Bark Cloth among the Mesoamericans (amate)

Today's post is part of the series on paper made from beaten bark in the Americas, Asia, and Polynesia, and the possible common trans-pacific origin for this prehistoric industry.

Yesterday's post looked into the British Columbian and Alaskan beaten bark traditions. This post will explore the Mesoamerican paper.

Maguey

Maguey or agave (Agave americana) is well known because its starches, after processing, become alcohoic beverages like pulque, tequila, and mezcal. The natives used them for many purposes, from construction and food, to medicine and as a source of textile fiber and paper. Below is a picture of a maguey.

During the conquest of the Aztec empire, chroniclers like Francisco López de Gomara (Historia de la Conquista de México, p.449) described the use of maguey fiber. de Gomara wrote in 1552: "Metl is a tree that some call maguey and others call cardón... From the leaves of this plant they make paper, which is used everywhere for sacrifices and painters. They also make espadrilles, mats, blankets, girths, halters, and finally, it is hemp and is spun."

Friar Toribio de Motolinia (1482-1569), in his Memoriales (p. 317) gives a similar account, calling the maguey "metl": "From those maguey leaves, thread for sewing is obtained; they also make cords, ropes, hawsers, girths, and halters, and everything made from hemp is made from metl. They make clothing and footwear from it, because the Indians' footwear is apostolic, for they are properly sandals: the Indians call them cactli. They also make espadrilles like those of Andalusia. They make blankets and capes from this metl... From these agave leaves they make a paper of glued cotton, as thin as a fine veil, and on this paper, resting on top of an agave stalk, they carve all their drawings, and it is one of the principal tools of their trade."

In the 1700s Francisco Javier Clavijero also mentioned the use of maguey for paper manufacture. (Source) on p. 383 and 420. It also provided fiber for clothes (p. 383). He also described the use of paper as garments, and flags in relgious ceremonies and funerals (p.317, 330).

Clavijero describes how they made paper from maguey leaves, and from a palm called iczotl (p. 410) he added that "I have held in my hands many sheets of this Mexican paper. It is quite similar to European cardboard, although much softer and smoother, and one can write on it comfortably. The sheets of this paper were enormous."

Below is a photo of an iczotl, Yucca aloifolia.

Regarding maguey cloth, the image below shows a man selling maguey cloth known as áyatl. The text on the upper side of the image says "maguey thread". The Spanish text captioning the picture is the following: "And the blankets she sells are white, coated with dough, burnished, well-crafted, and have wide or narrow legs, long or elongated, thick or fat, stiff or sturdy; in short, all the maguey blankets that have designs. Some she sells that are very sparse, that look like nothing more than a headscarf, such as the very thin blankets woven with nequén fiber, and those made of twisted thread. And on the contrary, some are thick and very dense, and well-crafted, and others coarse and thick, whether made of pita or maguey thread." This image and text are part of the Florentine Codex (Book 10, folio 53r), compiled in Spanish and Nahuatl languages around 1575.

Ficus Tree paper, Amate or Amal

Other contemporary writers reported paper; Díaz del Castillo (1496-1584), in his True History of the Conquest of New Spain, tells about the conquest of the Aztec empire, in which he took part, and mentions "amal" (p. 160): "I remember that at that time his [Montezuma's] chief steward was a great chieftain, whom we named Tapia, and he kept an account of all the income that was brought to Montezuma with his books, made of their paper, which is called amal, and they had a large house of these books."

Amate paper was used for writing by the Mesoamerican pre-Hispanic civilizations, the Mayas, and the Aztecs its use survived the Spanish conquest and was used well into the 16th century, when European paper-making techniques replaced it.

Amate was made from the bark of trees belonging to the ficus genus, the red and the white jonote (Heliocarpus appendiculatus) called amacuahuitl in the Nahuatl language.

The bark was stripped from the trees, soaked in water and cooked. Then it was rinsed and pressed dry. The bark fiber was placed on a wooden board and beaten with wood or stone beaters called amahuitequini. The bark fiber was flattened and spread, softened and given a relatively smooth texture. Then it was dried. Color of amate ranged from white to pale yellow.

