Part 3 (1/2)
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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 fis.h.i.+ng, 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 s.h.i.+ft 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 fas.h.i.+on 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: