Prehistoric Textile Art of Eastern United States Part 3

Weaving among the Indians of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, and the northeast is described by Kalm, De la Potherie, and others. The following extracts are from Kalm, and will serve to indicate the status of the art over a wide area:

_Apocynum cannabinum_ was by the Swedes called Hemp of the Indians; and grew plentifully in old corn grounds, in woods on hills, and in high glades. The Swedes had given it the name of Indian hemp, because the Indians formerly, and even now, apply it to the same purposes as the Europeans do hemp; for the stalk may be divided into filaments, and is easily prepared.

When the Indians were yet settled among the Swedes, in Pensylvania and New Jersey, they made ropes of this apocynum, which the Swedes bought, and employed them as bridles, and for nets. These ropes were stronger, and kept longer in water, than such as were made of common hemp. The Swedes commonly got fourteen yards of these ropes for one piece of bread. Many of the Europeans still buy such ropes, because they last so well.

The Indians likewise make several other stuffs of their hemp.

On my journey through the country of the Iroquese, I saw the women employed in manufacturing this hemp. They made use neither of spinning wheels nor distaffs, but rolled the filaments upon their bare thighs, and made thread and strings of them, which they dyed red, yellow, black, etc., and afterwards worked them into stuffs, with a great deal of ingenuity. The plant is perennial, which renders the annual planting of it altogether unnecessary. Out of the root and stalk of this plant, when it is fresh, comes a white milky juice, which is somewhat poisonous. Sometimes the fishing tackle of the Indians consists entirely of this hemp. The Europeans make no use of it, that I know of.[26]

In another place this author describes the weaving of bark fibers:

The _Direa pal.u.s.tris_, or Mouse-wood, is a little shrub which grows on hills, towards swamps and marshes, and was now in full blossom. The English in Albany call it Leather-wood, because its bark is as tough as leather. The French in Canada call it Bois de Plomb, or Leaden-wood because the wood itself is as soft and as tough as lead. The bark of this shrub was made use of for ropes, baskets, etc., by the Indians, whilst they lived among the Swedes. And it is really very fit for that purpose, on account of its remarkable strength, and toughness, which is equal to that of the Lime-tree bark. The English and the Dutch in many parts of North America, and the French in Canada, employ this bark in all cases where we make use of Lime-tree bark in Europe. The tree itself is very tough, and you cannot easily separate its branches without the help of a knife: some people employ the twigs for rods.[27]

De la Potherie, who wrote at an earlier date than Kalm, says--

The women spin on their knees, twisting the thread with the palm of the hand; they make this thread, which should rather be called twine (fisselle), into little b.a.l.l.s.[28]

Hariot, John Smith, and Adair bear witness to the primitive practice of the art in Virginia and the Carolinas. Smith uses the following words:

Betwixt their hands and thighes, their women vse to spin, the barkes of trees, Deere sinewes, or a kinde of gra.s.se they call Pemmenaw, of these they make a thread very even and readily. This thread serveth for many vses. As about their housing apparell, as also they make nets for fishing, for the quant.i.tie as formally as ours. They make also with it lines for angles.[29]

The Cherokees and other Indians with whom Adair came in contact preserved in their purity many of the ancient practices. The following extracts are, therefore, of much importance to the historian of the textile art in America:

Formerly, the Indians made very handsome carpets. They have a wild hemp that grows about six feet high, in open, rich, level lands, and which usually ripens in July: it is plenty on our frontier settlements. When it is fit for use, they pull, steep, peel, and beat it; and the old women spin it off the distaffs, with wooden machines, having some clay on the middle of them, to hasten the motion. When the coa.r.s.e thread is prepared, they put it into a frame about six feet square, and instead of a shuttle, they thrust through the thread with a long cane, having a large string through the web, which they shift at every second course of the thread. When they have thus finished their arduous labour, they paint each side of the carpet with such figures, of various colours, as their fruitful imaginations devise; particularly the images of those birds and beasts they are acquainted with; and likewise of themselves, acting in their social, and martial stations.

There is that due proportion and so much wild variety in the design, that would really strike a curious eye with pleasure and admiration. J. W--t, Esq., a most skilful linguist in the Muskohge dialect, a.s.sures me, that time out of mind they pa.s.sed the woof with a shuttle; and they have a couple of threddles, which they move with the hand so as to enable them to make good dispatch, something after our manner of weaving.

This is sufficiently confirmed by their method of working broad garters, sashes, shot pouches, broad belts, and the like, which are decorated all over with beautiful stripes and chequers.

