Prehistoric Textile Art of Eastern United States | Page 8

shape, or color, thus producing borders and patterns of no little beauty. Du Pratz thus mentions the use of dyes by the Louisiana Indians: "The women sometimes add to this furniture of the bed mats woven of cane, dyed of 3 colours, which colours in the weaving are formed into various figures."[22] This is well illustrated in the mat from a rock shelter in Tennessee, later to be described, and the Indians of the east and north practiced the same art.
Speaking of the ceremony of smoking the calumet among the Iroquois, De la Potherie says:
The ceremony is held in a large cabin in winter and in summer in an open field. The place being chosen, it is surrounded with branches to shade the company. In the center is spread a large mat of canes dyed in various colors, which serves as a carpet.[23]
Frequent mention is made of the use of mats in burial. Two brief extracts will serve to illustrate this use. Butel-Dumont makes the following statement regarding tribes of the lower Mississippi:
The Paskagoulas and Billoxis do not inter their chief when he dies, but they dry the corpse with fire and smoke in such a way that it becomes a mere skeleton. After it is reduced to this state they carry it to the temple (for they have one as well as the Natchez) and put it in the place of its predecessor, which they take from the spot it occupied and place it with the bodies of the other chiefs at the bottom of the temple, where they are arranged one after the other, standing upright like statues. As for the newly deceased, he is exposed at the entrance of the temple on a sort of altar or table made of cane and covered with a fine mat very neatly worked in red and yellow squares with the skin of the canes.[24]
Brackenridge[25] says that a few years ago, in the state of Tennessee, "Two human bodies were found in a copperas cave in a surprising state of preservation. They were first wrapped up in a kind of blanket, supposed to have been manufactured of the lint of nettles, afterwards with dressed skins, and then a mat of nearly 60 yards in length."
[17] A Brief and True account of the New Found Land of Virginia, Thomas Hariot, p. 24.
[18] A Brief and True account of the New Found Land of Virginia, Thomas Hariot, p. 137.
[19] William Bartram's Travels, etc. London, 1792, p. 302.
[20] Joutel, in B. F. French's Historical Collections of Louisiana. New York, 1846, p. 149.
[21] Hist. de l'Am��r. Sept., Bacqueville de la Potherie. Paris, 1722, vol. III. Plate opposite p. 24.
[22] Hist. Louisiana, Du Pratz. English translation. London, 1763, vol. II, p. 227.
[23] Hist. de l'Am��r. Sept., vol. II, p. 17.
[24] Mem. sur la Louisiane, vol. I, pp. 240-241.
[25] Views of Louisiana, H. M. Brackenridge, 1817, p. 178.

PLIABLE FABRICS.
DEVELOPMENT OF SPINNING AND WEAVING.
The use of simple strands or parts in textile art precedes the use of spun threads, but the one use leads very naturally up to the other. In employing rushes, stems, grasses, etc., the smaller strands were doubled to secure uniformity of size, and when a number of parts were used they were combined into one by twisting or plaiting. In time the advantage in strength and pliability of twisted strands came to be recognized, and this led to the general utilization of fibrous substances, and finally to the manufacture of suitable fibers by manipulating the bark of trees and plants. Spinning was probably not devised until the weaver's art had made considerable advance, but its invention opened a new and broad field and led to the development of a magnificent industry. Semi-rigid fabrics served for a wide range of uses, as already described, but soft and pliable cloths for personal use and ornament were made possible only by the introduction of spinning.
On the arrival of the whites the native art was well advanced; thread, cordage, and even ropes of considerable weight were made with a degree of uniformity and refinement that surprises us. The finest threads with which I am acquainted are perhaps not as fine as our no. 10 ordinary spool cotton thread, but we are not justified in assuming that more refined work was not done. What we have is only that which happened to be preserved through burial with the dead or by impression on the plastic surface of clay used in the arts.
The materials employed for spinning by the aborigines were greatly diversified. Through historical as well as through purely archeologic sources we learn that both vegetal and animal filaments and fibers were freely used. The inner bark of the mulberry was a favorite material, but other fibrous barks were utilized. Wild hemp, nettles, grasses, and other like growths furnished