Part 3 (2/2)

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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 fas.h.i.+on 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]

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