The women are the chief, if not the only, manufacturers; the men judge that if they performed that office, it would exceedingly depreciate them. * * * In the winter season, the women gather buffalo's hair, a sort of coa.r.s.e, brown, curled wool; and having spun it as fine as they can, and properly doubled it, they put small beads of different colours upon the yarn, as they work it, the figures they work in those small webs, are generally uniform, but sometimes they diversify them on both sides. The Choktah weave shot-pouches which have raised work inside and outside. They likewise make turkey feather blankets with the long feathers of the neck and breast of that large fowl--they twist the inner end of the feathers very fast into a strong double thread of hemp, or the inner bark of the mulberry tree, of the size and strength of coa.r.s.e twine, as the fibres are sufficiently fine, and they work it in manner of fine netting. As the feathers are long and glittering, this sort of blankets is not only very warm, but pleasing to the eye.[30]

The extent and importance of the art among the Gulf tribes are indicated by a number of early observers. The Knight of Elvas speaks of the use of blankets by the Indians, 83 degrees west longitude, and 32 degrees north lat.i.tude, or near the central portion of Georgia:

These are like shawls, some of them are made from the inner barks of trees, and others from a gra.s.s resembling nettle, which, by threading out, becomes like flax. The women use them for covering, wearing one about the body from the waist downward, and another over the shoulder, with the right arm left free, after the manner of the gypsies: the men wear but one, which they carry over their shoulders in the same way, the loins being covered with a bragueiro of deer-skin, after the fashion of the woolen breech-cloth that was once the custom of Spain. The skins are well dressed, the color being given to them that is wished, and in such perfection, that, when of vermilion, they look like very fine red broadcloth, and when black, the sort in use for shoes, they are of the purest. The same hues are given to blankets.[31]

At Cutifachiqui similar fabrics were observed:

In the barbacoas were large quant.i.ties of clothing, shawls of thread, made from the barks of trees and others of feathers, white gray, vermilion and yellow, rich and proper for winter.[32]

The frequent mention of fabrics used by the Indians for shawls, mantles, etc., makes it plain that such were in very general use when the town of Pacaha was captured, and the Spaniards clothed themselves with mantles, ca.s.socks, and gowns made from these native garments. Everywhere woven shawls were a princ.i.p.al feature of the propitiatory gifts of the natives to the Spaniards.

The extent of this manufacture of hempen garments by the Indians of the lower Mississippi is well indicated in the account of the adventures of the expedition on the western side of the Mississippi at Aminoga. The Spaniards undertook the construction of brigantines by means of which they hoped to descend the Mississippi and to pa.s.s along the gulf coast to Mexico. A demand was made upon the natives for shawls to be used in the manufacture of sails, and great numbers were brought. Native hemp and the ravelings of shawls were used for calking the boats.[33] What a novel sight must have been this first European fleet on the great river, consisting of five brigantines impelled by sails of native manufacture!

It is worthy of note that in this region (of the lower Mississippi) the Spaniards saw shawls of cotton, brought, it was said, from the west--probably the Pueblo country, as they were accompanied by objects that from the description may have been ornaments of turquois.[34]

The following is from Du Pratz:

Many of the women wear cloaks of the bark of the mulberry-tree, or of the feathers of swans, turkies, or India ducks. The bark they take from young mulberry shoots that rise from the roots of trees that have been cut down; after it is dried in the sun they beat it to make all the woody part fall off, and they give the threads that remain a second beating, after which they bleach them by exposing them to the dew. When they are well whitened they spin them about the coa.r.s.eness of pack-thread, and weave them in the following manner: they plant two stakes in the ground about a yard and a half asunder, and having stretched a cord from the one to the other, they fasten their threads of bark double to this cord, and then interweave them in a curious manner into a cloak of about a yard square with a wrought border round the edges. * * * The girls at the age of eight or ten put on a little petticoat, which is a kind of fringe made of threads of mulberry bark.[35]

This is ill.u.s.trated farther on.

The manner of weaving in the middle and upper Mississippi country is described by Hunter, who, speaking of the Osage Indians and their neighbors, says:

The hair of the buffalo and other animals is sometimes manufactured into blankets; the hair is first twisted by hand, and wound into b.a.l.l.s. The warp is then laid of a length to answer the size of the intended blanket, crossed by three small smooth rods alternately beneath the threads, and secured at each end to stronger rods supported on forks, at a short distance above the ground. Thus prepared, the woof is filled in, thread by thread, and pressed closely together, by means of a long flattened wooden needle. When the weaving is finished, the ends of the warp and woof are tied into knots, and the blanket is ready for use. In the same manner they construct mats from flags and rushes, on which, particularly in warm weather, they sleep and sit.[36]

Fabrics of various kinds were employed in burial, although not generally made for that purpose. The wrappings of dead bodies were often very elaborate, and the consignment of these to tombs and graves where the conditions were favorable to preservation has kept them for long periods in a most perfect state. By exhumation we have obtained most of our information on this subject. Our knowledge is, however, greatly increased by descriptions of such burial customs as were witnessed in early times. Extracts already given refer to the use of fabrics in mortuary customs. Many others could be cited but the following seems sufficient:

After the dead person has lain a day and a night in one of their hurdles of canes, commonly in some out house made for that purpose, those that officiate about the funeral go into the town, and the first young men they meet withal, that have blankets or match coats on, whom they think fit for their turn, they strip them from their backs, who suffer them so to do without any resistance. In these they wrap the dead bodies, and cover them with two or three mats which the Indians make of rushes or cane; and, last of all, they have a long web of woven reeds or hollow canes, which is the coffin of the Indians, and is brought round several times and tied fast at both ends, which, indeed, looks very decent and well.

