This survey makes no pretension of being complete, but it is an
adequate sampling of the fibers utilized by the Eastern Indians and
illustrates their resourcefulness in exploiting the raw materials at
hand. It is noticeable that they used a great variety of plants and
that one of the determining properties or qualifications was the local
abundance of a plant. There seems to have been a tendency to use the
monocotyledonous plants and the bast from the trees for coarser work
and the diocotyledonous herbaceous plants for the manufacture of finer
cords and threads.
Several general points of interest are apparent from the comparative
study of these prehistoric and historic plant materials.
1. The plant fibers used by the prehistoric people were rarely if ever
treated before utilization, while among the modern Indians a high
degree of skill has been attained in the preparation of the fibers
before spinning.
2. There seems to have been some commercial interchange between the
Northern and the Southern tribes, both in historic and prehistoric
times. The occurrence of palmetto fibers in modern Mohawk and
Potawatomi collections and the use of _Nolina_ by the cave and
rock-shelter people of Ohio, shows commerce.
3. It seems that most, if not all, of the materials utilized were wild
plants for there was no discoverable evidence of the cultivation of
these plants. Such evidence would be far from obvious since
cultivation does not seem to improve the fibers in textile plants.
4. Among the prehistoric peoples the purposeful mixing of fibers was
the rule. This is especially notable in the collections from Ohio and
Arkansas. These mixtures of fibers occur both in the same strand and
in the two-ply cords. It is not apparent why the fibers from different
plants were mixed, but the combinations seem intentional, as nettle
and milkweed, blue stem grass and pawpaw, nettle and yucca, basswood
and nettle, and pawpaw and yucca. Yet, such intentional mixtures were
rarely encountered in the historic collections examined.
5. It is apparent that the prehistoric peoples used such fibers as
were adapted to their immediate purpose without previous treatment.
They were stripped from the plant and twisted at once. This seems to
account for the dominance of monocotyledonous fibers in prehistoric
collections. The historic Indians, on the other hand, used a greater
variety of species of fiber plants because they were able to prepare
them properly before using. The determining factors seem to have been
strength, fineness of fiber, and abundance of supply.
All the above observations are consistent with the assumption of a
steady advance in textile skill and knowledge from prehistoric time to
the present.