The Indian origins of the bandanna

Magazine Antiques, Dec, 1999 by Susan S. Bean

Bandannas, the familiar squares typically of red or blue cotton usually with spotted or floral patterns, are thought of as distinctively American. For more than a century they have stood for the all-American values of hard work, rugged independence, and egalitarianism. In recent years they have become part of the fashion for work clothes, worn by laborers and celebrities alike. Bandannas have even been enlisted to signal gang membership, drug deals, and sexual orientation. Underlying all these uses is an imagined American past, a sort of down-to-earth classlessness connected with intrepid forebears who tilled the soil, sailed the seas, and tamed the frontier. Today, few are aware that both the word bandanna and the original textile were imported from India. In the eighteenth century bandannas were a distinctly exotic import; while in the nineteenth they gradually became completely domesticated and finally quintessentially American. The word bandanna was borrowed either from Hindustani (which was the lingua fr anca of traders before India's independence) or from Bengali, the language of the region in which bandannas were made. [1] In both languages the word means tie-dyed--the technique by which small sections of cloth are tightly wrapped with thread to prevent the dye from penetrating.

The silk imported into the United States for bandannas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was manufactured in India's main silk-producing region, Murshidabad, about one hundred miles north of Calcutta in northeastern India. The thin, sometimes translucent silk was called kora cloth and came in lengths of seven to ten yards long by one yard wide, or enough to make seven to ten square handkerchiefs. The lengths, known as pieces, were either tie-dyed in simple geometric patterns or block printed in spotted or floral motifs. The pieces were cut into handkerchiefs and hemmed by the importers.

The export of bandannas to the West was initiated in the early eighteenth century by the Dutch East India Company from its trading station on the Hooghly (or Hugli) River north of Calcutta. The Dutch called these textiles taffa de foolas (taffeta silk neckcloths), [2] but they were put to many uses and found a ready market in Eumpe. Like chintzes and kashmir shawls, these handkerchiefs were soon copied by Eumpean textile weavers and dyers and sold by merehants who pressured their governments into protecting their imitations from competition with the imported originals. In 1720 the British East India Company began exporting bandannas from its trading station in Calcutta. By this time it was already illegal to sell Indian bandannas in England (and remained so until 1826). The East India Company reexported the Indian bandannas from England for sale in the American colonies and on the Continent, although many were smuggled back into Britain. [3]

The earliest documented bandanna in America is a fragment that dates from about 1750 and was found during an excavation in Charleston, South Carolina (Pl. VIII). In the late eighteenth century tens of thousands of bandannas were imported from India to New England on American ships, along with madras, pullicat, blue and red gilla handkerchiefs, chintz, calico, and seersucker fabrics, and kashmir shawls. These were all well known as products of Indian weavers and dyers and were purchased in the colonies by their Indian names.

In the early days of the Republic handkerchiefs were also used as neckerchiefs, head wraps, and bundle wraps. They were made of many fabrics in many patterns and colors and were imported not only from India but also from China, England, and the Continent. The popularity of snuff in the eighteenth century increased the need for pocket handkerchiefs, particularly dark-toned chocolate-colored and red bandannas. American sailors customarily wore a neckerchief, which was often a bandanna. [4] African-American women, slave and free, usually wore colorful headdresses variously called kerchiefs, bandannas, head-kerchiefs, hand handkerchiefs, and turbans (see Pls. XI, XIa). [5]

The first period of American trade with India, from independence until the foreign trade embargo of 1807 and the War of 1812, was relatively free of government control. Before the American industrial revolution began in the textile mills of New England, Indian cotton goods were in great demand for everyday uses. Indian silk bandannas were imported and priced for most townsfolk, competing with British imports and home manufactures.

Henry Lee (1782-1867), a leading Boston merchant in the India trade, writing to his brother George Lee in Calcutta in 1810, recommended buying great quantities of silk handkerchiefs. The consignment he ordered consisted of tie-dyed bandannas, half of them chocolate colored and the remainder scarlet, yellow, and blue, as well as twilled bandannas and a kind of printed handkerchief, which the British East India Company called company flags, both of which were of higher quality than their tie-dyed counterparts. All of these goods were produced under the direction of the British East India Company. Lee also ordered undyed kora, presumably to sell to printing establishments in the United States. [6] In Lee's estimation, the American market for bandannas was 150,000 pieces, or more than one million handkerchiefs, a year. Even though a significant number of these were reexported, there would have been plenty of bandannas for the American population of about seven million. [7]