Part 1 (1/2)

Prehistoric Textile Art of Eastern United States.

by William Henry Holmes.

INTRODUCTORY.

SCOPE OF THE WORK.

About the year 1890 the writer was requested by the Director of the Bureau of Ethnology to prepare certain papers on aboriginal art, to accompany the final report of Dr. Cyrus Thomas on his explorations of mounds and other ancient remains in eastern United States. These papers were to treat of those arts represented most fully by relics recovered in the field explored. They included studies of the art of pottery, of the textile art and of art in sh.e.l.l, and a paper on native tobacco pipes. Three of these papers were already completed when it was decided to issue the main work of Dr. Thomas independently of the several papers prepared by his a.s.sociates. It thus happens that the present paper, written to form a limited section of a work restricted to narrow geographic limits, covers so small a fragment of the aboriginal textile field.

The materials considered in this paper include little not germane to the studies conducted by Dr. Thomas in the mound region, the collections used having been made largely by members of the Bureau of Ethnology acting under his supervision. Two or three papers have already been published in the annual reports of the Bureau in which parts of the same collections have been utilized, and a few of the ill.u.s.trations prepared for these papers are reproduced in this more comprehensive study.

Until within the last few years textile fabrics have hardly been recognized as having a place among the materials to be utilized in the discussion of North American archeology. Recent studies of the art of the mound-building tribes have, however, served to demonstrate their importance, and the evidence now furnished by this art can be placed alongside of that of arts in clay, stone, and metal, as a factor in determining the culture status of the prehistoric peoples and in defining their relations to the historic Indians. This change is due to the more careful investigations of recent times, to the utilization of new lines of archeologic research, and to the better knowledge of the character and scope of historic and modern native art. A comparison of the textiles obtained from ancient mounds and graves with the work of living tribes has demonstrated their practical ident.i.ty in materials, in processes of manufacture, and in articles produced. Thus another important link is added to the chain that binds together the ancient and the modern tribes.

DEFINITION OF THE ART.

The textile art dates back to the very inception of culture, and its practice is next to universal among living peoples. In very early stages of culture progress it embraced the stems of numerous branches of industry afterward differentiated through the utilization of other materials or through the employment of distinct systems of construction.

At all periods of cultural development it has been a most indispensable art, and with some peoples it has reached a marvelous perfection, both technically and esthetically.

Woven fabrics include all those products of art in which the elements or parts employed in construction are more or less filamental, and are combined by methods conditioned chiefly by their flexibility. The processes employed are known by such terms as wattling, interlacing, plaiting, netting, weaving, sewing, and embroidering.

MATERIALS AND PROCESSES.

Viewing the entire textile field, we find that the range of products is extremely wide. On the one hand there is the rude interlacing of branches, vines, roots, and canes in constructing houses, weirs, cages, rafts, bridges, and the like, and on the other, the spinning of threads of almost microscopic fineness and the weaving of textures of marvelous delicacy and beauty.

The more cultured peoples of Central America and South America had accomplished wonders in the use of the loom and the embroidery frame, but the work of the natives of the United States was on a decidedly lower plane. In basketry and certain cla.s.ses of garment-making, the inhabitants of the Mississippi valley were well advanced at the period of European conquest, and there is ample evidence to show that the mound-building peoples were not behind historic tribes in this matter.

In many sections of our country the art is still practiced, and with a technical perfection and an artistic refinement of high order, as the splendid collections in our museums amply show.

The degree of success in the textile art is not necessarily a reliable index of the culture status of the peoples concerned, as progress in a particular art depends much upon the encouragement given to it by local features of environment. The tribe that had good clay used earthenware and neglected basketry, and the community well supplied with skins of animals did not need to undertake the difficult and laborious task of spinning fibers and weaving garments and bedding. Thus it appears that well-advanced peoples may have produced inferior textiles and that backward tribes may have excelled in the art. Caution is necessary in using the evidence furnished by the art to aid in determining relative degrees of culture.

SOURCES OF INFORMATION.

The failure of the textile art to secure a prominent place in the field of archeologic evidence is due to the susceptibility of the products to decay. Examples of archaic work survive to us only by virtue of exceptionally favorable circ.u.mstances; it rarely happened that mound fabrics were so conditioned, as the soil in which they were buried is generally porous and moist; they were in some cases preserved through contact with objects of copper, the oxides of that metal having a tendency to arrest decay. The custom of burial in caves and rock shelters has led to the preservation of numerous fabrics through the agency of certain salts with which the soil is charged. Preservation by charring is common, and it is held by some that carbonization without the agency of fire has in some cases taken place.

Considerable knowledge of the fabrics of the ancient North American tribes is preserved in a way wholly distinct from the preceding. The primitive potter employed woven textiles in the manufacture of earthenware; during the processes of construction the fabrics were impressed on the soft clay, and when the vessels were baked the impressions became fixed. The study of these impressions led to meager results until the idea was conceived of taking castings from them in clay, wax, or paper; through this device the negative impression becomes a positive reproduction and the fabrics are shown in relief, every feature coming out with surprising distinctness; it is possible even to discover the nature of the threads employed and to detect the manner of their combination.

Evidence of the practice of textile arts by many ancient nations is preserved to us by such implements of weaving as happened to be of enduring materials; spindle-whorls in clay and stone are perhaps the most common of these relics. These objects tell us definitely of the practice of the art, but give little insight into the character of the products. It is a notable fact that evidence of this cla.s.s is almost wholly wanting in the United States; spindle-whorls have in rare cases been reported from southern localities, and a few writers have mentioned their use by modern tribes.

It happens that in some cases we may learn something of the progress made by vanished peoples in this art by a study of the forms of such of their earthen vessels as were manifestly derived from baskets, or made in imitation of them. The ornamental art of peoples well advanced in culture often bears evidence of the influence of the system of combination of parts followed originally in the textile arts, and little art, ancient or modern, in which men have endeavored to embody beauty, is without strongly marked traces of this influence. By the study of archaic ornament embodied in clay, wood, and stone, therefore, the archeologist may hope to add something to the sum of his knowledge of ancient textiles. It should be noted that the pottery of the mound-builders shows less evidence of the influence of textile forms than does that of most other nations, and some groups of their ware appear to present no recognizable traces of it whatever.

Although much information has been brought together from all of the sources mentioned, it is not at all certain that we can form anything like a complete or correct notion of the character and scope of the art as practiced by the mound-builders. No doubt the finest articles of apparel were often buried with the dead, but a very small fraction only of the mortuary wrappings or costumes has been preserved, and from vast areas once thickly inhabited by the most advanced tribes nothing whatever has been collected. Of embroideries, featherwork, and the like, so frequently mentioned by early travelers, hardly a trace is left.

The relations of our historic tribes to the ancient peoples of our continent and to all of the nations, ancient and modern, who built mounds and earthworks, are now generally considered so intimate that no objection can be raised to the utilization of the accounts of early explorers in the elucidation of such features of the art as archeology has failed to record. The first step in this study may consist quite properly of a review of what is recorded of the historic art.

Subsequently the purely archeologic data will be given.

PRODUCTS OF THE ART.