Prehistoric Textile Art of Eastern United States | Page 7

caves, is quite full and satisfactory. Mats are not so varied in form and character as are baskets, but their uses were greatly diversified; they served for carpeting, seats, hangings, coverings, and wrappings, and they were extensively employed in permanent house construction, and for temporary or movable shelters. A few brief extracts will serve to indicate their use in various classes of construction by the tribes first encountered by the whites.
Hariot says that the houses of the Virginia Indians--
Are made of small poles made fast at the tops in rounde forme after the maner as is vsed in many arbories in our gardens of England, in most townes couered with barkes, and in some with artificiall mattes made of long rushes; from the tops of the houses downe to the ground.[17]
[Illustration: PL. I. PRODUCTS OF THE TEXTILE ART.
a, Openwork fish baskets of Virginia Indians; b, manner of weaving; c, basket strainer; d, quiver of rushes; e, mat of rushes.]
It would appear from a study of the numerous illustrations of houses given by this author that the mats so often referred to were identical in construction with those still in use among the tribes of the upper Mississippi and the far west. The rushes are laid close together side by side and bound together at long intervals by cords intertwined across. In e, plate I, is reproduced a small portion of a mat from Hariot's engraving of the dead-house of the Virginia Indians, which shows this method of construction.
The modern use of mats of this class in house construction is known by an example which I have seen represented in a small photograph, taken about the year 1868, and representing a Chippewa village, situated somewhere in the upper Missouri valley, probably not far from Sioux City, Iowa.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--Use of mats in an Indian council (after Lafitau).]
Mats were used not only in and about the dwellings of the aborigines, but it was a common practice to carry them from place to place to sleep on, or for use as seats or carpeting in meetings or councils of ceremonious nature. The latter use is illustrated in a number of the early accounts of the natives. Figure 2, copied from Lafitau, serves to indicate the common practice.
The omnipresent sweat-house of the aborigines is thus described by Smith:
Sometimes they are troubled with dropsies, swellings, aches, and such like diseases; for cure whereof they build a Stone in the forme of a Doue-house with mats, so close that a few coales therein covered with a pot, will make the patient sweat extreamely.[18]
Bartram, speaking of the Seminoles, states that the wide steps leading up to the canopied platform of the council house are "covered with carpets or mats, curiously woven of split canes dyed of various colours."[19]
The use of mats in the mound country in very early times is described by Joutel as follows:
Their moveables are some bullocks' hides and goat skins well cured, some mats close wove, wherewith they adorn their huts, and some earthen vessels which they are very skilful at making, and wherein they boil their flesh or roots, or sagamis��, which, as has been said, is their pottage. They have also some small baskets made of canes, serving to put in their fruit and other provisions. Their beds are made of canes, raised 2 or 3 feet above the ground, handsomely fitted with mats and bullocks' hides, or goat skins well cured, which serve them for feather beds, or quilts and blankets; and those beds are parted one from another by mats hung up.[20]
The mats so much used for beds and carpets and for the covering of shelters, houses, etc., were probably made of pliable materials such as rushes. De la Potherie illustrates their use as beds,[21] one end of the mat being rolled up for a pillow as shown in figure 3.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--Use of mat in sleeping (after De la Potherie).]
The sizes of mats were greatly varied; the smallest were sufficient for seating only a single person, but the largest were many yards in length, the width being restricted to a few feet by the conditions of construction.
Mats were woven in two or more styles. Where the strands or parts were uniform in size and rigidity they were simply interlaced, but when one strong or rigid series was to be kept in place by a pliable series, the latter were twisted about the former at the intersections as in ordinary twined weaving. The heavy series of strands or parts were held together side by side by the intertwined strands placed far apart, a common practice yet among native mat-makers. Much variety of character and appearance was given to the fabric by varying the order of the strands in intersection. It was a common practice to interweave strands of different size,