Tro-Cortesiano Codex, AD 1250-1500. Museo de América. Source

Paper manufacturing was an industry, its use was widespread in the Aztec region in the 15th century. Part of the tribute paid by those conquered by the city-states of Texcoco, Tenochtitlan and Tlacopan was in the form of paper, up to 400,000 reams of paper each year, produced in more than 50 villages as detailed in the Mendoza codex, a detail of tax revenue. (see p. 50, 51, 52, 53, etc.)

Amate was used not only in ceremonies, but also for records. The famous "codices", of which roughly 500 have survived the massive burning of books conducted by the Spaniards (the Inquisition and the Catholic church wanted to erradicate all traces of the pagan religions).

The jonote is still used in basket-making. Below is a picture of a man stripping bark from a jonote tree. (Source).

Maguey, Yucca, Jonote and Fusang (T'ung) Tree

Were the maguey or the jonote the trees described in the Fusang account (a mysterious land to the East of China, perhaps America?).

The original Fusang text mentions the paper and the tree: "The kingdom of Fusang lies 20,000 li east from Tahan, and directly east from China. The name of the country is derived from the tree of this name (Fusang), which grows there in abundance. Its leaves resembles those of the tree T'ung. The young sprouts are like those of the bamboo, and are eaten. The fruit resembles a pear, and is of a red colour. Cloth is made out of the bark, and paper is also prepared from it" (p. 168).

The T'ung tree is the Paulownia tomentosa (more on the T'ung in this external link), and looks similar to the jonote trees, so maybe the Buddhist monk thought they were the same species.

Tomorrow we will close this series on bark cloth with a final post.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Bark Cloth in British Columbia and Alaska

Continuing with the subject of the bark coloth and beaten bark that seems to be a pan-Pacific industry, found in Indonesia, Polynesia, China, Southeast Asia, Mexico and the Northwestern coast of North America, this post deals with the latter, the beaten bark of the natives of Alaska, British Columbia.

The book Cedar: Tree of Life to the Northwest Coast Indians By Hilary Stewart (see p. 143) shows images of different types of clothes, like aprons, skirts, capes, and blankets fashioned by the natives in cedar bark. It also mentions Captain Cook's and John Jewitt's accounts about these woven bark mats and textiles.

Captain James Cook visited this region during his final (third) voyage (1776-1780). He carried an artist to record the events of his expedition, John Webber, who drew several images, some nicely watercolored, of the expedition's stop in Nootka Sound, Vancouver Island, in what is now Canada. The two ships, Resolution and Discovery anchored there between March 29 and April 26, 1778.

Further down, the illustration of the interior of a Nootka home, shows the natives, wrapped in mats of woven bark, seated on mats, weaving, and cooking. Smoked salmon can be seen under the ceiling. Below is what Cook wrote at that time, as recorded in The Three Voyages of Captain Cook Round the World. Vol. VI. Being the Second of the Third Voyage, by James Cook, p. 298.

"The flaxen and woollen garments, with which they cover themselves, must necessarily engage their first care, and are the most material of those that can be ranked under the head of manufactures. The former of these are made of the bark of a pine-tree, beat into a hempen state. It is not spun, but, after being properly prepared, is spread upon a stick, which is fastened across to two others that stand upright. It is disposed in such a manner that the manufacturer, who sits on her hams at this simple machine, knots it across with small plaited threads, at the distance of half an inch from each other. Though, by this method, it be not so close or firm as cloth that is woven, the bunches between the knots make it sufficiently impervious to the air, by filling the interstices, and it has the additional advantage of being softer and more pliable. The woollen garments, though probably manufactured in the same manner, have the strongest resemblance to woven cloth. But the various figures which are very artificially inserted in them, destroy the supposition of their being wrought in the loom; it being extremely unlikely that these people should be so dexterous as to be able to finish such a complex work, unless immediately by their hands. They are of different degrees of fineness; some resembling our coarsest rugs or blankets, and others almost equal to our finest sorts, or even softer, and certainly warmer. The wool of which they are made, seems to be taken from animals, as the fox and brown lynx; the last of which is by far the finest sort, and, in its natural state, differs little from the colour of our coarser wools; but the hair, with which the animal is also covered, being intermixed, its appearance, when wrought, is somewhat different. The ornamental parts or figures in these garments, which are disposed with great taste, are commonly of a different colour, being dyed, chiefly, either of a deep brown, or of a yellow; the last of which, when it is new, equals the best in our carpets, as to brightness."

