery.”

Jennie’s Isolation Period
Jennie, like all Tlingit girls of her status, received special training. The Tlingits believe that life-long habits and attributes are shaped during early adolescence. Young girls are awakened early in the morning so they will not be late-morning sleepers in later life. They are required to walk wearing a hat with a wide brim without shaking the hat. This is to teach girls to walk in stately manner.

During their first menstruation they are isolated in the back room of the tribal house. Jennie recalls that she was isolated for a period of seven to ten days. She explains that she does not have gray hair because during the isolation period her mother and her mother’s oldest sister, Kinjee, washed her hair with a special shampoo. Other Tlingits have suggested that the special shampoo was blueberry juice. Jennie recalls the events: They bring water in my room, basin and he’s [they] got something in it. Crazy, I don’t find out what it is. And she says,” You grandma used to use this shampoo, you going to use it. You not going to get gray hair right away.” My grandma, my mama’s mother, still black just like mine. They didn’t get no gray hair. But I’m sorry I don’t ask what it is, that Indian shampoo.”

Jennie Reaches Adulthood
According to Tlingit tradition, marriages are arranged. So it was for Jennie that her parents told her of her impending marriage: "We are poor people, but that guy is high class. Be a good girl!"
Her first husband was a member of Tlingit nobility whose mother came from the Shakes family of Wrangell. At the age of thirteen, in October 1905, she left her parents and married a Gaanaxteidi man, John James. Jennie recalls that her husband's mother and sister came. Her mother brought money. It was an "Indian marriage." Jennie tells that her mother and father also gave her husband the Chilkat blanket with a Frog crest that she and her mother had made in 1902. Later her husband would go to Juneau and sell the blanket to buy a war canoe.

Her husband was an industrious man. He worked hard in both wage labor and subsistence fishing. He used the war canoe to haul freight from Haines to the gold mine up the Chilkat River to the Porcupine gold fields. He "transported" all kinds of tools and groceries to use at the gold mine." Since there was no road at the time, he was busy all through the summer of 1906 hauling freight. In 1908 or 1909, he worked in the gold mine at Porcupine during the summer months. They lived together at the mining camp.

Jennie recalls with particular delight and in vivid detail her trip to Klawock in 1910. Her husband was out trolling when she saw the Klawock women returning with sacks filled with black seaweed. She asked them where they picked the seaweed. They told her out on the island. Young Jennie ran to her husband and said, "You better pick some for me, I want to dry some!" "No, he don't listen, he like trolling." Jennie then pleaded with her sister-in-law (Henry Phillip's wife) "Maggie, let's go out to the beach, see how it looks." Maggie responded, "You don't know how to do." Jennie pleaded again, "No, let's go. The older women pick lots of seaweed."

Her sister-in-law relented and off they went with two sacks and a rope. They tied the rope around Jennie who climbed down the rocks to gather seaweed. Maggie was to watch the waves and pull Jennie up before they reached her. They came back to camp ever so happy with their two bags full of seaweed. They cleaned the rocks where they could spread their seaweed out to dry. Jennie laughs, "I see the women folks go down. Oh, I feel good. I got it!"

Jennie recalls the women began examining her black seaweed and they started laughing, "Look at that Chilkat People, they pick something different kind of black seaweed." Jennie remembers, "I hear it good. And then I run to Maggie--'Maggie we pick some wrong one, not black seaweed. The women folk was laughing down there. And I watch and they go home, two of them. I go down there. I throw away in water." They had gathered what the Tlingit call "rock fat."
Jennie then returned to Maggie and said, "I not going to cook for your brother!" Jennie recalls that she returned to her tent and climbed into bed. She even refused to build a fire. Around four or five o'clock, her husband returned home. He asked Jennie, "What's wrong, you sick?" She refused to answer. He asked again, "What's wrong?" It all comes tumbling out: "You don't want to pick the black seaweed for me, that's why I don't cook for you. I pick the different one; the women folk were laughing!" Jennie recalls her husband's words, "Oh, no, come on get up." Maggie had cooked for both her husband and brother. Maggie's husband, Harry also came over to persuade Jennie to join them for dinner, "Come on and eat with us." Jennie relented and joined them.