Then the corps is brought out of the house into the orchard of peach trees, where another hurdle is made to receive it, about which comes all the relations and nation that the dead person belonged to, besides several from other nations in alliance with them; all which sit down on the ground upon mats spread there for that purpose.[37]

NETS.

The manufacture and use of nets by natives in various parts of the country are recorded by early writers, some of whom have already been quoted. Speaking of the Iroquois De la Potherie says:

The old men and those who can not or do not wish to go to war or the chase, make nets and are fishers. This is a plebian trade among them. Their nets are made of thread of nettles or of white wood, the bark of which they make into thread by means of lye which renders it strong and pliable.[38]

In another place the same author says:

The Sauteurs, who are beyond the Missisakis, take their name from a Saut (waterfall) which flows from Lake Superior into Lake Huron by a great fall whose rapids are extremely violent. These people are very skillful in fishery by which they obtain white fish as large as salmons. They cross all these terrible rapids into which they cast a net like a sack, a little more than half an ell in width by one in depth attached to a forked stick about 15 feet long.[39]

A novel use of nets is recorded by this author as follows:

For taking pigeons in summer in nets, they make a broad path in the woods and attach to two trees, one on each side, a large net made in the shape of a sack well opened.[40]

Du Pratz, speaking of the fishing nets of the Louisiana Indians, states that they "are meshed like ours and made of lime-tree bark; the large fish are shot with arrows."[41]

FEATHER WORK.

Feather work was one of the most remarkable arts of the natives of Mexico and other southern countries at the period of the conquest. The feathers were sometimes woven in with the woof and sometimes applied to a network base after the fashion of embroidery. Rarely, it may be imagined, were either spun or unspun fabrics woven of feathers alone.

Very pleasing specimens of ancient Peruvian feather work are recovered from graves at Ancon and elsewhere, and the method of inserting the feathers is ill.u.s.trated in the Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology.[42] In few instances has such work been recovered from mounds or burial places, but there can be no doubt that the mound-building tribes were experts in this art. Frequent mention is made of the feather work of the natives by the earliest explorers of the Mississippi valley, and the character of the work may be gathered from the extracts already given and from those which follow.

John Smith, speaking of the feather work of the Virginia Indians, says:

We haue seene some vse mantels made of Turky feathers, so prettily wrought and woven with threads that nothing could be discerned but the feathers.[43]

Lawson mentions a "doctor" of the Santee nation who "was warmly and neatly clad with a match coat, made of turkies feathers, which makes a pretty show, seeming as if it was a garment of the deepest silk s.h.a.g."[44]

In another place the same author says:

Their feather match coats are very pretty, especially some of them, which are made extraordinary charming, containing several pretty figures wrought in feathers, making them seem like a fine flower silk s.h.a.g; and when new and fresh, they become a bed very well, instead of a quilt. Some of another sort are made of hair, racc.o.o.n, bever, or squirrel skins, which are very warm. Others again are made of the greenpart of the skin of a mallard's head, which they sew perfectly well together, their thread being either the sinews of a deer divided very small, or silk gra.s.s. When these are finished, they look very finely, though they must needs be very troublesome to make.[45]

Du Pratz thus describes the art in Louisiana:

If the women know how to do this kind of work they make mantles either of feathers or woven of the bark of the mulberry tree. We will describe their method of doing this.

The feather mantles are made on a frame similar to that on which the peruke makers work hair; they spread the feathers in the same manner and fasten them on old fish nets or old mantles of mulberry bark. They are placed, spread in this manner, one over the other and on both sides; for this purpose small turkey feathers are used; women who have feathers of swans or India ducks, which are white, make these feather mantles for women of high rank.[46]

Butel-Dumont describes feather work of the natives of Louisiana briefly as follows:

They [the women] also, without a spinning wheel or distaff, spin the hair or wool of cattle of which they make garters and ribands; and with the thread which they obtain from lime-tree bark, they make a species of mantle, which they cover with the finest swan's feathers fastened one by one to the material. A long task indeed, but they do not count this trouble and time when it concerns their satisfaction.[47]