The Inside of a House in Nootka Sound. Webber

In the case John Rodgers Jewitt (1783-1821), we have his account, The adventures and sufferings of John R. Jewitt, only survior of the ship Boston, during a captivity of nearly three years among the savages of Nootka Sound. With an account of the manners, mode of living, and religious opinions of the natives (see p. 72 below).

"From bark they likewise make the cloth for their garments, in the following manner : A quantity of this bark is taken and put into fresh water, where it is kept for a fortnight, to give it time to completely soften; it is then taken out and beaten upon a plank, with an instrument made of bone, or some very hard wood, having grooves or hollows on one side of it, care being taken to keep the mass constantly moistened with water, in order to separate, with more ease, the hard and woody from the soft and fibrous parts, which, when completed, they par cel out into skeins, like thread. These they lay in the air to bleach, and afterwards dye them black or red, as suits their fancies, their natural colour being a pale yellow. In order to form the cloth, the women, by whom the whole of this process is performed, take a certain number of these skeins, and twist them together, by rolling them with their hands upon their knees into hard rolls, which are afterwards connected by means of a strong thread, made for the purpose.
Their dress usually consists of but a single garment, which is a loose cloak or mantle (called Kutsack) in one piece, reaching nearly to the feet. This is tied loosely over the right or left shoulder, so as to leave the arms at full liberty.
Those of the common people are painted red with ochre, the better to keep out the rain, but the chiefs wear them of their native colour, which is a pale yellow, ornamenting them with borders of the sea-otter skin, a kind of grey cloth, made of the hair of some animal which they procure from the tribes to the South, or their own cloth wrought or painted with various figures in red or black, representing men’s heads, the sun and moon, fish and animals, which are frequently executed with much skill. They have also a girdle of the same kind, for securing this mantle, or Kutsack, around them, which is in general still more highly ornamented, and serves them to wear their daggers and knives in. In winter, however, they sometimes make use of an additional garment, which is a kind of hood, with a hole in it for the purpose of admitting the head..."

Jewitt had been an armourer and blacksmith on board an American ship, the "Boston" on a trading expedition around the world. The natives attacked the crew in March 1803, sparing Jewitt as they needed his know-how as an armourer. He was held captive for 28 months when he managed to escape aboard another ship that was visiting Nootka Sound.

Ninety years later, the Report on Population and Resources of Alaska at the eleventh census: 1890, by Robert P. Porter, published in 1893 (see p. 57-58), indicated that the natives still continued with this tradition:

" The early visitors to the Alexander archipelago [see Google Maps] found the natives of both sexes wearing conical or truncated hats woven of grass or finely split spruce root, and painted with totem shapes in different colors, generally black and red. From the same material, blankets and mats ornamented with grotesque designs were manufactured and found in general use. They also had a rain coat or rather blanket with a central aperture for inserting the head [like a poncho].
These garments were woven from coarse grass with the shaggy side exposed to the rain. The inhabitants of the southern part of the archipelago substituted the more pliable material obtained from cedar bark for grass and roots. Mats and cloths manufactured in this way are still in general use throughout the Thlingit tribe and they are applied to every imaginable purpose from carpeting a house and lining a canoe to packing cases bags and coverings. In cases of emergency they also serve as garments and bedding while nearly everything the Thlingit brings for sale to the settlement is carefully wrapped in cedar matting."

Below is an image of one of these cedar bark mats

Cedar bark mat, late 1800s–early 1900s from Alaska or British Columbia, Canada. Material+technique: cedar bark; weaving. Dimensions: (Length x Width): 106 x 49.5 cm (19.5 x 41-75 in.). Source

But, they also made sophisticated clothes, as you can see below, and not only coarse mats.

Tunic and leggings, Date: ca. 1890. Alaska, United States. Tlingit, Native American Medium: Cedar bark, mountain sheep wool and dye. Source

Woven Bark and also wool

In their book, The Tlingit Indians, George Thornton Emmons and Frederica De Laguna (see p. 222), describe how the Tlingit wove cedar bark into mats and "cloth". They also used animal wool to weave blankets, like the famous Chilkat blanket (see this online source for more details about the blanket).

