Prehistoric Textile Art of Eastern United States Part 1

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.

In undertaking to cla.s.sify the textile fabrics of the mound region it is found that, although there is an unbroken gradation from the rudest and heaviest textile constructions to the most delicate and refined textures, a number of well-marked divisions may be made. The broadest of these is based on the use of spun as opposed to unspun strands or parts, a cla.s.sification corresponding somewhat closely to the division into rigid and pliable forms. Material, method of combination of parts, and function may each be made the basis of cla.s.sification, but for present purposes a simple presentation of the whole body of products, beginning with the rudest or most primitive forms and ending with the most elaborate and artistic products, is sufficient. The material will be presented in the following order: (1) Wattle work; (2) basketry; (3) matting; (4) pliable fabrics or cloths.

WATTLE WORK.

The term wattling is applied to such constructions as employ by interlacing, plaiting, etc., somewhat heavy, rigid, or slightly pliable parts, as rods, boughs, canes, and vines. Primitive shelters and dwellings are very often constructed in this manner, and rafts, cages, bridges, fish weirs, and inclosures of various kinds were and still are made or partly made in this manner. As a matter of course, few of these constructions are known to us save through historic channels; but traces of wattle work are found in the mounds of the lower Mississippi valley, where imprints of the interlaced canes occur in the baked clay plaster with which the dwellings were finished. When we consider the nature of the materials at hand, and the close correspondence in habits and customs of our prehistoric peoples with the tribes found living by the earliest explorers and settlers, we naturally conclude that this cla.s.s of construction was very common at all known periods of native American history.

The constructors of native dwellings generally employed pliable branches or saplings, which are bound together with vines, twigs, and other more pliable woody forms. John Smith says of the Indians of Virginia[1]

that--

Their houses are built like our Arbors, of small young springs bowed and tyed, and so close covered with Mats, or the barkes of trees very handsomely, that notwithstanding either winde, raine, or weather, they are as warm as stooues, but very smoaky, yet at the toppe of the house there is a hole made for the smoake to goe into right over the fire.

[1] Hist. Virginia, John Smith. Richmond, 1819, vol. I, p.

130.

Butel-Dumont also, in describing the dwellings of the Natchez Indians of the lower Mississippi region, speaks of the door of an Indian cabin "made of dried canes fastened and interlaced on two other canes placed across."[2]

A singular use of wattle work is mentioned by Lafitau. He states that the young men, when going through the ordeal of initiation on attaining their majority, were placed apart in--

An inclosure very strongly built, made expressly for this purpose, one of which I saw in 1694, which belonged to the Indians of Paumaunkie. It was in the form of a sugar loaf and was open on all sides like a trellis to admit the air.[3]

Of a somewhat similar nature was the construction of biers described by Butel-Dumont. Speaking of the Mobilians, he says:

When their chief is dead they proceed as follows: At 15 or 20 feet from his cabin they erect a kind of platform raised about 4 feet from the ground. This is composed of four large forked poles of oak wood planted in the earth, with others placed across; this is covered with canes bound and interlaced so as to resemble greatly the bed used by the natives.[4]

According to John Lawson, similarly constructed "hurdles" were in use among the Carolina Indians.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 1.--Fish weir of the Virginia Indiana (after Hariot).]

The tide-water tribes of the Atlantic coast region made very frequent use of fish weirs, which were essentially textile in character. John Smith mentions their use in Virginia, and Hariot gives a number of plates in which the weirs are delineated. The cut here given (figure 1) is from Hariot's plate XIII. It represents a very elaborate trap; much simpler forms are shown in other plates. Slender poles set in the shallow water are held in place by wattling or interlacing of pliable parts.

It is probable that traps of similar character were used by the mound-building tribes wherever the conditions were favorable. The only apparent traces of such weirs yet found in any part of the country are a number of stumps of stakes discovered by H. T. Cresson in Delaware river near Wilmington, but these appear to be much heavier than would have been used for the purpose by the natives.

Another somewhat usual use of wattling is mentioned by various authors.

Butel-Dumont speaks of a raft made of poles and canes, and Du Pratz, writing of the Louisiana Indians, says:

The conveniencies for pa.s.sing rivers would soon be suggested to them by the floating of wood upon the water. Accordingly one of their methods of crossing rivers is upon floats of canes, which are called by them Cajeu, and are formed in this manner. They cut a great number of canes, which they tie up into f.a.ggots, part of which they fasten together sideways, and over these they lay a few crossways, binding all close together, and then launching it into the water.[5]

We learn from various authors that cage-like coffins were constructed of canes and reeds something after the wattle style; and hampers, cages for animals, chests for treasures or regalia, biers, carrying chairs, fish baskets, beds and seats were often similarly made. These articles, being generally light and portable, and constructed of delicate parts, can as well be cla.s.sed with basketry as with wattle work.

[1] Hist. Virginia, John Smith. Richmond, 1819, vol. I, p.

130.

[2] Memoires Historiques sur la Louisiane, George Marie Butel-Dumont. Paris, 1753, vol. II, p. 104.