The following day, Jennie's husband did not go trolling but rather went out to pick her seaweed and returned with three sacks full. Jennie continues with her story, telling that Klawock women, even though they had laughed at her, taught her how to make seaweed (kat'at'xi) with halibut-head juice, which acts like glue, and pack it in boxes.

Jennie's memories are filled with these happy times in her carefree youth. She remembers that she bought a "handmade" short canoe from her brother, Tom. Her husband asked why she bought it when she did not know how to use it. She responded that "we young girls, if we can fish, people will come and buy it from me. Pretty soon, I learn how to do it. I have a lot of fun. I had no kids at that time."

Jennie's first two sons did not survive. Her husband's family believed that her sons did not live because she was married to a noble and she was equal to his status. When Jennie was pregnant with her third child, she went to Juneau to see a man whom Jennie called a "fortune teller" (shaman) to fix her up. She was given a flask and was instructed to put a drop of the medicine it contained wherever she stepped. The medicine promised that her children would live but she would have to give her first-born to the person who gave her the medicine. The child lived, and the medicine person kept asking for the child, but Jennie refused to give her up.

Jennie and her husband, John James, had three daughters--Kathryn, Edith, and Edna.

In 1920, her husband became ill, which Jennie describes as "funny sick." His gums were swollen, he had a sore throat, he could not eat, and he stayed in the hospital in Haines for two months. One day Jennie heard him laughing in his sleep. When he awoke he called Jennie to his side and told her, "I got a good dream. Don't worry if I go away to see my son."

He told Jennie that he was going away. He told her that in his dream their son had brought a sack and told him not to worry. The sack contained "green backs" (dollars). The dream was a prediction that Jennie would be able to take care of herself and her daughters with the money she would earn. Her husband died that year, confident that Jennie would be able to take care of herself. After his death, she went to work in a laundry and a cannery.

In 1922, Jennie married John Mark Thlunaut. John Mark's mother and sister came to her and told her she should marry John. John had adopted the English surname of Mark. Jennie and John used Mark as their last name. After his death, Jennie dropped the name Mark and used the Tlingit name Thlunaut. They lived in Haines and moved into the Yeil Hit (Raven House) of the Lukwaax.adi Clan. They had a daughter who died in her crib. Jennie says the baby was frightened by a barking dog. Another daughter, Agnes, survived.

Her second husband died in 1952. According to Tlingit law, her husband's property, including the tribal house, would not be inherited by herself but rather would revert to someone in the clan who ascended to John's position. If Jennie did not marry anyone else in her husband's clan. she would have to move out of the Raven House. Jennie never remarried and she returned to Klukwan. She bought a small red house near the river where she could clean and smoke her fish.

In about 1973, she moved to a new house which was constructed by the Tlingit and Haida Housing Authority under the HUD program. Although the house was larger, it was inconvenient because it was on a hill away from the river. She would live in the new house throughout the winter but return each summer to her house by the river. She recently gave her small house to her grandson.

Throughout her life, Jennie had been active in many church and civic affairs. She had been a faithful member of the Alaska Native Sisterhood and made some of the first ANS and ANB banners. She has been recognized for her life-long dedication to her home, family, people, and culture.

Her participation in the traditional Tlingit ceremonies and potlaches has been as faithful and extensive. She has been given many names, and the following two stories tell of the love and regard her people have for her. Tlingit names are like titles and they are owned by particular clans. They also tell the stories of clan histories.

Click here to continue “Jennie Thlunaut” Biography Part 3

Click here to see map of where Jennie lived and worked

Click here read about the Chilkat Valley environment.

Clarissa Hudson
970-903-8386