Comments

To my non-scholar eyes, these mats and cedar bark mats and rugs of the Tlingit natives seem less sophisticated than the Celebes-Sulawesi paper (the key here is "paper") garments. The Indonesians beat bark into a paper pulp and then fashioned it into clothing. The Tlingit wove (the key here is "weaving") the bark, they used very primitive looms (if the word loom could be used), actually frames onto which they wove the bark. The only similarity is that they used a plant fiber to make clothes. But the processes seem different.

My next post on the Mesoamerican beaten bark will show that they made paper from the bark. So Mexican bark-cloth is similar to the Indonesian product.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2026 by Austin Whittall © 

Bark Beaters: Polynesia, Mexico and British Columbia

This is the third post of a series dedicated to the possibile prehistoric links between Polynesians and the Native Americans of Alaska and Britih Columbia, on the NW coast of North America.

My previous post mentioned a text published in 1894 on the similarities between both groups of people.

The first post was an introduction to the subject, mentioning some Hawaiian lore about an Alaskan origin, and online sources.

Beaten Bark

This post will look into a product known as "beaten bark", it is obtained by pounding tree bark (hence its name) into fiber which is then used either as a textile (barkcloth) or, as a product similar to paper. Beaten bark is found in China, Southeast Asia, Polynesia, and among some Native American groups in Mexico and NW North America. This suggests the possibilitiy of trans-pacific sharing of know-how in ancient times.

The tools: Bark beaters

Bark is processed by beating the tough fibers and breaking them apart, special tools known as "beaters" are used for this purpose.

An article published in 1900, by Frederick Starr (Mexican Paper, The American Antiquarian, Vol XXII Sept & Oct 1900, No. 5, p. 307) mentions a baton used to hammer bark to make paper. It compares the pre-Hispanic Mexican beater with the Polynesian tapa, notes that beaten bark was used to make cloth or paper in different parts of America. It also mentions the bark beater used by the Tinglit Indians of Alaska, and recognizing that they are also used in other places like "New Guinea and Africa they are usually quite different from these in sectional form and in the mode of grooving. Personally we are inclined to see a significance in the the similarity of the Polynesian - Tlingit - Mexican beaters. Were there no other evidence pointing to relationship or contact between the three populations the argument would be indeed weak; as it is, however this similarity presents evidence which reinforces an argument already made."

Below are some images from this article, comparing Mexican, Alaskan, and Polynesian beaters:

The Aztecs of Mexico beat Maguey (the plant said to give Fusang its name, also used to make paper!), for paper on which they wrote their symbols. They also used bark from different plants for this purpose. This paper was ceremonial.

This similarity in bark beaters was also noted more recently, and a post titled "Indigenous Bark Beaters in Coastal British Columbia" by Grant Keddie, 2024, (online here, with photographs), the similarity between Polynesian and British Columbian (B.C.) beaters is amazing. However, the author is cautious: "There is not enough information, at present, to indicate that bark beaters represent a transfer of an artifact type from Polynesia to the coast of B.C. If the latter were true, one might expect that they would be part of an assemblage of other kinds of artifacts that appeared near the same time. There are a number of candidates for the later that are in need of further examination."

Keddie then quotes Paul Tolstoy, who researched the matter extensively. Tolstoy's work, has a very revealing title:"Paper route: Were the Manufacture and Use of Bark Paper Introduced into Mesoamerica from Asia?" 1991, Natural History, vol. 100, no. 6, pp. 6-8, 10, 12-14. Below is Keddie's quote from Tolstoy:

" My own survey of hundreds of specimens of the club and racquet types [of bark beaters] shows further correspondences in the construction of Mesoamerican and Indonesian examples... My research also reveals a pattern of dates for the archaeological examples. In Mesoamerica, the earliest bark beaters are from the Maya area and its periphery, particularly the Pacific coastal plain of Guatemala and El Salvador, where they appear some 2,500 years ago.
The dating of artifacts from the islands of Southeast Asia is less secure, but both forms [of bark beaters, i.e. club-shaped, and racquet-type] almost certainly go back several hundred years earlier than they do in Mesoamerica. In Taiwan they probably go back one or two thousand years still earlier.
Surveying the manufacturing technologies of bark cloth and early true paper worldwide, I have identified some 300 variable features in the steps that go into producing these materials. They include such elements as the cultivation or care of trees used for their bark; ways of getting at the desired bast layer... [a long list of such features follows here]
In addition, I have recorded some 140 uses of the product, such as mats, blankets, bags, various items of clothing, shrouds, banners, and of course, writing paper. – Finally, there are some 100 specific details of the design of bark beaters, which may be combined in various ways, and a mass of relevant botanical and linguistic information.
Finally, the shared features and innovations suggest a family tree for these industries with a history of common inheritance and local differentiation. In it, Mesoamerican paper technology evolves from a prototype shared with Sulawesi bark cloth and moves toward the threshold of the true papermaking. Evidence from China suggests that this threshold was crossed sometime between 2,500 and 2,000 years ago, possibly in southern China or Indochina. Mesoamerica, however, acquired a version of the technology as it existed just prior to this event, probably from the area that includes Indochina, Taiwan, and the Philippine Islands, where the two beater forms occur together archaeologically."

I have seen several online posts mention that Max Uhle was the first to suggest a similarity between Sulawesi beaten bark (in those days the area was known as the Celebes), and Mayan beaten bark paper. The source given is his work in German: Kultur und Industrie südamerikanischer Völker: nach dem im Besitze des Museums für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig befindlichen Sammlungen, in 2 volumes. I wasn't able to find any mention by Uhler of beaten bark or the Celebes+Sulawesi. If you can find it, I'd appreciate it.

There is an excellent article about the Barkcloth production in Central Sulawesi (Lloraine V. Aragon. Expedition, Vol. 32, No. 1, p.33). And this gallery with descriptions shows sarongs, shirts, vests, hankys, headbands and paintings with dyed designs that are amazing even nowadays. One image is shown below

Tolstoy's books from 1991 and 1963 ("Cultural Parallels between Southeast Asia and Mesoamerica in the Manufacture of Bark Cloth." Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, Series II, Vol. 25, No. 6: 646–662. New York.) are behind paywalls, but those who have quoted him¹ say that "Tolstoy (1963, 1991), who rejects any notion that the tapa of Polynesia provides a credible link between Southeast Asia and Mesoamerica, and he argues instead that bark-cloth technology was introduced into Mesoamerica, not island to island, but in a single voyage sailing north of Hawaii along an island-less route to Mesoamerica."

¹Trans-oceanic transfer of bark-cloth technology from South China-Southeast Asia to Mesoamerica? Judith Cameron, 2008, in Islands of inquiry: colonisation, seafaring and the archaeology of maritime landscapes (Terra Australis 29). Editors, Geoffrey Clark, Foss Leach & Sue O'Connor, PublisherANU ePress, pp.203-210. Vol 1.

Independent, convergent discovery?

Judith Cameron suggests that the natives of Central America (Mesoamerica) developed the technique on their own, independently, and discovered details like groves on the beaters, on their own, below is her positiion¹:

"Notwithstanding the above-mentioned parallels, there is also the possibility that the Meso-american archaeological bark-cloth beaters belong to an independent cultural tradition that has no links with Southeast China or Southeast Asia. Although the Southern Chinese and Southeast Asian beaters suggest interaction, parallels are neither necessarily nor exclusively resultant from interaction. An alternative explanation is that prehistoric groups in Mesoamerica independently developed stone bark-cloth beaters. In manufacturing material culture, there is a limited range of raw materials and there could be geological reasons, such as an abundance of river-smoothed pebbles of appropriate size and weight in both regions. The diagnostic features of the beaters in the typology might also be purely functional, rather than stylistic. Grooves on the faces of beaters enhance the maceration of bark fibres and prehistoric groups in Mesoamerica could have realised this quite independently. In the same way, prehistoric groups with hafted beaters on the two continents could have invented hafting independently, as groups in other parts of the world have done. "

To be continued

My next posts will look into the Mesoamerican amate (the Nahuatl name for barkcloth), and the work of the natives of British Columbia, who employed beaten red cedar bark to make mats and garments.

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Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025by Austin Whittall ©